Evaluation of the Success of the Evacuation of Children from Major British Cities during World War II Before discussing how successful evacuation was it must first be asked, how is success measured? Evacuation may have succeeded for some, but failed for others. Some groups of society may have benefited from it, others may have become worse off because of it. In some ways evacuation was a great success. The government introduced evacuation in 1939 to save people's lives and this was achieved; but did the end justify the means? Can the minor successes of evacuation be said to be just by-products of the main success? Primarily, evacuation was successful in its main goal; it saved lives. Throughout the blitz sixty thousand people were killed and eighty seven thousand people were seriously injured. The may sound a lot, but these figures are relatively small compared to estimates before the war. Because of this evacuation was definitely a great success, but did this success justify other failings? The evacuation of millions of children from towns and cities in Britain highlighted the gap that existed in the country between the rich and poor. This had both positive and negative connotations. Firstly, the government took steps to make social improvements to try to lessen this gap. The government introduced things like free school meals and milk in order to improve living conditions in poorer areas of the country. It could be argued that these improvements were imminent regardless of evacuation, however evacuation certainly acted as a catalyst for these improvements. However, the rich-poor gap certainly came to the attention of the host families. They had to endure poor hygiene and bad manners from children "from homes where no sentence was complete without a swear word" ('How We Lived Then'). Many of the hosts were shocked at the lack of hygiene displayed by some of the evacuees. Oliver Lyttelton, who allowed ten children from London to live in his large country house, later said, "I got a shock. I had little dreamt that English children could be so completely
Hundreds of boats came together to help the city, helping in any way they could. The boat captains in the documentary explained that they never seen so many boats at one time in the same location. Each boat would take as many people that they could fit on their boat it was the largest sea evacuation in history. Five hundred thousand people were evacuated in 9 hours more that the evacuation of Dunkirk in World War II where three hundred thousand people were saved over nine
This community was spirit was shown in a multitude of ways, for example, through the preparation. Information sheets on the use of public trench shelters were issued by the Borough Engineering and surveyor in 1940. This way of informing the public and making sure that they were aware of what to do illustrates the way in which the community was brought together in an attempt to make sure that nobody was hurt. An array of precautions were put in place, to limit the number of casualties, and in order for this to happen, many underground emergency hospitals were designed, with volunteers from the community helping to run them. The forms of protection that Bexley had in place were obviously useful, as although Bexley had thousands of people with injuries, only 155 people were killed from September 1939 to May 1945.
[4] From the memoirs of J.B Gent a Child in the war who lived on
Evaluating the Success of Dunkirk There are many opinions on how successful Dunkirk was; one point of
"World War II by the Numbers." National World War II Museum n. pag. Web. .
after the event and there was no reason for the author to be bias. I
“WW2 People’s War: An Archive of World War Two memories- written by the public, gathered by the BBC.” BBC. February 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar
Wells, Karen C.. "Children and youth at war." Childhood in a global perspective. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2009. 152. Print.
brown paper carrier bag it was in!) It was all made out to be rather
Source D is a photo of evacuees at bath time and was issued by the
Assessment of the British Evacuation of Children During World War II The main aim of evacuation was to protect Britain’s children form the threat of a German Blitz. Between the 1st and 3rd of September 1939 over 1.5 children, pregnant women and disabled people were evacuated to rural areas in mainland Britain. In my essay I am going to determine weather or not this objective was met and look at many different sources to see if there is any conflict in opinion. Whether evacuation was or was not a success is a controversial issue. There are four main viewpoints to this argument which all have to be considered.
“Reparations helped ease the pain, but were too little too late,” according to Harriet Hope of Unalaska, Harriet was 5 when her family was evacuated. It has been 70+ years since the Aleut people were forced to leave their homes by evacuation during World War II. The Aleutian Islands are a string of some 200+ islands along Southwest Alaska that come out into the Pacific Ocean. Also referred to as “Unangan”, the Aleut People are closely related to the Eskimo in language and culture. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the earliest people in this region, the Paleo-Aleuts arrived in the Aleutian Islands from the Alaskan mainland around 2000 B.C. Native Aleuts were exploited to Russian explorers and traders in
Singer, P.W. “Children at War.” Military History 24.6 (2007): 1-5. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 14 Feb. 2011.
Infantries could spend months in a disease ridden, rodent infested trench. With watching your fellow soldiers die of disease, have their limbs rot off, and bombed many soldiers that survived ended up developing post traumatic stress disorder, which would not have been treated or diagnosed for many years following the war. Survivors would most likely have many health problems to try to fix after the war ended in 1918. Trench warfare was created to help protect soldiers, but with disease and the harsh conditions of the trenches it may have harmed the soldiers more than helping
Machel, Graca & Sebastian Salgado. The Impact of War on Children. London: C. Hurst, 2001.