Mixing It

Diversity in World War Two Britain

Bibliographic Data

ID19973126
AuthorsWendy Webster (0000-0001-7926-4954, corresponding author)
Year2018
Pages336
Publication date2018-02-15
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueMixing It (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780198735762.001.0001
OpenAlexW4250768342
ISBN9780198735762
Open LibraryOL27369227M
LanguageEN
Citations received8

During the Second World War, people arrived in Britain from all over the world as troops, war workers, nurses, refugees, exiles, and prisoners of war—chiefly from Europe, America, and the British Empire. Between 1939 and 1945, the population in Britain became more diverse than it had ever been before. Through diaries, letters, and interviews, Mixing It tells of ordinary lives which in wartime conditions were often extraordinary. Among the stories featured are those of Zbigniew Siemaszko and ‘Johnny’ Pohe. Siemaszko’s epic journey to Britain began on a horse-drawn sleigh, in a village in Kazakhstan to which he had been deported by the Soviet Union, eventually taking him to the Polish army in Scotland via Iran, Iraq, and South Africa. Pohe, from New Zealand, was the first Maori pilot to serve in the RAF. He was captured after he had to ditch his plane, took part in what was subsequently called the ‘Great Escape’, and was one of fifty escapees who were recaptured and murdered by the Gestapo. This is the first book to look at the big picture of large-scale movements to Britain and the rich variety of relations between different groups. When the war ended, awareness of the diversity of Britain’s wartime population was lost and has played little part in public memories of the war. Mixing It recovers this forgotten history. It illuminates the place of the Second World War in the making of multinational, multiethnic Britain and resonates with current debates on immigration

Ancient history · Archaeology · Economic history · Empire · Ethnology · Genealogy · Immigration · Population · Refugee · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · World War II · Canadian Identity and History · Demography · History · 1939-1945 · 20th century · emigration and immigration · Ethnic relations · ethnic relations · Great britain · Social aspects · World War

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