"Evacuation was a great success" Do you agree? Source based work.

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“Evacuation was a great success”

Do you agree?

        

On the 1st September 1939 the first evacuation began. 827,000 school children and 524,000 mothers and pre-school children moved in the following three days. 13,000 pregnant women, 7000 blind and disabled people and 103,000 teachers were also evacuated. This was a procedure that involved children and teachers leaving their homes in large cities to keep safe from bombing. Trains and buses were prepared to transport children out to hosts homes in the countryside. But was the whole process a success or failure? To say it was a success depends on how evacuation is judged.

        The government’s aim of evacuation was to move children, teachers, blind and disabled people and pregnant women out of the major cities at risk from bombing, to reception areas, mostly in the countryside, so they would be safe, away from the bombing. Evacuation was both successful and unsuccessful. Evacuation was a great success for the government because at the time they managed to persuade people that evacuation was the right thing to do.

The Government did manage to secure its objectives of keeping children safe and keeping the war machine going without the threat of children being killed which was a successful aspect of evacuation. Another success of evacuation for the government was that hospitals were freed up for the wounded war victims and school buildings could be used for other purposes. There were extra workers as parents didn’t have to look after their children. The evacuees were not needed in the war effort.

Although the conditions on the train were cramped and there was a lack of facilities, a vast amount of children were transported out of the cities quickly and efficiently. Most of the children who were evacuated also benefited from it although some did have bad experiences. However a major problem with evacuation was that a significant number of children either did not go or returned back to the danger-zones. Looking at the figures it seems that the government schemes weren’t so successful after all. In London of 1.8 million potential evacuees only 660,000 went (36%). In the provinces, of 3.6 million potential evacuees only 1.2 million went (33%).

During the phoney war many evacuees returned home as there had been no bombing in Britain. According to the official figures, by the 8th January 1940 almost 900,000 of the evacuated adults and children had gone home: though when the threat of invasion emerged in May 1940, the whole process began again. A couple of hundred thousand evacuees were moved back to the reception areas.

The preparation of evacuation and the whole journey seemed to go well. Source B seems to show this. The children seem cheerful and the process is orderly. On the other hand the source is clearly posed and we cannot tell from a photograph how the children genuinely feel. Also source A and C show evacuation as being a failure. They both demonstrate the fact that evacuees found it hard to settle into the countryside, as they were not used to the idea of leaving home. They should both be reliable as well, as source A is from a textbook and source C came from a teachers memories. But it seems that most school parties were well ordered and this stage of evacuation was a success.

Source H from the question sheet is an advertisement issued by the government in 1940, appealing for more people in Scotland to provide homes for evacuee children. It says that the children who had already been fostered were happy and healthy. It also gives the statistics that 20,000 people in Scotland were already looking after evacuees. Source H is government propaganda so it is bound to say that the children were happy and healthy because they wanted more people to foster evacuees, and to do this they had to persuade people evacuation was a success. The last line, “You may be saving a child’s life,” would make people want to adopt a child because it suggests that they would be helping the war effort and could be proud for saving a child’s life. Source H may not be reliable because it is an appeal for more foster parents so the government would want to make the children look happy and well-behaved, otherwise no one would foster them. Source H may also indicate that evacuation was a failure for the government. It is appealing for more foster parents in Scotland, suggesting that not enough people had already come forward. It is a primary source and it shows that the government needed more foster parents to come forward, and that the children evacuated were happy and healthy at the time. Many families were forced and pressured into taking evacuees in, resulting in many evacuees being miss-treated.

Despite the governments attempts to show evacuation as a success, there were many aspects of evacuation that were a failure. They planned to evacuate 3.5 million people, but only 1.5 million were actually moved. Despite the widespread anxiety that existed about the terrors of bombing and poison gas, only about a third of the mothers, babies and children who were expected to join this vast operation actually did so. A natural concern about being parted from their children- especially as war had not yet been declared- was doubtless one factor that influenced the parents; another may well have been what can be seen only in hindsight as an unnecessary decision by the government to keep the destinations to which the evacuees were being taken a secret.

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There was no attempt to keep families, friends and school children together, or to match children and foster parents with the same interests, even though in theory they should have been kept together. This proves the government did not stick to their original plans. The government failed to realise the effect evacuation would have on their children; a child learns an incredibly large amount in their first five years. Taking a child away from its mother is a very traumatic experience. Some young children confused their foster parents with their real parents.

During the phoney war evacuees became homesick, ...

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