DSE History | The Rise of Dictators in the Interwar Years Lesson Prep

DSE History | The Rise of Dictators in the Interwar Years Lesson Prep | From treaty grievance to world war

2026-11-04

Tutor lesson-prep guides · Secondary History

Students can recite that the treaty was harsh, but asked how it led to war they offer only that Germany was angry. This lesson splits the twenty years into three lines: the territorial, military and reparation terms; the transmission of the Depression after 1929; and the legal route by which dictators took power. Appeasement then ties the three together.

Objectives — Students can: (1) state the territorial, military and reparations terms of the settlement and explain German grievance; (2) use the transmission chain of the Depression to explain why democracy lost support after 1930; (3) explain how dictators used elections and emergency decrees to take power, and assess appeasement in terms of both effect and cost.

01 Prerequisites (3-minute check)

If any of these fails, fix it before the lesson starts.

Skill	Quick check	Pass mark
End of the First World War	In which year did the war end?	1918
Peace conference	Who were the four leading powers at Paris?	Britain, France, the United States, Italy
Democracy	Where does authority come from in a democracy?	Elections and majority consent

02 Lesson flow (60 minutes)

Time	Stage	Tutor does	Student does
0-8 min	Three-question check	End year, four powers, source of authority	Answer orally
8-24 min	Three treaty lines	Territory, armaments, reparations	Fill a three-row table
24-38 min	Transmission of the slump	1929 to 1933: jobs and votes	Draw a causal chain
38-50 min	The legal route	Election, decree, enabling law	Sequence and explain
50-57 min	Timed practice	One source question, one causation question	Work alone
57-60 min	Exit check	Three checkpoints, one question each	Self-mark and circle slips

03 Teaching script (read it out)

Scene 1: The treaty: twenty years of grievance on three sheets

The 1919 settlement can be taught as three sheets: territory surrendered or mandated, armaments capped, reparations payable in instalments. The League was founded in 1920, but the United States stayed out and sanctions depended on voluntary contributions, so collective security had no teeth from the start. Only 20 years separate 1919 from 1939: those years were not peace but a contest between enforcement and revision. The point to land is that the injury was not only land and money but the fact of imposition, which is why any politician promising revision won applause.

Require a three-row table, each row ending with one line on how Germans saw it.

Scene 2: The Depression: from Wall Street to European unemployment

After the 1929 crash, American lending was recalled, European banks failed in sequence, and by 1933 world trade had contracted sharply, turning local joblessness into a general condition within 4 years. Germany is the clearest case: the Nazi vote rose from 18.3 to 37.3 per cent, a factor of 2.0, and seats from 107 to 230. The causal order matters: the economy broke first, parliament failed next, and only then did voters turn to extremes. People did not fall in love with dictatorship; they lost faith in the existing government.

Have them draw the chain: unemployment up, revenue down, coalition collapses, decrees become normal, extremist vote rises.

Scene 3: The legal route: from ballots to the enabling law

Hitler became chancellor in 1933 through presidential appointment and parliamentary procedure, which students find hardest to accept. Teach three steps: street violence to create a sense of collapsing order; the emergency decree after the Reichstag fire to restrict speech and assembly; and the enabling law transferring law-making from parliament to the cabinet. Then came the Rhineland in 1936, the Sudetenland at Munich in 1938, each probe meeting no real resistance. Appeasement turned not-this-time into not-this-time-either, and the invasion of Poland in 1939 ended it. Close on the expensive lesson: a democracy can be dismantled by democratic procedure.

Have them recite the six-step sequence until it is automatic; order is where marks are lost.

04 Question types and worked steps

Type	Example	Steps	Answer
Source question	Cartoon or poster, ask stance and technique	Context, symbols, then policy link	Stance, evidence, effect
Causation	How far did the treaty cause the war	Two points each side, then a degree judgement	Treaty is distant cause, slump the accelerator
Comparison	Two dictators compared	Background, methods, mass base	Same crisis, different electoral base
Chronology	Order six events	Use year and cause, not memorised months	Versailles to Poland

Sanity check (teach this): Three checks: 1939 minus 1919 must equal 20, the origin of the twenty years truce phrase; the vote rising from 18.3 to 37.3 per cent is a factor of 2.0, not a vague doubling; and the Saar plebiscite returning 90.7 per cent for Germany shows even a treaty device could reinforce revisionism. If a student says the treaty made war inevitable, ask why Locarno still produced a thaw after 1925.

05 Independent practice (3 questions)

Question	Answer	What to watch
State two armament limits on Germany	Army ceiling, no air force or submarines	Specific terms given
Explain how unemployment after 1929 affected parliament	Revenue fell, coalitions collapsed, decrees normalised	Mechanism, not just outcome
Give two appeasement examples and their cost	Rhineland, Sudetenland; cost was encouraging further expansion	Years included

06 Common mistakes and what to say

Mistake	Student writes	Say this
Reducing the treaty to German anger	Writes feelings, no terms	Three rows first: territory, arms, reparations; anger is the result.
Assuming dictators seized power by force	Says a coup brought them in	Ballots and decrees dismantled democracy legally, which is the frightening part.
Treating the slump as the only cause	Says the Depression caused the war	The slump was the accelerator; the treaty and the League were the track.
Broken chronology	Places Munich after the invasion of Poland	Probe, concession, general war: the order cannot be reversed.

07 Homework (paper, section and question numbers)

History chapter index — All chapters
History practice papers — Interwar section: one causation and one source question

08 Exit check (last 5 minutes)

Question	Answer	Decision
Three terms	One term each for territory, arms, reparations	Cannot: return to the table
Chain	How rising unemployment broke parliament	Says it was chaotic: add revenue and coalitions
Chronology	In which year was the Munich conference	Says 1939: re-sequence by cause

09 Tutor FAQ

How many dates must be memorised?

Six key years suffice; the rest can be reasoned from sequence and cause.

Why did the League fail?

American absence, unanimity rules and no standing force left sanctions dependent on members.

Was appeasement simply wrong?

There were genuine public and military constraints, but each concession lowered the next deterrent, which is the assessment point.

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A TutorZone lesson-prep guide. Written by the TutorZone team; questions and lesson flow are original and are not taken from any school or publisher material.