Why did the British government evacuate children at the beginning of the Second World War?

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Ryan Belchamber

Why did the British government evacuate children at the beginning of the Second World War?

At the start of the Second World War, the British government introduced a plan of evacuation. It was to evacuate children and pregnant women from evacuation areas where heavy bombing was expected. The heavy bombing was expected in large cities and industrial areas.

The government expected a heavy bombing campaign in towns, cities, and industrial areas, so they expected heavy casualties.

After the tragedies of World War 1, where Britain was bombed for the first time, this gave people real fear because it was the first time had been bombed and people had a lot of fear. Even though it only happened near the end of the war 1000s of people were killed and a lot of property was damaged. Also this time there was the fear that Germany could bomb Britain with poison gas, so the government issued everyone even babies with Anderson gas masks over 38 million were sent out with a leaflet telling people how to use them. They were issued because the government considered a gas attack a real threat. Also Germans had improved there technology there aeroplanes could now fly faster, higher, further and carry more bombs and there were bigger, this all summed up to more damage and more deaths this is why children were evacuated.

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The British people had also seen newsreels of bombardment on civilian and they would have thought if it is happen to them it could happen to us. They saw what happened in Manchuria in the war between Japan and china; they also saw what happened in Abyssinia where they the Italian attacked with poison gas. But especially in the Spanish civil war in Guernica where Hitler helped out by used German aircraft. He used this to test out the aircraft and there bombing techniques. Guernica was bombed on market day 1000s were killed, this was shown back in Britain as ...

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