Wartime Britain

Soldiers guard England's south coast behind a bank of banned wire on 2 September 1940

Britain’s fight for survival: Fortress Britain 1940

dig-for-2-fe977fc

10 tips for surviving on the home front during the Second World War

Premium

Portrait of Juliet Gardiner for BBC History Magazine

History explorer: the Second World War home front . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium

Escaping the Blitz and recording the First World War . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium

Worshippers inside the Duke Street Baptist Church in Richmond, Surrey, listening to a service in 1954. (Photo by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Getty Images)

The Library D-Day for God? . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium

The aftermath of the Second World War . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Screen-Shot-2013-11-06-at-15.23.53-6e1547a

Second World War

Video: Keith Lowe on the aftermath of the Second World War

Industrial might: Blenheim bombers in production in England, late 1939. The Allies’ combined industrial strength proved too much for the Axis. (Getty Images)

Second World War

The Library The world in flames

Hard labour: a woman tarring and flinting in Oxford Street, central London, 1919. (Getty Images)

The Library “Our Excess Girls": women after the First World War

German scientists Dr Carl Eisenmann, Dr Mersch, Dr Trabat and Dr Stocklin. (Express/Getty Images)

The intelligence war for German scientists

A woman at a floral tribute to Neville Chamberlain at a florist in Ludgate Circus, London, 1938. In the wake of the Munich agreement, the prime minister was understood to be a hero of women everywhere. (Photo by Harry Todd/Getty Images)

The Library Guilty women?

English soldiers in the ruins of Palmyre in charge of taking over the Syrian Territory occupied by Vichy’s France. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

The untold Second World War

Clean-up crews salvaging what they can from the ruins of buildings in Hornsey, a north London suburb, 1944. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Hitler’s secret weapon

Schoolchildren helping workmen construct a new estate of pre-fabricated houses in Watford, Hertfordshire in 1946 following the devastation of the Second World War. (Photo by Keystone Features/Getty Images)

Postwar squatters: a very British uprising

British ordinance workers put the final touches to anti-aircraft gun barrels, c1940. (Photo by Hudson/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

A colossus at war