The idea that, during the Second World War, soldiers of the Red Army were so ill-equipped
that they sometimes had to share one rifle between two is, in reality,
a Hollywood myth. There were almost always enough rifles to go around, though some
were a bit old. But this wasn’t true for every fighting nation.
Some units were so ill-equipped that men raided museums for functioning rifles, while others had
no guns at all. In this video, we count down the five WORST equipped units of the Second World War.
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First up is the Inner Mongolian Army,
a Japanese-allied Chinese and Mongol force that fought in northern China.
In the 1930s, when the Japanese were making military incursions into China,
large parts of the country weren’t under direct government control.
Warlords dominated peripheral regions and fielded armies to reinforce their territorial claims.
One of these peripheries was Inner Mongolia, a region lying south of Mongolia proper and
outside the influence of the Soviet Union. For the Japanese, it was there for the taking.
After defeating their armies in battle, the Imperial Japanese Army incorporated enemy
soldiers into their ranks as auxiliary troops. Han Chinese bandits were thrown in with Mongol
tribesmen and conscripted village irregulars. The conquered groups spoke different languages, had
different customs, and refused to take orders from each other. Discipline was a major issue, as was
supply. Only half of the men carried rifles, while the rest made do with bows, pikes, and swords.
The majority of their equipment was looted, so finding the correct ammunition
was exceptionally difficult. Despite this abysmal situation, the Japanese
frequently ordered the Inner Mongolian Army to attack the Nationalist Chinese.
Of all its component groups, the Mongols distinguished themselves as the most courageous,
but also the least disciplined. They would willingly charge enemy machineguns on horseback,
but would just as readily go on a looting spree across the countryside.
The Inner Mongolian Army never got its supply situation sorted out, and when the Red Army
came in 1945, the soldiers that hadn’t already switched sides were annihilated.
Arms shortages weren’t solely an issue in the Asia-Pacific theatre;
they were just as prevalent in Europe. Nowhere was this more true than Britain,
and for its most poorly armed unit: the Home Guard.
After the British Expeditionary Force’s miraculous escape from Dunkirk in 1940, the entire
British Army was critically short of weapons. Rightfully, they got first dibs on new weapons,
but this meant England’s auxiliary force, the Home Guard, didn’t really get anything. This was
a problem, as the Home Guard were intended to act as a second line of defence in case of invasion.
Winston Churchill planned to raise a force of half a million men over
several months to serve in the Home Guard. Initially called Local Defence Volunteers,
these men had previously been deemed unfit to serve, mostly because they were too old.
The public was behind the idea, and within a week of the call for volunteers,
250,000 men had enlisted. Within two months, 1.5 million had joined.
This placed a massive burden on supply, and before long, people were asked to donate their
hunting weapons and antique rifles to arm Home Guard units. Functioning Great War-era weapons
were also taken from museums and put back into the hands of veterans of Flanders and the Somme.
By late 1940, 739,000 of 1,682,000 volunteers remained unarmed. Churchill declared, “Every
man must have a weapon of some sort, be it only a mace or a pike.” But when units began receiving
their pikes, there was uproar. Parliament doubled-down, with the undersecretary for war,
Lord Croft, stating the pike was “a most effective and silent weapon.”
The public also lamented the Home Guard’s situation.
Noel Coward, a contemporary singer, composed a song about the atrocious supply situation.
It was called “Could you please oblige us with a Bren gun?”
The Home Guard remained critically undersupplied until its disbandment in late 1945. Luckily,
they never had to do any real fighting.
The Brits weren’t the only power re-arming old veterans with their even older rifles.
The Germans were at it too, and the supply situation for their Volkssturm was just as dire.
Set up on the personal request of Adolf Hitler in 1944, the Volkssturm was a
national militia comprising men aged 16 to 60. Its ceremonial chief, Joseph Goebbels,
intended the force to raise morale across the Reich and effectively block the advancing Allies.
In reality, mass conscription of boys and old men
lowered morale, with the Great War veterans sardonically commenting:
joke was that the Volkssturm were only valuable “because its members have silver in their hair,
gold in their mouths, and lead in their bones.”
All available weapons were handed out to Volkssturm units, meaning there was zero
standardisation. A lucky Volkssturmer might get a stamped sheet-metal MP-3008
and an extra magazine, while an unlucky one might get a single-shot panzerfaust or a single grenade.
Fighters often had to familiarise themselves with their weapons while in combat.
Against professional soldiers, they had no chance.
Outside Berlin, many Volkssturm units saw continued fighting as pointless
and surrendered to the Western Allies. None wanted to be taken prisoner by the Soviets.
While the Polish Home Army was technically an underground resistance,
not a third-rate military force, it certainly deserves a mention here.
The Home Army was formed from the remnants of the Polish Army after the joint German and
Soviet invasion. Over time, civilians joined and were trained in clandestine warfare by specialist
officers. At its peak in 1944, the Home Army had between 200,000 and 600,000 members.
Due to a lack of weapons, only small numbers of Home Army personnel could fight conventionally—a
problem they tried hard to fix. Secret workshops designed and manufactured
Błyskawicas, a Polish submachine gun, as well as copies of British Sten guns,
flamethrowers, pistols, anti-tank mines, and grenades. By the time of their most famous
operation, the Warsaw Uprising, only one-sixth of the Home Army’s soldiers were armed. But this
didn’t stop them from inflicting surprisingly high casualties on the occupying Germans.
On August 1st, Home Army operatives across Poland rose up against the Germans as
part of the nation-wide Operation Tempest. Emerging from the sewers all over the city,
armband-toting members of the Home Army liberated virtually all of central Warsaw from the Axis.
The Poles planned to take over key parts of the city then hold out for
the Soviets, who were just a few kilometres away, to rescue them.
But Stalin refused to help. He saw the Home Army as a threat to Soviet-aligned Poland.
Astonishingly, Warsaw remained partly under the control of the Home Army for 63 days,
until the Germans forced them back underground. The Poles fought valiantly, but the Axis had
numbers and weapons on their side. A Wehrmacht report sent after the uprising stated:
“The resistance fought to the very last bullet.”
Thus far, each of these undersupplied units have actually been armed with firearms,
and sometimes fairly good ones. Not so for this last unit, which was by far the most
poorly armed fighting force of the Second World War: Imperial Japan’s Volunteer Fighting Corps.
By April 1945, Japan’s Army and Navy were fighting last ditch battles and sending
out suicide missions in an attempt to force the Allies into accepting surrender terms.
Strapped for resources and with most of the working-age men in the military,
Japan had a very tough time keeping its regular forces supplied. So when the government decided
to raise a civilian militia to fight in the Home Islands, there were no weapons available.
Government officials conscripted all men aged between 15 and 60 and all women aged 17 to 40
to fight in district Volunteer Fighting Corps units. Twenty-eight million were eligible,
but only 2 million had been volunteered before the war ended. On paper, they were armed with an
assortment of rifles and pistols, but in reality, they had to make do with whatever they could find.
Highschool girls were given bits of wood, and old men were issued bamboo poles with
knives tied to one end. If the Allies invaded, the so-called volunteers had one job: suicidal charge.
Japanese government planners knew the Volunteer Fighting Corps would be totally ineffective as
soldiers, but that wasn’t the point. They wanted to force the Allies to kill so many civilians
that they would tire of the bloodshed, accept a conditional surrender, and let Japan's top
war criminals off the hook. The plan even had a name: “The Glorious Death of One Hundred Million.”
Those were five of the most poorly armed units active during the Second World War. But what
do YOU think? Do YOU think the British Home Guard could have stopped a German invasion?
How do YOU think those Great War veterans felt when they were given back their old rifles
and ordered to fight for Germany again? Why do YOU think Stalin
left the Polish Home Army to its fate? Let us know in the comments!