Guard Corps (Haganah)

The Haganah’s Guard Force was based on older members and assigned to the static defense of settlements during World War II, in contrast to the Field Force, whose younger members, up to age 35, trained for active defense.[1] In the first phase of the War of Independence, the formation identified as Ḥim, or Heil Mishmar, likewise carried responsibility for static defense alongside the Haganah’s mobilized units and active reserves.[2]

Settlement defense also involved Jewish auxiliary police formations established under British authority in 1936, most of whose guards were Haganah members.[4] These guards were known as notrim, from noter, meaning “guard”; reserve members were also called mushba’im, or “sworn men.”[4] Their official police status gave them access to government-issued arms and training, while their Haganah connections linked them to the wider Jewish defense organization.[4][5]

The Haganah’s static force, the Jewish Settlement Police, and the Mobile Guard represented different organizational arrangements rather than interchangeable names for a single corps.[4][6] Together, their histories encompass local settlement protection, mobile road security, police training, and the transition from Jewish communal defense to the Israel Defense Forces.[4]

Organized Jewish guarding preceded the Haganah: Bar Giora was founded in 1907 with goals that included guarding Jewish communities, and in 1909 it became the organized unit Hashomer Eretz Israel.[7] Members of Hashomer were among the Haganah’s first recruits after its establishment in 1920.[7] The Haganah was established in June 1920 to defend the Jewish community.[8]

An Ahdut HaAvoda conference at Kinneret in June 1920, which continued through June 15, adopted a resolution requiring members to comply with the defense committee’s calls.[8] Following the disturbances of 1921 and 1929, the organization was assigned responsibility during the 1930s for defending the entire Jewish community in the country.[9] In 1931, responsibility for the Haganah passed to the Jewish Agency and the National Council, which established a national command with three representatives from the political right and three from the left.[8]

Before the introduction of Jewish settlement police in 1936, rural defense relied on sealed settlement armouries.[10] During an attack, settlers gathered at a fortified house and alerted the nearest police by telephone or signal; weapons were made available when police arrived.[10] The need to obtain weapons also shaped clandestine Haganah activity: during the 1929 riots in Haifa, Manya Shohet transported machine guns and rifles in a truck disguised as an ambulance.[7] When a British officer demanded a search, she cut her companion’s arms and forehead with a pocket knife and persuaded the officer to escort them to hospital.[7]

The Arab revolt beginning in 1936 brought a new arrangement for settlement protection.[3] In May, British authorities agreed to recruit Jews as supernumerary police to defend settlements and assist the police.[4] Between April and October 1936, the Jewish Supernumerary Police enlisted 3,000 volunteers.[5] The Haganah encouraged members to join for weapons training, and the arrangements also gave it access to weapons stored for settlement defense.[5]

Each settlement was authorized to recruit a fixed number of full-time guards, typically four, and to train additional reserves.[4] The government supplied the full-time guards with rifles, ammunition, and uniforms; by late 1936, nearly every Jewish settlement had trained and armed men standing guard at night.[4] The guards protected settlements and assisted Haganah units with defense and the transportation of weapons and ammunition.[3]

The Haganah’s own command structure continued to develop: in 1939, its national command created a General Staff headed by a chief of staff, and its aims were explicitly defined in 1941.[8] The Palmach, established in 1941 as a mobilized Haganah formation, was another named force distinct from settlement policing.[1] During World War II, the division between an older Guard Force and a younger Field Force provided a separate organizational basis for static and active defense within the Haganah itself.[1]

The settlement-police scheme introduced in 1936 divided Jewish supernumerary police into four categories: active personnel, reserves available at short notice, reserves available on 24 hours’ notice, and a further reserve intended to reinforce the other categories.[10] Initially, the government and Jewish Agency each paid half the active personnel’s wages; subsequently, the government paid the full cost of category A and of other categories called into active service.[10]

Paid personnel in categories A, B, and C reached a peak of 2,700 in 1937, when Jewish settlements had 3,746 rifles and 596 Greener guns available for defense.[10] Members of the Jewish Settlement Police served a minimum six-month paid term, and some subsequently left police service and served in the Haganah.[6]

Early settlement guarding was largely static: in 1936–38, guards fired from behind settlement defenses toward the apparent source of attacks and summoned British troops.[5] Their responsibilities nevertheless broadened to protecting agricultural areas outside settlements, patrolling roads, and ambushing insurgents.[4] They also guarded railway sections in predominantly Jewish areas.[5] From March 1937, the Notrim were authorized to pursue fleeing armed groups, and in summer 1937 they were formally placed under British Army command and training.[5]

Mobile patrols initially operated on foot and later used cars, including armored vehicles, to patrol roads, clear mines, and escort agricultural workers.[3] By 1938, neighboring settlements had been grouped into blocks, and most full-time guards were organized into the Mobile Guard, or Mishmar Na.[4] These units secured roads and responded to attacks across their areas, while settlement “Specials” remained responsible for immediate local defense until the mobile units arrived.[4]

A September 1938 review replaced the four-category system with temporary additional police and special constables organized into companies, groups, and settlement units.[10] British police inspectors commanded the companies, and police officers supervised training.[10] Of the 1,279 temporary additional police recorded in December 1938, 470 formed a mobile reserve patrolling Jewish lands within their group areas.[10] The Jewish Agency supplied the vehicles, while the government paid for maintenance, repairs, and fuel.[10]

By spring 1939, there were 62 mobile Notrim patrols, each numbering eight to ten members.[5] These patrols had exclusive responsibility for covering the Haifa–Lydda railway, and each company had a Jewish second-in-command nominated by the Jewish Agency.[5] Jewish police also served as guides, scouts, and interpreters during operations, and some Jewish police sergeants eventually commanded patrols.[5]

By the end of 1939, settlement defense had been formalized under the Jewish Settlement Police, consolidating about 1,300 full-time notrim into 12 regional units called “battalions,” though their size and structure were closer to companies.[4] These units conducted mobile patrols and supervised settlement reserve guards.[4]

In June 1941, general defense preparations brought an increase of 1,790 men in the Jewish Settlement Police establishment, raising it to 2,863 temporary additional police; the special-constable establishment rose to 15,818.[10] A reduction initiated in March 1945, as the external threat diminished, took effect by the end of that year, with establishments of 1,650 temporary additional police and 12,800 special constables.[10] These were authorized establishment figures, not necessarily the numbers actually serving at a particular moment.[10]

On February 28, 1938, the guards of Tirat Zvi resisted an estimated 40–100 attackers in a battle lasting nearly three hours.[4] Despite being outnumbered and facing attackers carrying numerous explosive devices, they repelled repeated attempts to enter the isolated kibbutz.[4] Across the 1936–1939 revolt, 98 notrim were killed in action.[4]

Police service provided an important training channel for the Haganah.[6] Most members of Yitzhak Sadeh’s Haganah strike force, FOSH, had received Jewish Supernumerary Police training.[5] During the revolt, selected Haganah units also received British-officer training, arranged through the Jewish Agency, in public-security work, guarding vulnerable points, and guerrilla warfare.[10] The Haganah played a substantial part in resisting attacks on Jewish property during those years.[10]

A contemporary estimate divided the Haganah into three branches under central control and territorial commands: a static force of settlers and townspeople estimated at 40,000, a mobile field army estimated at 16,000, and the full-time Palmach, estimated at 2,000 in peacetime and 6,000 in wartime.[6] For the first phase of the War of Independence, the separate figure reported for Ḥim was 32,000 registered members, without a specific date attached to that count.[2]

The notrim continued operating until the end of the Mandate.[4] When the War of Independence began, their units, weapons, and vehicles were incorporated into six nascent IDF brigades.[4] The IDF was established by order of the interim government on May 26, 1948; its formation order prohibited any other armed force.[11] The Haganah’s General Command became the IDF’s first General Command, and the new military initially built most of its divisions on the Haganah’s existing structure.[11] Over the following six months, the Palmach was disbanded while Lehi and Etzel merged into the IDF.[11]

The exact English title “Guard Corps” is not established as the formal name of a distinct Haganah organization in the material available here; the documented terms include Guard Force and Ḥim, or Heil Mishmar.[1][2] The Notrim were formally under British authority and should not be equated institutionally with the Haganah’s static-defense branch, despite extensive overlapping membership.[4][6]

Contemporary strength figures also require care: the three-branch estimates came from military authorities, while the Haganah’s secret character prevented a precise membership count in the Mandate administration’s assessment.[6][10] Its reported overall membership estimates ranged from tens of thousands to 80,000, and levels of training varied among members.[10] Those estimates describe the wider Haganah, not a verified total for a formally named Guard Corps.[10]