There were many reasons why the British Government introduced evacuation in September 1939. The level of activity they showed reflected how concerned they were. For example they issued 38 million gas masks and introduced a public information leaflet on evacuation in July 1939 along with a range of other precautions. These include the Blackout System. Everyone had to put up heavy curtains or shutters to stop the light escaping from their windows. The streetlights were also dimmed. The idea was to make it harder for the bombers on nighttime air raids to spot towns and cities. The Government also gave away about 3 million Anderson Shelters, which could be erected in the garden, as well as opening public air raid shelters. An information booklet was introduced to inform people about certain procedures.
The air raids would focus on large industrial cities because this way the factories that were making weapons would be targeted. This would have a knock on effect to the countries war effort - meaning there would be a shortage of equipment for the troops to fight with.
The Government knew that Germany would use Blitzkrieg tactics from their actions in the Spanish Civil War. The German air raid attacks caused massive destruction and huge amounts of casualties. One main example of this was Guernica, in the Spanish Civil War.
There was a great impact from the film “Things to Come”. This film was released in 1936. It showed how civilians would be targeted in a war. Due to the cinema being very popular (because it was good value entertainment for not a lot of money), many people took the films message to heart – that civilians would be targeted. This film made the Government realise that civilians could be targeted and action and precautions needed t be implemented.
Another incident that happened in 1935, which caused apprehension amongst the British public, was when Prime Minister Baldwin said, “The bomber always gets through”. What he meant by this was that no matter how good our defences are, at least one bomber would always get through to cause maximum damage. This once again puts the British people on edge and the Government must be prepared in the build up to war.
In conclusion the British Government decided to evacuate children from major cities is because they were apprehensive about the damage and loss of life that would be caused in the German air raids. They predicted that the majority of causalities would have been children and for this reason they introduced evacuation. The effect that the loss of life would have put the government under severe pressure to surrender to avoid more deaths. The government would also have thought that a drastic loss of children could have affected the next generation of British adults. The main reason the British Government decided to evacuate children from Britain’s major cities at the start of the Second World War was because they feared that the loss of children’s lives would have sparked a revolt and could have lead to an early surrender.