WACE Modern History ATAR case studies
WACE Modern History ATAR · Put your knowledge to work in context.
The WACE Modern History ATAR is a Western Australian senior-secondary course and external examination for Year 12 students working towards the Western Australian Certificate of Education and an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank. It is designed for students who intend to continue to university and who want a historically grounded, evidence-based preparation for further study in history, law, politics, international relations, journalism or education. The WACE Modern History ATAR case studies are 5 cases and about 2,222 words.
1The 1919 Paris Peace Conference: Competing Claims on the Rhineland
A student is preparing an essay on the Treaty of Versailles and gathers four sources on the Rhineland question. Source A is a memorandum from French Marshal Foch dated January 1919 arguing the Rhine should be the western military frontier of Germany, with an independent Rhineland buffer state.
475 words, about 2 min2Stalin's Five-Year Plans: Reading a Production Statistic
A student investigating the First Five-Year Plan (1928–1932) finds a Soviet statistical handbook reporting that gross industrial output rose from 18.3 billion roubles in 1928 to 43.3 billion in 1932, an increase of about 137 per cent. The student also finds a Western economic historian's estimate that Soviet industrial output grew by roughly 60–70 per cent over the same period, and a memoir by a British engineer who worked at a Magnitogorsk steel plant describing chronic shortages of skilled labour and chaotic supply.
478 words, about 2 min3Evaluating a Photograph of the 1936 Berlin Olympics
A student is analysing a photograph from the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It shows a stadium crowd with arms raised in the Nazi salute, swastika banners along the stands, and athletes on the track in the foreground.
415 words, about 2 min4Differing Interpretations of the Cuban Missile Crisis Resolution
A student compares two accounts of how the Cuban Missile Crisis ended in October 1962. Account 1, a memoir by a Kennedy administration official published in 1969, credits firmness: the naval 'quarantine', the threat of invasion, and Khrushchev's backing down in the face of resolve.
425 words, about 2 min5Assessing a Turn toward Terror in the French Revolution
A student is answering an essay question on why the French Revolution became more radical between 1789 and 1794. The student has three pieces of evidence: (1) the August 1789 decrees abolishing feudal privileges, passed in a session of the National Assembly amid rural panic known as the Great Fear; (2) the September 1793 law authorising the Revolutionary Tribunal and the subsequent execution of leading Girondins; (3) a speech by Robespierre in February 1794 defining 'terror' as 'prompt, severe, inflexible justice' and a virtue of democratic government.
429 words, about 2 min