Last night I was watching Band of Brothers and in episode 9, Why We Fight, Cpt Nixon said that Hitler ordered the Waffen-SS to retreat into the Alps and to start a guerilla war. Why didn't this happen? Weren't the Waffen-SS a pretty radical group that at least a small portion of them would've followed Hitler's orders even after he had committed suicide? It seems like the Alps would've been an ideal place to start a guerilla war and would've been hard for allied forces to root out.
Hey there,
Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.
If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!