The Second World War, 1939-45 Sources Questions
TOM LARDNER 4B
COURSEWORK FOR HISTORY SYLLABUS B
CSU4: The Second World War, 1939-45
Coursework Assignment: Evacuation in Britain.
I don't think that the evacuees were very excited about leaving their homes. Source B is not very accurate as the evacuees are probably only waving and smiling to the camera. I think source C is a better description. Photographs as in source B can only show actions not feelings, so the camera try's to create a picture for propaganda for the government to use; it shows an adventure for the children, going away with friends. However Source C describes what the teacher actually saw and heard, "the children were too afraid to talk". Their fathers were at war, bombs in the city, being separated from their mothers; they didn't know where they were going. HoHHHHlkjhsdlkejnlkdshnla;fdjpoiefdmnlkijholrejpefrdmn vfiohfrlijfdThe evacuees were scared and afraid of what was going to happen; the mothers didn't know whether they would see their children again. Source B would have been used as propaganda by the government to show that people were happy with evacuation. This I think, in most cases would have been untrue.
2 I think that sources B and C are both useful. Source B is useful because it is obviously a piece of propaganda and it shows us that the government thought it necessary to make people believe evacuation was a good thing, it may also be good for historians trying to learn about the time in general. They can see their type of clothes, what they are carrying etc. Source C is more useful to historians studying the evacuation in general because it is an unbiased view of what happened, she may be lying but other sources back it up so it is most likely true. In source B the people might be just smiling for the camera, the photographer probably said, "smile for the camera" just before taking the shot. Source B is a primary source, which should make it more useful and reliable, but photographs can be deceiving. It would give us an idea of how rich or poor the evacuees were (from their clothes) and how they reacted to a camera, a reasonably new invention at the time.
3 Source D was taken to convince parents that their children were being well treated and that they were having fun with friends, but they may only be smiling for the camera. There are four children in the bath to make it look like there is more water in the bath; this gives the impression that there is more water in the countryside, despite rationing, so it must be a good place. This photograph is a piece of propaganda used by the government. This picture would also have been used to encourage people to wash.
4 Sources ...
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3 Source D was taken to convince parents that their children were being well treated and that they were having fun with friends, but they may only be smiling for the camera. There are four children in the bath to make it look like there is more water in the bath; this gives the impression that there is more water in the countryside, despite rationing, so it must be a good place. This photograph is a piece of propaganda used by the government. This picture would also have been used to encourage people to wash.
4 Sources E and F are different because they are opinions from two different kinds of people. One opinion is from an evacuee moving into a new home, and the other is an opinion of a mother taking in an evacuee. The stereotype is that the evacuees are all bad-behaved children with no manners, and the people who take in the evacuees are all upper class snobs, country folk and evacuees had set ideas about each other. Source E supports this stereotype, the mother sees the children as lower class with no manners. In source F the evacuee is against the stereotype, he or she says that "they weren't all raised on a diet of fish and chips eaten from newspaper," in most cases this was true. Both these sources are most likely to be accurate, source E may have been exaggerated a bit but we don't know this. In source E the two children obviously had never had indoor toilets which would follow the stereotype, but in source F the evacuee probably did have an indoor or outdoor toilet. The accounts are different because one is following the stereotype of evacuees and one isn't.
5 I think that source A is not an accurate interpretation of what people's attitudes were towards evacuation. It is a one-sided account, the text gives only a brief reference to people's attitudes. It mentions that the country folk were "shocked" at the behaviour of the children. There is no reference of how the country folk felt about the evacuation itself - the removal from the city to a safe place for the children. There are also no comments from the evacuees, or parents of evacuees as to how they felt about the evacuation at all. I think that the comments of, "children fouling gardens, hair crawling with lice and bed wetting," may have been too generalized, there would have been children that did that but not all of them. There could be another source like this one, in another textbook that says completely the opposite to what it says in source A. I think in some cases the country families attitudes were wrong, they did not understand that the evacuees were mainly poor and in most cases, without a proper education. The evacuees could have done a bit more to try and conform to the country way of life, there seemed to be little understanding between either group as to how they should live their lives. Source A would give the wrong impression regarding people's attitudes towards evacuation to perhaps children nowadays, with no prior knowledge of the evacuation.
6 I think that source G is very useful for historians as the book would have been based on fact and the author was an evacuee which would have made her want to write a book about her experiences. In the source Miss Evans follows the stereotype that all evacuees were poor, but not necessarily bad mannered, while the two children laugh at this, "She thinks we are poor children, too poor to have slippers," Nick says. This sort of thing would have happened to a lot of the richer evacuees. This would be good for historians to study as this sort of scene would probably have happened in real life, it may have even happened to the author herself and she has turned it into a novel to show everyone what life was really like for evacuees.
7 I think that evacuation was on the whole a success, although there were a few reasons that made it slightly unpopular. The sources provided suggest that evacuation was a bad thing as the evacuees had to leave their homes, parents and brothers and sisters. The families taking in the evacuees had to put with their lack of manners and cleanliness, but I don't think that this mattered as long as the children were away from the bombings.
Source A, which is a secondary source, tells us that the evacuees did not settle well into the countryside. The country people were appalled at the city children's " lack of manners" and "obvious poverty and deprivation." This source gives a reason why evacuation was not a success; the evacuees caused problems for the country folk with their lack of manners but this does not give reasons for the country people's lack of understanding.
Source B is a photograph that suggests that people were happy with evacuation; they may have been just smiling for the camera. The source does not really show whether evacuation was an overall success or not as the children had only just begun their journey. They may have been looking forward to "going on an adventure."
Source C shows that the children were scared and unsure of what was going to happen to them. This does not prove either way whether evacuation was a success. Like source B this was describing what had happened before the children had gone anywhere so this is inconclusive as to whether or not evacuation was a success.
Source D is like source B as it is a photo that suggests evacuation was a good thing, however it does show us that the government had to use photographs such as this to convince people that evacuation was a good thing.
Sources E and F show that there were differences between evacuees and families taking in evacuees, this is one of the bad points but it is nothing serious and it would not matter as long as the evacuees were evacuated safely.
From my own knowledge, I think that evacuation was a success as the children had better lives in the countryside. It would have been nice to have lots of space and clean air to play in; the food would have been better and fresher. There may have been a few problems with ill-mannered evacuees or with snobby country families but that is not important, the important thing is that the children were evacuated safely from the cities.
I think that evacuation on the whole was a success but for some individuals it was unsuccessful. Evacuation was carried out so the children would avoid the German bombers. If they were killed, Britain would have lost future generations and maybe even future soldiers. It was good for the parents in the cities; they would know there children were safe from the bombing and have a better quality of life. The people in the country would feel that they were helping out in the war effort.
On the other hand it may have been sad for some of the evacuees who never saw their parents, or brothers and sisters again. The children would have been worried, as they would have known there were bombings in the cities so they would have been scared that they would return home to find their parents dead.
The over riding factor for the success of evacuation was the removal of children into a safe place away from the bombing, death and destruction that were common place in the big cities, and in this respect I think it was successful and achieved the governments objective. The sources provided in the text are not conclusive either way but what was conclusive was the safety of future generations.
