[ex-snook]

"The myth of the Nazi “Redoubt” in the Bavarian Alps was one of the greatest intelligence failures of the war."

Maybe it was at some level. At the front line level, we made no special anticipations. What we saw was the Germans dropping resistance to us to concentrate on the advancing Russians. The Germans were quite willing to let us take over territory. We waited on the Austrian border for the Russians to advance, based on some higher level political deal. We regarded to biggest intelligence failure was the Battle of the Budge.

[colorado tanker]

Oddly, failure to get early warning of the Ardennes offensive figured in Allied (American) thinking on the Redoubt. Because Hitler had ordered no radio traffic about the Ardennes we had no Ultra intercepts about it. The fact that we had no Ultra on the Redoubt was viewed as evidence the Germans were going to do it. Not so this time.

My understanding is hundreds of thousands of German troops and civilians were pouring into Bavaria at the time, not to main a Redoubt, but to avoid the Red Army.