OCR GCSE History B Living under Nazi Rule 1933 to 1945: a complete world depth-study overview
A complete overview of OCR's GCSE History B (SHP) world depth study, Living under Nazi Rule 1933 to 1945. Covers the Nazi dictatorship and terror, propaganda and culture, young people and women, persecution and the Holocaust, opposition, and the home front in the war, plus the Paper 3 source and interpretation questions.
Reviewed by: AI editorial process; not yet individually human-reviewed
Jump to a section
What this option demands
Living under Nazi Rule 1933 to 1945 is the most popular OCR History B world depth study, examined on Paper 3. A depth study examines a short period in close detail, and the exam rewards knowledge, the ability to evaluate sources (AO3) and to weigh interpretations (AO4). The option asks how the Nazis controlled Germany, what life was like under them, and how the war destroyed the regime. This overview ties the dot-point pages together.
The dictatorship and terror state
After Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, the Nazis destroyed democracy through the Reichstag Fire, the Enabling Act, the banning of other parties, the Night of the Long Knives (1934) and the merging of Chancellor and President as Fuhrer. The regime was held in place by terror: the SS under Himmler, the Gestapo (secret police relying on informers), and concentration camps.
Propaganda and culture
Goebbels and the Ministry of Propaganda flooded Germany with the Nazi message through radio (cheap "People's Receivers"), film, mass rallies (Nuremberg) and a censored press, and controlled the arts and tried to control the Churches. Propaganda was widely effective but worked alongside terror and real popularity (jobs, order, national pride), and never won everyone.
Young people and women
The Nazis targeted the young through the compulsory Hitler Youth (boys, military focus), the League of German Girls (girls, motherhood focus), and a rewritten school curriculum. Women were pushed towards the "three Ks" (children, kitchen, church), encouraged to leave work and raise large families, though the war later drew them back into employment.
Persecution and the Holocaust
Driven by racial ideology, persecution of the Jews escalated from the 1933 boycott, through the Nuremberg Laws (1935) and Kristallnacht (1938), to the ghettos and the Final Solution (1941 to 1942), in which around six million Jews were murdered, alongside Roma, disabled people, homosexuals and others.
Opposition and the home front
There was opposition (the Churches, the Edelweiss Pirates and White Rose, the army's July Bomb Plot of 1944), but it was limited by terror, propaganda and disunity. The Second World War reshaped the home front through rationing, Allied bombing, the move to total war under Speer, and the return of women to work, ending in the collapse of the regime in 1945.
Check your knowledge
A mix of recall questions covering the whole option. Attempt them, then check the solutions.
- What did the Enabling Act of 1933 allow Hitler to do? (1 mark)
- Name the Nazi secret police and the elite force that ran the camps. (2 marks)
- Who was the Minister of Propaganda, and name two methods he used. (3 marks)
- What were the "three Ks" for women? (1 mark)
- Name the 1935 laws and the 1938 event in the persecution of the Jews. (2 marks)
- Roughly how many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust? (1 mark)
- Name two groups or people who opposed the Nazis. (2 marks)
- What happened to Nazi Germany by 1945? (1 mark)