What were the final few months of World War II like for civilians in Britain?
The last few months of the war for British civilians were exhausting. For the previous nine months the Germans had been launching V1 and V2 rockets on London and the southeast with lethal effect. Elsewhere, rationing and shortages added to people’s woes and there was a sense of war-fatigue on the one hand and a growing awareness of the horrors that had been perpetrated in Nazi-occupied Europe. The author Barbara Cartland wrote, “We were glad, but still our hearts refused to sing, the shadow of war still lay over us in a restriction of freedom, in controls and coupons.”