Lucy and Karens 1940s Home Front

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Hello and a very warm welcome to our 1940s Home Front website. We have always been interested in the Home Front, and grew up like many others on the stories of our relatives who lived through the Second World War but remained behind at home during those terrible years, with the fear of bombing and constant shortages in both food and materials.

Hopefully through our website you will see what it was like to live in Britain through those years. We are both very keen collectors and have our own Living History Group, attending various shows in East Anglia. We have a collection of authentic Home Front items, which we have both been collecting over the years, and you will be able to view these on the various pages of our website. The web site is a new step for us and we hope it will serve to educate and enlighten people about this period of our history, we are always learning and as such we will be looking to continuously develop the web site over time. We hope you enjoy our website and if there is any questions you would like to ask us please do not hesitate in dropping us a line through the Contact Us page.

Sincere best wishes to you all . . .

Like most other Living History enthusiasts we are very keen collectors. We enjoy attending various 1940s events in and around East Anglia with our exhibits. It is important to us that people and in particular the younger generation understand that there was another war being fought on the Home Front whilst the men were fighting abroad. Education is always on our agenda along with a lot of fun, and it is great for us when people take a keen interest in what we have on show. Our exhibits include things such as food stuffs and cooking items, Civil Defense items and1940s make-up. We are also part of a larger Living History Group, the 2nd Battalion Royal Ulster Rifles, who portray this regiment in north-west Europe from 1944 to 1945. You can see their website at www.2ndbattalionroyalulsterrifles.com.

Throughout our website there will be various pieces of video to add atmosphere to the subjects we are trying to describe. Please note that in order to view the individual pieces of film the back ground music to the website can be turned off at the control panel at the music box at the bottom of this page.

2nd Battalion Royal Ulster Rifles

Above, London burns during the blitz

Above, Lucy and Karen with some of their exhibits

The fighting in World War 1 ended when the Armistice took effect at 11am GMT on November 11th, 1918. In the aftermath of the war the political, cultural, and social order of the world was drastically changed in many places, even outsid the areas directly involved in the war. New countries were formed, old ones were abolished, international organizations were established, and many new and old ideas took a firm hold in people's minds.

In the United Kingdom, funding the war had severe economic cost. From being the world's largest overseas investor, it became one of its biggest debtors with interest payments forming around 40% of all government spending. Inflation more than doubled between 1914 and its peak in 1920, while the value of the pound sterling ( consumer expenditure ) fell by 61.2%. Reparations in the form of free German coal depressed the local industry, percipitating the 1926 General Strike.

British private investments abroad were sold, raising £550 million. However, £250 million new investment also took place during the war. The net financial loss was therefore approximately £300 million; less than two years investment compared to the pre-war average rate and more than replaced by 1928. The material loss was ' slight '

The most significant being 40% of the British merchant fleet sunk by German U-boats.

Most of this was replaced in 1918 and all immediately after the war. The military historian Correlli Barnett has argued that ' in objective truth the Great War in no way inflicted crippling economic damage on Britain ' but the war ' crippled the British psychologically but in no other way ' .

Less concrete changes included the growing assertiveness of Commonwealth nations. Battles during the Great War, such as Gallipoli for Australia and New Zealand, and Vimy Ridge for Canada led to increased national pride and a greater reluctance to remain subordinate to Britain, leading to a growth of diplomatic autonomy in the 1920s. The battles were often decorated in propaganda in these nations as symbolic of their power during the war, but however much the propaganda machine worked the casualty figures told a different story, it was if Britain and its ' donkey ' generals were throwing away the lives of their soldiers in endless and pointless battles. Traditionally loyal dominions such as Newfoundland were deeply disillusioned by Britain's apparent disregard for her soldiers, the Newfoundland Regiment had been totally wiped out to a man on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. This eventually led to the unification of Newfoundland into the Confederation of Canada.

Colonies such as India and Nigeria also became increasingly assertive because of their participation in the war. The populations in these countries became incresingly aware of their own power and Britain's fragility. The world was changing and it was changing fast. In Ireland the delay in finding a resolution to the Home Rule issue, partly caused by the war, as well as the 1916 Easter Rising and a failed attempt to introduce conscription in Ireland, increased support for separatist radicals, and led indirectly to the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence in 1919 and the eventual creation of the Irish Free State. Ireland would remain neutral during World War Two, but her men and women would still flock to the cause.

Britain was living in a mood of great mourning. Her ' generation of youth ' had blown away on the battlefields of Flanders. Her casualties including those of Ireland were

885, 138 military deaths, and 109,000 civilian. Making a total of 994, 138. Those wounded amounted to a staggering 1, 663, 435.

Every village, town and city had a memorial to the ' glorious dead ' nearly every family in the land had been affected by the loss of a loved one. And now a bigger evil was awakening across the Channel. An evil so great it would cast its shadow across Europe. Britain was asleep. She would stand alone. And she would call on the help of her dominions once again to survive.

Below, gas mask training at schools.

The ' Phoney War ' also called the Twilight War by Winston Curchill was a phase in early World War Two, the the months following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and preceding the Battle of France in May 1940 - that was marked by a lack of major military operations in Continental Europe. The great powers of Europe had declared war on one another, yet neither side had committed to launching a significant attack, and there was relatively little fighting on the ground, notwithstanding terms of Anglo-Polish military alliance and Franco-Polish Military Alliance, which obliged the United Kingdom and France to take military action, in the case of the United Kingdom, in 15 days time. While most of the German Army was engaged in Poland, a much smaller force manned the Siegfried Line,

their fortified defensive line along the French border. At the Maginot Line on the other side of the border, British and French troops stood facing them, but there was only some local, minor skirmishes. The British Royal Air Force dropped propaganda leaflets on Germany and the first Canadian troops stepped ashore in Britain, while western Europe was in a strange calm for seven months. Meanwhile the opposing nations clashed in the Norwegian Campaign. In their hurry to re-arm, Britain and France had both begun buying large amounts of weapons from manufacturers in the US at the outbreak of hostilities, supplementing their own productions.

The non-belligerent United States contributed to the Western Allies by discounted sales and later, lend-lease of military equipment and supplies.

Alfred Jodl at the Nuremberg Trials said that ' If we did not collapse already in the year 1939 that was due to the fact that during the Polish campaign, the approxiamtely 110 French and British Divisions in the West were held completely inactive against 23 German Divisions.

Meanwhile at home, the worst was expected. Gas masks were issued to all. Air riad drills were carried out and shelters were built. An air of impending doom lurked as the country waited for the next move.

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