The treatment that the evacuees received at their host families varied considerably. Some of the evacuees were treated very well by their hosts. To many of the evacuees the homes that they were sent to were luxury compared to their own homes in the cities. Many were treated much better by their hosts than at home, so much so, that many of them did not wish to leave, “don’t let this woman take me away; she says she is my mother, but I want to stay here with my aunties” (‘How we lived then’). However, there were also cases of the other extreme. Some children were treated very poorly. In some cases this may have been because the host families simply did not have enough to care for the evacuee, “they were starving there before the war” (Source E). This highlights the poor planning on the government’s parts and the lack of faith that many parents had in evacuation. However, this could be misleading, as this was said during an interview, and interviewers tend to have their own agendas and ask leading questions to try to get the answers they want. But in some cases the poor treatment was not because the host could not, but abused the children physically, sexually or, in some cases, as slave labourers. Whether or not evacuation can be said to be a success from this is purely subjective. A child sent to a host who treated them well would judge evacuation to be a success, whereas a child sent to a host who treated them poorly would judge evacuation to be a failure.
Evacuation had a profound psychological effect upon the evacuees. At the start of the war, people’s opinions on evacuation varied. Some evacuees had never been away from home before so seen this as a great adventure. Others were terrified of being sent away from their families. Source A shows evacuees walking to the station; all are smiling and waving to the camera, suggesting that moral is high. However, photographs are selective, as it is not clear why it was taken; it could been for a newspaper, government propaganda or simply someone taking a nice picture. Also, it was taken at the start of the war, before the evacuees had reached their hosts or experienced what life there would really be like. Source B is in contrast to Source A. Source B says, “the children were too afraid to talk”. This suggests that even at this early stage in the process of evacuation, it had already had traumatic psychological effects on the children. Also, the man in charge of evacuation, Sir John Anderson, has been described as “a cold, inhuman character with little understanding of the emotional upheaval that might be created by evacuation”. Such a man could not have cared about the evacuees. These traumatic effects can be shown by the bed-wetting by many evacuees, “constant washing of bedding soon represented a serious burden”. Again, the success of evacuation is purely subjective as the personal experiences of each evacuee were different.
Germany’s plan to invade Britain was in three stages: gain air superiority, bomb major cities, and then launch a sea-borne invasion along Britain’s south coast. When the government started to evacuate children in 1939, they were preparing for an imminent bombardment of Britain’s major cities; this did not happen as the Luftwaffe were still in the first phase of the invasion plan. This meant that no bombs were dropped on British cities and this made many people feel that evacuation had been unnecessary and began to bring their children home. By January 1940 an estimated One Million people had returned home. A survey in Cambridge investigating the reasons for the returns found that four out of five evacuees returned home because of the lack of bombing in the cities. This shows poor planning by the government and rendered the initial evacuation pointless, as many returned evacuees died in the blitz, making evacuation a failure.
Many aspects of evacuation were very poorly planned. Firstly, the areas that were designated as high risk, low risk or neutral were not very well researched. Some evacuees were sent from areas that didn’t get bombed in the blitz, to areas that did get bombed. This not only undermined evacuation, but also had the exact opposite effect that evacuation had set out to achieved. Also, the transportation stage of evacuation was poorly planed, as Source B highlights, “we hadn’t the slightest idea where we were going”. This is a teacher talking, so not even the people organising the evacuation knew where they were going. Further lack of planning was shown when the evacuees arrived. Many evacuees were sent to the wrong place; and the villages they were sent to were not expecting them. Source D, a government poster asking for more foster families highlights the government’s failings; the government did not have enough host families at the start of evacuation. Even when the evacuees were sent to the correct place it had still been poorly planned. Many children did not have basic provisions, such as shoes or medical care. The spread of many infectious conditions, such as head lice, that could easily have been avoided if the government would have took steps to check for such infections before sending the evacuees to avoid the infections spreading. Also, many evacuees found that they had a lack of recreational activities in the countryside, this lead to an increase in crime in the countryside; this was due to boredom, coupled with the rich-poor gap. From this, evacuation was a failure as there were many failures on the part of the government when planning evacuation both before and after the war started.
In conclusion, it is hard to evaluate success, and it was mainly subjective; there were many success and failures, but all in all, evacuation as a success as it achieved what it set out to and despite some failures it saved lives, which is what it set out to achieve.
