DSE History - End of the Cold War and the Post-Cold War Order Prep Guide (for tutors) | six dates, one causal chain, four question types

DSE History – End of the Cold War and the Post-Cold War Order Prep Guide (for tutors) | six dates, one causal chain, four question types

2026-11-05

Tutor lesson-prep guides · Secondary History

Students can recite that the Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, yet they cannot say why street pressure in 1989 produced a state collapse only in 1991. This lesson strings six dates into one causal chain, then uses numbers – 44 years, 328 days, NATO from 16 to 26 members – to turn narrative into a markable argument.

Objectives — Students can: (1) order the opening of the Wall in 1989, reunification in 1990 and the Soviet dissolution in 1991, and state the 328-day gap; (2) explain why a bloc that lasted 44 years broke in two years, using economic failure, the arms burden and satellite defection; (3) evaluate NATO growing from 16 to 26 members, a rise of 62.5 percent, giving one point for and one against.

01 Prerequisites (3-minute check)

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

Skill	Quick check	Pass mark
The bipolar order	Where was the line through Europe between 1947 and 1989?	Between the NATO and Warsaw Pact blocs, with Germany divided
Planned economy	Factories met targets yet shelves were empty. What does that show?	Targets counted quantity, not quality or demand
Causal language	How do trigger and underlying cause differ?	A trigger fixes the timing; an underlying cause is long term
Source evaluation	An East German report in 1989 says order is good. What do you ask?	Who wrote it, for whom, and with what motive

02 Lesson flow (45 minutes)

Time	Stage	Tutor does	Student does
0-5 min	Prior knowledge check	Ask the four questions and write the two blocs on the board	Answer orally and copy any wrong item
5-15 min	Act one: the Wall is not the start	Run 9 November 1989 to 3 October 1990 and mark 328 days	Label three dates on a timeline
15-28 min	Act two: four causes snap together	Take economy, arms spending, satellites and non-intervention in turn	Copy one concrete example per cause
28-37 min	Act three: two faces of the new order	NATO from 16 to 26, plus the Gulf War and ethnic conflict	Write one point for and one against
37-42 min	Question practice	Model the two-causes-plus-judgement frame for an 8-mark answer	Write 120 words on the frame
42-45 min	Exit check	Hand out three items and collect them	Work alone with books closed

03 Teaching script (read it out)

Scene 1: Act one: the Wall fell, the state did not

On 9 November 1989 East Germany opened the checkpoints and crowds climbed the Wall. The state still existed; it disappeared only with reunification on 3 October 1990, 328 days later.
Those days were filled with negotiation: monetary union came first, the four wartime Allies gave up their veto, and NATO membership was kept.
The teaching point: crowd action changed the cost, but leaders’ calculations fixed the outcome. An answer that stops at people power is half an answer.

Ask students to repeat: the Wall falling is not the state vanishing; a year of talks sits in between.

Scene 2: Act two: four causes fail at once

First the economy: planned targets ignored quality and demand, so the system lost its claim to deliver.
Second the arms burden: competition drained resources, so reform had no money behind it.
Third the satellites: Poland and Hungary loosened first, and the Warsaw Pact dissolved after 36 years, removing the buffer.
Fourth non-intervention: Moscow refused force to hold Eastern Europe, pulling down the line it had built for 44 years.
Together these explain why 1991 produced 15 successor states at once.

Ask students for one sentence: not one cause, but four supports failing together.

Scene 3: Act three: two faces of the post-Cold War order

One face is institutional expansion: NATO went from 16 members to 3 more in 1999 and 7 more in 2004, reaching 26, a rise of 62.5 percent; the trade rules that had run for 47 years became the World Trade Organization in 1995.
The other face is new conflict: the 1991 Gulf War, ethnic wars in the Balkans and Africa in the 1990s, and cross-border terrorism, none of which fits the old bipolar script.
Evaluation must run one hand, other hand, therefore – and land on whether small states are safer with collective machinery or with great-power goodwill.

Ask students for one reason to welcome NATO enlargement and one reason to doubt it.

04 Question types and worked steps

Type	Example	Steps	Answer
Chronology (4 marks)	Order five events and give the gaps	Anchor 1989 and 1991 first, then slot the rest	328 days from Wall to unity; 44 years of Cold War
Causal explanation (8 marks)	The Soviet collapse was mainly economic. Do you agree?	Two economic points for, one arms and one nationality point against, then a judgement	Two plus two plus one sentence
Evaluation (10 marks)	The impact of NATO enlargement	Define the order first, then stability against provocation, one example each	16 to 26 members as the number
Source comparison (6 marks)	An East German report and a West German paper on the same day	Compare origin, purpose and tone, then judge usefulness and limits	The official report is weak as fact but strong as official expectation

Sanity check (teach this): Three read-backs: (1) anchor the sequence with two hard years, 1989 for the checkpoints and 1991 for dissolution; a student writing that the Wall fell in 1990 has merged unity with opening; (2) the membership numbers must move from 16 to 26, so “no change” means enlargement was not read; (3) a causal answer that lists causes without layering them long term against trigger caps out at half marks whatever the word count.

05 Independent practice (3 questions)

Question	Answer	What to watch
Order the Wall, reunification, Soviet dissolution and the Warsaw Pact dissolution, with years	1989 then 1990 then 1991, with the Pact disbanding in July before the December dissolution	Check whether the two 1991 events are ordered by month
Explain in three causes why street pressure in 1989 dissolved a superpower within two years	Economic failure, arms burden, satellite defection, plus the non-intervention decision	Check whether non-intervention, the usual omission, appears
NATO grew from 16 to 26 members: give one benefit and one cost	A wider security net against pressure on Russia; 62.5 percent growth is the number	Check that a judgement sentence exists, not just two lists

06 Common mistakes and what to say

Mistake	Student writes	Say this
Treating the Wall as reunification	The Wall fell in 1989, so Germany was united that day.	The Wall opening let people through; unity took another year of talks, so your dates are a year out.
One cause, then a conclusion	The Soviet Union collapsed because its economy was weak.	A weak economy is background. Answer this too: why did it break in 1991 and not twenty years earlier?
Enlargement written as simply good	NATO enlargement made more countries safe, so it was good.	You wrote what should be; the question asked what happened. Add the view from the other side.
Reading content, ignoring origin	The report says order was good, so it was peaceful.	Who wrote it, for whom? An official paper claiming good order is exactly what you should doubt.

07 Homework (paper, section and question numbers)

Redo this chapter (practice items 1-3) — Rewrite all three, with months in the chronology item
Origins of the Cold War — List three 1947 starting points against the 1991 end point
History chapter index — Pick one more chapter and draw the timeline only

08 Exit check (last 5 minutes)

Question	Answer	Decision
How many days from the Wall opening to reunification?	328 days	Error: same day or one year
Year of the Soviet dissolution and the number of successor states	1991 and 15	Error: 1989
NATO after 2004: how many members?	26	Error: 19, counting only the 1999 round

09 Tutor FAQ

Which year is this for?

The S6 twentieth-century international relations unit, and a preview in S5 term two.

How many dates must be memorised?

Six anchors: 1945, 1947, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1995; order the rest within the same year.

Students say history is just memorising. What works?

Set two opposite questions on one causal chain so dates alone cannot earn the marks.

Can this link to Asia?

Yes, but this page keeps to the European line so the argument stays tight.

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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.