In 1939 Britain evacuate millions of children from its major cities and towns. Evacuate began on 1st September, roughly two days before Britain went to war. The Government wanted its children out of the way before the war started. Evacuation was voluntary, the Government expected over 3.5 million people to leave for the safety of the countryside. In fact, only 1.5 million did and, of those, 735,000 were children travelling alone. So, why did the Government undertake an extremely hard task to evacuate 3.5 million children in 1939?
             The first causes were long term starting at World War 1. In the beginning, the first ever reason for evacuation was at the end of World War 1. At the early stages of WW1 most important an aircrafts were airships that were huge bags of lighter-than-air hydrogen gas. The British mainly used these for escorting ships and for hunting German U-Boats. However, the German airships were much more advanced and widely used than ours, called Zeppelins that were able to fly much higher and faster. The Germans realised the potential of Zeppelins as bombers and the first raids hit British towns in early 1915. During the course of that war, 1400 civilians were killed in just over 100 raids. Even though this was a major turning point to the 'new type of Warfare', the Zeppelins could not carry enough bombs to do any serious damage, but did achieve psychological damage. The citizens of Britain, generally secure from enemy action for almost 1000 years, now found themselves vulnerable, and became more so with each advance in aviation technology. This was said that this War was the first ever 'Total war'. I think that this cause was quite important because it was the first ever signs of evacuation and air raids. Even if Zeppelins had not of used bombs, than later someone like Hitler or another Germany President would have thought of doing it.
             By 1919 air technology had improved dramatically and f...