Why were the major cities of Britain bombed by the Germans in 1940-41?

Assignment one Britain in the age of total War . Why were the major cities of Britain bombed by the Germans in 1940-41? The start of the Blitz is remembered as Black Saturday which was that evening when the first German planes flew the English Channel and bombed British Cities, this was the 7th September 1940, it was called the blitz which meant 'total war' the word came from "Blitzkrieg" which means lightning war. The British was bombed 67 nights out of 68 from the 7th September to the 13th November 1940. The first time British civilians were attacked was on the 24th august 1940where some German Raiders got lucky and lost and in result bombed London. The following night 80 British planes were sent to Berlin and caused havoc. On the first night of the blitz Britain was unprepared and therefore over 200 people died. The blitz was part of Hitler's 'Operation Sea lion' which ended in the invasion of Britain. Hitler's promise to his German people was that no Germans would be hurt from bombings, this was massively untrue. The main objective of the Blitz for Hitler was to demonstrate the strength of his new improved Luftwaffe by bombing and completely destroying British cities such as London,, Birmingham and Hull. By these means three other objectives that Hitler had set would be achieved, one being the destruction of industrial areas and factory's that are vital to

  • Word count: 684
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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Why did the British Government decide to evacuate children from Britain's major cities in the early years of the Second World War?

Why did the British Government decide to evacuate children from Britain's major cities in the early years of the Second World War? After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany and just twenty-one years after the last one had ended, a new World War had begun. With these past twenty-one years being very tense between countries, warfare had changed, weapons that could kill many people instantly were invented and especially the warfare in the sky was much more advanced. With a ruthless dictator in power, Germany had the technology to cause millions of casualties across to Britain, especially on her home front. With fear of heavy bombing of Britain's large cities, the British government decided to evacuate the children of Britain to safety in the countryside. Evacuation was introduced for many different reasons as we are about to see. 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

  • Word count: 711
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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Why did the British government decide to evacuate children from Britains major cities in the early years of the Second World War.

Why did the British government decide to evacuate children from Britain's major cities in the early years of the Second World War. There were five reasons why the British government decided to evacuate children at the start of the Second World War; they were the fear of huge civilian casualties, major development in technology, rationing, war effort and control. The government felt they had to evacuate the children from the major cities to the countryside because they knew that in a modern war, civilians would be targeted. For example during the Spanish civil war in Guernica the Germans did a test on bombing cities from the air and many unnecessary deaths occurred, this provoked the government's decision on evacuation as they feared the horror of new aerial warfare. Before the war, the British Government calculated that 100,000 tons of bombs would be dropped on London in 2 weeks, with each ton causing 50 casualties. There were then predictions of 4,000,000 civilian casualties over the period of time in which the war was to last for. During the Munich crisis, evacuation was nearly put forward but the war wasn't started, this also meant that they could have more time to ensure their plans for when the war did occur, so the children remained at home. Evacuation was decided by the parents some sent their children away some didn't there were posters and leaflets persuading

  • Word count: 920
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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Why did the British Government decide to evacuate children from Britain's major cities in the early years of the Second World War?

Why did the British Government decide to evacuate children from Britain's major cities in the early years of the Second World War? On the 1st September 1939; two days before the declaration of war, the British Government officially started to evacuate civilians from Britain's major cities. It was mainly children who were evacuated, but others such as the disabled and blind, teachers, mothers and young children and also pregnant women were also sent away. From the 1st - 3rd September around 1.5 million people were evacuated. Evacuation statistics: * 827,000 Children * 524,000 Mothers and young children * 103,000 Teachers * 13,000 Pregnant women * 7,0000 Disabled and Blind The evacuees were sent to rural towns and villages in designated areas where the Government thought that they would not be in danger. Many children who came from wealthy backgrounds were also sent abroad "privately" to live with relatives or stay in nice hotels. They were sent to places like Canada, the USA, South Africa, Australia, and the Caribbean, almost two million children were sent away like this. London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle, Sunderland, Leeds, Bradford, Portsmouth, Southampton and Sheffield, these are just come of the cities that the evacuees were sent away from. They were sent away from the industrial cities, ports and production cities

  • Word count: 723
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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Why did the British Government decide to Evacuate children from Britain's major Cities in the early years of the war?

Why did the British Government decide to Evacuate children from Britain's major Cities in the early years of the war? The evacuation of Britain's cities at the start of World War Two was the largest movement of people in Britain's history. In the first four days of September 1939, nearly 3,000,000 people were transported from towns and cities. The Government's aim was to reduce the risk of injuries and death from the main target areas such as London, Manchester, Bristol, Portsmouth and many other cities. The danger came from German bomber attacks over Britain. The first wave of evacuation in Britain took place on September 1st 1939. Britain evacuated children from the major cities because of long term, short term and spark causes leading up to 1st September 1939. It was necessary to evacuate children as a priority because they were considered the country's future, as were pregnant women. It was necessary to spread the population out towards the countryside so that the people living there could do their part in the war; by looking after evacuees. The fear of bombing in the large cities was very high, due to past events such as Guernica, where bombing took place in 1937 during the Spanish civil war. Many parents wanted their children to move to safe areas until the threat of bombing had subsided. Since the First World War when gas bombs were first introduced against the

  • Word count: 1732
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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Why did the British Government decide to evacuate children from Britain(TM)s major cities at the start of the Second World War?

Why did the British Government decide to evacuate children from Britain's major cities at the start of the Second World War? Evacuation began before war was declared in 1939 and over 1.5 million children were evacuated out of major cities and towns to the countryside where it was thought to be safer. There were many reasons for the Government's decisions on evacuations but not all of them were rational, as much of the government's information about the upcoming war was incorrect. The government knew how the aftermath of the First World War had affected the British and how they had suffered, they didn't want a repeat to such an awful extent. The number of deaths in the First World War was a huge number in both the military and amongst civilians but it was predicted that more were to be killed and injured during the Second World War due to the improvement of technology. However, as these predictions were based on incorrect data, the predictions were hugely exaggerated and the number of civilian deaths was just a minority compared to the numbers of those killed out in battle. During the First World War in the battle of the Somme, the British suffered over 60,000 casualties on the first day of the attack alone. The thought of so many deaths amongst the British was believed to lower morale in the public and it would have been even worse if a large percentage had been children.

  • Word count: 874
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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Why did the British government decide to evacuate children from Britain(TM)s major cities in the early years of the Second World War

GCSE History Coursework - Question 1 Why did the British government decide to evacuate children from Britain's major cities in the early years of the Second World War? When Britain declared war on Germany in 1939 the British government urged families in cities that were likely to be bombed in air raids, to evacuate their children to the country. There was lots of reasons the British government decided to evacuate children during WW2 most of them I will highlight in this essay. The first reason the British evacuated children was because England had experienced air raids during world war one. Gotha bombers & Zeppelins, which were huge balloons that dropped bombs, reeked havoc on British towns. Overall 1500 innocent people died. Poison gas attacks were also used during world war one, the government considered that the repeat of gas attacks was likely in the future conflict. This made the British government evacuate children because they knew the damage air raids can do and it also confirmed from past history that the German army would target civilians in a total war situation Another reason for the evacuation is the massive rearmament of the German army including the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe bombed Guernica in September 1937. The city was bombed to the ground by German planes. Some people believe that the Luftwaffe bombed the city as an experiment to measure the damage

  • Word count: 567
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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Why did the British Government decide to evacuate children from Britain(TM)s major cities in the early years of the Second World War?

Why did the British Government decide to evacuate children from Britain's major cities in the early years of the Second World War? In 1939 Germany declared war on Poland, as a result, France and Britain declared war on Germany. Even before World War Two broke out, it was obvious that the prime targets of the German bombers would be Britain's major cities. The countryside would be pointless for the Germans to bomb as there were no built up areas and few factories in the countryside. The government decided it would be safer for the children living in large, industrialised cities if they were moved to the countryside. This was called evacuation or operation 'Pied Piper`. On the 1st September 1939, two days before the beginning of World War Two, the government decided to evacuate children, mothers with children under school age, expectant mothers, teachers and handicapped people from the cities into areas of the country side where there were no significant targets. The government predicted that around 3.5 million people would choose to be evacuated to the countryside but in the end only around 1.5 million did. But why did the government think this was necessary with so many other things to think about? There are many reasons why the British Government decided to evacuate children from Britain's major cities. Arguably one of the most important reasons was the attitudes of

  • Word count: 4126
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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Why did the normans win the battle of hastings?

WHY DID THE NORMANS WIN THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS? In the year 1066, the battle of Hastings took place. During the year, Edward the confessor died and left no heir to the throne. William, duke of Normandy and Harold Goodwinson fought to become king. In the end, Harald Hardrada, were very angry that they were not chosen. Many think the Normans won, because William was a skilful and ambitious man, and he knew that he wanted to be king of England. He knew that he would eventually become king and he would rule over England. He decided to go to war with Harold, because he thought that the only way to become king was to fight and to kill Harold Goodwinson. Another reason that William won was that he had skilful and well trained men on horse back, who were very good at fighting. This is what put Harold in such a difficult place. But to make it even harder, Harald Hardraada and Tostig (another man who wanted to be king), and teamed up and were waiting in the south to fight with Harold - the king. Being put in this position, Harold's spies told him that William was waiting for in the North. Harold chose to go south to Stamford Bridge to meet Harald Hardraada and Tostig. Harold choosing to go south to Stamford Bridge, the journey made Harold's troops very tired and they would find it very difficult to fight. The battle at Stamford Bridge, was a great success, as Harold won, but

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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Why did the Number of Women employed in Britain begin to rise significantly from mid-1915?

Why did the Number of Women employed in Britain begin to rise significantly from mid-1915? The number of women employed in Britain increased dramatically as of mid-1915. There was a multitude of reasons for this which I will explore during this essay. I shall be looking in particular at the great shell shortage of May 1915 and the women's campaigns to be a part of the war effort. I shall also look at some of the other opportunities made available for women then and the reasons behind them. The main contributory factor to women's employment was the 'Great Shell Shortage' of May 1915. On the Western front levels of ammunition for troops was falling critically low, rendering many of them useless on the battlefield as it had got to the extent where many soldiers actually ran out of bullets amidst a fire fight. The decision to employ women in munitions factories was blatantly the right choice to make and so it was made by the newly appointed Minister for Munitions David Lloyd George who was desperate to increase production of ammunition and other equipment. With an army of 2.5 million men volunteered already by late 1915 an immense amount of ammunition and equipment was required to keep supply levels up, more and more were employed to provide them, as the war neared its conclusion, around 900,000 women were employed in munitions factories. There was a national register of names

  • Word count: 610
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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