Explain the differing reactions of people in Britain to the policy of evacuating children during the Second World War?
Explain the differing reactions of people in Britain to the policy of evacuating children during the Second World War?
During the beginning of the Second World War the government thought it would be a good idea to move children away from the towns and cities. So they decided to put evacuation into effect. Evacuation is moving people from hazardous areas, such as big cities and industrial areas, to safer places like the countryside. Mainly children were evacuated, over eight hundred and twenty seven thousand children. The first time evacuation was announced was on the thirty first of August 1939, and started on the first of September. The amount of mothers and small children or babies evacuated was five hundred and twenty seven thousand. The government decided to evacuate the children for their own protection, also men thought the battle field was no place for them. The policy of evacuating children provoked a large number of different reactions from different people during World War Two.
One group of people thought long and hard over this proposal, this was the politicians. The politician’s main reaction was fear. They feared the bombing of the British cities, and remembered what had happened to Guernica in 1937 and Poland in 1939. They were thinking to themselves the damage that could happen to big cities such as London during an aerial bomb. A lot of the politicians believed that over half the population would be killed. This is why they issued over 38 million gas masks around Britain. Also, this is why the government felt it was necessary to put the children out of harms way. But Winston Churchill did not agree with this. He thought everyone had a right to stand up to the Germans and fight for their country. John Anderson also thought evacuation was a bad idea. To him the trains carrying the evacuees could have been used to manoeuvre large machinery, weapons and troops around. The trains could also have been used to ship raw materials to the factories around Britain. Fear was not the only reaction from evacuation. Some people believe that the government did it for psychological reasons. The government knew that mothers would be happier knowing their children were safe. The troops would be happier also, knowing that their family was safe, and this could boost their morale. The troops would be happy and worry less; therefore they would fight for their country better. The women would be happy therefore they could work better in the factories. Other people said it was done to increase war-time production. Without the children to look after, the women could get more work done at home and in the factories. But, greed was just as big a part played in the governments’ reaction.
