Nevertheless, the National Redoubt had serious military and political consequences. Once the Anglo-American armies had crossed the Rhine and advanced into western Germany a decision had to be made whether to advance on a narrow front towards Berlin or in a simultaneous push by all Western armies spanning from the
North Sea to the
Alps. America's most aggressive commander,
Third Army head General
George S. Patton in General
Omar Bradley's centrally located
Twelfth Army Group, had advocated a narrow front ever since D-Day, and did so again; likewise at this point British
21st Army Group chief Field Marshal
Bernard Montgomery in the north, each lobbying to be the decisive spearhead. Cautious Allied commander in chief U.S. General
Dwight Eisenhower, however, resisted both. Ultimately, this broad front strategy left the
Seventh Army of General
Jacob L. Devers' southern
Sixth Army Group in a position at war's end to race south through Bavaria into Austria to prevent German entrenchment in any mountain redoubt and cut off alpine passes to Nazi escape.
When the American armies penetrated Bavaria and western Austria at the end of April, they met little organized resistance, and the National Redoubt was shown to have been a myth.
[1]
The Alpine Fortress was one of three reasons[
which?] associated with SHAEF's movement of forces towards southern Germany rather than towards Berlin, which was planned to be in the
Soviet Zone of Occupation, and the
battle for which would have entailed unacceptably high Western Allied casualties.