to leverage peace deals, including claims that they would be held at a national redoubt in the Alps. This claim was backed up by SS General Gottlob Berger, who was appointed general commander of POW camps during 1944. Berger stated during his trial for war crimes (1948), that Hitler had considered a threat to execute 35,000 POWs, unless the Allies agreed to a peace deal. Similarly, SS chief Heinrich Himmler had made similar plans, centred on the Baltic coastal region and set up a new headquarters in a castle on the Bay of Lübeck. Main evacuation routes to the west Robert Schirmer was the Red Cross delegate in northern Germany when the evacuation of POW camps was taking place. His situation report was received in London and Washington on 18 February 1945. He is likely to have seen a group of marchers on the road in Pomerania. He had knowledge of the overall POW situation in Germany, and his report described three main POW evacuation routes to the west: The "northern route", included POWs from Stalag XX-B, Stalag XX-A and Stalag Luft IV. Many of the men in Stalag Luft VI, the camp closest to the Russian advance, were transported to Stalag XX-A by train in July 1944, and so took part in the evacuation from there. (This is the group that included Dixie Deans.) Schirmer estimated that 100,000 POWs took the northern route. It went to Stalag Luft IV at Gross Tychow, Pomerania then via Stettin to Stalag XI-B and Stalag 357 at Fallingbostel. Some prisoners were marched from here at the end of the war towards Lübeck, however, for most, Fallingbostel was their final destination. The route involved crossing the River Oder and the Elbe. In interpreting Schirmer's description, Nichol and Rennell emphasise that the various groups of POWs were distributed across an area of more than , with some still far behind on roads to the west of Danzig (Gdansk): so the reality was much less organised than it might first appear. A "central route", started at Stalag Luft 7 at Bankau, near Kreuzburg in Silesia (now Poland), via Stalag 344 (formerly and usually known as Stalag VIII-B) at Lamsdorf, to Stalag VIII-A at Görlitz, then ending at Stalag III-A at Luckenwalde, south of Berlin. The "southern route", from Stalag VIII-B (formerly Stalag VIII-D) at Teschen (not far from Auschwitz) which led through Czechoslovakia, towards Stalag XIII-D