HMS Foylebank
World War II started in 1939. World War II stopped in 1945.
Germany invaded Poland, and Britain as Poland’s friends said NO. We helped Poland fight the Germans. Germany’s friends came to help, including Italy — these were the Axis forces and we were the Allies.
My great-grandad (my mum’s Grandad) was in the Navy and his ship was bombed. His ship was called the Foylebank and it sunk in Portland Harbour on 4 July 1940 (so before my Granny was born in 1945). He survived but lots of people died and one man won a Victoria Cross for not leaving his guns.
Another great-grandad (my dad’s Grandad) was in the Navy, and a third (my mum’s Grandpa) was a spy, and in the RAF. My great-grandma (dad’s Grandma) had a husband who was killed in the RAF but he was not my great-grandad.
Some of my family are Italian but they were all the wrong age to fight in the war on the Axis side.
This is a picture Omario and I drew of a dogfight, which is when the RAF fought the Luftwaffe (German planes). The Germans were coming to bomb Britain because they wanted to invade and they thought by destroying things we couldn’t fight back and we would want them to come over. The British did not want that. There was a blackout to stop the Germans from seeing the homes and buildings from their planes. No one could show a light at night, even on cars. The British built shelters in the towns and in gardens to hide from the bombs. The bombing was called The Blitz.
Rationing was introduced in 1940. This meant that you could only buy the the things in your ration book coupons and you had to buy them from one supplier. This was done so everyone got a fair share, because the Germans were bombing the ships that imported food with their submarines and so there was not as much to go round.
Interesting fact: did you know that before the war Britain had imported 55 million tons of food per year, but during the war they could only import 12 million.
In Germany, the Nazi party was in charge, run by a man called Adolf Hitler. They only wanted Germans they liked for their society. They tried to kill everyone who didn’t fit. They put people in a kind of prison called a concentration camp where there was torture, and they murdered people. This was called the Holocaust, when they killed 6 million Jewish people, but some people survived.
In Europe, the armies beat German forces back to Germany, and Adolf Hitler killed himself. The Germans surrendered. That was the end of the war in Europe, but there was still war between the Allies and Japan. The Americans dropped two nuclear bombs, and Japan surrendered. The nuclear bomb was new so they could not fight back.
