Yes, missed the point; you were the one who widened the discussion onto other topics, not me - including the aspect where you missed the point of why the police were armed.Excuse me ????? All of a sudden I'm the one who "missed the point"?
Why do you think it would be any different? Continental Europeans were indeed somewhat "used" to taking to the roads to avoid occupation; why do you think British citizens would have been any less anxious about living under the Nazis? Didn't Fleming detail the quiet egress of thousands of inhabitants of the South and South-east of England who could afford it to hotels in the south-west, Scotland etc.? How do you think the inhabitants of the invasiona area who couldn't afford to depart earlier were going to do it? Shanks' mare would be the ONLY choice for many of them that didn't live in an area covered by the government/council evacuation. Just because they didn't have motor transport wasn't going to make them any more ready to let the German occupation roll over them.Try to think a little bit before you start your compulsive contradicting ... what I mean, obviously, is that the temptation to take to the road and flee would be very much stronger for people with a car with a full tank at their disposal than for people who would have to transport their most precious belongings in a pram or wheelbarrow.
The situation would have been different from Belgium and France. People there expected a repeat of WWI and did not want to be in the German-occupied zone. If they had known the outcome in all likelihood they would not have fled, because in the large majority of cases they returned home after a while and so had risked their lives on the road, abandoned their livestock, and/or had their houses plundered, for nothing
After all - while it had been generations since England was truly invaded...hadn't it been the citizens of England who were treated to four years of propaganda regarding the Rape Of Belgium within recent memory? Propaganda that hadn't yet been softened by the decades of revision of that event since the end of WWII? If anything - British citizens probabaly had a WORSE idea and opinion of German occupation than the French or Belgians...because it wasn't in any way softened by years of having to live day-to-day under it. The English' idea of German occupations was still the "babies on bayonets" idea of the Boche, not helped by newsreels from France in May, tales in the papers of machinegunned civilians, terror bombing, etc.. While the reality of German occupation was in no way beneficent - neither was it quite as wantonly violent and arbitrary as the British opinion of it....carefully fostered by the government twenty years before!
Obviously this opinion is incorrect - and was JUST as incorrect in 1940...or else why even bother with the Stay Put instructions, why even bother with the preparations for directing/feeding/accomodating refugees/evacuees etc.?I imagine that most people in Britain at the time were smart enough to figure out that in case of invasion there were only two likely scenarios: either the invaders would be defeated and thrown back into the sea in a relatively short time - in which case staying in tne cellar was the best bet - or they would win and occupy the whole island, in which case fleeing was pointless
And that's in addition to the other plans we know about - for nodal points, fortresses etc. to be evacuated, and the Army wanting the coastal strip evacuated.
By definition there wouldn't have been - BECAUSE of the government/council preparations for largescale, organised evacuations...AND the preparations already mentioned for directing refugees onto dedicated, pre-mapped out, roads for their use.To repeat myself, I'm not saying there wouldn't have been any refugees at all - just not large masses blocking the roads everywhere.
Given what has already been posted up regarding the police being prepared to handle refugees, the pre-printed maps showing separate military-use-only and refugee-use roads/routes, saying that there would/wouldn't be refugees "everywhere" is just an attempt to establish a strawman.