Evacuation was a Great Success

‘Evacuation was a Great Success’

Do you agree or disagree with this interpretation?

Evacuation began on 1 September 1939, two days before Britain went to war with Germany. It was a voluntary scheme aimed to send all children living in cities that were likely to be bombed, to safer places. In this answer I am going to discuss good and bad points and then come to a conclusion as to whether I think evacuation was a ‘Great Success’ or not.

Many people believe that evacuation in WW2 was a great success due to the lives it saved and the many positive things that came of it. There are many arguments used to show evacuation was a success.

First of all were the lives it saved. Major cities in England were the target of air raids from the Luftwaffe. This made the people that inhabited these cities worried that they would be bombed. Children in these cities were the next generation of citizens. Looking at photographs of the devastation caused by the bombing shows how important it was to get people away from those areas.

Secondly, the evacuation was generally very well organised. Organization was a key factor to get write in sending children to new homes. Many children thought that evacuation was a great adventure as most of them hadn’t been out of the city before. Source B is a photograph taken in September 1939, showing evacuees walking to a station in London. All the children in the photograph appear to be smiling and waving and that seems to portray a very positive image about evacuation. It shows them in a very orderly group with a female leader (most probably a teacher as I know they were evacuated in schools). Source C is an interview with a teacher in 1988 who says “When we got to the station the train was ready”; this source backs up the point about how well organised it was and for most evacuees the experience was probably a welcome change from life in the city.

A very positive thing that came out of the evacuation was the welfare state and it could be argued that it was the biggest positive outcome of the war. Many foster parents that took in children from slums and poor areas were shocked at the state these children had been living in and complained to the government.

A committee led by Sir William Beveridge published a report in 1942 saying that Britain needed to overcome ‘5 evils’:

‘Disease’; poorer citizens could not afford medical treatment so the NHS was set up to give free health ...

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A committee led by Sir William Beveridge published a report in 1942 saying that Britain needed to overcome ‘5 evils’:

‘Disease’; poorer citizens could not afford medical treatment so the NHS was set up to give free health care.
‘Want’. many people lived in poverty through out Britain and this needed to be tackled by setting up a new benefit system.
‘Ignorance’; not enough children attended school; this was solved by giving free education up to the age of 15 with the hope that children would stay on.
‘Idleness”; after the depression before the war many people were out of work, this was solved by nationalising some industries.
Finally ‘Squalor’; Poor areas and slums were replaced with by massive council housing programmes.

The welfare state had a major effect in the way the country was run after the war and it is still in place today helping millions across Britain.

However, some people believe that evacuation wasn’t a great success and that there were a lot of things that the government did wrong. One thing the government didn’t always take into consideration when evacuating children was the homes they would go to. Many children were taken into homes where they had to live by completely different rules and even religions. A lot of Jewish children, when being put in new homes, were made to eat food prohibited by their faith and celebrate festivals such as Christmas which conflicted with their beliefs. In other cases children went to new homes where they were abused verbally and physically.

There were many reports of children not settling in and disturbing behaviour such as ‘urinating on walls, bad manners, fouling in gardens, hair crawling with lice and bed wetting’. Many children clearly could not settle after being split up from parents and sometimes even brothers and sisters. Source C describes the parting of the mother and child, ‘children were too afraid to talk’ and ‘the mothers pressed against the iron gates calling ‘good-bye darling’.’ These experiences scarred people for life as this was the first time most evacuees had been away from home and their parents. To be put into a new home and expected to settle down and live a different life would have been a traumatic experience.

In source I, a father is interviewed by the observer and says he is against sending his child away for reasons such as ‘they can’t be looked after where they’re sending them’ and ‘they were starving there before the war’. This is just one persons view of the situation but you do understand their not wanting to give up your child to strangers.

Overseas evacuation was a popular option for many adults that could get there children out of Britain. CORB (Children’s Overseas Reception Board) was an organisation that sent children on the SS Volendam and the City of Benares which were both attacked by German u-boats on 17th September 1940. The City of Benares was carrying 90 child passengers who were being evacuated from Britain to . 77 of the 90 children died in the sinking, prompting the immediate cessation of the Children’s Overseas Reception Board.

So in conclusion, although some children had a bad time and sometimes unnecessarily so, the majority of evacuees enjoyed the experience. For something as good as the welfare state to come out of the evacuation, makes it a success in my eyes. And looking at photos of the bomb damage, it is clear that many children were saved who would have most probably died. It can be easy to view the past through ‘rose coloured spectacles’ but on balance, I believe there are many more positives than negatives and, for that reason the policy of evacuation qualifies in my opinion, as a ‘great success’.