In the first four days of September 1939, nearly 3,000,000 people were evacuated from towns and cities through fear of enemy bombers. Weopons had advanced since the First World War and it was greatly feared that warfare would no longer stay in the trenches or on the battlefields but a lot of the war would be fought on Britain’s homeland as they were next on Hitler’s “Blitzkreig” plan. Britain feared millions of casualties from Germany’s blitz because the days of the odd German Zeppelin balloon passing over London were over and Germany had become a lot more focused on bombing. Therefore the British took no chances in risking the lives of Britain’s future, her children.
The British thought that the Germans would use poison gas as one of their new age weapons so gas masks were issued to everyone to almost everybody. The Germans had new longer range bombers which would be harder to defend against. Over 60,000 people were killed by German bombing raids. This was very bad, but not as bad as was expected before the war. You can imagine the added numbers to the 60,000 if evacuation had not taken place.
Hitler believed in very extreme politics and would go to any lengths to win the war. He thought that if Britain sustained heavy civilian casualties then eventually she would submit. This made civilians more legitimate targets, especially children who could not fend for themselves. If Hitler caused enough children to die then Britain would suffer a great emotional blow and the country’s morale would be severely damaged. Britain needed to evacuate her children to give the civilians piece of mind so the war effort could run more smoothly.
If most of the children had stayed in the cities, their education would have been at great risk with every night a threat of their school being bombed and their educations being greatly delayed. This could have had bigger long-term effects if the war had gone on and the current children of society had to direct Britain’s role in the war. If the children were evacuated then they could carry on their education peacefully and without threat of being bombed.
In the first few months of the war nothing really happened on the British home front. People started to call it phoney war and were frustrated because they had spent all this time preparing for nothing. By Christmas 1939 half of the evacuees had returned home. By May 1940 Hitler was ready to launch a full scale attack on Britain and the “Blitz” had started on the 9th of May 1940 with an air raid on Cantebury. Evacuation was quickly reintroduced a lot quicker than in 1939 when they saw the devastation Germany could cause to Britain’s cities.
Evacuation was introduced for a great range of different reasons from not as important reasons such as making sure education ran smoothly to keeping the children and the future of Britain away from danger. I think this was the most important reason for evacuation because if there were many child casualties then the public’s morale would have been lowered. But knowing there children are safe in the countryside puts the parents minds at ease so they can concentrate fully on winning the war and stopping the killing all together.
Alex Arkley
11.30
