How would the Home Guard have actually fared?

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?

 

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...

 

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

 

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...

 

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!!

 

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

 

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

The British Resistance Movement

 

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!

 

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!


And if just one RAF fighter got through the fighter screen as they often did then what would it do to a Ju52.

 

Indeed...but look how many 52s they lost at CRETE...and they STILL got the reinforcements in...AND an entire convoy of 'caiques' had been sunk by the Royal Navy as well...they stll prevailed...this is what leads me to believe that Students plan, though slim, actually had a chance at success...

As I said before, it MAY have been better than doing NOTHING and allowing the British Army to recover....Just after Dunkirk, there were not much in the way of anti-invasion defences...and look at Spike Milligan, swimming on the Beach, with a Ross rifle and % ROUNDS btween the WHOLE OP....

I think they had a chance, it just wasn't a very large chance...

 

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....

Aren't we all glad of that!

An interesting thought, I've wondered too. If they had launched in July it would have had a better chance of working, during the 2 month delay from mid-June to mid Aug the British were building fighters at over 200/month. The disadvantage obviously was that only light artillery could be flown in. So it would be more of an infantry fight with few heavy weapons. Presumably after the initial para landing the Germans (with air superiority) would fly in regular infantry in the JU 52's

But don't underestimate the value of a volunteers & a hostile population. After the Panzers broke through at Ardennes they had very little resistance for most of the way to the coast, apart from the Arras counterattack. Imagine if the Panzers "race to the sea" had been met with machinegun & mortar fire from every village? The same with the Paratroopes. if they have to defend against minor "home guard' attacks on every flank, they will have less forces available to defend agaist counterstrike.

 

In fact, the only Division that was fully armed and equipped was the Third British Infantry Division. Monty's Ironsides...(Mine) They had fought valiantly at Dunkirk and had held the rear guard position. On returning from France they were quickly rebuilt ready to return to France.

That was called off when France capitulated. To rearm Monty's Ironsides they had stripped other services.

Now the Home Guard? I was a member in Southampton during the Blitz, and again in Poole, what would have happened if we had been invaded? They would have fought well, and they would have been quickly swept away. Many would have been shipped off to Germany where they would have been worked to death and perished as slave labour.
Sapper

 

Ah!...nice correection.....no-one ever mentions Monty's divisions...and you served in that one?...what a beaty of a coincidence!...thanks for the correction, I did actually get that piece of info from an old BBC documentary of the "World at War"....they must have assumed that the Ironsides" was stll unready after Dunkirk...shows you how wrong even the experts can be...

 

By the way sapper, is that you in the photo on your posts?....handsome devil, weren't you?

 

Yes that WAS me. Though a bit different now thats for sure.
Sapper

 

Now the Home Guard? I was a member in Southampton during the Blitz, and again in Poole, what would have happened if we had been invaded? They would have fought well, and they would have been quickly swept away. Many would have been shipped off to Germany where they would have been worked to death and perished as slave labour.
Sapper

Yes, I'd say that is pretty accurate Sapper. Well said. It would have been like what happened in Holland. The Dutch police fighting the German's automatic weapons with their pistols. They were all massacred without mercy.

 

To be honest I dont know how many WW1 vets were in the HG. In Southampton we were based at Redbridge down Millbrook. In Poole we were based just over the lifting bridge in Hamworthy next to the pub.

R. S. M. Humphries.
The Greatest Warrior.
A great character of those times and a man I am very proud to have known. Regimental Sergeant Major Humphries. Over a period of time there developed a friendship between this young 19 year old and an old soldier who had served in the South African war, the Great war and was asked back to assist in training young recruits in the second World war. He had been decorated in all these conflicts and had a long bayonet wound down one side of his face, he was a perfect specimen for a "Giles" cartoon of a Guardsman. With his peaked cap down over his forehead.

Strange friendship between this young soldier and an old military man, he treated me like a son and I remember him as one of nature's gentlemen. He showed me all of his medals from South Africa and photo's of him in his pill box hat and red uniform, and the first world war medals, I know that he had been awarded a medal in this war for saving a group of recruits when one dropped a live grenade in the slit trench, while on battle practice.

I was supposed to have these medals when he died, for our friendship and because he knew that I would cherish them and look after them. One day I went to visit him at Wareham and found that the RSM had died and was buried. I do not know what happened to his medals. I was very fond of the old man and was saddened to hear of his death. A Canadian soldier suffering from concussion and starvation was in the next bed to me, what strange effect's concussion can have! He had been a prisoner of war and had the typical bloated stomach appearance of starvation, his wife came from Scotland to see him, only to be greeted with "What do you want" often he would ask for a cigarette and then screw it out on the polished bedside cabinet.

Over all of this sat the Sergeant Major, bolt upright in his bed, drinking his beer and the beer of other patients who did not drink. There were Italian prisoners in the ward, who had been brought back for treatment in this country, unfortunately they kept up a night long moaning and groaning with cries of Momma mia, Momma mia!
Sapper