The biggest misconceptions about WW2 evacuees? This historian has the answers
Britain’s wartime evacuation scheme uprooted millions, but the familiar images of children clutching gas masks hides a much more detailed picture of what evacuees endured during the Second World War, and who they were
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first book in CS Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia series, begins with the Pevensie siblings fleeing from London during the Blitz: a quartet of young children leaving the city to find a safe haven in England’s countryside.
For many, this is the archetypal image of what the British evacuee experience was like during the Second World War. And, for countless children, it did indeed go something like this.
But while that image of small figures huddled on crowded train platforms is certainly powerful, historian Joshua Levine argues that it’s also misleading. The realities of evacuation involved millions of people, not just children, and the experience was wildly different from family to family.
“Perhaps the biggest misconception is simply that there was a single story. And this is the biggest misconception about history, full stop. In fact, there’s a unique story for every single individual,” Levine says on the HistoryExtra podcast.
Why Britain expected bombing as the Second World War began
“Evacuations actually started two days before the war – that’s how much it was anticipated,” Levine explains.
That anticipation was based on grim calculations. Britain had already endured aerial bombardment during the First World War, when German airships and Gotha bombers killed more than 1,500 civilians. The scars of those raids were still very visible in London during the 1930s.
Between the wars, military strategists believed that bombers would only become faster and more destructive. Former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin summed up the mood with his bleak declaration in 1932 that “the bomber will always get through”. By 1938, British planners feared that enemy raids could kill half a million people in the first weeks of conflict.
“It was anticipated that bombing would end the war almost immediately,” Levine notes.
Evacuation was therefore part of a wider system of civil defence that included gas masks, air raid shelters and the blackout. It was a planned attempt to protect civilians before the bombs began to fall.
Operation Pied Piper: who really left the cities?
On 1 September 1939, the day German forces invaded Poland, Operation Pied Piper began. In just three days, around 1.5 million people left Britain’s towns and cities for the countryside. And these people weren’t just schoolchildren.
“At the beginning of the war you had children being evacuated. You had disabled people being evacuated, though not on the same scale. You also had expectant mothers being evacuated … and teachers too,” Levine explains.
Families who could afford it sometimes arranged their own ‘private evacuations’, sending children to stay with relatives or friends in safer areas. Some middle-class households even rented cottages outright to avoid the official billeting process.
The logistics were extraordinary. Teachers gathered pupils at schools, marched them to stations, and shepherded them onto trains with labels pinned to their coats and small suitcases in their hands. Trains ran across the country to reception areas, where local officials and billeting officers assigned evacuees to households, sometimes by little more than a quick glance.
Did children have to leave?
The famous photographs and stories of queues at railway stations can give the impression that evacuation was compulsory. It wasn’t, and this remains one of the biggest misconceptions about the evacuee experience.
“People often think that children had to go – but that’s not the case. The government wanted them to be evacuated, but they absolutely didn’t have to. Quite a lot of people stayed,” Levine points out.
Parents had to make painful decisions. For many, the thought of sending children away to live with strangers was unbearable. Others worried about rural poverty, or about their children working as cheap labour in farmhouses. In some areas, uptake was low in part because parents trusted local shelters, or because they simply underestimated the threat of the Blitz.
Even in London, many families chose to remain together despite the danger. This meant that when bombing finally arrived, children were among the casualties in devastated streets.
More than poor city children going to wealthy countryside homes
Another of the common stereotypes is that evacuees were exclusively poor, urban children sent to live with comfortable middle-class families in the countryside. The reality, however, was far more complicated.
“It was much more varied than that,” explains Levine. “You also had wealthy people being evacuated, and you had people being evacuated to very poor families, too.”
Some evacuees found themselves in clean and well-stocked homes – arguably preferable to their own conditions in overcrowded urban districts. But others were placed in damp and draughty cottages, expected to help with farm work, or treated as outsiders. In some instances, evacuees were subject to outright neglect and abuse.
The scheme also exposed deep cultural divides. Rural hosts were sometimes horrified by the rough manners of city children. Meanwhile, urban evacuees were bewildered by outdoor toilets and the strict routines of farming life.
Was evacuation a uniquely British experience?
Britain wasn’t alone in trying to remove civilians from danger. Nazi Germany organised its own evacuation programme – though for very different ends.
“Evacuation also happened on a very large scale in Germany, but it was a different experience because it was also about brainwashing. Children were taken to what were essentially camps, where they were indoctrinated in the worship of Hitler and Nazi ideology,” Levine explains.
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While Britain aimed to protect its people from air raids, Germany turned evacuation into a political tool. Children in the Kinderlandverschickung camps were subjected to propaganda, paramilitary training and strict discipline, moulding them into loyal supporters of the Nazi regime.
- Read more | The rise and fall of the Third Reich
Other countries experimented with evacuation, too. Finland and Denmark sent children abroad, often to neutral Sweden. In the Soviet Union, children were moved eastwards to escape the German advance. In each case, the mix of protection, propaganda and disruption echoed the dilemmas faced in Britain.
So, what was evacuation really like?
The sheer scale of Operation Pied Piper meant that no two stories were alike. Some children revelled in the countryside, enjoying fresh air, good food and space to play. Others endured homesickness, neglect or outright hostility.
Teachers provided some stability, accompanying their pupils and continuing lessons in village halls or barns. But the scheme also highlighted Britain’s class divides. Many middle-class children had never encountered rural poverty; many farmers had never hosted large numbers of city families.
“It happened across the board, and I think you can say that, overall, it made people more empathetic than they had been. You had city people going into country houses where both sides learned something about each other,” Levine reflects.
The mingling of urban and rural, rich and poor, helped shape attitudes in wartime Britain, and this awareness of hardship encouraged postwar support for the creation of the new National Health Service, and a more comprehensive welfare state.
Joshua Levine was speaking to Lauren Good on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Authors
James Osborne is a digital content producer at HistoryExtra where he writes, researches, and edits articles, while also conducting the occasional interview