Anova has been publishing a series of pocket-books under the Conway imprint. These are reproductions of pocket-books produced during World War Two in Britain. This book was produced for civilians to help them prepare for total warfare as German aircraft began to blitz civilian targets, using terror tactics employed in Civil War Spain, Poland, the Low Countries and France.
NAME: The British HOME FRONT pocket book 1940-1942
CLASSIFICATION: Book reviews
FILE: R1622
Date: 031110
AUTHOR: Ministry of Information
PUBLISHER: Conway, Anova
BINDING: Hard back
PAGES: 160
PRICE: GB £7.99
GENRE: Non-Fiction
SUBJECT: Air raids, chemical warfare, bomb shelters, evacuation, strategic bombing, WWII, German bombers, rationing, conscription
ISBN: 978-1-84486-122-4
IMAGE: B1622
LINKS: http://tinyurl.com/
DESCRIPTION: Anova has been publishing a series of pocket-books under the Conway imprint. These are reproductions of pocket-books produced during World War Two in Britain. This book was produced for civilians to help them prepare for total warfare as German aircraft began to blitz civilian targets, using terror tactics employed in Civil War Spain, Poland, the Low Countries and France. In 1940 when this pocket book was originally produced, the phoney war had given way to lightning war that regarded civilians as useful targets. Although Germany had made attacks on the British Isles in World War One, these had involved very small numbers of airships with relatively limited bombs. In 1940 the fear was that gas would be used on heavily populated areas. Public air raid shelters were built in towns, often adapting cellars and underground railway systems. Many families made their own arrangements and a variety of air raid shelters were built in back gardens, most using steel kits where the shelter was dug half way down and then covered with excavated soil. These shelters saved many lives. In the large cities several waves of evacuation took place with children and vulnerable people being moved into the countryside or shipped to Canada and South Africa. People had to rapidly learn new vocabularies as they came to terms with the rationing of clothes and food and virtually all materials that only months before were taken for granted as readily available items. The Home Front pocket book was printed in large numbers and distributed through the population. Very few of the originals survived and this new publication gives a new generation the opportunity to appreciate the hardships and solutions that were everyday life in 1940