Understanding how people prepared for, reacted to and adapted to the war at home.
STUDENTS WILL
• Use objects and narratives to learn about people’s experiences of war
• Examine the conditions imposed upon citizens and explore how they would feel if it happened to them
• Learn how the Second World War was a total war – changing all aspects of life for civilians as well as the military
• Evaluate the contribution of ordinary people to the war effort
Resources involved: baby gas masks, evacuation suitcases, first hand accounts of what life was like as a civilian contributing to the war effort, propaganda (posters, films, songs), Civil Defence (ARP, gas masks, shelters, personal responsibility, blackout), evacuation (why, where, Phoney War, memories), The Blitz (shelters, experiences, effect – military, industrial, morale) The Home Guard, equipment and legislation.
OUTCOMES
• An understanding of how civil liberties can be restricted to preserve longer term freedoms
• Empathy with those who endured the privations of the Second World War
• An appreciation that the military success of the Second World War were dependent upon the efforts of the whole nation
• An ability to envisage what it would be like to live through the Second World War