Slovene Home Guard

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Slovene Home Guard" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Slovene Home Guard
Slovensko domobranstvo
The symbol of the Slovene Home Guard
Active	1943–1945
Size	about 18,000 at its height (autumn 1944)[1]
Motto(s)	Za Boga, narod in domovino "For God, Nation and Homeland"
Commanders
Notable commanders	Vuk Rupnik Ernest Peterlin Franc Krener
Insignia
Flag

The Slovene Home Guard (Slovene: Slovensko domobranstvo, SD; German: Slowenische Landeswehr) was a Slovene anti-Partisan^[2] collaborationist militia that operated during the 1943–1945 German occupation of the formerly Italian-annexed Slovene Province of Ljubljana.^[3] The Guard consisted of former Village Sentries (Slovene: Vaške straže; Italian: Guardia Civica),^{[4][page needed]} part of Italian-sponsored Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia, re-organized under Nazi command after the Italian Armistice of September 1943.

The Guard had close links with Slovenian right-wing anti-Communist political parties and organizations, which provided most of the membership, receiving assistance from the Germans rather than providing assistance to them.^{[4][page needed]} In the Slovenian Littoral, a similar but much smaller unit, called the Slovenian National Defense Corps (Slovene: Slovensko narodno varnostni zbor, German: Slowenisches Nationales Schutzkorps), more commonly known as the Littoral Home Guard (Slovene: Primorsko domobranstvo) was ideologically and organizationally linked to the SD. An even smaller Upper Carniolan Self-Defense (Slovene: Gorenjska samozaščita, German: Oberkrainer Landschutz), also known as the Upper Carniolan Home Guard (Slovene: Gorenjsko domobranstvo) operated in Upper Carniola between 1944 and 1945. All three "home guard" units comprised almost exclusively ethnic Slovenes. At their peak, they had a combined membership of around 21,000 men, made up of 15,000 in the Province of Ljubljana, 3,500 in the Julian March and 2,500 in Upper Carniola.^{[citation needed]} The officers and the language of command were Slovene.^{[4][page needed]}

Some of the resistance groups outside of the communist-led Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation (OF) were collectively known by the OF as White Guards (Slovene: Bela garda). The British liaison-officers with the Slovene Partisans saw the White Guards as another name for the Home Guards, and declared them enemies of the Allies.