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The people’s war
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This chapter examines how ordinary people engaged with ideas about civil duty and the ‘people’s war’ myth. Although the ‘people’s war’ required everybody to ‘pull together’ and ‘do their bit’ within the national community, not all roles were regarded equally. By representing themselves as key players in the war on the home front – and who demonstrated national characteristics to a greater degree than other groups – civil defence personnel were able to stress their own value. But while this was possible during the conflict, as civil defence communities dispersed in the postwar years the accounts of former personnel were much more likely to accept popular representations of an ‘equality of sacrifice’ on the home front. The chapter also considers the criticism levelled at civil defence during the war and explores how the language of the ‘people’s war’ became central to both the insults and the responses put forward by personnel. Finally, it examines everyday life to consider, firstly, how these narratives were developed in practice and, secondly, the significance of the everyday rather than the extraordinary in representations produced by personnel.

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Creating the people’s war

Civil defence communities in Second World War Britain

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