Core: Power and Authority in the Modern World 1919–1946

The core study, Power and Authority in the Modern World 1919–1946, is Section I of the HSC paper: 25 marks, everyone answers it. There are three or four questions. Most use sources (written, visual or statistical), and one question is worth 10–15 marks and comes mainly from the focus of study. There are no multiple-choice questions in the real paper; the quick questions in our bank are for checking your knowledge.

The syllabus has a survey and a focus of study, and both can be examined:

• Survey: an overview of the peace treaties that ended World War I and their consequences.
• Rise of dictatorships: the conditions that let dictators rise to power between the wars, and an overview of the dictatorships in Russia, Italy and Japan.
• The Nazi regime to 1939: the rise of Hitler and the collapse of the Weimar Republic, consolidation of power in 1933–34, Nazi ideology, prominent individuals, methods of control, impact on life in Germany (culture, religion, workers, youth, women, minorities including Jews) and opposition.
• The search for peace and security 1919–1946: the ambitions of Germany in Europe and Japan in the Asia-Pacific, and the intentions and authority of the League of Nations and the United Nations.

Expect the big question to come from the Nazi regime or the search for peace and security, and the smaller source questions from anywhere.

Each defeated power signed a separate treaty in Paris:

Consequences you should be able to explain:

• Germany: the ‘Diktat’ and war guilt clause humiliated Germans and were blamed on the Weimar politicians who signed. The ‘stab in the back’ myth claimed the army had not been defeated. Reparations (set in 1921 at 132 billion gold marks) became a political weapon for the right.
• Italy: a victor that felt cheated (the ‘mutilated victory’), because it did not receive Dalmatia or Fiume. This fed nationalism and Fascism.
• Japan: gained Shandong and Pacific mandates, but its racial equality proposal was rejected, which nationalists used as evidence of Western hostility.
• New states and minorities: self-determination was applied unevenly, leaving German speakers in Czechoslovakia and Poland and Hungarians outside Hungary. These were later sources of tension.
• The League of Nations: created by the treaties, but without the USA.

Dictatorships grew from crises. Learn the general conditions, then an example of each from at least two countries.

• Economic crisis: post-war inflation and unemployment (Italy 1919–21), hyperinflation (Germany 1923) and the Great Depression after 1929.
• Fear of communism: after 1917, elites and the middle class feared revolution, so they were willing to back strongmen.
• Weak or new democratic institutions: coalition governments that kept collapsing (Italy), proportional representation and decree rule (Weimar), or a constitution that gave the military independence (Japan).
• War and the peace settlement: veterans, nationalism and resentment.
• Decisions by elites: in Italy the King appointed Mussolini; in Germany Hindenburg's circle appointed Hitler.

Overview of three dictatorships

• Russia (USSR): the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917 and banned other parties. Stalin won the power struggle after Lenin's death (1924), then drove the Five-Year Plans and collectivisation (from 1928–29) and the Great Terror (1937–38). The regime was a one-party state with an official ideology (Marxism-Leninism), terror (NKVD, Gulag) and a leader cult.
• Italy: Mussolini's Fascists used squad violence, and after the March on Rome (October 1922) the King appointed him Prime Minister. The Acerbo Law (1923), the murder of Matteotti (1924) and the laws of 1925–26 created a one-party state. The monarchy, Church (Lateran Treaty 1929) and big business kept some independence, so historians debate how totalitarian it really was.
• Japan: there was no single dictator and no mass fascist party. The army acted on its own in the Mukden Incident (1931), ultranationalists assassinated Prime Minister Inukai (1932), and power drifted to the military and bureaucracy acting in the Emperor's name. Repression used the Peace Preservation Law (1925).

Totalitarianism means a regime that aims to control every part of life through one party, one ideology, propaganda, terror and a leader cult. It is a useful concept, but you gain marks by noting its limits (for example in Italy, or in how far the Nazis really controlled private life).

Collapse of Weimar and the rise of Hitler

Weimar's weaknesses: the stigma of Versailles, proportional representation producing coalitions, Article 48 emergency powers, and elites (army, judges, landowners) hostile to democracy. After the Depression hit, unemployment reached about 6 million. From 1930 Chancellors Brüning, von Papen and von Schleicher governed by presidential decree.

Nazi Reichstag seats rose from 12 (1928) to 107 (1930) and 230 (July 1932), then fell to 196 (November 1932). Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30 January 1933 after von Papen persuaded Hindenburg that Hitler could be controlled. Remember: the Nazis never won a majority in a free election.

Consolidation of power, 1933–34

1. 27–28 February 1933: Reichstag fire; the Reichstag Fire Decree suspended civil rights.
2. 23 March 1933: the Enabling Act let the cabinet make laws without the Reichstag.
3. 1933: Gleichschaltung (coordination) — states taken over, unions replaced by the German Labour Front (2 May), all other parties banned (14 July).
4. 30 June – 2 July 1934: Night of the Long Knives; the SA leadership was killed, winning the army's support.
5. 2 August 1934: Hindenburg died; Hitler became Führer and the army swore an oath to him personally.

Ideology and individuals

Core Nazi ideas: racial hierarchy and antisemitism, the Volksgemeinschaft (people's community), the Führer principle, Lebensraum (living space) in the East, anti-communism, and rejection of Versailles and democracy. Know at least two individuals well: Goebbels (propaganda), Himmler (SS, police, camps), Göring (Gestapo founder in Prussia, Luftwaffe, Four-Year Plan from 1936), Heydrich (SD), Speer (architect), Schacht (economics).

Methods of control

• Laws: decrees and the Enabling Act gave terror a legal form.
• Terror and repression: SS, Gestapo, SD, concentration camps (Dachau, March 1933), the People's Court (1934). The Gestapo was small and relied on denunciations from ordinary people.
• Propaganda and censorship: Goebbels's ministry, the Reich Chamber of Culture, radio (the People's Receiver), rallies, film, the 1936 Olympics, book burnings (May 1933).
• Cult of personality: the ‘Hitler myth’ made Hitler more popular than the party.

Impact on life in Germany

• Workers: unemployment fell sharply (public works, rearmament, conscription from 1935), but unions were abolished and wages controlled; Strength Through Joy (KdF) offered leisure.
• Youth: Hitler Youth and League of German Girls (compulsory by laws of 1936 and 1939), a Nazified school curriculum; some nonconformity (Edelweiss Pirates, Swing Youth).
• Women: motherhood ideology, marriage loans (1933), the Mother's Cross; but female employment rose by the late 1930s.
• Religion: the Concordat with the Catholic Church (July 1933) was soon broken; the Confessing Church resisted Nazi control of Protestantism.
• Culture: ‘degenerate’ art banned, Jewish artists expelled, art and literature made to serve the regime.
• Jews and other minorities: the boycott and civil service law (1933), the Nuremberg Laws (1935), Kristallnacht (November 1938), Aryanisation and forced emigration. Roma and Sinti, disabled people (forced sterilisation law, July 1933), homosexual men and ‘asocials’ were also persecuted.

Opposition

Opposition was limited and divided: the underground KPD and SPD, churches defending their own sphere, youth nonconformity, and army officers who considered a coup in 1938. Historians separate nonconformity (grumbling, avoiding the Hitler salute), dissent (protesting about a specific policy) and resistance (trying to overthrow the regime).

Ambitions of Germany and Japan

• Germany: overturn Versailles, unite all Germans, gain Lebensraum. Steps: leaving the League (1933), conscription (1935), the Rhineland (1936), the Anschluss and the Sudetenland (1938), Prague (March 1939).
• Japan: resources, markets and regional dominance — Manchuria (1931–32, Manchukuo), leaving the League (announced 1933), war with China (1937), the ‘New Order in East Asia’ (1938).

The League of Nations

• Intentions: collective security (Article 10), settling disputes by arbitration, disarmament, and social and humanitarian work.
• Authority and weaknesses: no army; sanctions (Article 16) depended on members; decisions needed unanimity; the USA never joined; Germany, Japan and Italy left in the 1930s.
• Record: successes in the 1920s with smaller powers (Åland Islands 1921, Upper Silesia 1921, Greece–Bulgaria 1925) and in refugee and health work; failure with great powers (Corfu 1923, Manchuria 1931–33, Abyssinia 1935–36).

The United Nations

The UN Charter was signed in San Francisco on 26 June 1945 and came into force on 24 October 1945. It was designed to fix the League's weaknesses: the great powers joined from the start, the Security Council's decisions bind members, and Chapter VII allows sanctions and military action. The five permanent members (USA, USSR, Britain, France, China) have a veto, which kept them involved but often paralysed the Council during the Cold War. Australia's H.V. Evatt argued at San Francisco for the rights of smaller powers.

Section I rewards three skills: using sources as evidence, judging their value or reliability, and adding your own knowledge.

Worked example (an original source). Suppose you are given a 1934 Nazi poster showing a smiling family under the slogan ‘The Führer protects your home’, and asked how useful it is for studying the Nazi family policy.

• _Content:_ it shows the ideal of the family and the leader as protector — useful evidence of the values the regime promoted.
• _Provenance:_ made by the regime in 1934 to persuade the public — so it shows propaganda aims, not how families actually lived.
• _Own knowledge:_ marriage loans (1933) and the later Mother's Cross support the poster's message; the rise in women's employment by 1939 shows the limits of the policy.
• _Judgement:_ very useful for Nazi ideology and propaganda; limited for the real experience of German families.

Use the same steps for any source: what it says (content), who made it, when, why and for whom (provenance), what it can and cannot show (value and limits), and what you know that confirms or challenges it.

• Saying Hitler or Mussolini was elected to power. Both were appointed.
• Calling a source ‘biased, so useless’. A biased source is often very useful evidence of its author's views or of propaganda.
• Quoting a source without explaining what it shows. Every quotation needs a ‘this shows…’ sentence.
• Ignoring ‘your own knowledge’ in a source question. Markers expect evidence beyond the sources.
• Treating Japan as a copy of Nazi Germany. It had no single dictator or mass party.
• Mixing up the stages of Nazi persecution of Jews (1933 → 1935 → 1938). Dates matter.
• Spending too long on the small questions. Work out the time: about 45 minutes for 25 marks, so roughly 25 minutes for a 15-mark question.

• Command verbs: _outline_ (main features), _explain_ (cause and effect, how and why), _assess_ or _evaluate_ (judge value or importance with criteria), _to what extent_ (a judgement on a scale, with both sides), _compare_ (similarities and differences).
• For a 10–15 mark answer, write a clear thesis in your first sentence, organise paragraphs by argument (not by date), and finish each paragraph by linking back to the question.
• Integrate sources with your own knowledge rather than writing a ‘sources paragraph’ and a ‘knowledge paragraph’.
• Mention historians only when it supports your argument; correctly using one interpretation beats listing five names.
• Learn ten key dates and statistics that you can drop into any answer: 30 January 1933, the Enabling Act (March 1933), the Night of the Long Knives (June 1934), the Nuremberg Laws (September 1935), Kristallnacht (November 1938), the 37.3% vote in July 1932, unemployment of about 6 million, the March on Rome (October 1922), Mukden (September 1931) and the UN Charter (June 1945).

• Russia and the Soviet Union 1917–1941 gives the depth behind the overview of Stalin's dictatorship.
• Conflict in Europe 1935–1945 continues from German foreign policy and the failure of collective security.
• The Cold War 1945–1991 builds on the UN and the post-war settlement.
• Civil Rights in the USA and other topics use the same source analysis skills.