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

people how technology had changed, how serious this could turn out & how easy a large sum of people could die in one bombing raid, in May 1937 newsreel films of the condor legion attack on the Spanish city of Guernica during the Spanish civil war was shown at local cinemas. It was believed that bombing would cause massive destruction and loss of life. Since world war one technology had improved an aeroplane what could only carry one pilot whom was no more than 10 stones, had dramatically changed to a death machine that could not only carry more than one person but also a large cargo of bombs. It was also definite that the main purpose of the aeroplane would be to aim to kill people & destroy cities of the opposition by dropping bombs. It was feared that as many as 4 million innocent civilians could be killed or at least seriously injured in consequence of bombing raids. Hospital beds were being cleared of people who suffered from long-term illnesses such as cancer to make way for the inevitable causalities of war. 1,250,000 cardboard coffins were pre-made for those unfortunate enough to have been killed during the war. This wasn’t very optimistic thinking but was reality  & the worst had to be prepared for pre-hand so that it would be easier to cope with when the toll of dead bodies exceeded to large sums. But best effort was made to evacuate as many women, children possible to keep the death toll as low as possible to also protect the future generation. Concerns were big enough that it was needed to look that far ahead. The government also had to be assured that there would be a, sufficient number of people to help re- structure the country back to normality after the war finished. Particular efforts to evacuate children were made so that their parents could concentrate better which would help war effort. These same pre-cautions & evacuation procedures had been carried out at the time of the Munich crisis in September 1938. During that period when it was definite that war would break out British government had asked the parents of children living in unsafe areas what they perceived of the evacuation scheme.  Most of these parents had been to the local cinema  & so had seen what the effects of war could be & so 80% of the parents agreed that it was a good idea. 1939 Now the government was fully prepared & had made all preparations for what could be a huge wipeout of a lot of civilians. Preparations such as the coffins, 38,000,000 gas masks 400,000 Anderson shelters had been produced to try to prepare for the effects of bombing. But by now parents were not as keen & didn’t find it as good of an idea to evacuate their children to complete strangers so the agreement to the evacuation had fallen to 60%. Unnecessary chaos was tried to be avoided once the war had started by the government so as many children & pregnant women as possible were evacuated, so there was less anarchism during the air raids on the streets. Another key reason is that the British Government didn’t want panic by civilians fleeing the country & causing panic among other civilians. Best effort was made to keep the civilians calm but alert.  But the government did want to stress that the evacuation plan was a good idea since they controlled the media they gave the impression to the public that the evacuation was highly popular among the people who have been affected.  So propaganda pictures & films were put out to show this. But as expected there were still a few mothers who were scared & very unsure whether the evacuation is actually any help and has any use. Although many children were evacuated it wasn’t always willingly. Many children found the families whom they were staying with rather unwelcoming & found it difficult to fit in with their host family’s lifestyle. Many children were evacuated from city centers: some of the families they went to were very surprised at their state of health. In 1941 there was a series of articles published by the women’s institute describing the health, clothing and manners of many children from city centers. These effects made many realize that something should and could be done to improve the lives of the people of Britain when the war ended. So in 1941 the British Government asked Sir William Beveridge to lead a commission of inquiry to find out on what can be done. The Welfare State’s creation was due to Beveridge’s report.  Both rationing and evacuation affected women much more than it did men. It was the housewife who had to cope with them. Sir Winston Churchill stated that it was the housewives of Britain who enabled the country to survive Hitler’s attempts to force surrender.