The conduct of World War II and the post-war settlement, including the major turning points 1939 to 1945, the Holocaust, the use of the atomic bomb, and the Nuremberg Trials

A 10-mark "compare" question requires structured comparison, not parallel description.

Thesis

Both Germany and Japan pursued territorial expansion driven by ideology, resource scarcity, and great-power ambition, but their methods and rationales differed. German expansion was racial and continental (Lebensraum); Japanese expansion was imperial and maritime (the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere).

Similarities

Both states framed expansion as escape from the Versailles order (Germany) or the Washington Treaty system (Japan). Both used staged incidents to justify aggression: the Reichstag Fire and the Polish "attack" at Gleiwitz for Germany; the Mukden Incident (September 1931) and the Marco Polo Bridge Incident (July 1937) for Japan. Both pursued autarky through conquest.

Differences in ideology

German expansion was ideological: Lebensraum in the East, the destruction of the USSR, the racial reordering of Europe (Hitler's Hossbach Memorandum, 1937). Japanese expansion was framed as Pan-Asian liberation from European colonialism, though in practice Japanese rule (Manchukuo 1932, Indochina 1940, the Philippines and Malaya 1942) was brutal occupation.

Differences in method

Germany used diplomatic intimidation (Anschluss 1938, Munich 1938) before war. Japan pursued continuous war with China from 1937 and surprise attack at Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941).

Strategic alignment

The Tripartite Pact (27 September 1940) joined Germany, Japan, and Italy. The Axis was a loose alliance; Germany and Japan never coordinated against the USSR.

Markers reward structured comparison (similarity-difference paragraphs), specific dates, and source integration. Richard Overy (Why the Allies Won, 1995) treats Axis fragmentation as a key Allied advantage.

A 3-mark "identify" requires three distinct factors, each in one or two sentences.

Factor 1: Resource scarcity

Japan was poor in oil, rubber, iron ore, and food. The Great Depression collapsed silk exports (Japan's main earner) and devastated the economy. Conquest of resource-rich territories (Manchuria for coal and iron; South-East Asia for oil and rubber) became economic strategy.

Factor 2: Resentment of the post-WWI order

The Washington Naval Treaty (1922) capped Japanese capital ships at 60 per cent of US and British tonnage. The 1924 US Immigration Act effectively banned Japanese migration. Japanese liberals saw a racial order that contained Japanese ambitions.

Factor 3: Rise of militarist nationalism

Civilian government weakened through the 1920s. The Kwantung Army acted independently in staging the Mukden Incident (September 1931). The assassinations of Prime Minister Hamaguchi (1930) and Inukai (15 May 1932) ended effective civilian control. By 1936 the army dominated cabinet.

Markers reward three distinct factors with at least one specific date or treaty per factor.

A 15-mark response requires a thesis, developed paragraphs, and sustained historiography.

Thesis

The Nuremberg Trials (1945 to 1946) were a landmark in international law that established individual criminal responsibility for state crimes, but their significance was limited by selective prosecution and the emerging Cold War.

Establishment

The International Military Tribunal was established by the London Charter (8 August 1945), agreed by the US, UK, USSR, and France. It prosecuted 24 senior Nazis on four counts: conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity (a new category). The trial ran from 20 November 1945 to 1 October 1946.

Verdicts

12 defendants were sentenced to death (Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, and others). Goering took cyanide before his execution. Three were acquitted (Papen, Schacht, Fritzsche). Twelve subsequent trials of doctors, judges, industrialists, and Einsatzgruppen commanders ran until 1949.

Legal significance

The Tribunal established that "following orders" was not a defence, that individuals bear criminal responsibility, and that crimes against humanity exist as a distinct category. Principles were codified by the UN (December 1946) and informed the 1948 Genocide Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute, 1998).

Critiques

Trials applied retroactive law, the USSR (which had invaded Poland and Finland) sat as judge, and no Allied conduct was scrutinised. Donald Bloxham (Genocide on Trial, 2001) argues the Holocaust was relatively marginal to a prosecution strategy emphasising aggressive war.

Historiography

Telford Taylor defended the Tribunal as the foundation of modern international criminal law. Richard Overy (Interrogations, 2001) treats it as genuine legal accountability constrained by politics.

Conclusion

Nuremberg's principles outlasted its limitations.

An 8-mark "assess" requires a judgement, three to four reasons, and the Alperovitz vs Frank debate.

Thesis

The decision combined military, political, and diplomatic motives. The military case was strongest, but Cold War calculations were not absent.

To end the war quickly

US planners estimated Operation Downfall (the invasion of Kyushu and Honshu, planned November 1945 and March 1946) would cost between 250,000 and 1 million American casualties. Okinawa (April to June 1945) had cost 12,000 American dead against fanatical resistance.

Japanese refusal to surrender unconditionally

The Potsdam Declaration (26 July 1945) demanded unconditional surrender. Premier Suzuki's response of "mokusatsu" (treat with silent contempt) was read in Washington as rejection. Japanese militarists resisted surrender even after Hiroshima (6 August); Emperor Hirohito intervened only after Nagasaki (9 August) and the Soviet declaration of war (8 August).

Atomic diplomacy

Gar Alperovitz (Atomic Diplomacy, 1965) argues the bomb was used primarily to intimidate the USSR. The Trinity Test (16 July 1945) coincided with Potsdam, where Truman told Stalin about a "new weapon."

Bureaucratic momentum

The Manhattan Project had cost around $2 billion. Not using the bomb was politically difficult.

Historiography

Richard Frank (Downfall, 1999) defends the decision as a legitimate military choice given Japanese intransigence. J. Samuel Walker (Prompt and Utter Destruction, 1997) takes a middle position. Markers reward both Alperovitz and Frank and the Soviet declaration of war.

A 3-mark "identify" needs three distinct points, each with a one-line significance. One mark per correct, dated, significant turning point.

Midway (4 to 7 June 1942)

The US destroyed four Japanese carriers, halting Japanese expansion in the Pacific.

Stalingrad (Aug 1942 to 2 Feb 1943)

The German Sixth Army was destroyed (around 91,000 captured); the decisive turn on the Eastern Front.

D-Day (6 June 1944)

About 156,000 Allied troops landed in Normandy, opening the Western Front against Germany.

Markers reward three distinct, correctly dated turning points, each with a stated consequence. El Alamein (Oct to Nov 1942) is an equally valid third choice.

A 4-mark "outline" rewards several accurate, sketched features across both conferences, with dates.

Yalta (4 to 11 February 1945). Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin agreed to divide Germany into occupation zones, hold "free elections" in liberated Europe (ignored in practice by the USSR), bring the USSR into the Pacific war, and create the United Nations.

Potsdam (17 July to 2 August 1945). Truman, Churchill (then Attlee) and Stalin agreed on de-Nazification, demilitarisation and reparations, and the Oder-Neisse line as Poland's western border. Disputes over Eastern Europe foreshadowed the Cold War.

Markers reward features from BOTH conferences, correct leaders, and at least one date. A top answer notes the shift in tone between February and July 1945.

A 5-mark source-and-own-knowledge "explain" rewards use of the source's perspective PLUS own knowledge, organised around the causal question.

Use the source

The minute captures the core clash: Stalin frames Poland as a security corridor ("twice invaded"), while Churchill frames it as the moral cause of the war ("Polish independence"). The source is a Foreign Office record, so it reflects the British official perspective and is useful for showing how the two aims could not be reconciled.

Own knowledge

At Yalta (Feb 1945) the Allies agreed to "free and unfettered elections," but the Red Army already occupied Poland and the Soviet-backed Lublin Committee was installed. At Potsdam (Jul to Aug 1945) the Oder-Neisse line and reparations deepened the split, and Soviet refusal to hold genuine elections turned the wartime alliance into Cold War suspicion.

Link to the question

Security versus self-determination was an irreconcilable conflict; once the Red Army held the ground, Western protests had no leverage. John Lewis Gaddis (We Now Know, 1997) reads Stalin's aims as security-driven; Vladislav Zubok (A Failed Empire, 2007) reads them as expansionist where possible.

Marking criteria

5 marks: explains the tension using the source's perspective AND specific own knowledge (Yalta/Potsdam, elections, Oder-Neisse) with a clear causal line. 3 to 4: uses one well but the link is partial. 1 to 2: describes the source or recounts events without explaining the tension.

A 5-mark "assess usefulness" weighs the source's value AND its limits for the stated purpose, using origin, motive and content.

Origin and motive

Stimson was the Secretary of War, a decision-maker at the centre of the Manhattan Project, writing privately in a diary. This gives the source high value: it records the reasoning of someone who actually shaped the choice, and a private diary is less performative than a public statement.

Content and what it reveals

It supports TWO of the main reasons in the debate at once: the military case (shock Japan, avoid a costly invasion - Operation Downfall casualty estimates ran from 250,000 to 1 million) AND a diplomatic edge over Stalin (the "atomic diplomacy" reading). It is therefore useful for showing the motives were mixed.

Limits

It is one official's view at one moment; it does not show Truman's full reasoning, Japanese decision-making, or the impact of Soviet entry (8 August 1945). A diary may also rationalise a decision already taken.

Judgement

Highly useful for the American decision-makers' stated motives, but must be corroborated. Gar Alperovitz (1965) would seize the Stalin detail; Richard Frank (1999) would stress the military case the diary also records.

Marking criteria

5 marks: assesses BOTH value and limitations using origin/motive/content, tied to the historian's purpose. 3 to 4: discusses value or limits but not both, or thin on purpose. 1 to 2: describes the source only.

A 25-mark essay needs a sustained, judged thesis, specific evidence, and named historiography throughout, all addressing "evaluate" (weigh and judge).

Band 6 plan.

• Thesis. The post-war settlement (Yalta, Potsdam, the UN, Nuremberg) did most to shape the modern international order, but it was the CONDUCT of the war - the scale of industrial killing, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb - that defined the problems the settlement had to answer. Conduct set the agenda; the settlement built the institutions.
• Argument 1 - The conduct of the war created the moral and strategic problems. Total war, the Holocaust (around 6 million murdered), and the atomic bombings (Hiroshima 6 Aug, Nagasaki 9 Aug 1945) made "never again" the founding impulse of the post-war order. Evidence: Wannsee (Jan 1942); Einsatzgruppen; Hiroshima casualties (around 140,000 to year-end).
• Argument 2 - The settlement built the lasting institutions. The UN Charter (26 June 1945), the Nuremberg principles (crimes against humanity; "following orders" no defence) and the 1948 Genocide Convention are the durable framework. Evidence: London Charter (8 Aug 1945); four counts; UN codification (Dec 1946).
• Argument 3 - But the settlement also planted the Cold War. Yalta/Potsdam disputes over Poland and Germany's division split the world into blocs for 45 years - so the "order" was as much division as cooperation. Evidence: Oder-Neisse line; four-zone Germany; Soviet refusal of free elections.
• Historiography. Richard Overy (Why the Allies Won, 1995) ties the outcome to Allied industrial power; Tony Judt (Postwar, 2005) treats 1945 as the hinge of the European order; Gaddis (1997) and Zubok (2007) debate whether the settlement's tensions were security-driven or expansionist.
• Judgement. Conduct framed the questions; the settlement answered them and seeded the Cold War. The modern order is the product of both, but it is the settlement's institutions that endure.

Model paragraph (Argument 2). The institutions that still define the international order were creations of the settlement, not the fighting. The UN Charter, signed in San Francisco on 26 June 1945 and in force on 24 October, built collective security around a Security Council whose five permanent members held a veto - a direct lesson from the League's failure. At Nuremberg, the London Charter of 8 August 1945 created the category of "crimes against humanity" and established that obedience to orders was no defence, principles the UN codified in December 1946 and extended in the 1948 Genocide Convention. Telford Taylor defended the Tribunal as the foundation of modern international criminal law, and Richard Overy (Interrogations, 2001) reads it as genuine, if politically constrained, accountability. These texts, not the battles, are what a citizen of the present still lives under - which is why the settlement, building on the war's lessons, did most to shape the modern order.

Marker's note. Top-band answers sustain a single judged line ("conduct framed, settlement built and divided"), deploy precise dated evidence in every paragraph, weave at least two named historians as argument rather than decoration, and keep returning to "evaluate." Narrating the war chronologically without judging, or naming historians without using them, caps a response in the middle bands.

A 15-mark response needs a clear thesis, weighed factors, and the Hasegawa/Frank debate.

Band 6 plan.

• Thesis. The atomic bombs and Soviet entry were entangled causes; the bombs delivered the shock, but the Soviet declaration of war removed Japan's last diplomatic hope and tipped the decisive balance.
• The bombs. Hiroshima (6 Aug, around 140,000 dead to year-end) and Nagasaki (9 Aug) shattered any defence-of-the-homeland strategy and gave Hirohito and the peace faction a reason to override the militarists.
• Soviet entry (8 Aug). Japan had hoped Moscow would broker a negotiated peace; the Soviet attack in Manchuria with 1.6 million troops destroyed that hope and threatened occupation. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (Racing the Enemy, 2005) argues this, not the bombs, was decisive.
• Counter. Richard Frank (Downfall, 1999) holds the bombs were decisive given Japanese intransigence and the casualty estimates for Operation Downfall (250,000 to 1 million). J. Samuel Walker takes the middle position.
• Judgement. The two shocks landed within 72 hours; the surrender followed both, so the honest answer is "to a large but not exclusive extent" - Soviet entry was necessary, the bombs sufficient, neither alone certain.

Marker's note. Markers reward a thesis that weighs rather than lists, the precise sequence (6 Aug bomb, 8 Aug Soviet entry, 9 Aug bomb, 15 Aug surrender), and the Hasegawa versus Frank debate used as argument. Reciting the events without judging the relative weight stays mid-band.