S3 History: Interwar Dictatorship and the Second World War — Tutor Prep Guide

S3 History: Interwar Dictatorship and the Second World War — Tutor Prep Guide | From depression to 1945

2026-11-11

Tutor lesson-prep guides · Secondary History

Students can date the invasion of Poland yet cannot explain why a country with weak relief payments voted for extremes. This lesson links economic figures, political choices and the timetable of the war.

Objectives — Students can: (1) explain the mechanism linking depression unemployment to extremist votes rather than blaming national character; (2) describe blitzkrieg as a combination of concentrated armour, air support and radio coordination, and say why it failed after 1941; (3) order five dates from 1 September 1939 to 2 September 1945 and explain why total war raised the civilian share of deaths.

01 Prerequisites (3-minute check)

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

Skill	Quick check	Pass mark
Timeline	Which years did the Second World War cover?	1939 to 1945, six years
Prior concept	What happened to unemployment after the 1929 crash?	It rose sharply, above twenty per cent in several countries
Map	Which country did Germany invade in September 1939?	Poland, which brought Britain and France into the war

02 Lesson flow (45 minutes)

Time	Stage	Tutor does	Student does
0-5 min	Word diagnosis	Ask why the war happened and write because Hitler was evil up uncorrected	Students give a personal explanation
5-14 min	Unemployment to votes	Write 1929 and 1933 only and ask students to fill the four years between	Students build unemployment, lost trust, extreme votes
14-23 min	The blitzkrieg combination	Draw armour, aircraft and radio arrows and ask how they combine	Students describe concentration and coordination
23-32 min	Five dates	Shuffle five dates and ask for the order plus the gap in days (2,076 days from Poland to VE Day)	Students order them and compute 2,076 and 117 days
32-41 min	Total war and civilians	Give the civilian share of deaths and ask for the three mechanisms	Students write air raids, occupation policy and famine
41-45 min	Exit check	Collect three answers and assign the retaught script	Students hand in three answers

03 Teaching script (read it out)

Scene 1: Script 1: before the votes, look at the unemployment figures

The Wall Street crash came in 1929 and Hitler became chancellor in 1933, four years later. The mechanism to teach is: unemployment rises, relief is inadequate, centrist parties lose credibility, voters move to parties promising immediate work and order. Say plainly that this is not a national character story but a story about institutions failing to respond. Mechanisms score; adjectives do not.

Follow-up: roughly how far did German unemployment rise between 1929 and 1933?

Scene 2: Script 2: blitzkrieg won on coordination and lost on logistics

Three things happen at once: armour concentrates on one point, aircraft hit airfields and command posts first, and radio keeps forward units and headquarters in step. That beat France in six weeks in 1940. The same method failed in the Soviet Union because distances were vast, roads poor, supply lines stretched and the defender could trade space for time. Tactical advantage met a logistical ceiling.

Follow-up: why did blitzkrieg break down in city fighting such as Stalingrad?

Scene 3: Script 3: 1945 had two endings, 117 days apart

VE Day was 8 May 1945 and Japan signed on 2 September, 117 days later. In between came Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Soviet advance into Manchuria. Count from 1 September 1939 to 8 May 1945 and you get 2,076 days. Six years of total war killed roughly seventy million people, and most of them were civilians, because factories, cities and food supplies became targets.

Follow-up: had Japan surrendered a week earlier, would the atomic bombs have been used?

04 Question types and worked steps

Type	Example	Steps	Answer
Date calculation	How many days from 1 September 1939 to 8 May 1945?	1) Subtract the dates 2) Do not subtract years alone 3) Give about 2,076 days	About 2,076 days, five years and eight months
Causal explanation	Why did depression boost extremist parties?	1) Unemployment and poverty 2) Inadequate government response 3) Extremist offers of order and simple answers 4) Conclusion: lost legitimacy	Economic crisis destroyed the credibility of centrist government
Comparison	Why did blitzkrieg work in Poland and France but fail in the Soviet Union?	1) Space and distance 2) Roads and weather 3) Defender mobilisation 4) Supply lines	The tactics did not change, but space and logistics broke coordination
Evaluation	Was the Second World War inevitable?	1) Structural causes 2) Contingency and miscalculation 3) Judgement with a criterion	Highly likely but not fated; choices in the mid 1930s mattered

Sanity check (teach this): Sanity checks: 1939 to 1945 is 6 years, not 16; 8 May to 2 September 1945 is 117 days, not 17; 2,076 is a number of days, not years; 1929 to 1933 is 4 years, not 14; six million out of seventy million is about 8.6 per cent, not 86 per cent.

05 Independent practice (3 questions)

Question	Answer	What to watch
How many years from the 1929 crash to Hitler becoming chancellor in 1933?	4 years	Did you subtract rather than add
How many days from VE Day to the Japanese surrender?	117 days	Did you subtract dates rather than count months
How many days from Pearl Harbor to 2 September 1945?	1,365 days	Did you include the 1944 leap year

06 Common mistakes and what to say

Mistake	Student writes	Say this
Explaining dictatorship by national character	Germans simply obey whoever shouts loudest	Write the conditions: unemployment, inflation memory, a paralysed parliament. Any country with those conditions gives extremes a market.
Treating blitzkrieg as superior tanks	German tanks were better, so they won fast	Armour alone gets surrounded. Without air support and radio coordination the spearheads stall. Name all three parts.
Counting only military dead	In war only soldiers die	Civilians were the majority in the Second World War because of air raids, occupation policy and famine. Total war needs those three mechanisms.
Ending the war in May 1945	The war ended in May 1945	The European war ended on 8 May; the Asian war ran to 2 September. Those 117 days contain the atomic bombs and the Soviet offensive.

07 Homework (paper, section and question numbers)

History chapter index: this chapter, redo one date calculation and one causal explanation — Interwar and Second World War chapter, questions 1 and 2
History chapter index: this chapter, write a 100 word four-layer explanation of why blitzkrieg failed in the Soviet Union — Interwar and Second World War chapter, question 3

08 Exit check (last 5 minutes)

Question	Answer	Decision
How many years from 1929 to 1933?	Four years	Wrong: reteach the timeline in script 1
Which three elements made blitzkrieg work?	Concentrated armour, air strikes on command, radio coordination	Wrong: reteach script 2
How many days between VE Day and the Japanese surrender?	117 days	Wrong: reteach script 3

09 Tutor FAQ

How many dates should students know?

Five: 1939-09-01, 1941-12-07, 1944-06-06, 1945-05-08 and 1945-09-02. Use about for the rest.

Students mix the causes of the two world wars. What fixes it?

A two-column table: alliances and mobilisation for 1914; Versailles, depression and appeasement for 1939.

Is there follow-on reading?

Yes. The homework links to the history index, and the chapter before this one covers the First World War and Versailles.

Find a tutor — free Tutor Registration →

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.