The Effect of the Second World War on the Lives of the British

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The Effect of the Second World War on the Lives of the British

The war brought changes to everyone living in Britain during and after

the Second World War. It didn’t only bring massive changes but also

smaller changes to people’s everyday life. Some people saw these

changes as beneficial but to most people these changes only brought

more suffering and pain to the already distraught Britain. Different

types of people in Britain suffered different types of changes

depending on their gender, age and social background.

Firstly, men were considered to having been affected the most by the

war. From early on in 1939 men were conscripted to fight in the war.

All fit men between the ages of 18 to 41 had to sign up. This meant

they had to leave their families and go face what might even be

death. A source from www.ppu.org.uk shows how “60,000 objectors were

sent to prison” demonstrating the huge amount of people who didn’t

want to fight. Many men were also part of the RAF, fighting

constantly with no time to rest as shown in source D3. This source

and source D5 are government issued which means that they aren’t as

reliable as source D6 and D4. We know this from the purpose of the

source and the time it was written. This image of people happy to make

sacrifices as suggested by the government was because they were

constantly fighting in battles and protecting the air space. Not only

did the war affect the men who were fighting but also those men who

were still working or were unfit to fight. The photographs from

sources D5 and D6 show how men had to volunteer due to the terrible

air raids. Some men lost family members and got hurt themselves as

demonstrated in the first source of D6. We know these sources are

reliable because they are photographs and they are probably taken from

a neutral aspect to capture the horrors of war.

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