National Redoubt

The Oxford Companion to World War II | 2001 | 700+ words | Copyright

National Redoubt, final Nazi stronghold, so-called by the Allies who probably borrowed the phrase from a redoubt which had been organized in Switzerland. It was said to centre on Hitler's Bavarian mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden. Allen Dulles, the head of the Office of Strategic Services in Berne, warned of its possible existence in September 1944, but this was sceptically received by most intelligence officers. When US troops were diverted away from the drive to Berlin to deal with it, it was found that it did not exist, though Hitler, on 18 April 1945, had, on the spur of the moment, ordered the preparation of a Kernfestung (inner fortress) in the Bavarian Alps which, with the Allies on the verge of victory, was totally impossible to achieve.

The myth of a national redoubt also exercised the minds of many resistance leaders—especially in France and Yugoslavia—and often with disastrous results, as in the Vercors.

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I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT. "National Redoubt." The Oxford Companion to World War II. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT. "National Redoubt." The Oxford Companion to World War II. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O129-NationalRedoubt.html

I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT. "National Redoubt." The Oxford Companion to World War II. 2001. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O129-NationalRedoubt.html

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