The Home Guard : a military and political history /
The extraordinarily popular British television program "Dad's Army" suggests that Britain's Home Guard during the Second World War was home to charming incompetence and lighthearted buffoonery. In 1940, however, the threat of a German invasion of Britain appeared very real. S. P....
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Language Notes: | English. |
| Published: |
Oxford ; New York :
Oxford University Press,
1995.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | The extraordinarily popular British television program "Dad's Army" suggests that Britain's Home Guard during the Second World War was home to charming incompetence and lighthearted buffoonery. In 1940, however, the threat of a German invasion of Britain appeared very real. S. P. MacKenzie's detailed and readable history of the Home Guard offers a new perspective on the men who took up the challenge. Despite its popular image of old men and teenagers playing soldiers, the Home Guard, often as large as the wartime army, became an astonishingly strong political force in its own right. Quite literally the people in arms, it proved able to exert a good deal of influence on policy. The Home Guard was never called upon to fulfil its military role, though there was a brief attempt to resurrect it in the 1950s. Since then it has been largely neglected by military historians and there have been few serious examinations of the part it played in the Home Front. This book fills that gap. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xiv, 262 pages) : illustrations |
| Format: | Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-253) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780191676789 0191676780 9786610801534 6610801533 1280801530 9781280801532 |