When researching history, I sometimes ask myself why people did the things that they did. That's especially the case when what they did had no effect on the outcome or placed them in a worse position. But that's the thing with history. When you're living through it, the world altering events are in the future. No one knows the outcome. They don't know if what they are trying to do will have a positive result.
I try to bear this in mind when I look back at events. This is especially true of my present research. During the Second World War, no one in Britain knew if what they were doing would have a positive outcome. They didn't know how long the war would last which may have been a good thing going in. If it was at the beginning and there was knowledge that there would be six more years to live and fight through that would probably have been harder than taking it day by day.
What really brought this home for me was something that my mother told me years ago. She said that during the war, when she was going home for a visit, if she saw enemy planes going overhead, she dove for the ditch and hoped for the best. There was no certainty she would survive nor was it certain that her parent's home would still be standing when she got there. This was a mindset that would have been prevalent at the time. That no one knew the outcome going in is something I try to remember.
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