I feel that both sources were useful. However they are useful for different reasons, source B shows a wide variety of information that can be helpful in may different areas of study. Source C is useful because it contains very specific details and also contains the feelings of different people which are much harder to deicide in source B.
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Question 2: Source G is an extract taken from a novel, is it reliable as evidence about evacuees?
Source G is an extract from Carrie’s war, a novel for children written by Nina Bowden in 1973. This source is a book which greatly decreases the value of the source, as book are made to sell therefore the source may have been exaggerated to increase the emotions a reader experiences. It is also possible that the book was altered because of her own personal experiences which may show certain people in different ways. Another reason that makes the source less reliable would be that it was written thirty years after evacuation which would significantly affect the writers memories of what actually happened.
However it must also be said that this is written by a person that experienced evacuation making this piece a semi-autobiographical piece of evidence, which shows that many parts of the story could be based on the way Miss Bowden was treated this increases the reliability of the source. The source shows a view similar to that of many that had been evacuated, except many of the small details; this increases the reliability of the source as we know that much of it could be the truth.
This source cannot be counted as reliable because much of the extract which contains details must be dismissed due to it being opinionated possibly making them false or very inaccurate.
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Question 3: “evacuation was a great success.” Do you agree or disagree with this interpretation?
Evacuation affected everyone and everywhere within Britain during WW2. These evacuations involved children, teachers, parents and other people. However different people in different groups had different opinions on weather evacuation was a success or not. This was affected by their treatment, the way they worked, adapted and completed their involvement in the task.
It is most likely that parents had the worst experience during evacuation; they were told by the government that their children must evacuate to protect them from bombings. They were forced to leave their children in the hands of a stranger and hope that they would return at the end of the war. However this proves that evacuation would save the lives of many children, which in the parent’s eyes must have made it a success. However source I challenges this theory, the parent in the source believes that his child is going to “starve”. But I know from my own knowledge that this would be very unlikely showing that the parent in source I is ill informed and unprepared to allow his child to leave him, therefore making the evidence in source I unreliable.
Source A is an informative piece which is made to teach pupils, it is an anti-evacuation piece of evidence; it portrays evacuation as a process which had many troubles. It says “many evacuees could not settle” if this quote is true it is a small price to pay for saving the lives of many children. It was also the opposite in many cases some children settled in and their lives where greatly improved, for example Michael Caine who refers to his experience as “changed me from a young ‘city slicker’ into the country lover I am to this day” this quote shows the improvement of many children’s lives during WW2. Many children had different views on evacuation; however this mass evacuation of children saved the next generation of people in Britain. Source D is another source that shows evacuation in a positive light as it of children enjoying the evacuation but this scene could have been rare during the evacuation as it is a piece of propaganda issued by the government probably to increase the number of children being evacuated. But source A shows a totally different view to evacuation and describes it as a bad experience for both the evacuees and the host families. However as we know already others had enjoyable and profitable experiences. An opposite view to the normal would be that in source F which is of an evacuee looking back on his adventure during an interview in 1988. it describes him as living in worse conditions of those that he was used to, this factual source is informal and is very reliable. But not all endured bad treatment.
Source E is a negative piece of evidence; it is describing a mother who looks back on looking after children and their mother. The source says that “the children went around the house urinating on the walls” this statement automatically shows the poor conditions that children living in major cities grew up in, which were possibly improved in many cases for different people. Many of the host families had similar problems
For many adults and children the shock of being in a new environment and meeting new people soon gave way to the feelings of mutual respect and affection. The more fortunate children were treated like members of the family. This was the first time that many of them experienced a full lifestyle
The British government believed its declaration of war would be quickly followed by massive German air attacks on Britain’s population. Conservative estimates put civilian casualties in London alone at 4 million. Operation ‘Pied Piper’ was formulated to reduce this figure. Operation ‘Pied Piper’ saw the evacuation of over 250,000 children evacuated from cities. Although many children did arrive at the wrong destination, operation ‘Pied Piper was successful’ so once again proving that evacuation was successful.
Evacuation saw large amounts of patriotism arise, many of the host families just wanted to do their bit for the British campaign this include philanthropist who saw an opportunity to help others. However their was a dark side to the evacuation, some individual saw the evacuation as an opportunities to take advantage of the many displaced and unsettled children; by working them hard in the home or on the farm, worse abusing them physically. However this was very much the minority of children.
To conclude the findings I feel that evacuation was a success in many ways. It saved the lives of many of the children. Evacuation had caused many improvements to the lives of the city children.
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