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World War II for Kids | A world war 2 crash course for kids

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The incredible story of the Navajo Code Talkers that got lost in all the politics | CNN

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When Peter MacDonald, Fleming Begaye and Thomas Begay joined the elite fraternity of Navajo Code Talkers during World War II, they had no idea what they were getting into.

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D-Day: The Allied Invasion of Normandy

The Allied invasion of Western Europe was code named Operation Overlord. It required two years of planning, training, and supplying by the United States and Great Britain, and was one of the most heavily guarded secrets of the war. On the morning of June 5, 1944, U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower announced "O.K. We'll go." Within hours an armada of 3,000 landing craft, 2,500 ships, and 500 naval vessels departed English ports to cross the narrow strip of sea to German-controlled Normandy, France. That night 822 aircraft, carrying parachutists and gliders, deployed troops over landing zones in Normandy. Intended to be the vanguard of the whole operation, the Airborne troops' landings were a tremendous success. Seaborne units then began to land on the beaches of Normandy at 6:30 on the following morning, June 6-D-Day. Although caught by surprise, the Germans fought fiercely, particularly on a stretch of beach code-named Omaha by the Allies. After suffering many casualties, the troops successfully landed and began to advance inland. There would be eleven more months of hard fighting in Europe before the Nazis were defeated, but the D-Day invasion gave the Allies the success they needed to start that fight.

Secondary Sources
Middle School:
Remember D-Day: Both Sides Tell Their Stories by Ronald J. Drez

D-Day: The Allies Strike Back During World War II by Terry Miller
High School:
D-Day, June 6, 1944: the Climactic Battle of World War II by Stephen E. Ambrose

Crusade in Europe by Dwight Eisenhower

D-Day Normandy: The Story and Photographs by Donald Goldstein

The Americans at D-Day: The American Experience at the Normandy Invasion by John McManu

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Research Starters: D-Day | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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The Allied invasion of Western Europe was code named Operation Overlord. It required two years of planning, training, and supplying by the United States and Great Britain, and was one of the most heavily guarded secrets of the war. On the morning of June 5, 1944, U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower announced "O.K.

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In September 1939, Britain entered into what would become the world's most devastating war to date. Learn all about the events that changed the lives of millions in our World War 2 facts....
World War 2 facts

1. World War 2 was a battle between two groups of countries

- the " Allies" and the " Axis ". The major Allied Powers were Britain, France, Russia, China and the United States. The major Axis Powers were Germany, Italy and Japan.

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2. Before World War 2 began, Germany was ruled by a man named Adolf Hitler

Together with the Nazi Party, he wanted Germany to rule Europe. To gain more land and power, on 1 September 1939 German troops invaded Poland. After Hitler refused to stop the invasion, Britain and France declared war on Germany - World War II had begun.

3. During the course of the war, German forces advanced through Europe.

Did you know that we have a FREE downloadable Second World War primary resource? Great for teachers, homeschoolers and parents alike!

4. Millions of Germans were imprisoned and killed because they didn't fit the image of the 'perfect' German

Hitler wanted to create what he thought was the "best" and strongest race - and to the Nazi Party, this excluded certain groups, such as Jews, Gypsies and those with physical and mental disabilities. In an attempt to eliminate a "racial enemy" outside of Germany, such groups were also persecuted in the countries invaded by German forces.

5. The group most heavily targeted by the Nazis were the Jews

Around six million Jewish people were killed during World War 2 in one of history's most terrible events - the Holocaust. Racist in his views, Hitler blamed Jewish people for Germany losing World War I and claimed they were dangerous to German people and society.

6. Around the same time that Germany fought for power in Europe, Japan wanted to control Asia and the Pacific

In 1937 (before World War 2 had officially begun) under Emperor Hirohito, Japan attacked China, bringing the two nations into years of conflict.

7. The US didn't join the war until 1941, when Japan attacked the United States

- at their Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. On 8 December 1941 (the very next day), the US declared War on Japan and, in turn, its German allies.

8. Some countries remained 'neutral' in World War 2

Such countries were Spain, Sweden and Switzerland - who chose not to join either side.

9. The Germans surrendered on 8 May 1945

In 1944, an Allied army crossed from Britain to free France from Nazi rule. One year later, Allied armies invaded Germany, forcing the Germans to surrender. After nuclear attacks on Japan's major cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan also surrendered to Allied forces in August the same year. World War 2 had ended.

10. Around 64 million people died in World War 2

- that's more than the entire population of the United Kingdom.

Find out more about the countries involved in World War 2 with our Germany, Japan and USA facts. Plus, learn about the life of Anne Frank, a young German girl who wrote a world-famous diary...

*Yugoslavia was a country established in 1918 in south-east Europe, which included modern-day Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

*USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the Soviet Union) was a former country which included modern-day Russia, Ukraine and Estonia, as well as other socialist states.

What did you think of our World War 2 facts? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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Learn astonishing World War 2 facts with Nat Geo Kids. When did the war start? Who fought in in the war and why? How did it change the course of history?

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Poland

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. This began World War II. The Germans used a new kind of attack. They called it blitzkrieg, or "lightning war." Blitzkrieg relied on fast-moving tanks and warplanes to shock the enemy into surrendering.

After this invasion, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, and South Africa joined Britain on the side of the Allies. But no one could help when the Soviet Union attacked Poland on September 17. Germany and the Soviet Union divided Poland between them. The Soviet Union also invaded Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland during 1939.

Scandinavia and the Low Countries

Between April and June 1940 the Germans took over Norway and Denmark. In May they moved into the Low Countries- Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

France

In mid-May 1940 the first German troops crossed into France. By June 14 the Germans had entered Paris, the French capital.

On June 22 France agreed to let Germans rule most of their country. However, many French people continued to fight the Germans. They were called the Free French. They took orders from Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle's headquarters were in Britain.

As France was falling to the Germans, Italy declared war against France and Britain. On June 10, 1940, Italy entered the war as an Axis power.

Great Britain

Hitler's next target was the island of Great Britain. Starting in June 1940, German warplanes began bombing Britain. However, the British had a new invention called radar. Radar warned the British when German aircraft were nearing. British fighter airplanes shot down many attackers. This battle, called the Battle of Britain, was the world's first major battle fought in the air.

The Germans soon decided not to invade Britain. Instead, they dropped more bombs on London and other cities until May 1941.

The Atlantic Ocean

The British also fought the German navy. Early in the war, the Germans sank many of the supply ships that delivered food and weapons from North America. In 1943 the Allies began to use aircraft carriers to protect convoys, or groups, of supply ships. The number of supply ships reaching Britain then increased.

North Africa

In the autumn of 1940 the Italians invaded Egypt. They wanted to control the Suez Canal, which linked the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. However, the British drove the Italians back.

Then the German general Erwin Rommel led the Germans to victories in North Africa. In 1942 British forces finally stopped Rommel in two battles at El-Alamein, Egypt. By November 6 the British had driven the Germans from Egypt.

The Soviet Union

After conquering the countries on Germany's borders, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. The attack began on June 22, 1941. The Soviet Union joined the Allies soon afterward. The Soviets stopped the Germans on the edges of Moscow (the Soviet capital) and Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg).

In 1942 Hitler decided to take the Soviet city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd). The fight at Stalingrad was the largest single battle in World War II. About 1.9 million soldiers died on both sides. The Germans surrendered in January 1943. After Stalingrad, the Soviets gradually drove out the Germans.

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World War II started in 1939. By the time it ended in 1945, the war involved nearly every part of the world. The two sides that fought the war were called the Axis powers and...

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Killed, wounded, prisoners, or missing

The statistics on World War II casualties are inexact. Only for the United States and the British Commonwealth can official figures showing killed, wounded, prisoners or missing for the armed forces be cited with any degree of assurance. For most other nations, only estimates of varying reliability exist. Statistical accounting broke down in both Allied and Axis nations when whole armies were surrendered or dispersed. Guerrilla warfare, changes in international boundaries, and mass shifts in population vastly complicated postwar efforts to arrive at accurate figures even for the total dead from all causes.

Civilian deaths from land battles, aerial bombardment, political and racial executions, war-induced disease and famine, and the sinking of ships probably exceeded battle casualties. These civilian deaths are even more difficult to determine, yet they must be counted in any comparative evaluation of national losses. There are no reliable figures for the casualties of the Soviet Union and China, the two countries in which casualties were undoubtedly greatest. Mainly for this reason, estimates of total dead in World War II vary anywhere from 35,000,000 to 60,000,000-a statistical difference of no small import. Few have ventured even to try to calculate the total number of persons who were wounded or permanently disabled.

However inexact many of the figures, their main import is clear. The heaviest proportionate human losses occurred in eastern Europe where Poland lost perhaps 20 percent of its prewar population, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union around 10 percent. German losses, of which the greater proportion occurred on the Eastern Front, were only slightly less severe. The nations of western Europe, however great their suffering from occupation, escaped with manpower losses that were hardly comparable with those of World War I. In East Asia, the victims of famine and pestilence in China are to be numbered in the millions, in addition to other millions of both soldiers and civilians who perished in battle and bombardment.

The table contains what appear to be the best available statistics on armed forces casualties of all types resulting from battle, of civilian deaths from war-related causes, and estimated total deaths in each of the major nations involved in World War II. Figures rounded to thousands (and this device has been employed in all cases for total deaths) are estimates of varying reliability while omissions in any category indicate that any estimate would be the wildest of conjectures. Estimated casualties of resistance movements have been included in military figures, other victims of Nazi persecution in the civilian ones. In the latter category fall about 5,700,000 Jews, more than half of them from Poland, who died in Nazi concentration and death camps.
World War II casualties
¹Figures for deaths, insofar as possible, exclude those who died of natural causes or were suicides. ²As far as possible the figures in this column exclude those who died in captivity. ³Figures for all Commonwealth nations include those still missing in 1946, some of whom may be presumed dead. ⁴This figure comprises 60,595 killed in aerial bombardment, 30,248 in the merchant marine service, 624 in women's auxiliary services, and 1,206 in the Home Guard. ⁵The figures for China comprise casualties of the Chinese Nationalist forces during 1937-45, as reported in 1946, and do not include figures for local armies and communists. Estimates of 2,200,000 military dead and 22,000,000 civilian deaths appear in some compilations but are of doubtful accuracy. ⁶Czech military figures include only those who fought on the Allied side, not Sudeten Germans and others who served in the German army. ⁷Includes merchant marine personnel who served with Allies. ⁸French military casualties include those dead from all causes in the campaign of 1939-40, those of Free French, of rearmed French units that fought with Allies during 1942-45, and of French units that fought with Axis forces in Syria and North Africa during 1941-42 (1,200 dead). ⁹These figures released in 1946 are possibly too high. Merchant seamen are included with military dead. ¹⁰Military figures drawn from statement released by Polish government in 1946 and include casualties in the campaign of 1939, those of the underground, of Polish forces serving with British and Soviet armies, and those incurred in the Warsaw Uprising. Civilian casualty figures, which include 3,200,000 Jews, are based on this statement as modified by the calculations of population experts. ¹¹Military figures include those of Army Ground and Air Forces and those of the Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard. There were an additional 115,187 deaths of U.S. servicemen from non-battle causes. Civilians listed in 1946 as dead or missing include 5,638 of the merchant marine service. ¹²Available estimates of Soviet casualties vary widely. A Soviet officer who served with the high command in Berlin and left the Soviet service in 1949 placed total military losses at 13,600,000-8,500,000 dead or missing in battle; 2,600,000 dead in prison camps; 2,500,000 died of wounds-and estimated civilian casualties at 7,000,000. These figures have been widely accepted in Germany, but most U.S. compilations, based on Soviet announcements, list 6,000,000 to 7,500,000 battle deaths. Calculations made on the basis of population distribution by age and sex in the 1959 U.S.S.R. census give some credence to the higher figures, for they seem to indicate losses of from 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 males of military age in World War II. The figures used here are a compromise estimate, not intended to obscure the fact that Soviet casualties are, in reality, unknown in the West. ¹³Estimates based on fragmentary data. ¹⁴Military estimates include men from outside Germany who served with the German armed forces and are based on the assumption that about 1,000,000 of the 1,250,000 men still listed as missing in Soviet territory in 1955 were dead. In addition, perhaps 250,000 military personnel died of natural causes, committed suicide, or were executed. Civilian figures are for Germany and Austria only, and they do not include an estimated 2,384,000 German deaths during 1944-46 resulting from Soviet invasion and forced transfers of population in the eastern provinces given to Poland after the war. ¹⁵Figures for dead include those listed as still missing in compilation made by the Italian government in 1952 (131,419 military personnel and 3,651 civilians), but not 49,144 military deaths from natural causes or suicide. Known dead from enemy action amounted to 110,823, making a total of 159,957 military deaths from all causes if the missing are not included. Of this number, 92,767 occurred before the 1943 Armistice, 67,190 afterward. ¹⁶ Based on an estimate of 1,600,000 total military deaths on the assumption that about half of those listed as missing in Soviet territory in 1949 were dead. About 300,000 of these probably resulted from causes not related to battle.

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World War II - Casualties and losses of World War II

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Estimates of total dead in World War II vary anywhere from 35,000,000 to 60,000,000. The heaviest proportionate human losses occurred in eastern Europe where Poland lost perhaps 20 percent of its prewar population, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union around 10 percent.

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How Children's Lives Changed During The Second World War

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How Children's Lives Changed During The Second World War

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The Second World War brought many changes to the lives of children in Britain. For some, the war was a time of fear and confusion that meant separation from families, the destruction of a home or even the loss of a parent. However, for others, these years were the most exciting and happiest time of their lives.

Evacuation was the biggest cause of disruption to children's lives. The government's voluntary evacuation scheme saw millions of children in Britain sent to places of safety for fear of German bombing. Many families made their own arrangements to evacuate their children to friends and family in the country or overseas. The short-lived Children's Overseas Reception Board also organised the evacuation of children to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

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How Children's Lives Changed During The Second World War

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The Second World War brought many changes to the lives of children in Britain. For some, the war was a time of fear and confusion that meant separation from families, the destruction of a home or even the loss of a parent. However, for others, these years were the most exciting and happiest time of their lives.

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On December 7, 1941, Japan staged a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, severely damaging the US Pacific Fleet. When Germany and Italy declared war on the United States days later, America found itself in a global war. Japan launched a relentless assault that swept through the US territories of Guam, Wake Island, and the Philippines, as well as British-controlled Hong Kong, Malaya, and Burma. Yet, with much of the US fleet destroyed and a nation unprepared for war, America and its allies decided they needed to save Great Britain and defeat Germany first.

The Japanese, meanwhile, sought to complete what they began at Pearl Harbor. They aimed to destroy the US carrier fleet in a victory so decisive that the United States would negotiate for peace. With its battleship fleet crippled in Hawaii, the US Navy turned to two surviving assets. Aircraft carriers and submarines mounted a serious challenge to Japan's triumphant fleet and were critical to protecting mainland America. But as US attacks on Japanese naval forces and merchant ships escalated from isolated raids to full-scale battles, the learning curve proved costly and deadly.

Blunting the Japanese Onslaught
Throughout the winter and spring of 1942 the war news reaching the United States from the Pacific was grim. The Japanese amassed a vast new empire with a defensive perimeter that ranged from western Alaska to the Solomon Islands. In the southwest Pacific, Japan threatened American supply lines to Australia, complicating US plans to use Australia as a staging ground for offensive action.

But within months, the tide of battle started to turn as the United States and its allies in Australia and New Zealand first blunted Japan's advance and then began a long counterattack across the Pacific. The amphibious invasion soon became the hallmark of the Allied counterattack. As they advanced westward toward Japan, Allied forces repeatedly bombed and stormed Japanese-held territory, targeting tiny islands as well as the jungles of New Guinea and the Philippines. The goal was to dislodge the enemy and to secure airfields and supply bases that could serve as the launching points for future attacks.

Turning Points
In early May 1942, US and Japanese carrier forces clashed in the Battle of the Coral Sea. While both sides suffered major losses, the US Navy checked a major Japanese offensive for the first time. Then, in the Battle of Midway the following month, US carrier aircraft dealt a devastating blow to the Japanese navy, destroying four aircraft carriers. The battle marked the first major US victory against Japan and was a turning point in the war.
By shifting the balance of naval power in the Pacific, Midway allowed US forces to take the offensive for the first time. The Allies soon set their sights on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands and on New Guinea.

Amphibious Invasions and Island Hopping
In August 1942, the United States mounted its first major amphibious landing in World War II at Guadalcanal, using innovative landing craft built by Higgins Industries in New Orleans. By seizing a strategic airfield site on the island, the United States halted Japanese efforts to disrupt supply routes to Australia and New Zealand. The invasion ignited a ferocious struggle marked by seven major naval battles, three major land battles, and almost continuous air combat as both sides sought to control Henderson Field, named after Loy Henderson, an aviator killed at the Battle of Midway. For six long months US forces fought to hold the island. In the end they prevailed, and the Allies took the first vital step in driving the Japanese back in the Pacific theater.

With Guadalcanal in American hands, Allied forces continued to close in on Rabaul in New Britain. As forces under the command of Admiral William F. "Bull" Halsey moved north through the Solomons, General Douglas MacArthur's troops pushed west along the northern coast of Papua New Guinea, grinding out a hard-fought victory by March 1943. But rather than follow this success with a risky invasion of the heavily defended Rabaul, American military planners hatched an ingenious plan: Allied planes and ships would isolate and neutralize Rabaul from the air and sea while the bulk of MacArthur's forces pushed westward to invade less-well-defended islands. This practice-skipping over heavily fortified islands in order to seize lightly defended locations that could support the next advance-became known as island hopping. As Japanese strongholds were isolated, defenders were left to weaken from starvation and disease. This new strategy turned the vast Pacific distances into an American ally, and the United States used it to leapfrog across the Pacific.

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Advancing on Two Fronts
In addition to hopping from one less-defended island to another, the Allies' Pacific strategy developed another key feature: soldiers, sailors, and US Marines pressed forward on two fronts. As MacArthur's troops leapt from island to island in the southwest Pacific, a central Pacific campaign began with the invasion of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands in November 1943. By the end of the year, a two-pronged assault on Japan was well underway.

As 1944 began, the southwest Pacific was largely under Allied control. By February, the Allies were also making progress in the central Pacific. Naval and air strikes reduced most of the Japanese bases throughout the area, and after several intense, bloody campaigns, most of the central Pacific was secure. As the islands in the Marshall and Mariana chains fell to US Army and Marines forces by that summer, troops constructed airfields in preparation for air strikes on Japan itself. The Marianas were a particularly valuable asset since they were close enough to Japan for the United States' new, technologically advanced B-29 bombers to reach the mainland.
As the United States geared up for this aerial bombardment of Japan, military leaders lobbied to continue their campaigns in the southwest and central Pacific. In the southwest, General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz pushed for an assault on the Philippines, while in the central Pacific, Admiral Ernest J. King pressed for an attack on Formosa (now Taiwan).

The Attack On Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941

The National WWII Museum will commemorate the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor with 80 days of articles, oral histories, artifacts, and more.

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The Pacific Strategy, 1941-1944 | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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On December 7, 1941, Japan staged a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, severely damaging the US Pacific Fleet. When Germany and Italy declared war on the United States days later, America found itself in a global war.

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Children of Wartime Evacuation (England)

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Children of Wartime Evacuation (England)

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n January 1941, Sheila Shear and her sister were evacuated from east London to the Chilterns and billeted with a bachelor called Harry Mayo. They came from very different backgrounds - the Shears were Jewish, he was Christian - but an affectionate bond developed between them. Weekly visits and holidays with Uncle Harry, as they came to know him, continued long after the war had ended.

When Harry died, Sheila and her mother went to the funeral: "When we got to Chesham, we were treated like the closest members of his family. In fact, in the church - and this was the first Christian funeral my mother and I had ever been to - we were put to sit in the front row, in front of Uncle Harry's nieces and nephews. It was only then, I think, that I really appreciated how much our little family had meant to him - and had gone on meaning to him all his life.

"We returned to London in the knowledge that we would never go back to Chesham again. But the following day we each received a letter from his solicitor containing a cheque. In the envelope was a note that read: "A very small token of my very great affection."

Sheila is a past president of the League of Jewish Women and an energetic organiser at Nightingale House, a Jewish care home in London. Joan Risley lives near Chelmsford. She is a grandmother who learned to swim when she was 60 and keeps fit by line-dancing. Don Bayley ran a pension scheme for a large company in the West Midlands until his retirement a decade ago. These three people are unconnected, but they have one thing in common: the greatest evacuation of children in British history, which began on Friday 1 September 1939.

It was codenamed Operation Pied Piper. Who on earth came up with that name? Not a mother, that is certain. After all, the piper leads the children of Hamelin away from the town, never to return. Over the six years of the war, more than two million children were sent away from their family homes. Most returned, but how they had changed and how the separation affected their relationships with their families is seldom considered.

What must it have been like to be sent away from home at five, 10 or even 14, as some of the older ones were, and then come home months, - or, more often, years - later and have to pick up where you left off? Is it even possible when your life has changed in all other respects? And who were the winners and losers in the whole evacuation project?

Joan Risley is keen to emphasise the good points in her experience. She was evacuated twice. The first time, she went with her sister to Beccles, in Suffolk. They were home by the beginning of 1940 but when an invasion seemed likely, Joan announced that she wished to be evacuated again. None of her brothers and sisters wanted to go too, so she was sent alone, aged nine, to Northamptonshire. She lived there with a childless couple who loved and cared for her as their own. When she returned in 1945 she found it difficult: "I remember sitting on a sofa with a feeling of not belonging. By that time we were really poor. Dad was still ill and unable to work. My family all commented on how I talked different, so I had that strange feeling of not quite belonging yet wanting to be there because they were my family. I soon got used to being with Mum, and she got used to me. But with my siblings it was more difficult. They are my family and I am very fond of them but they never went away like I did, so they don't understand that I have had these two lives."

Two lives. That is what so many children of that generation had and for some it was, in retrospect, a bonus.

But it wasn't a bonus for parents. As a mother, I feel deeply troubled at the thought of being forced to miss out on five or six years of my sons' childhood. I'm profoundly grateful that I have never had to face that dilemma. In Operation Pied Piper, the family suffered but I feel the real losers, as in the legend, were the parents. It was as tough for many as one would expect. Although some wrote of their immense gratitude to the kindly foster parents who had loved and cared for their children, there were far more stories of mothers feeling that they had missed part of their children's lives. Vera Brittain wrote in her memoir: "The small gallant figures which disappeared behind the flapping tarpaulin of the grey-painted Duchess of Atholl have never grown up in my mind, for the children who returned and eventually took their places were not the same; the break in continuity made them rather appear as an elder brother and sister of the vanished pair."

If you ask Don Bayley about his past he immediately talks about his evacuation to Lichfield, just 20 miles from his home in West Bromwich. It changed his life and that of his younger brother, Phil. Mrs Coles, their foster mother, gave them something their own mother could never have done: a love of books and learning. And it was not one-sided. Twenty years after the war, Mrs Coles wrote to Don to say that she felt the children had been sent "to cheer her up".

"I considered that she was proper middle class while we were clearly working class. I learned to appreciate all these different things from Mrs Coles. I learned how to talk to people and to address them properly and with confidence. I developed a different accent, dropping my Black Country slang. In fact, I have to say that Mrs Coles changed me completely and she loved me - I'm ashamed to admit it - more than my mother ever did. She made me feel wanted. She called us My Boys and that really meant something to us."

When the boys went back to West Bromwich after the war, Don was dismayed by his mother's reaction to his new found interest in books and education. She cursed him for being "a bloody big 'ead" and was constantly nagging him to "shift yer bloody books".

Even parents who were delighted that their children had had life-enhancing experiences and opportunities, found it hard to adjust to the changes. Fathers, often forgotten in the evacuation story, also felt they had lost out. In 1944, Ted Matthews wrote to one of his four daughters whom he sent to America in 1940: "Sending you away has been, in some ways, a tragedy. I still think it was the right thing to do, even though events proved different from our fears. But it has been heartbreaking to miss these years of your lives. We shall meet again as almost strangers."

Michael Henderson and his brother, Gerald, were sent to Boston in 1940, aged eight and six. They lived with a loving family and completely absorbed the culture, education and American way of life. Now, as then, it felt like a positive gain on every level. Yet he wrote: "Returning home, it was hard for us to step into the lives of parents who had survived the bombing - and more recently the V1 and V2 rockets - and would jump at any loud noise. Our parents' admonishments were met with, 'We don't do that in America.' Soon America became known in our family as 'We-land'."

It took months for the four Hendersons to re-establish a family relationship - a lot longer, Michael notes wryly, than it took to remove the accumulated dirt they had acquired on the aircraft carrier en route back from the US.

Sometimes children observed their parents afresh and found their way of life different from what they had grown used to with foster parents. John Mare, who had been evacuated to Canada aged seven, was horrified, as only a child can be, by what he found on his return to Bath. He told his friend Penny: "My mother wears lipstick and powder. They drink and smoke, and even the dog is called Whisky!"

The gulf in experience was not just felt between the generations or within families in which some children had been evacuated and others had not. Nigel Bromage and his twin brother, Michael, spent two years of the war on a farm in south Wales. They shared a room, they went to the same school, experienced the same foster family and saw the same sights in the countryside. They were seven when they arrived and nine when they left. Yet they had two opposite responses to their evacuation.

Nigel and Michael's hosts were small farmers at Golden Grove near Llandeilo, in Carmarthenshire. They had 20 cows, all of which had to be milked by hand, and the only aid was a horse. For Nigel, there was no down side. "As I enjoyed my experience on the Williamses' farm so my brother did not. It is not perhaps surprising. We were very different personalities - he an introvert, I an extrovert. He tended to opt out of activities around the farm; I volunteered for everything. I loved every minute of it. I don't think I was particularly aware of Michael's unhappiness at the time, because I was enjoying myself. It was only after he died that my sister told me how homesick and unhappy Michael had been."

Foster parents are often forgotten in the evacuation story, yet their role was vital. For them the war years often brought great delight, though it was only temporary. One wrote poignantly: "Here are your children ... Mother and I have loved them with all our hearts. We ask you to keep alive their loyalty to us as we have kept alive their loyalty to you - may they never forget that they have two homes."

As there was such pressure on rural households to take evacuees, some children were billeted with childless couples and for many a lifelong relationship ensued. These are the good news stories that we don't hear enough about.

Some children became so much a part of their foster parents' lives that the outcome was life-changing for all parties. Gordon Abbott is constantly irritated that people are not interested in his evacuation story as it had a happy ending. He was fostered by a childless couple who farmed in Cornwall. They loved him, cared for him and educated him as if he had been their natural son. He was blissfully happy. When the war was over, he and the couple were devastated that he had to return to London, but there seemed no choice.

Once "home", Gordon felt like a fish out of water. He did not like the city and he was not particularly enamoured of his mother's new boyfriend. She, in turn, realised that he was deeply unsettled and she soon wrote to his foster parents, to ask if he could return to Cornwall. He did and was adopted by them as their son. The war had given him a new family. "I loved them dearly, and thank the upbringing they gave me, which helped me into my adult life.

"There have been many stories written by evacuees about their childhood experiences and the effect it had on their lives. Some were happy, some were appalling and some were just unhappy. I was one of the many happy ones, and my years as an evacuee from London to the West Country were filled with wonderful memories."
When the Children Came Home: Stories of Wartime Evacuees by Julie Summers is published by Simon & Schuster, £18.99. To order a copy for £15.19, with free p&p, go to theguardian.com/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846.

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n January 1941, Sheila Shear and her sister were evacuated from east London to the Chilterns and billeted with a bachelor called Harry Mayo. They came from very different backgrounds - the Shears were Jewish, he was Christian - but an affectionate bond developed between them.