Home Guard plans for burning oil on invasion beaches

Did the Home Guard plan to ignite oil on landing beaches as German troops came ashore?

Yes, burning oil was among the defensive ideas described, alongside a determination to use whatever measures seemed necessary to stop an invasion.

Burning oil on landing beaches is accepted as one of many Home Guard defensive ideas. First World War experience and the threat to families help explain the willingness to use extreme measures. That determination is portrayed as alarming even to regular British forces. Clarke judges that some proposed methods might have been called war crimes under definitions written after the war; this is his retrospective assessment of the plans.