THE MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF HUMANITIES, LAW AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

BA (HONS) HISTORY PROGRAMME

COMBINED HONOURS PROGRAMME

YEAR 1

EUROPE IN TURMOIL: 1900-1939

SEEN SECTION A

DATE:

27 AUGUST 2008

Instructions to Candidates:
Answer THREE questions ONE from SEEN section A and TWO from section B
Time allowed: 3 hours

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SECTION A: DOCUMENTARY SEEN:

Answer ONE question from this section
1. What do the following extracts tell us about the level of emancipation
experienced among European women during the 1920s?
a) Ray Strachey, commenting on post-1914 changes in the dress and manners
of privileged women:
A hundred years ago a girl could go nowhere unprotected; today there is
nowhere she cannot go. The chaperon has vanished with the crinoline, and
freedom and companionship between the sexes have taken the place of the
old uneasy restraint. In work as much as in play, in study as much as in
games, there is now little divergence, and scholarship, athletics, travel,
tobacco, and even latchkeys and cheque books are no longer the sole
prerogatives of man.

b) Oral testimony of Salford womens recollections of the 1920s:

Respondent 1:
Question:
Response:
Question:
Response:

Question:
Response:

Did you ever go to the pubs?

Me? No, I never went to the pubs.
Was it mostly the men that went?
It was the men that went to the pubs. The women didnt go
out to sup like they are today. It was all the men. The women
were all at home, minding the children. And they hadnt to
call them husbands in those days, if they were talking
anywhere, theyd say, Oh, Ill have to go, my masterll be in
in a minute.
The master?
Always call them the master, yes.

Respondent 2:

Question:
Response:

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women going in pubs, we used to think it was absolutely

awful, and we used to say to my mum, Youll never go in a
pub will you, mum? And she used to say, No, will I heck!
What makes you think that?
Why was it that you thought it was so bad for women to go
in?
Well it was, those days. I mean, they didnt drink, they didnt
go out then like they do now.

Respondent 3: (recalling her mothers drinking habits in the 1920s)

She used to go out of a night, the pubs closed about ten
oclock then, so she would go about half past nineShe
used to make the excuse that she couldnt sleep unless she
had a drink. And sometimes when it got [to] the middle of the
week and shed be counting her money, how much she
could afford to go, sometimes my dadd say, Heres
fourpence go and get a drink Every night she used to
go and just have a couple of drinks. Then shed come in and
start telling us the tale of what had gone on in there.

c) The two documents summarised below illustrate the efforts of the French
government to bolster the birthrate:
The French Decree Establishing medals for Mothers (1920)
The raising of the birthrate, which our country must undertake in order to
retain the rank in which victory has placed us and to permit us to harvest all
its fruits, is above all a moral question.
Therefore we must neglect nothing that can encourage mothers to give
maternity the place it ought to haveMothers should be honoured as they
ought to be; they should feel surrounded by the pious respectof their cocitizensThe importance and grandeur of their social role should be apparent
to everyones eyes
Under the name of medal of the French family an order of honorary
compensations for mothers who have undertaken the task of raising
numerous children in a dignified manner. For this work a testament of public
esteem is due to them and will be given to them along with a bronze medal if
they have raised at least five living children, the last of which has reached the
age of one. The medal will be silver if this number is eight, and gold if it
reaches ten.
We insist on the point that, in order to be worthy of this award, it is not
sufficient just to bear children, but it is necessary to know how to raise them
and to make a point at every occasionof inculcating in them a healthy moral
education.

French anti-abortion and anti-contraception law (1920)

Article 1. A sentence of six months to three years in prison and a fine of one
hundred to three thousand francs will be levied against any person who
advocates the crime of abortionwhether by means of speeches, or by the
selling, or by the diplay, posting or distribution in public places etc
Article 2. The same penalties will be levied against whomsoever
sellsremedies, substances or instrumentsdestined for use in committing
the crime of abortion
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Article 3: A sentence of one to six months in prison and a fine of one hundred
to five thousand francs will be levied against any person who, for the
purposes of contraceptive propaganda describes (or) divulgesthe
procedures for preventing pregnancy or facilitates the use of such
procedures.
d) In Britain the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919 stated that:
A person shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from the exercise of any
public function, or from being appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office
or post, or from entering or assuming or holding any civil or judicial post, or
from entering or assuming or carrying on any civil profession or vocation.
Herbert Asquith, former Liberal Prime Minister, commenting on women
electors at Paisley, 1920:
There are about 15,000 women on the register a dim, impenetrable, for the
most part ungetattable element of whom all that one knows is that they are for
the most part hopelessly ignorant of politics, credulous to the last degree, and
flickering with gusts of sentiment like a candle in the wind.

2. What do the following extracts tell us about the political and social
attitudes of the Nazi Party?
a) Adolf Hitler, speech in Ingolstadt, March 1928:
The main motivating forces of life are self-preservation and the safeguarding
of future generations, and politics is none other than the struggle of peoples
for their existenceThe urge to live must lead to conflict because it is
insatiable, while the basis of life territory is limited. Thus brutality rather
than humanity is the basis of life! It is not humanity, but rather rights based on
strength and the pre-eminence of power which have prevailed. But mankind is
not a uniform and equal mass. There are differences between races. The
Earth has received its culture from elite peoples. What we see today is
ultimately the result of the activity and the achievements of the Aryans
b) Hitler in Mein Kampf (1925), on race:
Everything that we admire today on this earth, science and art, technology
and inventions, is the creative product of but a few nations and perhaps
originally of but one race. It is on them that the existence of all culture
dependsAll great cultures of the past were destroyed only because the
originally creative race died from blood poisoning
If one were to divide mankind into three species: the culture-creators, the
culture-bearers, and the culture-destroyers, only the Aryan would be likely to
fit the first definition. It is to him that we must trace the foundations and the
walls of all that human beings have created.
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The most powerful antipode to the Aryan is the JewNo, the Jew possesses
no culture-creating ability whateverHe is and remains the typical parasite,
asponger who, like a malign bacillus, spreads more and more a slong as he
will find some favourable feeding-ground. And the consequences of his
existence, too, resemble those of the parasite: where he appears, the host
nation will sooner or later die
c) Walther Darre, a leading Nazi [1937]:
Our nations only true possession is its good bloodGermanic laws on
eugenics can be understood only if they are seen for what they are: eugenic
laws. All eugenic progress can begin only by eliminating the inferior, and by
insisting on proven blood.
d) Adolf Hitler in his vision of a national community, speech at Kiel, 1930:
The NSDAP [Nazi Party] is an organisation which does not recognise
bourgeois, farmers, manual workers and so on; instead it is an organisation
based in all regions of Germany, composed of all social groups. If you ask
one of us, Young man, what are you?, he will smile: I am a German! I fight
in my brown shirt. That is indicative of our significance; we do not aspire to
be anything else, we are all fighting for the future of a people. We are all
equal in our rank.
e) Adolf Hitler, Second Book (1928), on war:
The task which falls to all great legislators and statesmen is not so much to
prepare for war in a narrow sense, but rather to educate and train thoroughly
a people so that to all reasonable intents and purposes its future appears
inherently assured. In this way even wars lose their character as isolated,
more or less violent surprises, instead becoming part of a natural, indeed selfevident pattern of thorough, well-secured, sustained national development.

SECTION B - UNSEEN
Answer TWO questions from this section
1. In what ways had women achieved greater emancipation in the decades
before 1914?

2. Why did a local war in the Balkans become a world war in July and August
1914?

3. Why did British soldiers volunteer and fight in the First World War?

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4. To what extent was the impact of the First World War crucial to the success of
the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution of October 1917?

5. Have the peacemakers at Versailles been unfairly criticised?

6. What impact did Allied victory in the First World War have for Europes
colonies?

7. The power of propaganda. Is this an adequate explanation of the rise to

power of the Nazis before January 1933?

8. Was the collectivisiation of agriculture essential for the rapid industrialisation

of the Soviet Union? How else might it be explained?
END

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