Home guard explained
Home guard is a title given to various military organizations at various times, with the implication of an emergency or reserve force raised for local defense.
The term "home guard" was first officially used in the American Civil War, starting with units formed by German immigrants in Missouri, and may derive from possible historical use of the term Heimwehr ("home guard") to describe units officially known as Landwehr ("country guard"), or from an attempted translation of landwehr.
Military units
Active
Historical & Defunct
- Aizsargi (Latvia, 1919–1940)
- Home Guard (Unionist), during the American Civil War
- Civilian Irregular Defense Group program (1961-1970) during the Vietnam War
- Confederate Home Guard (1861–1865) during the American Civil War
- Croatian Home Guard, several historic military formations during 19th and 20th century
- Czechoslovak Home Guard (1918–1919)
- Home Guard (Austria) (Heimwehr) (1920–1938) paramilitary unit of Fatherland Front Party
- Home Guard (New Zealand) (1940–1943)
- Home Guard (United Kingdom) (1940–1944)
- Home Service Force, British force for the 1980s-90s.
- Indian Home Guard, units raised from Indian tribes to support the Unionists in the American Civil War
- Kikuyu Home Guard, a government paramilitary force in Kenya (1953–1955)
- Lithuanian Riflemen's Union (1919–, unofficial since 1991)
- Malayan Home Guard, auxiliary volunteer police forces in Malaya during Malayan Emergency[1]
- Narodnoe Opolcheniye, Russia
- Slovene Home Guard (1943–1945)
- Veterans Guard of Canada (1940–1947)
- Volkssturm, Nazi Germany (1944-1945)
- Volunteer Defence Corps (Australia) (1940-1944)
- Volunteer Fighting Corps, Japanese armed citizen militia (1945)
Similar units
Other
- Home Guard (Shannara), in Terry Brooks' novel series
- Home Guard potato, a variety of first early potato
See also
Notes and References
- Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, Director of Operations, Malaya, 1958, Chapter III: Own Forces
Germany