Why did the British government decide to evacuate children from Britain's major cities in the early years of the Second World War?

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PARDEEP CHOHAN 10:03                   HISTORY COURSEWORK 1st DRAFT 

Why did the British government decide to evacuate children from Britain’s major cities in the early years of the Second World War?

The evacuation of children during the Second World War (1939-1941) was named operation ‘Pied-Piper’, Masses of children were moved from urban areas to the rural countryside.

The British government took measures of evacuation in the early years of the Second World War for many different reasons. The reasons can be split up into two sections. One of the sections is ‘phase one’ of the evacuation process and the other is ‘phase two’. Phase one of the evacuation process began on the 31st of august, three days before war was formally declared. This shows that the war had been ‘seen’ to be coming. Evacuating millions of children was no easy task, much planning and thinking needed to be done in order to make it successful. Plans for evacuation had been going on since the Munich crisis (1938) when Britain had been on the brink of war with Germany. About one and a half million children (in the first few days of evacuation) were sent from cities to countryside homes where they were believed to be safe. Towards the end of 1938 no German military action or bombing had taken place, people began to see it as the ‘phoney’ war, parents felt it unnecessary for their children to be sent away and so children began returning back home for Christmas, by January 1939 it was estimated that over one million children were back home in the cities. ‘Phase two’ of the evacuation process came in April/May 1940; this was the second wave of evacuation which began due to the successful gains of Germany in Western Europe. The Luftwaffe had invaded Denmark, Sweden, Norway and now even Dunkirk (France). Theses gains now played an important part in the evacuation process, unlike during ‘phase one’ where Britain ‘expected’ an German attack, it was now different, and Hitler provided a much greater threat to invade Britain. The threat was more direct and it was much easier for Hitler to attack Britain as his successful recent gains allowed him to be much closer to Britain and so, therefore more likely to severely bomb British cities. Germany posed a ‘real’ threat and so the major operation of evacuation once again took place, this time it was much faster and on the 9th of May 1940 the first German ‘blitz’ took place. The ‘Battle of Britain’ (1940) led to heavy German ‘blitzing’ at this point evacuation was most necessary and once again a colossal operation of moving thousands of children from cities to the countryside was underway.

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One of the most important reasons for evacuation was to save civilian life. The defenceless children who provided a face of innocence had nothing to do with the war. The government felt it was their duty to protect them, the children were seen as weak and vulnerable, therefore unable to protect themselves. Also the children were not only physically weak, but also mentally undeveloped, they were not strong enough to withstand the horrors of war, death destruction and famine would be both mentally and physically distressing for them. The British government felt it had to take the responsibility to evacuate ...

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