Child's War: Growing Up on the Home Front

RSPCA

Introduction

When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, it came as no surprise to the children of Germany; the Nazis had been preparing them for war through semi-military training in the Hitler Youth and the League of German Maidens, almost since they had taken control of the country back in 1933. To British children it was an altogether different matter – true, the situation in Europe had been looking threatening for some time, but British children then were no more interested in ‘the news’ than their descendants are today.

Everyone was affected by the war: men, women, and children. Although some people were far safer than others, no one could claim complete safety from the bombing raids or, later, the V1 flying bombs and the V2 rockets. On a more day-to-day level, everyone was affected by rationing, the black-out, shortages and the thousand and one small changes that the war brought with it.

This book seeks to look at those changes through the eyes of the children of the war, concentrating on those aspects of the home front that most concerned or interested them. It focuses on the war through eye-witness accounts by people who were children then, supported by photographs and artefacts. In addition there are activities from the period, such as recipes, things to make, and quizzes.

I hope the book will help those born after the war to understand what it was like for the children of the time, and bring back some fond memories to those who lived through it.

The Second World War did not just suddenly happen. In Germany Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers’s Party (the Nazis) had been voted into power in 1933, and soon set about getting back the parts of Germany that had been taken away by the Treaty of Versailles (1919–20), which ended the First World War – or the Great War, as it was then called. At first people in Britain were not too worried; many said that the Germans had been badly treated following their defeat and were only taking back what belonged to them; some even said that Hitler was a strong and gifted leader and that we might do well to copy him.

In March 1936 Hitler took back the Rhineland. Four months later, when civil war broke out in Spain between supporters of the left-wing Republican government and the right-wing Nationalists in July 1936, he and his ally, Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini, sent ‘volunteer’ troops and aircraft to support the Nationalist forces. The war became a testing ground for modern weapons and methods of warfare, including air raids against towns and cities, the most famous of which was by German aircraft on the town of Guernica in April 1937. Cinema newsreel pictures of the bombing were seen by thousands in Britain – this was a time when most British families went to the cinema at least once a week.

Two years later, on 11 March 1938, German troops marched into Austria. But the real crunch came in September of that year. Hitler demanded a part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland – this had never been German territory, so the argument that he just wanted to get back the former bits of Germany could not apply to it. The Czechoslovakian government refused to give in, so did Hitler; Europe seemed to be heading for another war – everyone’s worst nightmare. The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, met with Hitler, the French Prime Minister and Mussolini in Munich on 29 September and the Sudetenland was handed over. Chamberlain returned saying that he had achieved ‘Peace for our time’, but few believed it. Hitler claimed that the Sudetenland was his ‘last territorial demand’ – even fewer believed that.

The ‘Munich Crisis’, as it was called, had taken Britain to the brink of war. Trenches were dug in the parks, the emergency services were put on full alert, and plans were drawn up to evacuate all London schoolchildren on the last day of the month. Although the evacuation plan was called off, 4,000 children from nurseries and special schools were taken away to the country, a foretaste of what was to come.

More and more, people felt that war was on the way, a war that Britain was not ready for – this was underlined when Hitler took over the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. What Chamberlain had done was to buy time. In January 1939 the British Parliament had brought in the ARP (Air Raid Precautions) Act, which made local councils responsible for setting up safety measures such as the black-out, air-raid warnings and shelters to protect civilians. It also required them to get ARP services under way: air-raid wardens (to enforce the black-out), emergency casualty services and rescue squads. In March the Home Secretary made an appeal on the radio for one million ARP volunteers. Increasingly, throughout 1938 and into 1939, there were series of local ARP exercises where the new services put on public displays of fire-fighting and of dealing with air-raid ‘victims’.

In the late 1930s, through these and other preparations going on around them, the children of Britain became aware of the threat of war. In the 1920s and 1930s, most brands of cigarette contained a picture card in every packet. Each card was part of a set, usually of fifty, with different titles: ‘Film Stars’, ‘Cars’, ‘Aeroplanes’, ‘Footballers’, and so on. One of the most popular pastimes among children, especially boys, was collecting and swapping cigarette cards, which they would cadge from grown-up relatives or neighbours. In 1938 a new set was issued. Called ‘ARP’, it was issued throughout 1938 and 1939 by five different brands, including Will’s Woodbines, Churchman’s and Ogden’s, and would have been collected by many thousands of children. It contained cards showing different aspects of Air Raid Precautions, such as building a gas-proof ‘refuge room’ at home, or how to extinguish an incendiary bomb.

The preparations continued; in July 1939, every house in the country received four Civil Defence pamphlets explaining ‘Some things you should know if war should come’. One of these pamphlets was on evacuation, especially that of children. Then, in August, London and large areas of the south-east were involved in a massive black-out practice.

During the summer of 1939 Hitler turned his attention to Poland. Britain and France had promised to support Poland, but Hitler believed that they would once again give way. When the British Ambassador warned that they were serious, Hitler replied that he was 50 years old and would prefer war now rather than when he was 55 or 60. At the end of August he began to make impossible demands on Poland. Without waiting for the Polish government’s reply, the German army invaded Poland in the early hours of Friday 1 September 1939.

Britain and France declared war on 3 September. No one was prepared for war at this point and there followed a period of mobilisation, training and preparation by both sides and nothing much seemed to be happening – the so-called ‘phoney war’.

On the home front the war seemed to be nothing more than a series of inconvenient restrictions such as the black-out. The introduction of rationing in January 1940 only served to strengthen this view. The newspapers headed calls for cut backs in the ARP and Auxiliary Fire Services, widely seen as ‘army dodgers’, and there was a steady drift-back of evacuees; almost 1 million had returned by the end of January.

In the first winter of the war enemy aircraft activity was confined to attacks on shipping in the English Channel, or mine laying around the coast. The first civilian air-raid death in Britain was during an attack on the Orkneys’s naval base on 16 March 1940, and the first in England was not until the end of April, even then it was caused by a German mine-laying bomber crashing at Clacton-on-Sea, killing its crew as well as two civilians.

In May Germany began the Blitzkrieg; first German troops invaded Denmark, which fell in one day, then Norway, which fell in three weeks. On 10 May German armoured columns struck at Belgium, Holland, France and Luxembourg. Britain and France poured soldiers into Belgium to stem the flood of German troops – the same day that Neville Chamberlain resigned and Winston Churchill became Prime Minister.

On 14 May Holland surrendered, followed by Belgium on 17th. By 21 May German tanks had reached the Channel in France, splitting the Allied armies, and from 27 May to 3 June the Dunkirk evacuation took place – 225,000 British and 110,000 French and Belgian troops were plucked from the beaches by the fleet of ‘little ships’. On 17 June Paris fell and on 21st the French government asked the Germans to make peace. Britain now stood alone.

Invasion was expected at any time, and a series of anti-invasion measures was brought in. In May 1940 the Home Guard was formed, beaches were mined, road blocks and tank traps sprang up everywhere, railway station name boards and road direction signs were removed. Everyone was on the look out for spies and fifth columnists. ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’ the posters warned, car radios were banned, people taking photographs or making sketches were likely to be arrested. Invasion fever had reached a pitch by early September, as had the duel between the RAF and the Luftwaffe for control of the skies above Britain, otherwise known as the Battle of Britain.

On 7 September the Luftwaffe turned its attention to London. On that day, called ‘Black Saturday’ by the Londoners, the docks were pounded in the first of