History HL Europe P3

[cjy]

How did everyone find it? I nailed 2/3 questions so hoping for a 7 overall. I answered the Alexander II question, Bismarcks Germany and the Russo Japanese war

[Pepe]

Alexander II, Russo-Japanese War and Alliances System.
I really liked the questions, but the last essay I wrote was a little bit too short I think (around 3,5 pages compared with 4,5 pages for question 1 and 2).

[alefal]

I did questions regarding Russo-Japanese War, Hitler's foreign policies and the defeat of the axis in WW2.

I didn't really like the questions, as we had not really learnt a lot about what the questions asked for. We had touched upon the topics, but I think we had looked on other parts than what was asked for in the exam. Nonetheless, I think I did rather well, and, much thanks to my interest in history, I think I was able to answer the questions in a detailed and fairly analytical manner.

Alexander II, Russo-Japanese War and Alliances System.
I really liked the questions, but the last essay I wrote was a little bit too short I think (around 3,5 pages compared with 4,5 pages for question 1 and 2).

Considering that my teacher says 1,5 pages is a good length for a paper 3 essay, I think you'll be just fine with 3,5 pages

Edited May 10, 2013 by alefal

[IBisfunjustkidding]

Even though this is a Europe thread...I have to share my opinion

TZ1 HOA:

THAT. WAS. THE. WORST. EVER.

R.I.P IB diploma.

Edited May 10, 2013 by IBisfunjustkidding

[braindead]

The Alexander II question was perfect because literally every question about him is his reforms.. was so easy to revise for. The Nicholas II Russo Japanese War one I think I did fairly well on, but the Alliance system one may have tripped me up a bit - what did affect European affairs besides the alliance system? I got colonial disputes shaping the nature of European diplomacy, but that was about it...

[cjy]

See I was shakey on R-J War and COMPLETELY forgot Witte although I had a huge paragraph on Stolypin

[Pepe]

See I was shakey on R-J War and COMPLETELY forgot Witte although I had a huge paragraph on Stolypin

God, I did it the other way round I mentioned Witte but even though I know all Stolypin's reforms I didnt mention them because I couldnt see a direct link with the war... I mean that I focused on completely different aspects and wrote about them in a pretty synthesised way. At first I recognised the war as the direct cause of the Bloody Sunday and the creation of Duma etc etc but didnt write much about Duma itself. I focused more on the social aspect and the way the war changed the image of Nicholas II in the eyes of people. I also wrote a paragraph about military stuff and in the end mentioned the role the failure in the war played in Nichal foreign policy (it is still connected with his reign isnt it?).

When I am thinking now about this essay I can not explain how I managed to write 4 pages not going into details on the work of Duma and the government :<

[TykeDragon]

Personally wrote on Italian nationalism being ineffective from 1815-1848, Bismarck's domestic policies, and Alexander II's reforms. All essays were strong I think, so I'm fairly confident.

[braindead]

You could've argued that the fact Stolypin's reforms were necessary showed the extent to which Nicholas II's reign's popularity suffered after the war - "Stolypin's necktie"? How extreme is that! The best argument would've been that the severity of action taken to suppress revolutionaries following 1904 showed the weakness Nicholas II couldn't shake off, and arguably made it only more inevitable he'd eventually be toppled (although the question specified effects on his reign up to 1914).

[Yap]

I felt all the questions were horrible. My whole class agreed.

Guess our school didn't focus on any of the topics, we did touch some of them, but we did not go into the deeper levels of them....

[alefal]

I felt all the questions were horrible. My whole class agreed.

Guess our school didn't focus on any of the topics, we did touch some of them, but we did not go into the deeper levels of them....

My class had the same reaction. Our problem was that despite for doing parts of the topics, for instance the WW1, we had not studied the American intervention in the WW1, which made it difficult for us to really answer them. We had studied 6 or 7 topics which is on the P3, and almost all of them were twisted in a way that we could not answer them properly without having done quite a lot of self-studying beforehand.

Edited May 10, 2013 by alefal

[littlelionwoman]

Yeah, I pretty much found it horrid as well, 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 :/

[Megan Dimmick]

My school only teaches us Russia for paper three in depth but we didn't get taught Yeltsin so I had to wing stalins role in the breakdown in the wartime alliance

[Liberal Lady]

TZ1 here. I didn't think Paper 3 was horrible, but it wasn't easy either.

I can't remember the question numbers, but I wrote about The effect of WWII on women and minorities, the Progressive Era, and the differing opinions about the Treaty of Versailles.

[Colyn]

TZ1 too.

Paper 3 wasn't the prettiest of exams.

It touched little to none of what we learned.

Luckily, I expanded outside what we were taught and learned a bit on the American Civil War and Reconstruction era.

TERRIBLE questions though. Everyone in my class hated it and our history teacher was disappointed with the questions too.

I hope I don't get bellow a 4.

[Gemma B]

I felt all the questions were horrible. My whole class agreed.

Guess our school didn't focus on any of the topics, we did touch some of them, but we did not go into the deeper levels of them....

My class had the same reaction. Our problem was that despite for doing parts of the topics, for instance the WW1, we had not studied the American intervention in the WW1, which made it difficult for us to really answer them. We had studied 6 or 7 topics which is on the P3, and almost all of them were twisted in a way that we could not answer them properly without having done quite a lot of self-studying beforehand.

It was the same for our class as well. We found the Alexander question good but then we had no direct knowledge about any of the others. I ended up answering the alliance systems question and the Hitler one as well. Did you find the other two papers better though? I know that I certainly did!

Also what happened to the Spanish Civil War? There were no questions on that for our paper two or three, I was pretty disappointed...

Edited May 11, 2013 by Gemma B

[decemberr94]

I found Paper 3 pretty good actually! The question about Alexander II reforms and Hitler's foreign policy especially! For my third essay I answered the question about the Alliance system and how it divided Europe into two camps that eventually made WWI more inevitable. Not too happy with it...

Compared to past paper 3s, I think this was a fair one!

[alefal]

I felt all the questions were horrible. My whole class agreed.

Guess our school didn't focus on any of the topics, we did touch some of them, but we did not go into the deeper levels of them....

My class had the same reaction. Our problem was that despite for doing parts of the topics, for instance the WW1, we had not studied the American intervention in the WW1, which made it difficult for us to really answer them. We had studied 6 or 7 topics which is on the P3, and almost all of them were twisted in a way that we could not answer them properly without having done quite a lot of self-studying beforehand.

It was the same for our class as well. We found the Alexander question good but then we had no direct knowledge about any of the others. I ended up answering the alliance systems question and the Hitler one as well. Did you find the other two papers better though? I know that I certainly did!

Also what happened to the Spanish Civil War? There were no questions on that for our paper two or three, I was pretty disappointed...

Yeah, I found the other two papers much better! For paper 3, we had gone through a lot of Russian history between late 1800s up to Stalin's regime, which allowed most of us to answer the Russo-Japanese War question rather confidently. We had also done a lot regarding Hitler, but never really focused on his actual foreign policy plans. We knew about Anschluss, LoN withdrawal, the Reichkonkordat, all that, but we didn't really discuss to what extent these were planned or not in class, which made this one a tricky question to answer. With the defeat of the axis in the Europe during WW2, the third question I personally chose, we had discussed a lot regarding causes and consequences, but not the actual events in the war that led to Allied victory. We had briefly discussed the Battle of Midway, Battle of El Alamein and Battle of Stalingrad as the most important battles that turned the tide, but two of these battles were outside of Europe. Luckily, I am quite interested in history from before, and had earlier done some reading about the WW2 (a long time ago - not with the intention of practising to the exams), so I was able to discuss technology as well.

Anyhow, as I earlier stated, I felt it went rather well despite of the questions. I feel I was able to comment on the most important things (though, in hindsight, I've realised I could have been more detailed in some of the essays), and had an analysis that made sense.

I found Paper 3 pretty good actually! The question about Alexander II reforms and Hitler's foreign policy especially! For my third essay I answered the question about the Alliance system and how it divided Europe into two camps that eventually made WWI more inevitable. Not too happy with it...

Compared to past paper 3s, I think this was a fair one!

I've actually found past paper 3s much easier, but that might just be the result of what topics we've gone through in class.

[Lamb]

I wrote on questions #11, 15, and 16 ( the Alliance System, Mussolini's methods to gain and maintain power, and Hitler's foreign policy).

I think that my essays for questions #15 and #16 were quite strong but my essay on #11 was weaker. I knew a lot of specific information but it was much too narrative. I took a thematic approach to the question but I found it quite difficult to structure because my points overlapped. I'm hoping I will still get credit for my evidence even if my analysis was a bit lacking. I think I should be able to redeem myself with my other two essays.

I thought the question on Mussolini was quite good. The only problem was that the given time period ended in 1926(?) so I could only talk about his very early policies.

Question on Hitler's foreign policy was interesting. It wasn't something we had really discussed in class but I knew enough information that I was able to do some analysis on the spot. I ended up saying that he obviously had clear foreign policy aims based on lebensraum, promoting anti-semitism globally, and reversing the ToV but his actions were only planned to some extent. I wrote 2 body paragraphs on how they were planned and 1 body paragraph arguing how they were not.

Overall I thought Paper 3 went pretty well based on my personal knowledge, but the general consensus from my class was that it was awful. I agree that many of the questions we were prepared for focused on very specific elements making them more difficult but I think it could have been much, much worse. I surprisingly thought it went better than my Paper 2 which I really disliked the wording of the questions for. However, most of the class thought Paper 2 went much better than Paper 3 so I was the anomaly

[Meena]

I found the paper quite hard, as did most of my class. We studied the USSR's history, but focused less on Yeltsin. I focused on that when revising as well, from 1924-91, but not 1991-2000. I was assuming that I'd write at least one essay on that, but I ended up doing none, as I didn't feel I could do a good essay on the Stalin breakdown of wartime alliance thing either. I had to answer the Mussolini and Central Powers losing WW2 questions. In addition I did the immigration question on Norway. I had the history of Norway in the back of my head in case of emergency and having to answer Section 12, but I didn't know specific dates, it was like "in the middle of the 1980s", and "in the 60s and 70s" Wasn't 1922-26 a strange timeframe for Mussolini? Did anything significant happen in 1926 that I couldn't remember? I felt like I couldn't remember dates on Mussolini either... All in all, it was the worst paper 3 I've ever did, and it is so annoying because I got 7 on all mocks and way better questions. I guess it wasn't so wise to assume what to get...