The scale and pace of public investment in hospital construction and staffing was unprecedented in Europe.
In a few years the EHS expanded Scottish hospital capacity by 60%, creating 20,500 additional beds.
The EHS began in 1939 to cope with the expected high number of civilian casualties from German air raids.
The expected numbers of civilian casualties never arrived at the new facilities, so Tom Johnston, the Secretary of State for Scotland (1941–45), decided to use the largely empty buildings to reduce long surgery waiting times, with 33,000 civilian patients treated by EHS facilities by the end of the war in 1945.
Sites were identified to build hospitals at:[2] The EHS construction programme came to the attention of German military intelligence, but they mistook it for a military programme, so the Law and Stracathro hospitals were marked on Luftwaffe maps as barracks.