Why did the Government decide to evacuate children in Britain's major cities in the early years of the Second World War?

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Why did the Government decide to evacuate children in Britain's major cities in the early years of the Second World War?

        When World War Two broke out in 1939, the British Government's major worry were the air attacks by the German airforce, the Luftwaffe. They immediately went into action setting up the evacuation of children, pregnant women and women with children under 5.

        These plans were very well organised and thought through as the ARP committee began discussing the possibility of evacuating civilians as early as 1924. The evacuees were taken by trains or coaches to 'neutral areas' that the Government believed would be safe, as there was no real threat of air raid attacks on them.

        The air raid threats frightened the British Government. A well respected military advisor, Liddle Hart, shocked them when he predicted that there would be 250,000 deaths of civilians in the first few weeks of the war.

Britain still remembered the Zepplin raids on London in the First World War that killed 14,000 civilians. However, since then technology had improved and so had the German airforce. The world had already winessed the devistating effects on Spanish towns in the Spanish Civil War in 1936 courtesy of the Luftwaffe. Guernica, one of these towns, was completely obliterated. what was more shocking was the fact that nearly all the deaths were of civilians. This was the start of stratigic bombing.

        Italian, General Franco was the first person to mention the strategic bombing of civilian targets in 1919. Britain, along with other countries, believed that Germany would remember this and use it, which is why there was immediate reaction to evacuate when the war started.

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        The Government decided to evacuate children for other reasons, appart from the obvious fact that they didnt want them to die.

They needed to keep the morale of the nation as strong as possible. If Britain heard everyday in the newspapers and on the radio that innocent children had been killed in air raid attacks, it would emotionally effect them and the nation may give up all hope of winning the war.

The Government also wanted to increase working efficiency and production. parents would work harder if they didnt have to worry about their children's well-being.

        The children were the ...

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