The British Governments Decision to Evacuate Children From Major Cities Early in the Second World War As soon as war was declared the British government expected the Nazis to launch massive air attacks against Britain with its major cities as the prime targets. Britain knew how disastrous such attacks would be, in both loss of morale and loss of life, after seeing how devastating the bombing raids had been in both Shanghai in 1931 and later in Guernica in 1937 where German planes had been used. To avoid enormous casualty numbers the government planned to evacuate large numbers of children from cities to the countryside for the duration of the war. The British government’s greatest fear was that as soon as the air raids started children, as some of the most vulnerable people in the cities, would make up a large percentage of the death toll. To avoid the calamity of losing such a large proportion of the next generation the government decided to remove children and other vulnerable people, such as pregnant women and disabled people, from cities and relocate them to the countryside. The government saw the evacuation of children as a way of reducing casualty numbers as well as protecting the most vulnerable members of society from the bombing raids and gas attacks that were expected. The bombing was expected to be both heavy and frequent with major cities being targeted as soon as war broke out. Britain had already had some experience of bombing during the First World War but it was expected to be far worse this time. Although bombing had not been widely used in World War One it had accounted for the deaths of over