Why did the Government decide to evacuate children from Britains major cities during the early years of the Second World War?

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Why Did the Government decide to Evacuate children from Britain’s major cities during the early years of the Second World War?

Britain declared war on Germany on September 1st 1939 however a couple of days before, the government started evacuating. One and a half million of the most vulnerable people where evacuated from large cities that were most at risk of  being bombed, to places in the countryside such as Yorkshire and Somerset. The nine areas the Government decided to evacuate were; London, Newcastle, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Teesside, Sheffield, Portsmouth and Merseyside. And people evacuated included  about 827,000 school children under the age of fourteen, 7,000 blind and disabled people,  13,000 pregnant women,  524,000 mothers with young children under the age of five and 103,000 teachers. The code name for the operation of getting these people out of the major cities was called ‘Operation Pied Piper’. ‘Operation Pied Piper’ affected around a third of the entire population, whether it be that they where evacuated, a member of their close family was evacuated or they hosted people who were evacuated, many people were effected by the decision the British government made to Evacuate.

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Once war had begun the government had expected total war, meaning that as well as soldiers, civilians were now targets in war. Experts estimated that enemy bombers would kill ten thousand people every day. The aspect of total war had been demonstrated by the Luftwaffe in the sleepy market town of Guernica in Northern Spain during the Spanish Civil war. The bombings that took place by the Luftwaffe not only shocked the world but also allowed the British government to expect heavy bombing.  The bombing was only the start, the government also expected that the Nazis would drop gas, ...

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