Slovene Home Guard

The Slovene Home Guard (Slovene: Slovensko domobranstvo; German: Slowenische Landeswehr), SD for short, was a World War II Slovenian anti-communist collaborationist auxiliary police force. They were formed from the remains of Village Sentries (Vaške straže), but were much better armed and organised and much more aggressive. It fought mainly against the Slovene Partisans. It was sponsored and armed by the Nazi German forces in Slovenia, and served as an auxiliary anti-guerrilla unit under German command in the Nazi-occupied the Province of Ljubljana between late September 1943 and early May 1945. However, the SD took assistance of Germans rather than the opposite. Although officially under direct German command and without any political autonomy, the SD was closely linked to Slovenian anti-Communist parties and organizations, which provided most of the membership. Its officers and language of command were Slovene. Most of its membership was executed by Yugoslavia's communist authorities after the end of the war, in May and June 1945.

In the Slovenian Littoral, a similar but much smaller unit, called 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) was active in the Upper Carniola between 1944 and 1945. All three "home guard" units were formed almost exclusively by ethnic Slovenes. At their peak, they had a combined membership of around 21,000 men, of whom 15,000 in the Province of Ljubljana, 3,500 in the Julian March and 2,500 in the Upper Carniola.