A national redoubt is a general term for an area to which the (remnant) forces of a nation can be withdrawn if the main battle has been lost—or even beforehand if defeat is considered inevitable. Typically a region is chosen with a geography favouring defence, such as a mountainous area or a peninsula, in order to function as a final hold-out to preserve national independence for the duration of the conflict.
Read more about National Redoubt: France and The Low Countries, China, Nazi Germany, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Austria, Fictional
Famous quotes containing the word national:
“...America has enjoyed the doubtful blessing of a single-track mind. We are able to accommodate, at a time, only one national hero; and we demand that that hero shall be uniform and invincible. As a literate people we are preoccupied, neither with the race nor the individual, but with the type. Yesterday, we romanticized the “tough guy;” today, we are romanticizing the underprivileged, tough or tender; tomorrow, we shall begin to romanticize the pure primitive.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)