How would the Home Guard have actually fared?

[Gotthard Heinrici]

In his book "Battle of Moscow" Rodric Braithwaite describes the actions of Volunteer Battalions thrown into action against the Germans to try and halt the German advance thus buying time so that fresh divisions east of Moscow could be prepared. They were annihalated. These Battalions had training comparable with the Home Guard (If not better) and the men were of military age and the author posed the question of how would the Home Guard fare against a German invasion. Just wondered what you guys thought of this?

[Christos]

I repond to this one with the song we always assoaciate with th Home Guard...

My answer?

"Who do you think,
You are kidding?....".....sorry...couldn't resist that one...

[Gotthard Heinrici]

LOL!!! Ok Capt Mainwaring aside, would they have been any use?

[Christos]

Yes...I think their enthusiasm and the fact that if invaded, the situation would have woken everybody up...the Volksturm performed well, if patchy, so i reckon the home Guard would have been effective...maybe not for very long, but MORALE would have been the key...just an opinion..
i'm sure that other people will disagree on this one...

[Owen]

Ron and sapper need to answer this one, they were in it.
Ger, I'd say the Moscow Volunteers were more like the British WW1 Kitchener "Pals" battalions.

[Gotthard Heinrici]

Originally Posted by Owen D

Ron and sapper need to answer this one, they were in it.
Ger, I'd say the Moscow Volunteers were more like the British WW1 Kitchener "Pals" battalions.

Yeah but did the "pals" battalions have good training? It seems that in the case of the Volunteers, very little combat training took place, they seemed more interested in political indoctrination and Ditch digging, which against the blitzkrieg was about as useful as an axe in a china shop!!

[kfz]

Assuming Sealion worked and the creme of the heer got dropped in Kent and they where supplied they would have been wiped out to a man. You could have only hoped the Germans would have gven them oppertunity to surrender.

Kev

[Peter Clare]

A little different than Capt Mainwarings lot.....

The British Resistance Movement

[von Poop]

The brave chaps of the Home guard, perhaps other than those auxilliary 'secret' units, I'm sad to say, would most likely have experienced the Wehrmachts hot knife flying through their butter.

However the actual invasion defences weren't half bad and (again, with the major assumption that a Seelowe type op was even possible) the story could become somewhat different with the regs and stop lines coming into play.
Somebody's made quite a good job of the Wiki article on Invasion defences:
British anti-invasion preparations of World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
With a nice quote from Alanbrooke:

...I considered the invasion a very real and probable threat and one for which the land forces at my disposal fell far short of what I felt was required to provide any degree of real confidence in our power to defend these shores. It should not be construed that I considered our position a helpless one in the case of an invasion. Far from it. We should certainly have a desperate struggle and the future might well have hung in the balance, but I certainly felt that given a fair share of the fortunes of war we should certainly succeed in finally defending these shores. It must be remembered that if my diary occasionally gave vent to some of the doubts which the heavy responsibility generated, this diary was the one and only outlet for such doubts.

The defence of Britain project seems to have tarted it's website up somewhat:
Defence of Britain Project homepage is always worth a look when considering this kind of stuff, but I suppose I'm getting too far off the specific topic of the Home guard here.

I don't know how much the home Guard liaised or trained with the regulars?, or would be likely to at the crunch. Any old chap with a rifle might be deemed useful but I suppose there's also a possibility of them being told to clear off and leave it to the professionals? Alanbrooke's quote suggests that any body, no matter how old or young would be needed.

[Christos]

I believe that just after Dunkirk, there was only ONE fully equiped and trained division in the entire South East....(a Canadian Division)....MAYBE...if Seelowe had been put into operation IMMEDIATELY, that it might have had a bulls roar of a chance of success...

Kurt Student wanted to parachute his troops in with minmal help, mainly air-support, capture an airfield, and then fly reinforcements in, just like later on at Crete....The Navy dint have the ships, and Hitler "shuddered" at the thought of all those highly trained paratroopers being cut of and captured to a man....

I WONDER what would have happened had they gone along with Student's plan...tough hombres, the Fallschirmjaeger, well equipped, too, and you can bet that the Luftwaffe would have thrown in every aircraft it could lay it's hands on...Seelowe was going to be the biggest roll of the dice in the war so far....I sometimes wonder if they could have pulled it off, with just the one division in the area.....Don't think I would have authorized it either, but it may have been better than doing what they did...nothing.
Pursuance of a defeated enemy is a military maxim....The German Army failed to adhere to this principle, and with hitler fretting of the condition of the Panzers for the push further into France, it's easy to see why there was no "Operation Seelowe"....

Aren't we all glad of that!