SOCIETY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

SOCIETY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

10.1 The Home Front (Britain)

The Ministry of Information issued relevant posters and made radio broadcasts throughout.

The Local Defence Volunteers (Home Guard) guarded key installations, watched the coast, manned roadblocks and protected factories.

They released younger men for more urgent tasks.

The Air Raid Precaution workers and the Auxiliary Fire Service made up the Civil Defence and over 2000 lost their lives.

The underground was used and Anderson shelters were built.

Women

Single women aged 20 to 30 were conscripted for clerical jobs.

A high proportion of factory workers were women.

Some worker on farms and were called ‘Land Girls’.

10.2 Rationing

1939 a Ministry for Food was set up

Rationing introduced.

Controls put on the price of many foods.

Families encouraged to grow their own.

Fuel rationed.

A Black market developed in spite of increased sentences.

There was some robbery of warehouses and peoples homes.

10.3 Evacuees

The Anderson Committee recommended the setting up of 600 schools in rural areas.

Children were evacuated to these areas.

Most had a good experience of country life and referred to their ‘aunties’

Some were used as a source of cheap or free labour and others were badly treated.

A lot of homesickness.

Some companies moved out of London.

10.4 Refugees

40 million died in WW2 and 20 million were displaced

Hitler tried to repatriate ethnic Germans into his new larger Germany. This displaced many.

Hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans were sent to labour camps.

Jews fled.

The atrocities during the attack and retreat from Russia scattered people.

The bombing of German cities added to the problem.

Poland and Czechoslovakia expelled Germans after the war.

Such ‘ethnic cleansing’ happened in many countries.

Collaborators who survived the end of the war fled.

After the war 500,000 went to America. This is called ‘the great sea change’

By 1951 there was still 2 million refugees in Europe.

This led to The Office of the United Nations Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

10.5 Winston Churchill and WW2

Early career

Son of Lord Randolph.

At 20 fought in the Sudan.

Worked as a newspaper reporter during the Boer War. Became a war hero for an escape.

Became a Conservative MP in 1900.

Switched to the Liberals in 1904 and changed back in 1924.

1911 became First Lord of the Admiralty but has to resign after Gallipoli.

Run out of Belfast during Home Rule crisis.

Unpopular for his aggression during the General Strike.

Lambasted Chamberlain for appeasement and by 1939 was popular again.

World War 2

1940 he became PM and Minister for Defence.

Chose a War Cabinet of five people including two Labour ministers.

His oratory turned Dunkirk into a psychological victory.

He was visible during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz.

‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’.

He signed the Atlantic Charter with Roosevelt

He attended Tehran and Yalta

After the War

Labour got into office in 1945.

‘Iron Curtain’ speech.

He became PM again in 1951 but retired due to bad health in 1955.

Died in 1965

An ideal wartime leader but too arrogant and opinionated for peacetime.

Role of women in WW2 Society

Auschwitz

WW2 and the Holocaust