The Cabinet War Rooms

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The Cabinet War Rooms was a bunker which was used during the course of the Second World War for government purposes, and is located under the Treasury Building on King Charles Street in Whitehall (an area in the City of Westminster), London. The main purpose of the Cabinet War Rooms was to protect members of Parliament (most importantly the Prime Minister at the time, Winston Churchill) during the course of the Blitz (a series of bombing attacks upon the City of London by Nazi bombers during the Second World War); however it also served the purpose of protecting members of parliament during important cabinet meetings and housing military and government information . It also housed the transatlantic telephone which allowed the Prime Minister …show more content…
They were also built for the purpose of allowing these individuals to carry out their duties in the war effort and/or house/employ the people that would aid them. There were around 2,000 people working in the war rooms at any one given time. Churchill said that the Cabinet War Rooms would be the place from which he would lead the war’ . At the peak their use, the Cabinet War Rooms were mostly from 1940 to 1941. Over the course of the six years that the war went on for, THE rooms weren’t used as frequently as anticipated; out of all the 105 meetings held by the Cabinet, only around 1/10 (approx. 10 meetings) of the meetings that have occurred were held in the Cabinet War Rooms. However, all these meetings were held within the period of between 1940 and 1941, which would therefore show that even though the rooms weren’t used as much as first thought they would be, the still played a very important role within that time period. Besides the cabinet meetings that were held there, Churchill also made four radio broadcasts to the nation using the BBC Guidebook . The war rooms were used by many personnel and MPs (most notably members of the Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff). However the majority of the people that worked in the Cabinet War Rooms worked as typists, map plotters and telephone switchboard operators. Many of the highly ranked officials normally had their own secretaries, which also require accommodation in the Cabinet War Rooms. In addition, many people worked every day, plotting different maps, operating the telephone switchboard, working as secretaries. Because of these people working there, the Cabinet War Rooms became a sort of wartime data centre, providing much required intelligence to who needed it. This therefore made the Cabinet War Rooms a very important location/site during World War Two

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