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The British Government even before war was declared on Germany in September 1939 sought to safeguard the civilain population, especially children, from aerial bombardment. The Government on August 31, 1939 ordered the evacuations to begin. Within a few weeks, 3 million Britains, mostly children had been evacuated from the cities. It was the most extensive movement of people in British history. Caos insued as the children were tagged liked parcels and shipped out of the cities. The abrupt separtaion of many very young children from their parents was a traumatic experience. The British concern was especially deep because of the Luftwaffe atracks on civilian populations. Even before the Blitz, the British watched in horror as the Luftwaffe in September launched terror attacks on Warsaw and other Polish citids. The vast majority of the children evacuated were sent to the English countryside, usually to live with individual families who volunteered to care for them. After the German victory in France (June 1940) and the Blitz on Brutain began (July 1940), the Government began to see Canada and other Commonwealth nations as safer havens, nor only from the aerial bombardment, but also from a possible German invasion. Some children were evacuated by ship to British
Dominions, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. The first child evacuees, or "guest children" were of the wealthy classes, sometimes entire schools were sent through private arrangements to family or friends in Canada. The British public eventually demanded the government pay so that less privileged children were also eligible. The War situation changed by early 1941. A German invasion was no longer though eminent and the Luftwaffe was forced to wind down its bombing campaign. Two ships carrying child evacuees were torpedoed. As a result, the Government in early 1941 ended further evacuation plans. This program has been the subject of both scholarly study as well as a wide range of liteary and theatrical treatment.
One of the countroversies surrounding World War II is the Allied bombing campaign of Germany. Of course it was the Germans who began bombing civilian populations as a terror tactict to destroy civilian morale. This began even before the World War II during the Spanish Civil War with the bombing of Guernica in 1937?. Once the World War II began the tactic was used on Warsaw (September 1939), Rotterdam (May 1940), and on numerous British cities (1940-41). Once America joined the War in December 1941, a much larger bombing campaign was launched on Germany which by 1943 began to inflict serious civilian casulties.
After D-Day (June 1944), the Allied bombing campaign was significantly intensified. The Americans bombing by day, attempting to hit specific targets using the Nordon bomb sites. The British bombed by night and at best could hit specific cities. Large numbers of German civilians were killed, injured, or rendered homeless. Contrary to popular conceptions, the German economy was not effectively harnessed for war. Only when Albert Speer was put in charge did German industry begin to reach some of its potential. The Germans, as a result, despite the bombing were able to expand war production. Here the question that should be asked is how much more they could have expanded production had it not been for the bombing. The bombing significantly clearly disrupted the economy and the ability of the
NAZIs to persue their development of new weapons.
Britain had reason to be concerned about a German air offensive. Britain had been bombed by the Germans earlier. The Zephlin raids of World War I while doing little damage were remembered by the older generation. The Germans also used the Imperial Navy to bombard Btitish coastal cities. These were not attacks on military targets, but rather civilian populations. Government planners were horrified by what the Luftwaffe might do. One estimate suggested that 4 million civilians might be killed in Londob alone. Thus massive evacuation plans were drawn up by the Government".
The Germans employed poison gas in World War I. The gas agents they used were developed by a super-patriotic Jewish scientist. The Allies used them in response. The British and other Europeans were terrified that the Germans would use gas against civilians in the next war. The British took the threat more seriously than any other country. The British Government isued 38 million gas masks to civilians who were required to carry them. One of the unanswered questions ofWorld War II is why the Germans did not use gas weapons. They had massive stockpiles. The Germans apparently concluded that they were a difficult to use munition. We can only speculate that in the early years of the War that there was no need to use them. In the later phase of the War when they no longer had air superority, it would not have been to their advantage. We do not know, however, at this time to what extent the use of gas was actively considered by Hitler or German military planners. Of course in 1939 no one knew this. The British children evacuated in 1939 all had little boxes in which they carried their gas masks. They had been trained in school how to use them.
The British as it looked like war was coming over Czechoslovakia began developing a plan to evacuate the cities (summer 1938). The plan was prepared by the Anderson Committee. The Committee divided Britain into three zones (evacuation, neutral, and reception. The priority was to move evacuees from the major urban areas billeted in private housing in more rural counties. The three areas roughly divided the the population in thirds. s the Blitz developed, the Luftwaffe hit cities that had not been evacuated. The plan was not operational at the time of Munich (October 1938). While Britain did not go to war at that time, the planning for a future evacuation continued. Communities in the reception ares began preparing lists of possible billets for rge evacuees. The organizers found 4.8 million billets. The Goverment in addition constructed a few camps for additional evacuees. As it became increasingly clear that Prime Minister Chamberlain had not suceeded in apeasing Hitler and that there would be war, the Government began publicizing the evacuation plan through local authorities.
Britain and France braced for war as Hitler demanded the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia and prepared to invade. The Goverment prepared to evacuate children from London and other large cities. Primeminister Chamberlain was, however, determined to avoid war and caved into Hitler's demands at the Munish Conference (September 1938). With war averted, the evacuation was cancelled.
NAZI and Soviet Foreign Ministers V. Ribbentrop and V. Molotov stunned the world on August 23, 1939 when they signed a Non-Agression Pact in Moscow. The public was surprissed that the two bitter enemies could reach agreement. British officials had been trying to conclude an agreement with the Soviets themselves. Officials realized that the Non-Agression Pact had made a new war inevitable. It assured the Grmans that an invasion of Poland and would not mean a two
front wr with the Russians in the East and the Britisha and French in the West.
The Goverment staged a dress rehersal for the evacuation after an early return to school.
The British Government after Hitler seized power in 1933 secretly began planning for an emergency evacuation of children from cities. The planning began as early as 1934 and were well thought out at an early date. Planners assumed that British cities would be targetted as they were by Zephelins in World War I. There was great fear that the Germans would use poison gas. NAZI propaganda about their new Luftwaffe only increased official and public concern. The evacuation order was almost given during the Munich crisis (1938). Thus even before war was declared on Germany on September 3, the British Government was ready with a plan to safeguard the civilain population, especially children, from aerial bombardment. The Government on August 31, 1939 ordered the evacuations to begin. Much of it was coordinated through the schools. Within a few days, massess of Britains, mostly children had been evacuated from the cities. Eventually 3 million British children would be evolved in the evacuation. It was the most extensive movement of people in British history.
Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. The invasion was made possible by a Non-Agression Pact that Stalin had approved with Hitler. The Luftwaffe destroyed the obsolete Polish Air Force on the first day. Wehrmacht armored units using a new tactic called blitzkrieg or lighting war breached the Polish frontier and sliced deep into the country.
England was not prepared for war, but the idea of aerial bombardment had so terrorized the public, that plans were ready to protect children. The Government planned to evaccuate 3 million, but only 1.5 million were evavuated. It was up to the parents and parents decided to keep about half of the children. In the end about 1.5 million were evacuated. The children living in London and other major cities were immediately tagged liked parcels and shipped out by special evacuation trains. The evacuations were mostly conducted through the schools. Despite the imense number of children involved, the actual evacuation went fairly smoothly despite the caos in the stations as tearful mums waived good-bye to their nippers. The children sang songs like "The Lambert Walk" and "Wish Me Luck as You Wave Goodbye". There was also a song about the "Bogy Man" that the children liked. Other children said good-bye to their mums at their schools. Often schools marched en masse to the stations with their teachers. Caos ensued as train loads of children began arriving in the country side. Host families had signed up to care for the children, but there was enough. The Government had organized the evacuation, but it was left up to each local community to process the children. At many locations trains arrived with new loads of children even before the first group had been processed.
As Britian and France had treaty agreements with Poland, they were obliged to declare war. Prime Minister Chamberlin a year earlier had returned from Munich with an agreement signed by Hitler which he waved to the press claiming that it guaranteed "Peace in our times". Now deeply dismayed he had to address the British people by radio. Itwas the most monentous announcement up to that time tat had ever been made on radio. A deeply shaken Chamberlin told th British, "... the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the ... No such undertaking have been received and consequently this country is at war with Germany. ... it is evil things we shall be fighting against." Later in the day King George addressed his people, "For thge second time in the lives of most of us--we are at war. ...."
Children were not the only evacuees. City hospitals throughout Britain were also evacuated. Evacuees also included expectant mothers, the blind, and crippled. There were 31,000 Edinburgh mothers evacuated with their children.
Communities all over Britain prepared reception areas for the evacuess. These were usually church halls, schools, and various public buildings. The children who arrived mostly by train were gathered together at the reception areas. Here there billeting assignments were made with local families. Post cards were sent home informing each family where the children were staying. The vast majority of the children evacuated were sent to the English countryside, usually to live with individual families who volunteered to care for them. Accompanying the children to supervise their care went about 100,000 school teachers. A family had to be found to take in each of the evacuee children. Some of the matches are a matter of legend. In some cases some of the poorest children in Britain from the inner city slums of London, Liverpool, and Glasgow found themselves living with aristocratic families in oppulent mannor homes. They then attended the local schools. An example of the schools that took in evacuee children was the Kirkmichael School in Ayrshire which hosted children evacuated from Glasgow.
The abrupt separtaion of many very young children from their parents was a traumatic experience. The younger children were not really sure what was happening, except that they soon realized that they missed their mums. Many of the boys considered it a great adventure, especially the poorer children from the inner cities who often had not even seen the country before--let alone lived there. Some of the girls seemed less adventuresome than the boys. After the initial separation other traumatic expeiences occurred. In some paces the chilften were lined up and prospective hosts allowed to pick who they wanted. Living with strangers was also traumatic. The children involved had widely varying expeiences with their host families. Many children were treated like one of the family and have wounderful new experiences un the country. Some children were treated better by their host families than their own parents. A small number, however, were badly abused.
The best insights as to the childrens' experiences can be found in their letters home. Mny made out beautifully, but were terribly homeick for their mums. The worst time was Christmas. Others wrote her rending appeals to be allowed to come home. We hope to evntually add some of these letters here. Hopefully our Britih readers will provide us some of these letters.
The British concern was especially deep because of the Luftwaffe attacks on civilian populations. Even before the Blitz on London, the British watched in horror as the Luftwaffe in September was used for terror attacks on defensless Warsaw and other Polish cities. This was followed in 1940 by a similar attack on Rotterdam as part of the German western offensive.
Following the declaration of war, the Germans did not launch Luftwaffe rads on British cities. In fact, the Luftwaffe was a tactical force and did not have the capability for any extesive air campaign against Britain from German bases. The fighting was largely restricted to Poland. The Allies made no rel effort to suppot Poland besides declaring war and institutingf a naval blockade of Germany. The fighting in Poland was over by early October. There was little fighting on the Western front. The press took to calling the war "The Phony War". There were no important German bombing raids on Britain. The children for the most part were understandably unhappy and wanted to come home. As a result, many parents began bringing their children home. There was of course a great desire on the part of the children by Christmas 1939 to come home. Some children stayed put, but parents brought most of them home. Many children, about 75 percent, had returned home by May 1940 when the Germans finally launched their long anticipaed Western offensive was launched.
There were three main waves of evacuation. The first was September 1-3, 1939, the next was when the bombing actually started in August 1940 and the third was June 1944 when the Germans began launcjing the V1 flying buzz bombs. A HBC reader writes, "I am of course much too young to know of such things but my parents lived in the East End of London during the Blitz, my oldest sister was born in 1942 and was evacuated with my mother to Norfolk in 1944 to escape the flying bombs."
The German initiated their long awaited western campaign in May 1940. Paris fell June 14 and France capitulated June 22. The Luftwaffe quickly established bases
in France and by July 10 launched preliminary strikes in what has come to be called the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe while better trained and outnumbering the
RAF was ill prepared for the campaign. They did not appreciate the ctitical importance of the British home chain radar network. They also had no straegic bomber
fleet. The air offensive was to be conducted with two engine bombers that proved highly effective in short range tactical operations, but were not well suited for
kinger-range strategic bombing. The Battle of Brirain began in ernest on August 13 with Luftwaffe raids on British airfields and aircraft factories. Hitler had assumed
that the Luftwaffe could force the British to capitualte. He saw world politics in racial terms and in relatity wanted the British as allies or at least neutrals in his planned
invasion of the Sovie Union. This isresumably why he stopped the panzers before Dunkirk. Unlike his strategy against the Poles, Dutch, and Belgians, there were no
German terror bombing of London and other British cities. The Luftwaffe im its August campaign seriously weakened the RAF and Fighter Command was having increasing difficulty maintaining its forward air bases in Kent. Then off-course German bombers accidentally bomb London on August 23-24. RAF Bomber Command on August 25-26 mounted a small reprisal raid against Berlin. Hitler is furious and orders an immediate change in Luftwaffe tactics. Rather than completing its offensive against the RAF infrastructure, Hitler ordered a "blitz" on British cities which began in earnest on September 7. The Luftwaffe wreaked havoc on civilians in London and major English cities. Thousands of civilians were killed. Edward R. Murrow broadcasting from London ("London calling ...") described Britain's valiant resistance to rapt American radio audiences, greatly affecting American attitides toward the Hitler and the NAZIs. White British cities burned, the RAF was given a respite, allowing its forward air bases to recover from the damage done in August. As a result the RAF was able to mount increasingly costly attacks on the German bomber fleets. The Lutwaffe eventually is forced to shift to nightime raids and eventually end the major offensive against the British as the German military in 1941 began preparing for Opperation Barbarosa, Hitler's long awaited dream of invading the Soviet Union which at the time was a virtual German ally.
he British Government developed plans for evacuating 1 million children to the United states and Canada and other overseas domminions. Aftr the fall of France, some this as one way of ensuring that Britain could survive even if invaded. After the German victory in France (June 1940) and the air assault on Britain began (July 1940), the Government began to see America, Canada and other Commonwealth nations as safer havens, nor only from the aerial bombardment, but also from a possible German invasion. The Germans evetually began the Blitz or bombing of British cities (September 1940). Some children were evacuated by ship to British Dominions, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. The first child evacuees, or "guest children" were of the wealthy classes, sometimes entire schools were sent through private arrangements to family or friends in Canada. The British public eventually demanded the government pay so that less privileged children were also eligible. The War situation changed by early 1941. A German invasion was no longer though eminent and the Luftwaffe was forced to wind down its bombing campaign. Two ships carrying child evacuees were torpedoed. One of these was the City of Benares an ocean line with 200 British and foreign civilian passangers and 93 British children with an escort of nurses, teachers, and a clergyman. The ship was torpedoed September 13, 1940. Only two life boatswere ever found, one 8 days after the sinking. Only 15 children survived. Churchill when he learned of the disaster moved to end the overseas evaucation scheme. [Gilbert, pp. 321-342.] One of the most moving account of these evacuationscomes from Martin Gilbert, an historian that HBC has drawn on extensively.
I am not entirely sure how school was handled. The children were taught in the schools at the villages and towns where they wrere evacuated. In many cases children from a school were evacuated to the same town and village where their teachers were added to the faculty of the local schools and helped look after the evaceuees. Some villages were so small so only a few evacuee children, not a large segment of a city school. Hopefully our British readers can provide us more information on this. Many private schools were boardinf schools located in the country and thus relatively safe. Some of these schools were also evacuated because facilities were needed for the war effort. Isolated country estates had a vriety of uses. This was especially true of schools located along the southern, Channel coast where schools were evauated nboth for the childrren's saftey and because the facilities wer needed..
The fact that the children were evacuated to the country and small towns did not mean the children were entirely safe. There were many close calls and some children wereeven killed in their evacuation location. While the Luftwffe after the first weeks primarily targeted London and Britain's industrial cities, with so many planes in the sky and anti-aircraft batteries, there were bound to be incidents in small towns and subburbs. Planes were shot down, Luftwaffe bombers missing or driven off targets sometimes jettisoned their bombs. The British in the Battle of the Beams managed to divert Luftwaffe bombers from city targets which meant that the bombs were dropped elsehere--sometimes fields but in some cases towns and villages. Later in the War, the British tryed to fool the Germans about the targetting which meant again that some V-1 buzz bombs and V-2 missles hit small towns and suburbs.
Allied Armies by early 1945 had advanced into The Neherlands and Belgium to points where ecen he V-2s could not reach London. As a result, the children could now come home. Sadly some of the children were now orphanns because their parents had been killed in the fighting and or the German bombing of the cities.
T This program has been the subject of both scholarly study as well as a wide range of literary and theatrical treatment. A HBC reader writes, "I am reading a book at the moment which has an interesting chapter dealing with the evacuation. It is entitled A House Unlocked by Penelope Lively and is a memoir of sorts in which she delves into the history of her grandparents house by using the objects that were in it as a prompt--a system of reference, which help to conjure up the story of the house and the people that lived there. A sampler sewn by the authors grandmother in 1946 invokes the story of the six children that were billeted on the house in December 1940 and who appear in a corner of that sampler. Just one relevant paragraph, "For the adults involved, the single most significant effect of the evacuation experience was a sweeping revision of the way in which they saw their country. For city-dwellers it was an eye-opener about how the other half lived, in every sense. Of those in intimate contact with the evacuees--hosts, officials - many saw the experience as 'a dreadful lesson', recognizing that the blame for the conditions from which so many had come must be laid at the door of the nation as a whole for allowing such deprivation." [Lively]
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There have been several movies and television dramtizations made about the experiences of the children British evacuated. Curiously we have never seen a German film on this topic. Perhaps were made, but not distributed in America. One of the best TV productions is, Goodnight Mr. Tom (US, 2000?). The beautifully done British TV production, Goodnight Mr. Tom is about a boy evacuee at the beginning of World War II who was billeted on a elderly man. The British evacuated many children from London and the large cities during 1939-41 to move them into safer areas as the Germans in 1940 began bombing British cities in the Battle of Britain. They were taken in by private citizens in rural areas and villages. Most of the films addressing the evacuation deal wirh instances where the evacuee children were mistreated. In this production it was the boy's mother that was mistreating him. The costuming is very accurate. The boys in the village wear a variety of outfits, including both corduroy short trousers and matching lumber jackets.
Britain's World War II evacucations are not only remembered in books, aricles, movies, plays, and television, but there are also reenactments of the event. History reenactments is a popular activity in Europe and America. World War II is a little too recent for many reenactors, but this is beginning to change as the War is now over a half century old. The British World War II evacuations is especially interesting to children as the children played a major in the actual event. Inerestingly, although the Germans had an evacuation program involving comparabl number of children, we have never heard of any comparable evacuation recrations in Germany.
The evacuees were not all sent to the countryside. Not all children were evacuated to the countryside. A HBC reader reports, "I understand from my great aunt that my grand parents looked after a Dutch boy who had been evacuated to Blackburn, England during the War. When the war ended he returned to live with his parents in Holland. My grand parents were invited to Holland to meet the parents of the boy There was a photograph
of him. I do not know what happened to this picture but if I can find it i'll copy it." A German boy and his family managed to escape the NAZIs just before the War began. Steven Muller and his brother were evacuated along with the British children only days after reaching Britain.
HBC has collected some individual accounts of British boys during the 1940s. We do not yet, however, have any detailed account from one of the evacuees. Hopefully our British readers will provide us some accounts of their experiences.
The Germans also had a major, but very different priogram to evacuate children. HBC readers may be interested in comparing the two. The German Kinderlandverschickung (KLV) also operated during World War II (1939-1945). The German KLV program has been much less discussed than the British program, probably because of the NAZI taint.
Gilbert, Martin. A History of the Twentieth Century Vol. 2 1933-54 (William Morrow and Company, Inc.: New York, 1998), 1050p.
Lively, Penelope. A House Unlocked.
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