THE STRATEGY OF THE SECURITY SERVICE OF THE THIRD REICH FOR KEEPING HIGH-RANKING PRISONERS IN THE “ALPINE FORTRESS” AND ITS IMPACT ON POST-WAR INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Abstract

The article examines a layer of questions related to the issue of the use by the security service of the Third Reich of the strategy of capturing and keeping high-ranking hostages from occupied countries in special institutions for VIP prisoners, some of which were located on the territory of the “Alpine Fortress”. This topic is a “white spot” on the background of research in the field of world history, because there is a rather limited amount of research carried out by German, American and English historians. Despite their undeniable value for science, these studies were carried out to highlight a clearly defined range of questions, which, however, do not give an idea of ​​the problem as a whole. At the same time, the purpose of this article is to focus on the implementation of a comprehensive approach to the study of this problem and the formation of a global view of the strategy of the Third Reich to keep VIP-prisoners on the territory of the “Alpine Fortress”. The main tasks are the description of the process of creating two separate specialized prisons, the verification of those VIP prisoners who passed through them and the outline of a possible global strategy of the leadership of the Third Reich for keeping high-ranking prisoners. Based on the results of the tasks set, the article reconstructs the ways of implementing the mentioned strategy, identifies its executors from among the servicemen of the SS and SD, and determines its impact on postwar international relations. The article emphasizes that the global strategy of the Reich's leadership is characterized by situationism and ill-consideredness. The Nazis invested great resources in the process of converting castles and hotels into prisons for VIP prisoners and provided them with reliable security. At the same time, it is extremely difficult to determine whether the German leadership had specific plans for what to do with VIP prisoners. However, no matter how paradoxical it may sound, it was the ill-conceivedness of this strategy that made it possible to create the prerequisites for phenomenal events that preserved for Europe and the world outstanding political and military figures who had considerable influence on their post-war system.