VCE Modern History DBQ technique quiz

Origin, Purpose, Context, Value, Reliability

Old, Powerful, Clear, Visual, Realistic

Origin, Place, Country, Value, Republic

Opinion, Position, Charity, Veracity, Result

Always neutral and completely reliable simply because it was written by an eyewitness at the time

Useful for revealing perspective and intent at the time, but limited by the author's position and access

Useless as evidence because it is inevitably biased and therefore cannot be trusted by a historian

Automatically more reliable than any secondary source because it was produced during the events themselves

Listing and describing each of the provided sources separately in turn, one after another, without ever drawing any links between them

Quoting only the very first source in detail and then briefly mentioning the others without analysing what they say

Comparing what multiple sources say about the same event, identifying agreements, contradictions, and complementary perspectives

Putting the sources into alphabetical order by author before discussing each of them in that fixed sequence

High value as objective evidence of the genuine public mood and what ordinary Germans actually believed in 1934

No analytical value at all, since a propaganda poster is simply biased and therefore cannot be used as evidence

Exactly the same evidential value as a private diary, because both are primary sources produced at the same time

High value as evidence of regime intent and projected image; limited value as evidence of actual public belief

Reference all provided sources, integrate them into argument, and supplement with relevant outside knowledge

Use only one of the provided sources in close detail and leave the remaining sources out of the response entirely

Ignore the provided sources altogether and instead write the whole answer from the student's own memory of the topic

Discuss only the format of each source, such as whether it is a poster, a diary or a speech, without using its content

Two sources are always automatically better than one, regardless of where the sources came from or who wrote them

Independent sources confirming the same claim reduce the risk that the claim reflects a single perspective's bias

It adds extra word count to the response, which assessors reward because longer answers cover more of the topic

It makes the overall essay noticeably longer, and a longer DBQ response is generally awarded a higher band by markers

Quietly ignore the inconvenient source altogether and simply leave it out of the response entirely so that it cannot weaken the argument

Deliberately misquote the source so that it appears to support the argument the student wants to make instead

Acknowledge the contradiction, evaluate the source's reliability, and explain why the weight of evidence still supports the argument

Claim that the source is a fake or a forgery and therefore should be disregarded entirely by the marker reading it

The source simply being old, since age on its own makes a source less useful

The source being short, because a brief source cannot reveal anything of value

The source being a primary source rather than a secondary one written later

Author bias, restricted access, narrow audience, missing context

Together, the four sources demonstrate that Nazi consolidation depended on legal manoeuvre (Enabling Act, Source A), organised violence (Night of the Long Knives, Source B), propaganda (Source C), and elimination of independent civil society (Source D); their different origins corroborate the multi-channel nature of the regime's takeover.

The four sources provided are all very interesting and they each tell us something about what was happening in Germany during this period, and in this response I am going to go through each of them in turn, one after another, describing what every source shows before I finally bring everything together at the very end of the answer in my conclusion.

In this response I am going to analyse all of the sources that have been provided to me, looking carefully at each one and describing what it says about Nazi consolidation, and I will work through them one by one in order before reaching a clear conclusion about the regime's takeover of power across the years 1933 and 1934 in Germany.

Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and over the following year the Nazi regime gradually consolidated its hold on power through a series of important events, which the four sources provided here each describe in their own different ways, as this response will go on to show by working steadily through every one of them in turn.

The use of more complex and more impressive vocabulary throughout the whole response, which is taken to signal a more sophisticated answer

Source evaluation: explaining WHY each source is useful (or limited) for the specific argument, not just identifying it

Simply writing longer responses, since covering more material on the page is what lifts an answer into the top band

Avoiding the use of any subheadings, because a continuous block of prose is what top-band markers reward most highly