Britain raises the Home Guard
1940 · Event
A radio appeal for Local Defence Volunteers brings 250,000 men in a week — veterans, boys and reserved-occupation workers drilling with shotguns, pikes and eventually rifles. A quarter of a million more follow; invasion, for the first time since Napoleon, is a household expectation.
On these timelines: England, 1940: Britain's Darkest Hour, United Kingdom (combined), World War II, Master
More from England
- English Bill of Rights (1689)
- Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain (450)
- Roman conquest of Britain (43)
- Victorian era (1837)
- Domesday Book (1086)
- Reign of William the Conqueror (1066)
- Acts of Union 1707 (1707)
- Battle of Hastings (1066)
Around 1940
- Berlin Airlift (1948)
- Battle of Stalingrad (1942)
- Apartheid (1948)
- Indian independence and Partition (1947)
- Manhattan Project (1942)
- Korean War (1950)
- Battle of Britain (1940)
- Spanish Civil War (1936)
- Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany (1933)
- Chinese Civil War (resumed) (1945)