The town of Guernica was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in 1937.Tens of German bombers flew over the town and Hundreds of people were killed and the ancient town was turned into ruins. Stanley Baldwin said ‘the bomber will always get through’ he was right because they got through to Guernica and bombed everything even hospitals. This gave the British government a clear picture of what might happen if the German Luftwaffe attack the British cities and showed how important is the evacuation of children in Britain.
During the Munich crisis in 1938 and because the British government knew that a new war will begin and Hitler might think about breaking the morale of the British civilians by bombing their cities and killing people in order to force peace with Britain, the government started the evacuation but the war did not happen and nobody left home.
There were some other important reasons for the evacuation of children. The British government would be in need of more munitions workers in the factories and by evacuating children women would not be worried about their children, in other words the women would not have to help their children in different daily activities. Therefore more women would be available to work in the munitions and other factories during the war. The leaders in Britain also wanted to make sure that the hospitals work properly and that they would be able to help a large amount of people during the war if not all of them, so the evacuation was a good idea because there would be less pressure on the hospitals in the major cities and towns in Britain because most of the children would be in the countryside where they are safer.
The evacuation of children was important to Britain because the government wanted to protect the future generations from death and injury because if most of the children in Britain were killed in the bombings there would have been less British people living in Britain after the war.
The British leaders sent troops in the beginning of the war to support France in case of a German attack but the Germans were advancing quickly through France, which forced the British and the French soldiers into fast draw back. An Operation was launched and most of the soldiers were rescued. At that time the towns on the east and the southeast coasts of Britain were in danger of invasion after France was defeated. Because of that a large evacuation action was taken and children were moved to safer areas.
After that in July 1940 the Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe fought the Battle of Britain and there was a fear that Hitler might think of attacking the major cities and a new wave of evacuation started to save the lives of children.
The main reason of evacuation and the most important one in most cases was to save children in Britain from the bombing of the main cities and therefore saving them from death and injury. It was really important because it saved the future generations from the horrors of the Second World War.
Karam Aboud 10 R2
