WWII Propaganda

[curiosity]

Hi, I'm trying to find out if propaganda during WWII for the evacution process stepped up a mark at any point. I've searched loads of sites, and got caught up in reading them, but still haven't found out if Propaganda changed in response to any particular event/non event. e.g was there less in 1939?

[dot.hawkes]

i wonder if the evacuation of children out of many of the towns and cities here was infact an engineered situation to free up wives and mothers to be able to work in the factories and replace men in jobs that had been left vacant.
Whilst I know many coastal targets and inland industrial areas were bombed, the evacuations were planned from early in the war and the children that were displaced then freed up thier mothers to offer a valued and important contribution to the war effort.

[Octavius]

In August 1938 Adolf Hitler began making speeches that suggested he was going to send the German Army into Czechoslovakia. The British government now began to fear a war with Nazi Germany and Neville Chamberlain ordered that Air Raid Precautions (ARP) volunteers to be mobilized. The government also made plans for the evacuation of all children from Britain's large cities. Sir John Anderson, who was placed in charge of the scheme, decided to divide the country into three areas: evacuation (people living in urban districts where heavy bombing raids could be expected); neutral (areas that would neither send nor take evacuees) and reception (rural areas where evacuees would be sent).

Just before the outbreak of the Second World War the government decided to begin moving people from Britain's cities to the designated reception areas. Some people were reluctant to move and only 47 per cent of the schoolchildren, and about one third of the mothers went to the designated areas.

When the expected bombing of cities did not take place in 1939, parents began to doubt whether they had made the right decision in evacuating their children to safe areas. By January 1940, an estimated one million evacuees had returned home. A survey carried out in Cambridge suggested that the lack of bombing was the reason why 4 out of 5 decided to leave. Other reasons given were homesickness among the children, dissatisfaction with the foster home and the loneliness of the parents.

When France was invaded in May, 1940, children who had been sent to areas within ten miles of the coast in East Anglia, Kent and Sussex were transferred to South Wales. And when the Luftwaffe began bombing Britain in July 1940 another major evacuation took place.

Propaganda film and posters were used to popularise the idea of evacuation and to improve morale, some links:

http://www.j