The final stage of the Second World War, with the enemy across the
Reich's borders, saw final desperate battles for numerous "fortified
places" and blocking positions. Hitler ordered the defense of these
fortified places such as Königsberg and Breslau, Wesel and Kolberg,
Danzig, Posen and many others. In these isolated bastions the war-weary
German units offered desperate resistance, offered for good purpose.
This stubborn holding-on to the last round saved hundreds of thousands
of women and children, made possible the evacuation of hospitals and the
transport out of surrounded Wehrmacht female auxiliaries. The fates of
German soldiers were realized in bunkers and caves, in tunnels and
fields of rubble. In the Hürtgenwald as in the Reichswald, during the
crossing of the Rhine between Wesel and Emmerich, in the Remagen
bridgehead, on the hill at Keppeln, in the Ruhr pocket, as well as in
the east of the Reich in the East Prussian pocket, in Pomerania, in
Silesia and in the Reich capital. Shocking scenes of apocalyptic battle
were played out wherever Hitler's last bastions held out against the
onrushing enemy, whether at the frontiers of the Reich or inside Germany
itself.