"By the way, did you remember to feed the canary?"
Cartoon showing a Morrison shelter in May, 1941
In the end the government built 8 shelters, deep in the ground in London. They were supposed to have held around 8,000 people each but they were not finished in time and not used.
This is an account by Evelyn Rose, who was a child during the , on the Blitz in 1987.
“If you were out and a bombing raid took place you would make for the nearest shelter. The tube stations were considered to be very safe. I did not like using them myself. The stench was unbearable. The smell was so bad I don’t know how people did not die from suffocation. So many bodies and no fresh air coming in. People would go to the tube stations long before it got dark because they wanted to make sure that they reserved their space. There were a lot of arguments amongst people over that.
We did not have an Anderson shelter so we used to hide under the stairs. You felt the next bang would be your lot and it was very frightening. My grandmother was a very religious person and when she was with us during the bombing raids she would gabble away saying her prayers. Strangely enough, when I was with her, I always felt safe.”
This account describes what it was like in the tube stations and how the Blitz affected people. This is a secondary source as it was not written at the time the Blitz was going on, it was written some 47 years after the Blitz and this makes the source unreliable as the woman might have forgotten what it was really like. Also she could be exaggerating when she says she used to hide under the stairs.
The Home Guard was thought up by Winston Churchill in October 1939 because at the start of the war there were a lot of middle-aged men who volunteered for the war and Churchill thought that it would be better if men aged 40 and over could become part of the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV). However, it was only until the Germans started their Western Offensive, that action was taken to appeal for men to join. On 14th may 1940, Anthony Eden appealed on radio for men to join the LDV. But not everyone could join. The men had to be aged between 40 and 65 and be able to fire a rifle or a shot gun.
Source B1 is an account of the training that the home guard underwent. This particular account is the Civil Defence training by Dr. T. A. Cockburn who was Assistant Medical Office in Barking and Dagenham during the war. He recalls learning to fire a rifle and making petrol bombs, but that they had to teach themselves. He also says that when a general went to see how they were doing, it was a total fiasco and that they finally understood how hard it was to hit a moving object with,’ a sherry bottle filled with fluid!’ He then says that everyone missed and that he nearly hit the general. This source is just thoughts and memories and it was not published, also it hasn’t got a date nor an indication of when it was written and because of this it is a very unreliable source. It seems to be slightly exaggerated as it always seems to go wrong with him nearly hitting the general. This source is untrustworthy and research needs to be done on the man to come to a conclusion.
On the contrary, source B5 was written by a man named Alf Tyler in 1985 who was involved in rescuing. Although it is a secondary source it is very accurate. He recalls an incident on the 15th September, when he was called out to Roman Road where bombers had, ’swooped low over Barking, each carrying two 500lb bombs,…’ and he had to rescue several injured people. This source is pro the civil defence as it shows that they were prepared and had guns just in case. However, it suggests that Anderson shelters were not very good as a family of six were blown to pieces while taking cover in one, but it says that the family next door survived, so the Anderson shelter had worked. They were also not prepared as their vehicle only carried one shroud and did not have nothing to carry the dead in apart from a Council dustcart. This source is informative as it gives us an insight into how Barking and Dagenham dealt with the Air Raids and is balanced in that it is not propaganda used to make the air raids seem insignificant and not causing much damage.
Nearly 1.5 million men had been recruited by the end of June 1940. LDV’s were not paid and after France was captured by the Germans, the volunteers were moved along the coast of Britain and to defend munitions factories. Because not many weapons were available, anyone who had a gun should give it to the Home Guard and within a few months, 20,000 weapons had been handed in. However, there were not enough weapons for every Home Guard so most carried pickaxes or crowbars. The men were trained to make Molotov cocktails, sabotage and the use of high explosives. In 1940, uniforms started to arrive, but some had to wear LDV armbands as there were not enough to go around. Later the men were issued with armour, like helmets. The main role of Home Guards was never fulfilled as the Germans never invaded but their other purpose was to capture German airmen who had been shot down and checking people’s identity cards.
The last source on civil defence is source B4. Quite similar to source B1, in that it has no date and looks slightly exaggerated, it is an account by Richard Hunt, who was 9 years old at the time and remembers an incident which occurred. He starts by saying that he cannot remember the exact date, telling us it is inaccurate, and that he can only remember one boys name which, likewise, puts the persons memory in question. They had been,’ scouting around,’ in their yard when they had heard voices and ran to the gathering crowd starring at the parachuting pilot coming down at them. When he had landed, Richard Hunt says that the home guard had ignored all rules and hit the parachutist, telling us that the home guard did not follow rules all the time. In the end, it turns out that the pilot was with the RAF. This source was written on the, ‘People’s War,’ website established some 5 years ago where people shared experiences. The website could be unreliable as people could be making it up or exaggerating it to make it more exciting so more people go on the website. It is therefore undependable as the writer seems to remember small details like where the pilot was heading but he can’t remember the date.
Another means of civil defence was the Blackout. As the Luftwaffe attacked at night, if all of London’s electricity was running it would be easier for the German’s to locate munitions factories and bomb them. To make things more difficult, the British government imposed a total blackout during the war. This meant that no home should let out any light. People would use thick curtains to cover the windows or blackout paint. At first no light was allowed even in the streets with street lamps being turned off, however, permission was given to use small torches which had to be covered with tissue paper and pointing downwards. Although the blackout made it harder for the Germans, the British found it impossible to use cars or get around and in 1939 car side lights were allowed. But this did not help. The number of road accidents rose and the number of people killed by cars doubled. As a result the government was forced to change the regulations and dipped headlights were permitted and a 20 mph maximum speed limit was imposed.
The German Air Force began its bomb attacks on Britain in July 1940. Their main targets were, radio stations, aircraft factories and fighter airfields. The Royal Air force lost 792 planes and 500 pilots during the next three months in the Battle of Britain. The first day of the Blitz was on the 7th of September 1940 when the German air force changed its strategy and focused on bombing just London. As a result, 430 people were killed and 1,600 were injured. The Germans returned the next day and a further 412 were killed. The Luftwaffe made 127 large-scale night raids, with 71 on London, between September 1940 and May 1941. 2 million houses (60% in London) were destroyed during the Blitz and 60,000 civilians were killed with 87,000 seriously injured.Until half-way through the , more women and children in had been killed than soldiers.
This is an extract from a book by Robert Boothby published in 1978. It gives his recollection on what life was like during the Blitz in the East End of London.
“Then came the Blitz. After Coventry, the East End of London had to bear the brunt. Every night, from dusk to dawn the German bombs fell upon them. Woolton suggested that I might go down there every morning about six o'clock when the 'All-clear' sounded, and see what I could do to help. I found that, as they came out of the shelters, what comforted them most was a kiss and a cup of tea. These were easily provided. Almost overnight I got the Ministry of Food to set up canteens all over the East End, manned by voluntary workers, where the tea was free. When we took them back to their
homes, often reduced to rubble, their chief concern was what had happened to the cat. I am afraid that the cat searches which I tried to organize were less successful than the canteens.
A number of people, including Kingsley Martin, the Editor of The New Statesman and Ritchie Calder, now Lord Ritchie- Calder, came down to help. But the dominant figure was a priest called Father Grozier. He never failed. He seemed to be everywhere all the time; and his very presence brought comfort, and revived confidence and courage, to thousands of people.
The people of the East End of London - the true cockneys - are a race apart. Most of the men were dockers, all the women cosy. Taken as a whole, they were warm, affectionate, gay, rather reckless, and almost incredibly brave. Sometimes the language was pretty rough, but it was so natural and innocent that it never jarred. One day I came across a small boy crying. I asked him what the matter was, and he said: "They burnt my mother yesterday." Thinking it was in an air-raid, I said: "Was she badly burned?" He looked up at me and said, through his tears: "Oh yes. They don't muck about in crematoriums." I loved them, and I am glad to have been close to them in their hour of supreme trial.”
, Boothby: Recollections of a Rebel (1978)
As this book was published in 1978 we do not know whether he had written these memories during the Blitz so we cannot say whether or not it is a primary or secondary source. We can say that it is not that reliable because it is a book and people exaggerate thing that they write to make their book sell more copies.
This is an extract from the diary of Joseph Goebbels. In his diary recorded how had decided to increase the terror bombing attacks on Britain (25th April, 1942) and their hatred of the British.
“He said he would repeat these raids night after night until the English were sick and tired of terror attacks. He shares my opinion absolutely that cultural centres, health resorts and civilian resorts must be attacked now. There is no other way of bringing the English to their senses. They belong to a class of human beings with whom you can only talk after you have first knocked out their teeth.”
This extract is very reliable as it was written during the Blitz and it has an accurate date placed on it. It is also reliable because it was written by someone close to Hitler and is valuable.
In June, 1942, Germany began working on a new secret weapon, the V-1 bomb. It was built in response to the mass bombings on German land by the British. The V-1 was also known as the flying bomb, the buzz bomb or the doodle-bug.
Evacuated Child: "What, you ain't got no sirens or doodle-bugs! It must be very dull here."
This is a cartoon of an evacuated child that has gotten so used to the V-1 bombs that she is surprised the other towns don’t have them. The remark she gives also tells us that she is not afraid of the bombs and finds their presence exciting. We do not know who drew this cartoon or when it was drawn nor who it was drawn for so it makes this source very unreliable and not useful.
The V-1 flying bomb was a monoplane without a pilot that was powered by a pulse-jet motor and carried a one tonne warhead. They were launched from a fixed ramp and could travel at 350 mph at 4,000 ft. It could be programmed to fly to a certain area of England and then fall and blow up.
It was on the 22nd of August 1942 that British intelligence first became aware of this bomb when a danish naval officer discovered one that had been used for a test on a small island between germany and Switzerland. It was because of the picture and detailed sketches that the danish officer sent that Britain could start to prepare for the bombs which was thought to win the war for germany. When the military looked into this they found that it was being assembled in Peenemünde and in May 1943 Churchill ordered operation Crossbow, to destroy the factories that the V-1 was being built in and to destroy all the V-1 rockets they could find. As a result, over 36,000 tonnes of bombs were dropped on the sites that were thought to have V-1 bombs but without success.
The germans launched the rocket from the north coast of france in Pas-de-Calais on 12th June 1944. The first 10 failed to reach England but on the 13th of June 1944, one managed to reach Essex. Over the next few months 1,435 hit south-east England and created panic in Britain as the British public had never seen anything like it before. It also caused many deaths and flattened most of London. Between mid June and the end of July, around one and a half million people left for fear of their lives. Luckily, of the 9,521 V-1 bombs that were aimed at southern England, 4,621 were destroyed by anti-aircraft fire or by RAF fighters such as the new turbojet fighter, the . Although 6,184 people were killed by these flying bombs, by August only 20 per cent of these bombs were reaching England.
The year the British intelligence became aware of the V-1 flying bombs, that is 1942, the germans had begun work on their latest secret weapon. An advanced V-1 rocket called the V-2 flying bomb. This rocket was also built in Peenemünde and was first used on England on September 1944. It was quite similar to the V-1 rocket in that it carried 1 tonne of warhead, but in contrast, it was liquid fuelled and capable of supersonic speed. Furthermore, it could fly at an altitude of 50 miles and therefore could not be effectively stopped once it was launched from base. Of the 5,000 V-2 rockets that were launched for England, only 1,100 reached Britain. But those that did reach their target caused 2,724 deaths and 6,000 injuries. It was only until March of 1945 that Allied troops captured the launch sites in the D-Day landings that the attacks and fears of the British public ended.
Women and children
The outbreak of World War II meant that the educational reforms set at the end of World War II were postponed. It was during this period that the government started thinking of evacuating children to reception areas. Sir John Anderson split England into three areas that would be the neutral, evacuation and reception areas. The reception areas would receive evacuees sent from evacuation areas. The neutral areas would neither receive nor send evacuees. Although the government wanted to send every child to safe areas only 50% of the children living in towns were evacuated and because all the schools were closed down, this meant that there were around 1 million children without schooling and the reports of vandalism increased especially on public air raid shelters. The only means of schooling for the evacuees was the open schools in rural areas with which they had to share with other children. The evacuees had to attend school in the afternoon while the locals used it in the morning. In some situations, any empty building was used. This included churches, village halls and even warehouses. Berwick Sayers later wrote: "for weeks in some cases, teachers and children assembled at some agreed point and walked the country lanes until they could be housed in some suitable hall."
Neville Chamberlain finally admitted that evacuation had caused serious problems for education and in November 1939, decided to re-open some urban schools. But another problem was to occur. As a result of conscription notices, young male teachers were forced to join the army and so there were teacher shortages. This lead to the opening of some universities and the hope that young women would consider becoming teachers. Although the number of females in universities rose, this didn’t do much to help the situation.
It was before the outbreak of the second world war that the government started to move people from Britain’s cities to the reception areas. 827,000 school children, 524,000 mothers and children under school age, 13,000 pregnant mothers, 103,000 teachers, and 7,000 handicapped people were evacuated. More would have been evacuated but were reluctant to leave. The mothers who had let their children to be evacuated, they soon started to doubt whether they had made the right decision when the expected bombing in 1939 did not take place. They decided to take their children back home and by January 1940, about 1 million evacuees returned home. Children who had been evacuated to areas within ten miles of the coast in East Anglia, Kent and Sussex were transferred to South Wales when France was invaded in May 1940. Nearly half of the population of East Anglian's coastal towns and two-fifths of the inhabitants of Kentish towns on the coast had left for safer regions of the country by the end of July. 213,000 unaccompanied children were evacuated from Britain’s large industrial cities in July 1940 after the Luftwaffe began bombing England. As there were no more areas for the children to be sent to, the government set up the a (CORB), where children could be evacuated to USA, Canada and Australia. This was relatively successful will over 210,000 children registered. However, the scheme was brought to an end when 73 children were killed on the 17th September 1940 when the was sunk by a German torpedo. When the bombing started in other cities, parents wanted their children to be evacuated and between September and December of 1941, over 1.25 million children were evacuated from cities like Liverpool and Coventry.
The person who was to look after the evacuee was called the billetor. If the billetor lodged mothers and children it would cost 5s. per adult and 3s. Per child. The billetor received 10s. 6d. From the government for looking after the child on its own. However if the billetor took in more than one child they received an extra 8s. 6d. per head. This was reasonable seeing as the billetor usually complained about the state of health of the children.
It was mainly children from poor families that were in a bad state of health. Billetors complained that the children had fleas or head lice while others suffered from impetigo or scabies. Children found it difficult to live without their parents and to live with their new families as their new families found it difficult with the evacuees. In one case, when a billetor went to check on the evacuee, he found him sleeping not on the bed, but underneath it.
A seventeen year old girl from London recorded her thoughts on evacuation for the Mass-Observation organization.
“I was an evacuee for six weeks. The main problem between evacuees and hosts seems to me to be the difficulty of adapting one to the other. A few of the hosts treated their evacuees, mainly girls, as guests, or as they would their own children. But the majority treated the girls as unpaid maids.
A good deal of publicity has been given to the hosts burdened with dirty, verminous evacuees, but none or very little to cases where well brought up, middle class girls and boys have been billeted in poor, dirty homes, where they have little to eat and none of the facilities they are used to. At least half of the 250 girls evacuated with the school are billeted in tiny, dirty houses where they have to do any housework that is done. Being billeted in such houses has a very bad effect on the younger girls of an impressionable age, and they grow slack in their care of their personal cleanliness and manners.
There are a good many clean middle class homes in the area but the owners of these homes have seen to it that they did not have to take in evacuees.
The Government allowance for evacuees is another problem. A great many hosts find it impossible to manage on the Government allowance and they grumble incessantly to their evacuees and demand a supplementary allowance from parents. When the parents explain that this has been forbidden the hosts become extremely disagreeable, nag the evacuees, give them poor food and their meals separate from the rest of the family. I think a great many of the problems of evacuation would be solved if evacuees were found billets roughly corresponding in class to their own homes.”
Although this source is very descriptive, we do not know who wrote it or when it was written so it is not very valuable. Also, she could be making it up as she seems to exaggerate on some points. This source is biased on the sense that it leans too much against evacuations. If this is a true account then it still is not reliable as other children may have found their experience exciting and pleasurable.
We can say that during World War II, the lives most affected by this war, in a good way, were the lives of women all over Great Britain. In June 1939, the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) was formed to release men from combat posts. The women had to be aged between 17 and 44 and between December 1939 and June 1945, recruitment grew from only 8,800 to 153,000. Furthermore, by March 1940, England had lost over 30,000 men to the British Army who would otherwise have cultivated British land. The Women’s Land Army was actually set up in the First World War and was reformed due to the severe shortages of labourers and by 1944 there were 80,000 women volunteers working on the land with around a third of the workers coming from industrial cities. Their uniform was simple, they wore; green jerseys, brown breeches and brown felt slouch hats and did a variety of jobs, from milking, to general farm work while others cut down trees or worked in saw mills and even employed as rat-catchers
"I'm not here all day - I have to go and do part-time housework"
Cartoon in a British magazine in June 1943.
This cartoon was drawn for a British magazine so we can say that there could be an element of bias in it, or that it could be used as propaganda as all the women working seem happy and can even chat to each other about anything. The date is mentioned, being June of 1943, so it is a primary source. The poster in the top right hand corner which reads,” DON’T WASTE LIGHT.” also fits in with the time period. The women seem to be in a wood factory and are probably making things out of wood, like chairs. As a result of the jobs that the women had to do, they soon became experts at it and because of this, more jobs were offered to women after the war also as most men who knew how to make things had been killed in the war.
The was also something new in the Second World War. It was established on the 9th of September 1938 and as a result, women served as, office, mess and telephone orderlies, drivers, postal workers, butchers, bakers, and ammunition inspectors. On 18th December 1941, the was passed by Parliament. This legislation called up unmarried women aged between twenty and thirty but this was later extended to married women apart from mother with young children or pregnant mothers. Women were doing what was seen as ‘ Men’s work ’ and this ranged from, working in tank and aircraft factories, civil defence, nursing, transport and other key occupations to driving trains and operating anti-aircraft guns. There were also different types of auxiliary services that the women could sign up to. These were, - (ATS), the (WRNS), the (WAAF) or the (FANY). Among these, Women in the ATS served as volunteers with the until given full military status in July 1941. Women could also join the Women's Voluntary Service (WVS) where they helped to supply emergency services at home.
Women volunteers ploughing in winter.
This is a picture of women ploughing land. We do not know when this photo was taken or where it was taken. There is no information on who the two women in the photo are or that it was even taken in England. As a result, this source is untrustworthy and unreliable. The smiling faces on the women, although it is a tough job, could indicate that it could have been propaganda to show the other women how fun it is to join.
Community life changed as a result of World War II. Although the Blitz effected England, British morale was still high. This was hard to believe as so much had been thrown at the British public. Shortages meant that people had to be careful with wasting food or money. Some Londoners kept pigs in their back garden as they could feed them kitchen waste and others grew crops. This was a campaign called “Dig For Victory” and it persuaded people to become self-sufficient. People also kept goats, rabbits and chickens. If people didn’t have a garden, their were persuaded to use allotments. In fact every available patch of land was used in this campaign, from flower beds, to lawns. This was to take the place of the 55 million tonnes of food that was imported from other countries and it was successful. It was estimated that over 1.4 million people had allotments with many more using their gardens.
Cartoon on the Dig for Victory campaign (June, 1943)
This was a cartoon drawn in June 1943 showing a typical British garden pro the Dig For Victory campaign. The date tells us that it is a primary source and is therefore reliable. We do not know why or for who it was drawn for, all we can speculate is that it could have been used for propaganda as it seems to me as though the neighbours are comparing gardens and feel that they have not done enough. In the cartoon there are ducks, chickens, rabbits, a goat and bees! It is setting an example to others of what a Dig Fir Victory garden should look like.
Another means of dealing with the food shortages was rationing. This was a result of the German battle ships and submarines sinking British merchant vessels which lead to rationing being issued by the government. Everyone had to register to their local shop and the shop owner would provide that family with their maximum food amounts. In January, 1940, bacon, butter and sugar were rationed. This was later followed by meat, fish, tea, jam, biscuits, breakfast cereals, cheese, eggs, milk and canned fruit. A committee established by the government in the summer of 1940 stated that
each citizen could survive on twelve ounces of bread, a pound of potatoes, two ounces of oatmeal, an ounce of fat, six ounces of vegetables and six-tenths of a pint of milk per day, supplemented either by small amounts of cheese, pulses, meat, fish, sugar, eggs and dried fruit. However, the advice was not published, as the government was concerned by the implications of this proposal. Children were treated differently on the rationing scheme as they were thought to be growing up and in need for vitamins and minerals. They were entitled to extra food, in particular milk and orange juice. One pint of milk for every child under 5 was the minimum set by the National Milk Scheme.
There were open air markets in Romford, near Barking and Dagenham, but they were not normal markets and soon became black markets where food and clothing could be found. The government found out about the market and although market traders used methods to signal that police men were on their way, by the use of undercover inspectors the government was able to clamp down on the traders. Although alcohol and cigarettes were not official rationed it became hard to buy them.
People would do so much to get food that again in Romford, 100,000 ration books were stolen from the Ministry of Food Offices estimating at a £500,000 loss of food money then sold on to supply the public with a means to get extra food. This also occurred in Brighton where 80,000 ration books had been stolen. The situation was deteriorating and in August 1940, the government passed a legislation which made the waste of food a prisonable offence.
Not just food was rationed, in September 1939, the government rationed petrol. Clothing was rationed as well from June 1941. This meant that a person could only buy one new outfit a year. New ideas were thought up to save fabric. For example, men's trousers were made without turnups, while women's skirts were short and straight and no frills were allowed on women's underwear. So as not to upset the British women, handy hints on how to turn old curtains into a dress were published in a Woman’s magazine. Other methods used by women were to colour their legs with gravy browning as stocking were in short supply, and some even had friends draw a line on the back of their legs with an eyebrow pencil for the seam. However this situation was not the worst as the British government reduced the number of coupons continually in May 1943 so people were issued with 20 coupons instead of the 48 to begin with. This was not nearly enough as 18 could only buy you a coat and as a result, people were faced with serious clothing problems.
Cartoon on rationing that appeared in a magazine in January, 1943
This is a cartoon on the rationing of clothes. It was drawn in 1943 when the rationing of clothes was happening and so is a primary source. We do not have any information on who drew it, only that it was drawn for a magazine. It shows a woman wearing a self-made coat. two other women look on interested while the two men stare at the woman. These to me suggest that it was used as propaganda to persuade women to make their own clothes. It is telling them that other women will admire you and men will be attracted to you. The woman is saying, ’There darlings - you would never guess what I made this of!’ this suggest that anything could be used to make clothes and is indoctrinating women to make clothes.
Although most of the British nation found rationing hard, there were advantages. It was thought that the public which underwent the rationing scheme obtained a balanced diet and were therefore more healthy compared to the current generation where obesity is common.
Propaganda was an important weapon used by all the countries during World War II. In fact we don’t realise it, but we are exposed to propaganda every day. This may not just be from the government, but from companies wishing to sell us their products. Propaganda is a means to indoctrinate the public by making them think or do things or behave in a certain way. During the war, propaganda was used to raise morale or, in the case of the cartoon on the rationing of clothes, do something which is necessary. Propaganda was not just used to raise morale, but to boost British hatred of the Nazis.