Reduit

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Redoubt. (Discuss) Proposed since March 2012.

A reduit in the German fortress of Mainz.

A reduit is a fortified structure such as a citadel or a keep into which the defending troops can retreat when the outer defences are breached.^[1] The term is also used to describe an area of a country, which either through a ring of heavy fortifications or through enhancing through fortification the defences offered by natural features such a mountains which will be defended even when the rest of the county is occupied by a hostile power.^[2]

National reduit

The Antwerp forts, Belgium's Réduit national

In English the term National Redoubt is fairly commonly used. A redoubt is an outlying fortification, so its use to describe the Nazi's National Redoubt in the German and Austrian Alps is an accurate description.^[2] However another term that is sometimes used in English and more frequently used in French is national reduit (Réduit national) to describe the holding of the centre of a country while abandoning outlying territory.

Examples of this usage are:

• Réduit national, a ring of forts built around Antwerp built between 1859–1914, was to be Belgium's national redoubt.
• Réduit suisse was a strategy by which the Swiss would first seek to hold an invading army on the border; if that failed to launch a delaying war that would allow the bulk of Swiss forces to withdraw to a defensible perimeter in the Swiss Alps, and there to defend that mountain stronghold.^[3]

Notes

External links

• Fortifications open to the public as museums