History HL Paper 3

[Yap]

I'm in TZ2

My whole class thought the questions were horrible... None of the questions were really ideal for us as we hadn't focused on ANYTHING on the paper :/

I ended up taking Question 10, 11 and 19...

10 Was about Russo-Japanese War and how it affected the Reign under Nicholaos II up until 1914.... My school had mentioned it in order for us to get a clear grip of the February/October Revolutions but we had not gone deeper into the subject etc. No statistics or anything.

11. Was about how the alliance system affected the "European affairs" between 1871-1914. I pretty much talked only about the development of WW1... As we had only been talking about the formation of the new Germany at 1871 and then suddenly there were a massive amount of alliances... This is my bad, I didn't study the alliances so well...

19. I don't really remember this quesiton O.oo

[Pepe]

Topic on Paper 3 already exists

[littlelionwoman]

Yeah, I pretty much found it horrid, and so did most of my class.. we had only been taught German and Italian Unification in detail, so we didn't really have a choice of a third essay as we had simply touched upon some of the subjects so I just found myself bluffing through my third essay..

I ended up doing question 3, 4 and 11

(4) Bismarck's domestic policy and whether it was successful: I found pretty straightforward, focused on the Kulturkampf, the May Laws and th Anti-Socialist Law as his main failures, and brought in other aspects of his domestic policy into the essay in order to challenge the questions as they were relatively successful, such as the Tariff Bill and the policy of State Socialism. I emphasized how he did create disunity especially politically with Centre Party and National Liberals but also highlighted how overall internal domestic stability was maintained, so his domestic policies can be regarded to some extent as a success despite his flaws in many of his policies imposed.

(3) Can't remember the question exactly, but it was based upon the ineffectiveness of Italian Nationalism between 1815-1848 - I hadn't revised this well so I can't say I was too pleased, I focused on the role that regionalism/localism, lack of popular support, Mazzinian ideology, Austrian dominance and the failures of the revolutionaries played in the revolutions of the 1820s and 1830s, leading up to those of 1848-1849. Added quite a lot of historiography and quotes so hopefully that will pay up for it.

(11) I also bluffed my way through the essay on how the Alliance system affected European affairs between 1871-1914.. It was okayish I guess. Split it into longterm and short-term alliances and how they led to the buildup of tension and enmity between the powers leading to the outbreak of WW1. I focused initially on Bismarck's pragmatism and how his forein policy between 1871-1890 maintained relative peace, then after that how German policies of Flottenpolitik and Weltpolitik under Wilhelm post-1890 destabilized the diplomatic situation in Europe and provoced the British particularly, brought in how Europe had effectively been split into the Alliance blocs of the Entente and the Triple Alliance due to Moroccan Crisis and tensions in the Balkans, and also mentioned how alliances dragged one country after another into declaring war upon one another after the July Crisis of 1914. Was not happy with it.

Overall, I hated the Hitler and Stalin questions.. and I was hoping something on Prussia or Piedmont would come up for the Germany/Italy unification questions, so I was disappointed. My class felt that it was the worst Paper 3 of all time, and some of them did not even do a third essay :/