AQA GCSE History Revision List 2025

There are two exams, each worth 50% of the overall grade. Paper 1 is a two-hour exam and includes a paper on
Germany 1890-1945 and a paper on Conflict and Tension 1918-1945. Paper 2 is a two-hour exam and includes
a paper on Elizabethan England 1568-1603 and a paper on Britain: Health and the People c1000 – present day.

Paper 1

Germany 1890-1945

Part one: Germany and the growth of democracy

• Kaiser Wilhelm and the difficulties of ruling Germany: the growth of parliamentary government; the
influence of Prussian militarism; industrialisation; social reform and the growth of socialism; the
domestic importance of the Navy Laws.

• Impact of the First World War: war weariness, economic problems; defeat; the end of the monarchy;
post-war problems including reparations, the occupation of the Ruhr and hyperinflation.

• Weimar democracy: political change and unrest, 1919–1923, including Spartacists, Kapp Putsch and
the Munich Putsch; the extent of recovery during the Stresemann era (1924–1929): economic
developments including the new currency, Dawes Plan and the Young Plan; the impact of international
agreements on recovery; Weimar culture.

Part two: Germany and the Depression

• The impact of the Depression: growth in support for the Nazis and other extremist parties (1928–1932),
including the role of the SA; Hitler’s appeal.

• The failure of Weimar democracy: election results; the role of Papen and Hindenburg and Hitler’s
appointment as Chancellor.

• The establishment of Hitler’s dictatorship: the Reichstag Fire; the Enabling Act; elimination of political
opposition; trade unions; Rohm and the Night of the Long Knives; Hitler becomes Führer.

Part three: The experiences of Germans under the Nazis

• Economic changes: benefits and drawbacks; employment; public works programmes; rearmament;
self-sufficiency; the impact of war on the economy and the German people, including bombing,
rationing, labour shortages, refugees.

• Social policy and practice: reasons for policies, practices and their impact on women, young people
and youth groups; education; control of churches and religion; Aryan ideas, racial policy and
persecution; the Final Solution.

• Control: Goebbels, the use of propaganda and censorship; Nazi culture; repression and the police
state and the roles of Himmler, the SS and Gestapo; opposition and resistance, including White Rose
group, Swing Youth, Edelweiss Pirates and July 1944 bomb plot.

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Conflict and tension 1918-1935

Part one: Peacemaking

• The armistice: aims of the peacemakers; Wilson and the Fourteen Points; Clemenceau and Lloyd
George; the extent to which they achieved their aims.

• The Versailles Settlement: Diktat; territorial changes; military restrictions; war guilt and reparations.

• Impact of the treaty and wider settlement: reactions of the Allies; German objections; strengths and
weaknesses of the settlement, including the problems faced by new states.

Part two: The League of Nations and international peace

• The League of Nations: its formation and covenant; organisation; membership and how it changed; the
powers of the League; the work of the League's agencies; the contribution of the League to peace in the
1920s, including the successes and failures of the League, such as the Aaland Islands, Upper Silesia,
Vilna, Corfu and Bulgaria.

• Diplomacy outside the League: Locarno treaties and the Kellogg-Briand Pact.

• The collapse of the League: the effects of the Depression; the Manchurian and Abyssinian crises and
their consequences; the failure of the League to avert war in 1939.

Part three: The origins and outbreak of the Second World War

• The development of tension: Hitler's aims and Allied reactions; the Dollfuss Affair; the Saar; German
rearmament, including conscription; the Stresa Front; Anglo-German Naval Agreement.

• Escalation of tension: remilitarisation of the Rhineland; Mussolini, the Axis and the Anti-Comintern
Pact; Anschluss; reasons for and against the policy of appeasement; the Sudeten Crisis and Munich;
the ending of appeasement.

• The outbreak of war: the occupation of Czechoslovakia; the role of the USSR and the Nazi-Soviet Pact;
the invasion of Poland and outbreak of war, September 1939; responsibility for the outbreak of war,
including that of key individuals: Hitler, Stalin and Chamberlain.

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Paper 2

Elizabethan England 1568-1603

Part one: Elizabeth's court and Parliament

• Elizabeth I and her court: background and character of Elizabeth I; court life, including patronage; key
ministers.

• The difficulties of a female ruler: relations with Parliament; the problem of marriage and the
succession; the strength of Elizabeth’s authority at the end of her reign, including Essex’s rebellion in
1601.

Part two: Life in Elizabethan times

• A ‘Golden Age’: living standards and fashions; growing prosperity and the rise of the gentry; the
Elizabethan theatre and its achievements; attitudes to the theatre.

• The poor: reasons for the increase in poverty; attitudes and responses to poverty; the reasons for
government action and the seriousness of the problem.

• English sailors: Hawkins and Drake; circumnavigation 1577–1580, voyages and trade; the role of
Raleigh.

Part three: Troubles at home and abroad

• Religious matters: the question of religion, English Catholicism and Protestantism; the Northern
Rebellion; Elizabeth's excommunication; the missionaries; Catholic plots and the threat to the
Elizabethan settlement; the nature and ideas of the Puritans and Puritanism; Elizabeth and her
government's responses and policies towards religious matters.

• Mary Queen of Scots: background; Elizabeth and Parliament’s treatment of Mary; the challenge posed
by Mary; plots; execution and its impact.

• Conflict with Spain: reasons; events; naval warfare, including tactics and technology; the defeat of the
Spanish Armada.

Part four: The historic environment of Elizabethan England

• Question four in the exam is the 16 mark historic environment question. This year the focus is on
Hardwick Hall. You will be expected to include evidence about Hardwick Hall, as well as contextual
knowledge of the period, including Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury.

Health and the People 1000-present

Part one: Medicine stands still

• Medieval medicine: approaches including natural, supernatural, ideas of Hippocratic and Galenic
methods and treatments; the medieval doctor; training, beliefs about cause of illness.

• Medical progress: the contribution of Christianity to medical progress and treatment; hospitals; the
nature and importance of Islamic medicine and surgery; surgery in medieval times, ideas and
techniques.

• Public health in the Middle Ages: towns and monasteries; the Black Death in Britain, beliefs about its
causes, treatment and prevention.

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Part two: The beginnings of change

• The impact of the Renaissance on Britain: challenge to medical authority in anatomy, physiology and
surgery; the work of Vesalius, Paré, William Harvey; opposition to change.

• Dealing with disease: traditional and new methods of treatments; quackery; methods of treating
disease; plague; the growth of hospitals; changes to the training and status of surgeons and
physicians; the work of John Hunter.

• Prevention of disease: inoculation; Edward Jenner, vaccination and opposition to change.

Part three: A revolution in medicine

• The development of Germ Theory and its impact on the treatment of disease in Britain: the importance
of Pasteur, Robert Koch and microbe hunting; Pasteur and vaccination; Paul Ehrlich and magic bullets;
everyday medical treatments and remedies.

• A revolution in surgery: anaesthetics, including Simpson and chloroform; antiseptics, including Lister
and carbolic acid; surgical procedures; aseptic surgery.

• Improvements in public health: public health problems in industrial Britain; cholera epidemics; the role
of public health reformers; local and national government involvement in public health improvement,
including the 1848 and 1875 Public Health Acts.

Part four: Modern medicine

• Modern treatment of disease: the development of the pharmaceutical industry; penicillin, its discovery
by Fleming, its development; new diseases and treatments, antibiotic resistance; alternative
treatments.

• The impact of war and technology on surgery: plastic surgery; blood transfusions; X-rays; transplant
surgery; modern surgical methods, including lasers, radiation therapy and keyhole surgery.

• Modern public health: the importance of Booth, Rowntree, and the Boer War; the Liberal social
reforms; the impact of two world wars on public health, poverty and housing; the Beveridge Report and
the Welfare State; creation and development of the National Health Service; costs, choices and the
issues of healthcare in the 21st century.

You will need to understand the importance of the following factors:

• war

• superstition and religion

• chance

• government

• communication

• science and technology

• the role of the individual in encouraging or inhibiting change.