ABSTRACT
Longstanding assumptions about the Second World War have meant that the health of the nation has been analysed by historians tracing the contribution of wartime experience to the creation of the post-war National Health Service. Improving physical health at the workplace proved an attractive strategy because it offered an apparently concrete and self-contained goal. It was recognised that factors outside the place of work, such as transport, housing and nursery provision could also affect production rates, but the only advice given in the report was to 'make sure that you observe the commonsense rules of hygiene. If the Conservatives had won the 1945 general election they would have introduced a national health service, but it would have been very different from either the one outlined in the Coalition's White Paper or the service that was introduced by Labour after the war.
