Evacuation was a great success Essay Example for Free

Evacuation was a great success Essay Source A is a picture of all the happy school children all lining up to be evacuated. Now this is not a reliable source when trying to prove if evacuation was a success or not. This is due to the fact that during the war the government had emergency powers. This gave them power all over the newspapers. So this meant that the newspapers posted propaganda about how successful the evacuation was. In the picture, there are all smiling faces, and no signs of a resistance. It almost looks like the kids want to be evacuated. This photo has been used to give an overall positive impression of the evacuation. Now in the picture, the kids look happy, but in reality there was a lot of resistance against evacuation. Parents didnt want their kids to leave them, and kids didnt want to leave their parents. In Grimsby, more than seven thousand children were eligible to be evacuated, but on the day only 1,854 children had been evacuated. Showing that there was a reluctance to evacuate children. In the evening telegraph it even described the evacuation as Though some omnipotent pied piper had been thought the cities of England, stripping them of their children. Source B is a teachers recollection of being evacuated with her children from her school. Now this has to be looked at carefully, as it was written a while after in 1988. Now memories could be different. She explains, All you could hear was the feet of the children and a kind of murmur. This shows that the children arent the smiling people as shown in the papers. This shows that they werent really pleased about leaving their homes and families to live with complete strangers. This could also not be reliable because it could be over exaggerated. Source C is an extract from a novel about evacuees. Now before we analyse this we have to take into consideration that this was written for the younger audience. So facts could have been altered to make the story more interesting. First of all, we can rely on this source too highly as it is a fiction piece, which is made up. And also it will not be too graphic as it is intended for the children. Secondly it was written in 1973, nowhere near the time of the war. Source D is an appeal for more people in Scotland to provide homes for evacuee children. Now this source was probably published in a newspaper. Seeing as first looks at it, it looks like propaganda. In the passage, it is trying to get more people to take evacuees in. It does this by saying two of the strongest words ever, thank you. These words are the words that most reach out to the people, as humans like being appreciated. Now after they feel good form the thank you, thats when they appeal to you to get those sweet looking children in the picture. But it wasnt like this. Some of the children contained lice, and some had never had a bath in their lives. Some of them were under clothed, some had came in all the clothes they had. These mislead people thinking that they would get a nice quiet child, clean and happy. Instead they got unhappy crying children, suffering from chronic bedwetting. Source E is an Interview with a parent in may 1940. Now 1940 was the beginning of the bombing of the cities began. And during the text, you can see that he was reluctant to evacuate his child, and kept him with him in the end. As you can see from the way he speaks, he has a lack of knowledge and therefore is scared of the unknown; he has no concept of what it would be like to live in the shires. You can tell that he knows if the kid goes away, he knows that the dad dies, and the kid will come back to no family what so ever. This is a useful source because it gives us an idea of what the parents thought about the evacuation. I agree with the fact that the evacuation was a success. It kept the children safe, but the Evacuation failed in keeping the children mentally safe. Most parents who preferred to keep their children with them instinctively realised what was not known: That sending off young children could have serious repercussions.