When Townies Rebuilt the Countryside

[@ArosIrwin]

I absolutely love that whenever you're missing a photo of someone, you add a portrait of yourself with a little modifier! The brown wig was delightful!

[@michaelodwyer7308]

Thank you for posting another fascinating & informative video - please keep up the good work! Look forward to learning more about the country from you. I'm the 4th generation of my family to live mostly in the city, but love the countryside. My parents & grandparents were evacuated from the cities during the second world war, but went to stay with their relatives who lived in rural areas, not with strangers. When I was a child my parents' house was at the very outermost margins of a town & our windows looked out across arable fields.Some of my own earliest memories in life are of watching the farm tractor purposefully chugging to & fro across those fields, ploughing & harvesting. Wherever I travel in the world, I find myself scrutinising the landscape, trying to work out what crops are grown, how farmers make their living & how the countryside economy functions!

[@johnfowler4820]

Absolutely brilliant video. You deserve way more subscription s. The old footage and recordings show me what it was like when my father and his kin were growing up during the war in Bedfordshire. Thank you.

[@jamesthomas4841]

Germany and Italy in the forties still had many small farms and a higher farming/ peasant population. It is therefore not surprising that, language barriers aside, POWs became effective workers on British farms. Many of them came from farming backgrounds. POWs were kept working on British farms a full 2 years after the war.

[@jonathanwhite460]

as a 16 year old herdsman/farm worker my fathers main complaint about landgirls was that they got paid more than him and as an experienced hand was getting more work.He spoke highly of the German POWs, he got on the Italians but they had to be persuaded to work,i'm sure this was a generalization .

[@CorrectHorse126]

Hi from the middle of London! I've been enjoying the videos, and I really appreciate all the effort that clearly goes into researching and presenting all this material. Seems like now is a pretty good time for us all to be putting a bit more thought into where our food comes from and how the countryside operates.

[@malkomalkavian]

Yeah, let's have people who live and work in the country decide how cities operate, and where our money comes from.

[@marklorne6790]

Well done, a cracking film and well explained. There was a couple of ex Land Girl in our village who met her husband during her placement in our village during WW2. Heard my dad talk of Italian POW's working on local farms when he was a schoolboy.

[@neilbucknell9564]

Interesting video - thanks Oli. A few points - firstly, it wasn’t always the case that evacuees didn’t get on or mix with country people. My mother, a farmer’s daughter who went on to study dairying at Reading and marry a farmer (my late father) made good friends of two evacuees and kept in touch with both until they died. As to the town and country divide, I’ve read somewhere that whereas most of the UK population was urban by the third quarter of the 19th century, this did not occur in France or Germany until well into the 20th century. In Germany too there was also a tradition of families keeping on small farms as hobby farms while the main source of income was in industry or the service sector. There is just as much in French culture about the difference between metropolitan people (especially Parisians) and what were often portrayed as insular and backward rural people. As to resentment of town people moving to the country, the picture is blurred by the extensive spread of suburbs in many of the denser-populated parts of the country, including much of south-east and central southern England. One of the major causes of friction is the perception of the countryside as simply an amenity for urban dwellers, with no thought given that there are still people (albeit an ever-decreasing proportion of the population) who make a living there. Just as the prominent calls for inclusiveness ignore many underprivileged people in deprived areas who do not have “protected characteristics”, the rural and farming communities are largely ignored. As a farmer’s son and keen naturalist, it also annoys me that the disturbance and damage to wildlife from recreation is largely ignored by the media.

[@thorpreston2594]

I grew up in a town and have lived all of my adult live in London (or a London commuter town). I find your videos really interesting. Over the years I've moved from veganism (with a focus on reduced environmental impact) to a more balanced position where I eat a much wider range of foods (trying to eat more agracultural pests such as rabbits). I still do, and will likely continue to, eat a lot of foriegn food that might seem odd to both country and city people but incorperate more local ingrediants to.

[@paulthompson8467]

Another brilliant video Ollie keep up the good work 👍

[@schmiddy1473]

Great video, well sourced

[@alex990ism]

great video as always

[@joanne26]

My late mother (died aged 93 in June 2019) met through place of work in Birmingham Betty Andrews Betty died July 2023. She would have been 100 January 2025 Betty had married Jim Andrews (he served in the Parachute Regiment for almost all of the war and taught boxing in the Army) Of course Betty did not see Jim until he was demobbed Betty through those 5/6 years worked at the Spitfire Factory at Castle Bromwich and then ‘signed on’ for the LAND ARMY She was based around STUDLEY, ALCESTER, and surrounding villages She had a wonderful time. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧🇬🇧👍 👍 🙏🙏😃😃

[@skrv8588]

I shouldn't have been surprised by farmers betting on better with POWs than city-folk, but I was.

[@francisgribben6931]

Never a truer word spoken. Urban people have strong opinions on country matters no matter how scant their knowledge. They don't give the country people credit for their reasons for continuing their way of life and we end up with stupid laws which are concocted in cities for our countryside.

[@paulthompson8467]

Very well said 👍

[@here_we_go_again2571]

Regarding the POW's the hard-core Nazi's and Fascists were kept in more secure facilities. Even in the US most of them (in particular those of the Afrika corps) were known to be uncooperative and bullying towards the other POWs. Eventually they were separated

[@nickhbt]

... and ushered in secret into positions of influence or high office in the American government.

[@compassrise]

I'm reminded of the message at the end of "Spring Offensive".

[@user-du9bv5ud9c]

i moved to a village near Loughborough in 1975 the population has changed and grown greatly with town people who whilst mostly they are friendly enough make complaints about farming and concrete over their own green spaces. Why did they move here? Yes there are fond memories of POW’s who had been here , one Italian even married into the village.

[@mbb05jb]

My grandfather used to get POW's from the local camp to do ag work. He said they tried to get the Germans as they were better workers. The Italian POWs used to spend most of their time flirting with the land girls and the milk maids.

[@magma440]

Is the use of POWs as labour not a war crime? Did the British government ever get criticism for their use of prisoners' labour or was this seen as normal?

[@GronFarmCo-gs4wz]

Was done widely in the US also

[@malkomalkavian]

I don't think you are allowed to make officer POWs work. Isn't that part of the plot of Bridge over the River Kwai?

[@matthewnewberry7275]

Officers and other ranks are kept separated as POWs, officers as you said would not have been made to do physical labour.

[@hangingthief]

When you gonna cover the diggers? It would be cool to compare the diggers to current movements like Brazilian landless workers(MST) and via campensina, that's more examples of women in the countryside. Anglophobia joke

[@farmingexplained]

These guys are before my time but having just looked them up we will definitely discuss them! Thanks for the suggestion