Introduction
The Nazi retreat to a fortress in the Bavarian Alps in 1945 never really happened. It was seriously considered by those in the German high command who wanted to go on fighting, either in Germany or elsewhere, or those who didn’t want to die in Berlin. But Hitler forbade it. The Allied command was divided about the seriousness of the threat. Some were concerned that a large German army holed up in the mountains would be almost impossible to root out without incurring large numbers of American casualties, while others thought that the whole idea was a fantasy. This worry impacted on Allied strategy, including having some influence on the decision to not send the U.S. Army to take Berlin ahead of the Russians. Instead, the Allies concentrated on cutting off large numbers of Germans, thus keeping them from reaching their presumed mountain sanctuary. Berlin was left to the Russians. They took it after desperate and bloody fighting and then savaged the town and the city’s population in an orgy of rape and murder. Hitler died in the ruins and his remains were taken by the Russians where they kept them hidden for decades.
The United States was war-weary and there was still the planned invasion of Japan to contend with. Battles in the Pacific had convinced the U.S. leaders that invading Japan would be a bloodbath. Thus, the war with Germany had to be concluded as soon as possible so that the full power of the United States military could be concentrated against it. The idea of a Nazi-led German army holding out in the mountains for months, perhaps years, horrified Allied leaders.
The German high command’s idea for the redoubt was not to win the war; that was no longer possible. They wanted the cult of Nazism to survive, along with themselves, of course. Hitler wished to die in Berlin and he did, but it was his potential heirs who wanted to go to the mountains. There they wished to exact enough American blood so that the U.S. would negotiate a peace that left at least a small version of Nazi Germany intact.
Hitler did not change his mind about the redoubt until April 18, 1945, when it was far too late to implement.
But what if he had ordered the development of the redoubt just after the failure of his attack in the Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge? A mad dash to the mountains would have occurred. Hard and bitter fighting would have resulted as the Nazis did their best to convert the Alps into an impregnable citadel. Would the U.S. have negotiated an end to the war in Europe in order to end the killing? FDR was dead and Churchill had been voted out of office by a war-weary British population. Who knows what might have happened? And what if the United States began to fear that the Germans actually did possess at least one atomic bomb along with the means to deliver it? Pressure for peace would have been intense. The horrors of the death camps were only just being discovered, and many still doubted the extent of the killings.
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As I have done in previous novels regarding Nazi Germany, I have chosen to use the English equivalents instead of the overlapping and often confusing German and Nazi system of ranks. It’s just easier.
Many outstanding histories have been written about the closing months of World War II in Europe and some days I think I’ve read all of them. The most recent is Rick Atkinson’s magnificent The Guns At Last Light, and I’ve shamelessly borrowed a number of facts from that work.
To the best of my knowledge, there was no 105th Infantry Division active in World War II. Therefore, all characters from that unit are fictitious, including the commanding generals.
Robert Conroy