DSE History: Interwar Totalitarianism Prep Guide (for tutors) | Rise and rule of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia

2026-11-02

Tutor lesson-prep guides · Secondary History

Students usually memorise two lines about Hitler and Stalin and call it revision. This lesson makes them argue cause and effect with seat counts, legal texts and output figures, ending with one comparison table that both regimes must fit.

Objectives — Students can: (1) explain the Nazi rise using the Depression and the design flaws of the Weimar constitution; (2) use seat percentages from 1932 to 1934 and the key events to show how the largest party became a one-party state; (3) compare Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia on economy, social control and propaganda, judging both against five features of totalitarianism.

01 Prerequisites (3-minute check)

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

Skill	Quick check	Pass mark
First World War	How Versailles weakened Germany	Reparations, territory and arms limits
Percentages	230 seats out of 608 as a percentage	37.8%
Russia	Who took power in October 1917	Lenin and the Bolsheviks

02 Lesson flow (60 minutes)

Time	Stage	Tutor does	Student does
0-10 min	Weimar foundations	Proportional representation and emergency powers	Name two design flaws
10-24 min	From seats to dictatorship	Three steps, 1932 to 1934	Push 37.8% up to 100%
24-38 min	Stalin power engineering	Five-year plans, collectivisation, purges	Link industry to social control
38-48 min	Comparing the two	Five features, item by item	Fill six cells of the table
48-56 min	Source skills	Inference from cartoon and speech	Write two inferences
56-60 min	Exit check	Three questions marked on the spot	All three right

03 Teaching script (read it out)

Scene 1: Weimar was not simply weak: it was built with two escape hatches

Proportional representation had a very low threshold, so the party system fragmented: in July 1932 the Reichstag had 608 seats and the Nazis held 230, that is 37.8%, still short of a majority.
Article 48 let the president rule by emergency decree, bypassing the Reichstag; after the 1929 Depression pushed unemployment to about six million, governments governed by decree and the chamber stopped legislating.
Add the difficulty of a constructive vote of no confidence and the rapid turnover of chancellors, and public faith in the republic collapsed.
Teaching point: Germans were not naturally authoritarian; the system concentrated power in one office once a crisis arrived.
Ask for a one-line answer: with a five per cent threshold, could the Nazis have governed? No, because fragmentation itself is what let an extremist party in.

Ask the class: which article did governments use to rule after 1929 (Article 48).

Scene 2: From 37.8% to one-party rule: four steps, two and a half years

30 January 1933: Hitler becomes chancellor with only a minority of cabinet seats, the conservatives believing they could control him.
27 February 1933: the Reichstag fire, followed the next day by a decree suspending freedom of speech, assembly and the person.
5 March 1933: elections give the Nazis 288 of 647 seats, 44.5%, still short of two thirds; communist deputies are excluded and the Enabling Act passes on 23 March, letting the government legislate without the Reichstag.
2 August 1934: Hindenburg dies and Hitler merges the offices of president and chancellor, with the army swearing loyalty to him personally.
Compare the November 1932 low point: 196 seats, 33.6%. The Nazis never won a majority of votes; they governed through institutional gaps and intimidation.
In July 1932 the Nazis and the DNVP together held 267 seats, 43.9%, still short of half, which is the figure that defeats the election-landslide claim.

Ask the class: did the Nazis ever win a majority (no).

Scene 3: Stalinist planning was also a machine of social control

The first five-year plan began in 1928 and pushed heavy industry: steel, coal and electricity, advertised as completed in four years.
Forced collectivisation from 1929 moved peasants into collective farms, buying grain cheaply for export to pay for machinery; the price was the famine of 1932 to 1933 and millions of deaths.
After the Kirov murder in 1934 came the purges, with the show trials of 1936 to 1938 convicting old Bolsheviks; the 1936 constitution listed generous rights while power sat with the party and the secret police.
Propaganda ran through the youth league, unions, newspapers and radio, turning model workers into heroes and opponents into saboteurs.
Teaching point: read the plan figures carefully. Official growth rates are unreliable, yet absolute steel and electricity output did rise sharply, so the answer is growth plus a discussion of cost and data quality.

Ask the class: where did the capital for industrialisation come from (agriculture).

04 Question types and worked steps

Type	Example	Steps	Answer
Data	Seats and percentages	Compute the percentage, then judge majority	37.8% and 44.5%
Causation	Why the Nazis rose	Depression, institutional flaws, elite miscalculation, propaganda	At least three of the four
Comparison	Methods of rule	Compare economy, propaganda and terror	One similarity and one difference per row
Source	Cartoon or speech	Origin and purpose first, then message and limits	Each inference needs textual evidence

Sanity check (teach this): Seat share is not vote share: under proportional representation they are close but not equal, so say which you are using.
The March 1933 election followed the Reichstag fire with SA violence in the streets and cannot be treated as a free contest.
The Enabling Act was an enabling law, not a constitutional referendum, and its passage depended on excluding elected deputies.
Soviet growth figures need a caveat, and German unemployment counts vary with definition, so six million is a careful estimate rather than an exact figure.

05 Independent practice (3 questions)

Question	Answer	What to watch
Nazi seat share in July 1932	37.8%	230 divided by 608 times 100
Nazi seat share in March 1933	44.5%	288 divided by 647 times 100
Nazi plus DNVP seat share, July 1932	43.9%	267 divided by 608 times 100, still short of half

06 Common mistakes and what to say

Mistake	Student writes	Say this
Calling it an election landslide	Hitler won the election so he became chancellor	The Nazis peaked at 37.8%; he was appointed, then used the Enabling Act to take power.
Confusing the Enabling Act with constitutional amendment	The Enabling Act changed the constitution so it was legal	It let the government legislate without the Reichstag, and it passed only after deputies were excluded.
Treating the five-year plans as economics only	Stalin just wanted industry	Industrialisation also destroyed the kulaks and disciplined urban labour, so economics and control were one project.
Saying totalitarian without features	Both countries were very totalitarian	Name the five: one party, official ideology, secret police terror, mass mobilisation, leader cult.

07 Homework (paper, section and question numbers)

Practice: Weimar and the Nazi seizure of power — Cause first, evidence second
Practice: Nazi Germany and the USSR comparison table — Three rows, six cells, two similarities and two differences
All prep guides — Compare the ten sections

08 Exit check (last 5 minutes)

Question	Answer	Decision
Nazi seat share, July 1932	37.8%	All three right: move to the Second World War
Nazi seat share, March 1933	44.5%	One wrong: redo the percentages
Name three features of totalitarianism	One party, secret police, leader cult	Two or more wrong: return to act four

09 Tutor FAQ

Why compute percentages?

Because largest party and majority are different claims, and the arithmetic shows the Nazis never held majority consent.

Should the famine be taught?

Yes, described conservatively as millions of deaths, with a note that estimates vary.

Can we teach Germany alone?

Questions often demand comparison, so a single case loses marks; the five-feature table is the cheapest framework.

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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.