The Evacuation of Children From Britain's Major Cities During World War II

The Evacuation of Children From Britain's Major Cities During World War II

During the First World War, the home front in England did not

experience the terrible warfare that was happening in France. The only

experience the civilians had was the starvation due to the food

shortages they were facing. There were no bombs dropped on the main

cities, particularly because the air technology had not reached an

advanced enough stage.

On 1st September 1939, war was declared between Britain and Germany,

for a second time in history. However, this war was to be a lot more

dangerous, and the deaths were not limited to the battlefield.

Civilians would be at much greater risk this time; technology had

advanced a lot over the 20 years since the last war. Now there were

fighter planes and bombs capable of causing devastation at great

distances. These were not very accurate bombs, but they were very

powerful.

The Prime Minister of England, Neville Chamberlain was very worried

about the fact that there were more deadly weapons available now,

which could create a disaster in Britain, by hitting the defenseless

civilians. He had already seen the results of war between Spain and

the Far East in recent years. In this war there had been terrible mass

bombing of main towns and cities. This frightened Chamberlain, he knew

he could do nothing about the bombing. So instead he asked his

advisors to predict the number of possible casualties. This turned out

to be an alarming number- 600,000 deaths and 1.2 million wounded in

the first 6 months. Chamberlain also assumed that the German air force

would strike as soon as the war was declared. This was a ver...

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...minister

did not know what the war in the air would be like; the First World

War not having affected Britain in this way. He had heard of the

Spanish War against the Far East, where there had been heavy

bombardment from the air, and knew of the new Zeppelins that were

available as bomber planes now.

With all the assumptions that the Government made, such as the fact

that Germany would strike as soon as the war started and that there

would be lots of civilian deaths, plans were quickly made. Gas masks

were issued, bomb shelters erected, and most importantly of all, the

start of evacuation, which had been planned since 1934, when the first

bombs were developed. Perhaps it was because of all of the preparation

that resulted from the paranoia that the death count of civilians was

10 times smaller that the prediction.