Could the British Home Guard have repelled an invasion by German paratroopers?
As others have stated the major problem the German army had with invading Britain was not the British army. That was in a poor state and had left most of its kit on the beaches at Dunkirk. The invasion needed the destruction of the RAF and The Royal Navy. Any invasion force heading into the channel would have had the British Fleet steaming out of Rosyth and Scapa Flow. Later in the war it would become obvious that capital ships where very vulnerable to air attack, but the ships would have been sailing under some protection from the RAF. The reason the Germans fought the Battle of Britain was so they would be free to attack the British fleet when the invasion started. So if we take the RAF and the Royal Navy out of the equation, General Student’s Paratroops would later prove themselves against regular British soldiers capturing Crete in May 1941. They had recently scored a great success in capturing the Belgian fort of Eben Emael. Later in the war they would show themselves to be an eli
