WORLD WAR II

IMAGES

War declared
This man was selling
newspapers in Britain
on 3 September 1939.
How do you think
people felt when they
saw the headlines?

Children leaving their homes

These Polish
children had to
leave their
homes, after
Germany invaded
Poland in 1939.
Notice the horsedrawn carts, piled
with refugees'
belongings.

Saying
goodbye

A farewell kiss
A soldier kissing
his daughter
goodbye before
he leaves
Britain.

The Blitz

The Luftwaffe attacked Great Britain,

from September 1940 to May 1941.
They didnt win,
The Royal Air Force resisted,
but London and other places nearby
were almost destructed.

The main characters on D day

British
Commandos
wade ashore on
'Sword Beach',
Normandy,
D-Day 6 June
1944.
They are
leaving a
landing craft.
The soldier
nearest the
camera has
bagpipes, as
well as his kilt.

Servicemen
A poster shows Allied
servicemen marching
together.
They include men from
Czechoslovakia, Poland,
France, Denmark, Belgium
and Norway
(all countries occupied by
the Nazis)

Children evacuation
People expected cities to be bombed, as enemy
planes tried to destroy factories. But bombs would hit
homes and schools too, so children would be in
danger. The british government tried at the start of
the war to 'empty the cities' of children and mothers,
This was 'evacuation', to protect them from air raids.
The plan was put into action in September 1939.
About 800,000 children left their homes. However,
many returned home after a few weeks. Others
stayed in the countryside for the rest of the war.
They were sent to the countryside, with host families.
A small number went to other countries such as
Canada, Australia.

Children from a nursery school in Kentish Town, London, are

evacuated. Notice their labels.

A row of evacuees waiting for a train

Evacuees from a school

in Ilford, Essex, help on a
farm in Buckinghamshire.
These girls picked
potatoes for two hours a
day

These children lost

their homes after a
bombing raid on
London in 1940.
They rescued some of
their toys. How do you
think they felt?

Evacuees
in Devon
look
inside a
farm
stable to
see the
horses.
They
were out
on a
nature
walk, but
didn't
forget
their gas
masks!

Children evacuation
It was the same case in
Gibraltar.
The British Government
ordered the evacuation of
women, children, the
elderly and infirm to French
Morocco. The main reason
for this was that Gibraltar
had to be converted in a
fully-fledged fortress, which
Hitler was planning to
capture with Spanish
assistance and if he had
succeeded it would have
changed completely the
outcome of the Second
World War.
Monument to the evacuation, Waterport avenue, Gibraltar.

Gibraltar during the WWII

In 1940, Britain was at war with
Germany and Italy and the future
looked bleak for Gibraltar as the
enemy surrounded it. Winston
Churchill and the British military
leaders believed that an attack on
Gibraltar was imminent. The answer
was to construct a massive network
of tunnels, to build a fortress inside
a fortress, a city within a city.
These tunnels were excavated
during 1939-1944 by the Royal
Engineers and a contingent of
Canadian Engineers, and are an
extension to The Great Siege
Tunnels excavated during The Great
Siege of 1779-83. The Rock has a 32
mile-long network of tunnels.
This is a link of a video in Youtube in
which you can see the Tunnels:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
Royal
=Q8iv1pAmGyk

Air Force operations in Gibraltar

Since Poland was

defeated by nazi
Germany, polish
militaries went to
the exile without
stopping fighting
for freedom and to
recover their
homeland.
During their fight
in the
Mediterranean
Sea, there was an
air crash in which
general Sikorski,
polish prime
minister, died.
It happened a few
kilometers from
Gibraltar Coast.
Today we can see a
commemorative