The British Home Guard: Holding down the fort.

The British "Home Guard" was originally established in 1940 as the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV). The LDV consisted of middle-aged men (40-65) who were considered too old to fight on the front lines, but volunteered for military service. They were a very loosely-organized and loosely-supported group, originally having no uniforms, and only enough weapons for one out of every ten men. Because of this, men in the LDV resorted to arming themselves with common tools such as pickaxes, spears, crowbars, and even dummy rifles. Men in the LDV were stationed along the coast of Britain in order to defend against a supposedly impending sea-based invasion by Germany, and also at munition factories and other such locations of military importance.

Adolf Hitler referred to the Home Guard as "murder bands", denouncing their legitimacy and attempting to highlight their rag-tag nature. He threatened that the German army would immediately execute any member of the Home Guard who attacked the German forces.

Luckily for the members of the ill-equipped Home Guard, the German invasion never came.
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In retrospect, there are a few things the British government could have done a few things differently in handling the defense of their homeland.

1. Training of the members of the Home Guard was left up to the individual regional commanders. This left the Home Guard extremely incoherent in style and level of preparation, and therefore extremely easy to break down.

2. Since the Home Guard served as Britain's primary defense (because the army was away in other lands fighting for world freedom and such.), it would have made sense to arm them to the teeth. If they were to fall to an invasion, Britain would be done, because in the time that it would take to ship the army back, the German troops would have stomped the British Isles flat.

3. The Home Guard consisted only of men- no women. In retrospect, as bad as it sounds, this was probably a good idea. If all of the interested men and women went off to various parts of the country to defend their homes, tensions and apprehension at home would rise, and morale would plummet soon after. I'm sure you'd freak out if all of your neighbors suddenly went to the nearest military base to defend the Bay Area against an invasion.

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* For more on the defense of the British home front, see Rebecca's post on stationary defense hot air balloons and Christophe's post on air raid sirens.