Evaluation of the Success of the Evacuation of Children in Britain During World War II

Evaluation of the Success of the Evacuation of Children in Britain During World War II

There are many sources that cover this topic and I will be covering 5

different sources that are both primary and secondary. I will look how

they show that evacuation was a great success or not and also there

reliability and usefulness.

Propaganda was a major concern for the government because it was vital

for raising moral and encouraging public to join the war effort. The

first source I will be covering (source a) is a picture of a group of

children being evacuated. We are not told who took the picture so we

can only presume who it was aimed at. The most obvious reason for this

picture is for propaganda purposes, the group of children in it look

happy and are waving, it makes evacuation look organised and stress

free. This source isn't totally reliable because the government wont

want to show anything bad about evacuation so it will be bias and it

isn't entirely useful because it only shows one group of children and

doesn't give us a very large view in evacuees. In conclusion I think

that this source does show evacuation as being successful but might be

propaganda so it is not reliable.

Another source that is propaganda is source d, it is part of a

government campaign encouraging people in Scotland to take in

evacuees. Source d shows two innocent children asking for more foster

homes for evacuees. The text contains quotes from foster parents

saying how evacuees are extra work but they know they are doing the

right thing and goes into further details into who 'have cause to be

thanking them'. This source has statistics to show how successful

evacuation has been before the campaign. But it is also bias because

it wants to increase morale, so it doesn't' mention anything bad about

evacuation so it isn't reliable for telling us how successful

evacuation was.

Some views on evacuation weren't necessarily supportive of evacuation.

In source b a teacher who was evacuated with her class of children