Paper 1 source skills (Move to global war)

Paper 1 is a source exam, not an essay: Paper 1 checks how well you read, use, and judge sources — not how much history you can recall. You get four sources on one prescribed subject and answer four set questions.

Your prescribed subject here is The Move to Global War. That means your four sources will be about the aggression of the 1930s.

Here is the best news about Paper 1. The question types never change: every exam asks the same four things, in the same order, worth the same marks.

So you can drill a fixed method for each one long before you ever see the sources.

Your own knowledge of the case study still matters, but only the last 9-mark question rewards it directly. The first three questions are won or lost purely on how you handle the provenance and content of the sources in front of you.

This unit has two case studies. The Asia case study is Japanese expansion in East Asia, 1931–1941 — from the Mukden Incident to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Europe case study is German and Italian expansion, 1933–1940 — Hitler tearing up the Treaty of Versailles and Mussolini's hunt for empire.

Whichever case study you get, the same source skills carry you. You read each source, judge it as evidence, and — only at the end — bring in facts of your own.

Memory hook — '3-2-4-6-9': The marks run 3, 2, 4, 6, 9 down the page and add up to 24. Spend about one minute per mark, and remember 3-2-4-6-9 to remember the whole paper.

Each question is unlocked by its command word — the verb that tells you exactly what to do. Learn what each one is asking, and the method that earns the marks follows.

Turning a fact into Q4 evidence: Suppose Q4 asks whether appeasement caused Hitler's successes. A source might quote Hitler promising Munich was his 'last demand'. Your own knowledge then adds what the source leaves out: the Rhineland gamble of 1936, the Anschluss of 1938, and Hitler breaking his promise by taking all of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Source detail plus wider context is exactly what the top band rewards.

How this is tested: Q2 always uses OPVL. The big trap is to describe the source instead of judging it as evidence. A second trap is treating bias as if it makes a source useless — bias is itself a value, because it shows what people wanted believed.

Source B (invented for practice): A public statement issued by the Japanese Kwantung Army in September 1931, days after the Mukden Incident: 'Chinese soldiers attacked our railway line near Mukden. Our troops acted only to defend Japanese lives and property. Order and prosperity will now return to Manchuria under our protection.'

Common mistakes: 1. Describing the source instead of judging it. 2. Treating bias as useless — bias limits facts but is valuable for attitudes. 3. Forgetting to link back to the named topic. 4. Giving only a value or only a limitation — Q2 needs both. 5. Inventing provenance — use only what the attribution line states.