History - Evacuation

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History Coursework Task One

“Why did the British Government decide to evacuate children from Britain’s major cities in the early years of the Second World War?”

During the First World War, the home front in England did not experience the terrible warfare that was happening in France. The only experience the civilians had was the starvation due to the food shortages they were facing. There were no bombs dropped on the main cities, particularly because the air technology had not reached an advanced enough stage.  

On 1st September 1939, war was declared between Britain and Germany, for a second time in history. However, this war was to be a lot more dangerous, and the deaths were not limited to  the battlefield. Civilians would be at much greater risk this time; technology had advanced a lot over the 20 years since the last war. Now there were fighter planes and bombs capable of causing devastation at great distances. These were not very accurate bombs, but they were very powerful.

The Prime Minister of England, Neville Chamberlain was very worried about the fact that there were more deadly weapons available now, which could create a disaster in Britain, by hitting the defenseless civilians. He had already seen the results of war between Spain and the Far East in recent years. In this war there had been terrible mass bombing of main towns and cities. This frightened Chamberlain, he knew he could do nothing about the bombing. So instead he asked his advisors to predict the number of possible casualties. This turned out to be an alarming number- 600,000 deaths and 1.2 million wounded in the first 6 months. Chamberlain also assumed that the German air force would strike as soon as the war was declared. This was a very important factor, which led Chamberlain to panic and create better services in case of war such as air raid shelters, and more importantly to start evacuating children out of the area. However both of these predictions turned out to be unreliable. The predicted casualties were 10 times the actual numbers of deaths and casualties, and the German army did not strike for 6 months after the war was declared.

Children who lived in large industrial centers and in big cities and towns were evacuated from those evacuation areas to the reception areas, in the  country –side, where the children would be safe from bombing. Children who lived in neutral areas, where bombing was very rare or non-existent, did not need to evacuate. However 1.5 million children were evacuated – most of them in the first weekend before war broke out. As well as children, pregnant women, teachers and the disabled were also evacuated. The first plans for evacuation were made in 1934, to coincide with the amount of bomb production that was going on. These evacuees would go to the county to be “temporally adopted” by volunteers living there.

The Government handed out propaganda about the situation, trying to persuade people to give homes to evacuees. This gives some clues to the reasoning as to why evacuation took place. It was thought that the children were in some kind of ‘danger-zone’ where bombs could drop at any stage and minute. The Government was trying to prepare ‘for the crises that may come’ The Government thought that children were in most danger, and that they were the future of the nation. They were needed in the future to make up for the adult losses. The adults might have meant less to the government because they had already lived their lives and were not fighting in the war anyway. This was done to keep the future of the nation secure, so England could build up again in the worst case scenario. Also if bombing did start, adults would be able to look after themselves and be sensible enough to find safe hiding places. Children might not have realized the danger they were in might not have been able to keep safe.

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Another possible reason to evacuate children from the cities may have been that, because of rationing, there would be shortages of food in the cities whereas fresh food would be more easily available in the countryside.    

So, in conclusion, there were many reasons Chamberlain had for the evacuation of England. Perhaps the main fact that led to the Prime Minister’s decision on evacuation was the fact that the predicted casualty figures were so high. The Government knew that the war in the air was hard to stop, so they wanted to secure a future for England if ...

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