National Redoubt
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The National Redoubt was the English term used to describe the possibility that Adolf Hitler and armed forces of Nazi Germany would make a last stand in the alpine areas of Austria, Bavaria and northern Italy in the closing months of World War II in Europe. In German this concept was called the Alpenfestung (Alpine Fortress). Although there was some German military planning for a stand in the Alpine region, it was never fully endorsed by Hitler and no serious attempt was made to put the plan into operation. Nevertheless it was taken sufficiently seriously by the western Allies to lead them to divert their military operations in early 1945 to the south, thus allowing the Soviet forces to capture Berlin.
In the six months following the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944, the American and British armies advanced to the Rhine and seemed poised to strike into the heart of Germany, while the Soviet Army, advancing from the east through Poland, reached the Oder. It seemed likely that Berlin would soon fall and Germany be cut in half. In these circumstances, it occurred both to some leading figures in the German regime and to the Allies that the logical thing for the Germans to do would be to move the government to the mountainous areas of southern Germany and Austria, where a relatively small number of determined troops could hold out for some time.
Some Germans expected that the Soviets and the western powers would soon come to blows when their armies met in the centre of Germany, and believed that if there was still a German government functioning in the south it could come to terms with one side or the other.
According to a number of intelligence reports to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF), this area, which they dubbed the National Redoubt, held stores of foodstuffs and military supplies built up over the preceding six months, and could even be harbouring armaments production facilities. Within this fortified terrain, they said, Hitler would be able to evade the Allies and cause tremendous difficulties for the occupying Allied forces throughout Germany.
SHAEF received reports that German military, government and Nazi Party offices and their staffs were leaving Berlin for the area around Berchtesgaden, the site of Hitler's retreat in the Bavarian Alps. These reports said that most of the German ministries had moved staffs into this area during February and early March, by which time few departments were still operating in Berlin.
These reports found their way into the popular press in the last months of the war. Time wrote in February 1945:
- But what of the top Nazis who cannot hide? With a compact army of young SS and Hitler Youth fanatics, they will retreat, behind a loyal rearguard cover of Volksgrenadiere and Volksstürmer, to the Alpine massif which reaches from southern Bavaria across western Austria to northern Italy. There immense stores of food and munitions are being laid down in prepared fortifications. If the retreat is a success, such an army might hold out for years.[1]
The Allies' belief in the National Redoubt was fostered by German propaganda. Joseph Goebbels, the minister for propaganda, set up a special unit to invent and spread rumours about an Alpenfestung. Goebbels also sent out rumours to neutral governments, thus keeping the Redoubt myth alive and its state of readiness unclear. He enlisted the assistance of the military security organisation, the SD, to produce faked blueprints and reports on construction supplies, armament production and troop transfers to the Redoubt. For Germans, the Redoubt became part fantasy and part official deception plan.
The problem with the National Redoubt as a serious plan was that the heart of the German government was Adolf Hitler, and he never endorsed the plan. Without Hitler's approval, the Redoubt could never become a serious threat to the Allies. Although Hitler issued an order on April 24 for the evacuation of remaining government personnel from Berlin to the Redoubt, he made it clear that he would not leave Berlin himself, even if it fell to the Soviets, as it did on April 30. Without Hitler there was no Nazi Germany, and once Hitler was dead few Germans, even dedicated Nazis, saw any point in fighting on. When the American armies penetrated Bavaria and western Austria at the end of April, they met little serious resistance, and the National Redoubt was shown to have been a myth.
Nevertheless the National Redoubt had serious military and political consequences. Once the Anglo-American armies had crossed the Rhine and advanced into western Germany, they had to decide whether to advance on a narrow front towards Berlin, or on a broad front, with a view to securing both the North Sea coast and southern Germany before advancing further. The British commander, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, had consistently advocated a narrow front ever since D-Day, and did so again at this point. But the Allied commander in chief, U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower, took a more cautious view, and the broad front strategy prevailed.
Goebbels' deception plan over the Redoubt was one of the great successes of German intelligence during World War II, albeit one that came too late to alter the outcome of the war. The Allied intelligence services were completely fooled by Goebbels' false trail of rumours. The historian Stephen E. Ambrose, who has written important books about Eisenhower and the Second World War in Europe, has described the intelligence reports supplied to SHAEF about the Redoubt as one of "the worst intelligence reports of all time, but no one knew that in March of 1945, and few even suspected it."
As a result of Eisenhower's decision to move his forces towards southern Germany rather than towards Berlin, the Soviets were able to capture the city on April 30. There is no doubt that the belief in the National Redoubt significantly influenced Eisenhower's decision. One of his subordinates, General Omar Bradley, later wrote that the Redoubt "grew into so exaggerated a scheme that I am astonished we could have believed it as innocently as we did. But while it persisted, this legend of the Redoubt was too ominous a threat to be ignored." SHAEF nominated concern about the Redoubt as one of three reasons the Allies decided to shift their main thrust away from Berlin to Southern Germany in April 1945. (The others were the knowledge that Berlin had already been assigned to the Soviet zone in the future Allied-occupied Germany, and the belief that taking Berlin by storm would entail unacceptably high Allied casualties.)
