Word: bastion
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Kesselring could play the role the Nazis may want him to play. He could surrender the bulk of the armies in the west, then plead that he had no control over Nazi-led fanatics. From their southern bastion, the Nazis could blame the final blowup on leading Army figures...
...prongs cut up from Hungary and down from Silesia, ripping toward the Bohemian bastion. In three months Colonel General Johannes Friessner had sacrificed four of his eleven armored divisions to drive the Russians back from the southern entrances to this natural fortress...
Protecting the Bastion. Under "Smiling Albert" Kesselring, the Germans still had 27 good divisions fighting General Mark Clark's armies in Italy. No doubt they wanted to hold northern Italy's crops and factories as long as possible, but above all, the Nazis wanted to keep the Allies away from the Alps-the southern wall of their bastion-until the battle of northern Germany is over...
...mountain-girt Bohemia) they had 30 German and 20 Hungarian divisions. Fighting Marshal Tito's forces in Yugoslavia they had ten more. The only sane military explanation for this spreading-out of force was a desperate Nazi desire to keep the Allies away from those approaches to the bastion...
Building the Bastion. Meanwhile, the Nazis went ahead with preparations for their last stand. In Bolzano and Klagenfurt concentrations of 55 troops were reported, and work was being rushed on fortifications. Hitler's own Berchtesgaden was said to be another strongpoint. According to the stories reaching neutral capitals, the mountains around the Nazi strongpoints now bristle with defense works, repair shops, arms and munition depots. The caves of the ancient salt mines around Königs-See have been converted into subterranean hangars and air-dromes; into factories making guns, planes and synthetic gasoline...