National redoubt

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A national redoubt is a general term for an area to which the (remnant) forces of a nation can be withdrawn if the main battle has been lost — or even beforehand if defeat is considered to be inevitable anyway. Typically a region is chosen with a geography favouring defence, such as a mountainous area or a peninsula, in order to function as a final hold-out to preserve national independence for the duration of the conflict.

1 France and the Low Countries
2 China
3 Nazi Germany
- 3.1 SS General Gottlob Berger's claims
4 See also
5 References

[edit] France and the Low Countries

From the middle of the 19th century until 1914 the fortress city of Antwerp was the official National Redoubt of Belgium; until 1940 the "Fortress Holland" that of The Netherlands, although in neither case did the "redoubt" prove defensible (Fortress Holland did, however, manage to stop the advances of mainly French troops during 1672, providing the Dutch with much-needed time to eventually gain the upper hand). In the same year Brittany was briefly considered as such in the last stages of the Fall of France, but again proved impractical.

[edit] China

During the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II, the city of Kunming was prepared as a national redoubt in case the temporary capital in Chongqing fell, an elaborate system of underground caves to serve as offices, barracks and factories was prepared but never utilised.

Kunming was again to have served again in this role during the ensuing Chinese civil war, but the Nationalist garrison changed sides and joined the Communists. Instead, Taiwan became the last redoubt and home of the Nationalist government, a role which continues to this day.^[1]

[edit] Nazi Germany

A 1945 U.S. Army map showing the possible extent of the German WWII National Redoubt

In 1945 "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.

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.^[2]

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 of the 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.

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 intelligence service of the SS, 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).

[edit] SS General Gottlob Berger's claims

SS General, Generalleutnant Gottlob Berger, who was put in charge of all German run POW camps in 1944 until the end of the war was arrested at the end of the war and put on trial in the Ministries Trial in 1947. In 1948 Berger gave details to an American judge in Nuremberg of Hitler's plans to hold 35,000 Allied prisoners hostage in a 'national redoubt' (or 'last redoubt') in the Bavarian mountains. He claimed that if a peace deal was not forthcoming, Hitler had ordered that the hostages were to be executed. Many allied POWs were marched towards Stalag VII-A at Moosburg in Bavaria in the final months of the war in what was known as The March. Berger claimed that on 22 April 1945 Hilter had signed orders to this effect regarding the 35,000 hostages and the orders were passed onto him by Eva Braun but he decided to stall and not carry out the order.^[3]