As the “Phoney War” ended in June 1940 with the French government’s capitulation to Germany, Britain was faced with the very real prospect of Nazi occupation. The overstretched and woefully underprepared British Expeditionary Force had taken blow after blow throughout the ill-fated campaign to defend France. Even the later-immortalized evacuation of Allied troops by sympathetic fishermen at Dunkirk appeared in contemporary consciousness as an example of the rudderless British military situation.

This rapidly accelerated set of events punctured the British public’s morale, expecting something of a return to 1918 — as did the realization that the British Army was incapable of overwhelming the highly adept German war machine.

In this context of total disruption, the secretary of state for war, Anthony Eden, appealed over the radio for the establishment of a civilian organization that could mount an armed defense of British soil. Following the chaos of Dunkirk, four hundred thousand people between the ages of fifteen and forty-five put their names forward to join the organization which soon became known as the Home Guard.