National Redoubt

His region embraced much of the suspected National Redoubt.

They were almost viewed as a 'national redoubt,' permitting the survival and rebuilding of forces if Belgium was again invaded.

Amsterdam would function as a national redoubt or reduit, as the last stronghold of the Netherlands.

The only thing he knew about a national redoubt, he said, was something he had read in a Swiss newspaper the previous January.

"National redoubt"

The "National Redoubt" consisted of four defensive lines:

The National Redoubt was a way to preserve at least part of Swiss territory in the event of an invasion.

They would be held hostage to leverage peace deals, including claims that they would be held at a national redoubt in the Alps.

The next day he left for southern Bavaria, in the expectation that Hitler would make his last stand in the "National Redoubt" in the alpine areas.

The "national redoubt," as the chain of citadels is called, was at the core of Switzerland's belief that its national will had steered it unscathed through the war.

Despite widespread support for the national redoubts, morale was sometimes difficult, said Maurice Lovisa, who has been advising the Swiss Defense Department on the underground fortresses.

A national redoubt is an area to which the remnant forces of a nation can be withdrawn if the main battle has been lost, or beforehand if defeat is considered inevitable.

At the end of World War II he intended to flee to Mauterndorf, the "castle of his youth", in what was meant to be the Alpine national redoubt.

The French were aware that the Swiss were fortifying their National Redoubt in the high Alps that would bar most invasion routes, but the French command thought it prudent to undertake their own measures.

In case of a violation of neutrality by Germany, the strategy of the Army Command was to fall back on the Water Line, which formed part of Fortress Holland, the Dutch national redoubt and to await Allied assistance from France and the United Kingdom.

Construction of a chain of forts along the border was intensified, and let to a series of very modern fortifications, including the so-called "National redoubt" at Antwerp, at Liège and Namur, many of them designed by the great Belgian fortress architect, Henri Alexis Brialmont.

Is it not profoundly ironic that the EU was created to ensure that this did not happen again, though arguably it is less the EU than the fact that Europe leaders (if that is not a misnomer) have retreated into their national redoubts, that will prolong the current crisis.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War in 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 utilized.