5 exam-style questions with full mark schemes and model answers. Write your own answer and the AI examiner marks it against the mark scheme.
Source A — an invented diary extract written for this exercise, in the style of a Berlin shopkeeper writing in November 1923, at the height of the hyperinflation.
Today I sold a single loaf of bread for fifty billion marks, and by evening the same loaf would have cost twice as much again. My wife collected my wages this morning in a wheelbarrow and we spent every note within the hour, for to hold money overnight is madness. We paper the wall with thousand-mark notes because they are cheaper than wallpaper, and the children burn bundles of them in the stove. People say it is the fault of the French sitting in the Ruhr and the printing presses that run day and night to pay the strikers there. The old people who saved all their lives for a pension now have nothing, and I see respectable women selling their furniture in the street. There is talk that the government will bring in some new money to end the madness, but I will believe it when I hold it in my hand.
Study Source A.
How useful is Source A to a historian studying the impact of the 1923 hyperinflation on ordinary Germans? Explain your answer using Source A and your contextual knowledge. (8 marks)
Source A — an invented description of a political cartoon, written for this exercise in the style of a cartoon published in a British newspaper in March 1936.
The cartoon shows a uniformed German soldier in a steel helmet striding confidently across a bridge over the river Rhine, his rifle slung on his shoulder. The bridge is signposted "RHINELAND — DEMILITARISED ZONE". Behind the soldier, the figure of Hitler points the way forward with an outstretched arm. On the far bank, three plump, sleepy figures labelled "BRITAIN", "FRANCE" and "THE LEAGUE" sit in deckchairs; one is asleep, one hides behind a newspaper headlined "PEACE IN OUR TIME?", and the third merely shrugs. A small caption beneath reads: "No one is going to stop him for a walk in his own back garden."
Study Source A.
How useful is Source A to a historian studying reactions to Hitler's remilitarisation of the Rhineland in 1936? Explain your answer using Source A and your contextual knowledge. (8 marks)
Source A — an invented letter written for this exercise, in the style of a letter from a London doctor to a medical colleague, dated September 1854, during the cholera outbreak in Soho.
Dear Sir, I write from the midst of a most fearful visitation of the cholera in the parish of St James, where in Broad Street and the courts about it whole households have been swept away in a matter of hours. Mr Snow, who has long argued that the disease is spread not by foul air but by something in the water, has been about the streets mapping the deaths, and he finds them clustered thickly around the public pump in Broad Street, while the workhouse and the brewery near by, which draw their water elsewhere, are scarcely touched. At his urging the parish has removed the handle of the pump, and though the outbreak was already abating, the gentleman holds it proof that the well was the source. I confess that many of our profession still hold to the miasma and think his notion fanciful, for he cannot show us the poison under the microscope. Yet his maps are striking, and I begin to doubt the old teaching.
Study Source A.
How useful is Source A to a historian studying John Snow's investigation of cholera in 1854? Explain your answer using Source A and your contextual knowledge. (8 marks)
Source A — an invented description of a Nazi election poster, written for this exercise in the style of a German propaganda poster from 1932.
The poster is dominated by a huge, grim-faced crowd of working men in caps and overalls, drawn so that they seem to stretch back endlessly to the horizon, all facing the same way with set, determined expressions. Above them, in heavy black letters, runs the slogan "ARBEIT UND BROT" — "WORK AND BREAD". In the bottom corner, smaller, are the words "Hitler — our last hope" and the symbol of the Nazi Party. The men carry no weapons; their raised, clenched fists and their hungry, hopeful faces are turned upward towards the slogan, as if appealing for the work and food it promises.
Study Source A.
How useful is Source A to a historian studying why people voted for the Nazi Party in 1932? Explain your answer using Source A and your contextual knowledge. (8 marks)
Source A — an invented report extract written for this exercise, in the style of a confidential report sent by a German police official in a provincial town to his superiors, dated 11 November 1938, two days after Kristallnacht.
On the night of the 9th to the 10th, following the news from Paris of the death of the official vom Rath, parties of men, many of them in plain clothes though known to us as Party members and SA, gathered before the synagogue and the Jewish shops. The synagogue was set alight and burned to the ground while the fire brigade stood by under orders only to protect the neighbouring German houses. The windows of every Jewish shop in the main street were smashed and the goods thrown into the road. A number of Jewish men have since been arrested and sent to the camp at Dachau. The action was presented to the public as a spontaneous outburst of popular anger, but I must report that it was plainly organised, the men acting upon instructions received during the evening. The mood of the ordinary townspeople was mixed; some joined in the looting, but many watched in silence and a few expressed quiet disgust, though none dared intervene.
Study Source A.
How useful is Source A to a historian studying the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938? Explain your answer using Source A and your contextual knowledge. (8 marks)