The government decided to launch operation “pied piper” in which the whole country was split into 3 different areas there was “reception” areas where evacuees were sent. These places were mostly safe and were normally in rural areas away from big cities or major army bases for example Holsworthy. There were the “neutral” areas where no one went in or out because it was not an obvious target that made it fairly safe for example Credition. Lastly there were the “evacuation” areas that were a high risk, obvious target like a city, port or military base, where the evacuees came from for example Plymouth where 4,000 people died. This is what sir john Anderson had planned in 1938 when it was obvious that there was going to be a war against Germany. Evacuation didn’t just happen in main land Britain some evacuees were sent abroad to places like Canada, the U.S.A. and all the way to Australia. People were even evacuated to mainland Britain from the Channel Islands because it was the only target which the Germans wouldn’t have that much of a fight to capture as there was only 1 army regiment on the islands at the time
There were three waves of evacuation. The first of these was in September 1939 at the start of the war when Poland was invaded. Most of these people from this evacuation came back to there homes by the summer of 1940 this time is called the phoney war as Germany did nothing to Britain during this time. But this is when Dunkirk happened and the second wave of evacuation began. A lot of the kids from this wave of evacuation were back at their houses around spring 1943 and in this time there was the battle of Britain and the blitz. There was another wave of evacuation in 1944 when the v1 and v2 rockets were launched at the south east of Britain but only the south east was evacuated as the rockets couldn’t go any further. Basically whenever there was a serious threat of attack there was an evacuation of people from targets.
The reason that they did this was very complicated. One of the reasons was that it was easier to have the children out of the way of the people trying to sort out the rubble, not only would there be more people to find there would be kids playing on the rubble injuring themselves. This would also cost the government more in the hospital bills of the injured children it would also cost more to try and stop them getting injured so in comparison to other options the evacuation was a cheaper option. There is also the opinion that with the parents knowing that their children are safe the parents would work harder at the front line or in the factories because they wouldn’t spend all day wondering whether or not little Timmy was all right so can put all their effort into working for the government.
The government had to keep morale up so they had to be seen to be doing something. It was all part of the government propaganda where they had to be seen to be doing things for the cause. They had put antitank devises on the railways so that if Germany got in to England they couldn’t just stream up the railway and capture London. This way it made the people feel safer and made them think that they could avoid the Germans capturing any of main land Britain. They didn’t want England to fall to the Germans like the Channel Islands did which was the only part of the British Isles captured by the Germans.
So in conclusion the British government evacuated children from major cities during world war II because the planes had been improved and were capable of doing huge damage to cities as show in Gernica and if children had been in danger areas not only would there parents be worried about them so there for not concentrating on working for the government but in the incoming blitz second generation of British people would have been lost after nearly all the 17-25 year olds were lost in world war I
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/guernica.htm