Home guard

A Zemessardze (Latvian National Guardsman) guards the battalion tactical operations center during the Strong Guard 2016 (Zobens 2016) distinguished visitor's day.

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 historic 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

• Swedish Home Guard, (1940–)
• Norwegian Home Guard (1946–)
• Danish Home Guard (1949–)
• Indian Home Guard (1962–)
• Sri Lankan Home Guard (1986–)
• Estonian Defence League (1918–1940, 1990–)
• Latvian National Guard (1991–)
• Lithuanian National Defence Volunteer Forces (1991–)
• State defense forces of State governments and Territory governments in the United States (1917–)
• Polish Territorial Defense Force (2017–)

Historical

• Home Guard (Unionist), during the American Civil War
• Confederate Home Guard (1861–1865) during the American Civil War
• Croatian Home Guard, several historic military formations during 19th and 20th century
• Home Guard (Austria) (Heimwehr) (1920–1938) paramilitary unit of Fatherland Front Party
• Home Guard (United Kingdom) (1940–1944)
• Home Guard (New Zealand) (1940–1943)
• 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)
• Slovene Home Guard (1943–1945)
• Volkssturm Nazi Germany (1944-1945)
• Volunteer Defence Corps (Australia) (1940-1944)
• Home Service Force, British force for the 1980s-90s.

Other

• Home Guard (Shannara), in Terry Brooks' novel series
• Home Guard potato, A variety of first early potato

See also

• Civil Guard (disambiguation)
• Home Army (Armia Krajowa), Poland, World War II
• Boeitai, a Japanese home guard force of World War II
• Kaitseliit, Estonian Defence League
• Local Defence troops (Finland)
• Militia
• Ordenanças, Portuguese home guard from 1570 to 1831
• Omakaitse, Estonian Home Guard in World War II
• State defense forces, home guards of individual U.S. states
• United States Guards
• Volkssturm, German Home Guard in World War II
• Wachdienst, an auxiliary organisation erected by the Third Reich in Germany during the last months of World War II