In what ways did the government attempt to hide the effects of the Blitz from the people of Britain?
In the Second World War the British government tried to hide the effects of the Blitz due to the fact they wanted to keep British peoples morale up, which stopped Hitler’s main aim of the Blitz; to lower British people’s morale until they gave up and beg the Nazis for an agreement. Also if they hid the effects of the blitz the Nazis would be unable to use the destruction and devastation in a propaganda campaign.
The government hid the effects in two ways, firstly censorship. The government set up the Ministry of Information which controlled censorship, the ministry of information’s role was to suppress news and views which should not be known, release or invents news which should be known and give writers special facilities to report what was happening. All of this therefore helped hide the effect of the blitz for the British public. The ministry of information had a scrutiny division which aimed to read everything published in Britain, they would cut, hold up or ban some articles altogether, but they could also rewrite articles. If a news paper did not stick to these guide line, the government had the power to shut them down. The ministry of information also forced the BBC to pre-record programmes so nothing was said that could damage morale. The government did not take over the BBC directly because that would have gone against everything they were fighting for, so they controlled it through ministry of information whom censored thing which would damage morale.