In the later stages of World War II, the German army found itself increasingly on the defensive, facing the prospect of being attacked from both sides on its own soil by the Soviet army and the Allies.
To draw the attention of the Allies and the Soviet army away from Germany itself, Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels vigorously publicized the creation of a so-called Alpine Fortress within Austria. This fortress supposedly contained enormous arms factories, with hundreds of thousands of elite young Nazis gathered in the mountains for training. All of Germany's gold reserves were to be transferred there, and the Führer would abandon Germany proper and shift the focus of the offensive to the Alps, and so on.
Goebbels's propaganda did indeed fool Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Allies immediately redirected their main offensive into the Alps, away from Germany itself. Stalin, however, was not deceived.
The Soviet Union's goal was to be the first to storm Berlin and capture Hitler. Only after the Allies broke through the so-called Alpine Fortress did they discover that, apart from some props Goebbels had used to create an impression, there was not even a single piece of gold there. Hitler had not retreated to the Alpine Fortress either.
Although Hitler had been a subject of the Habsburgs, once he rose to the position of Führer, he was no longer the leader of a democratic system.
After the Battle of Kursk, the Germans began constructing the Alpine Fortress. They did indeed relocate important industries to the Alps. By the middle and latter half of 1944, as the front lines collapsed, the Germans began pulling back their best troops, especially the SS, into the Alps to prepare their defenses in advance.
They also withdrew hundreds of thousands of troops from Norway, stockpiling heaps of