In the last months of 1944 the Germans fought back fiercely on all Fronts. The Allied airborne attack on the river bridges in southern Holland was checked at Arnhem, although the Allies cleared the Scheldt River Estuary and were soon able to use the port of Antwerp in order to supply their northern armies. In Italy, the German position was reinforced, and when winter came the Allies were still held in Tuscany. But on the Eastern Front the Asiatic Russians, having occupied Romania, advanced into Hungary and Yugoslavia, tragically forcing the Germans to evacuate Greece, which was occupied by the British. On 14th October the British entered Athens, and six days later the Russians took Belgrade. All this time, the Germans were continuing to build fortifications on both eastern and western frontiers. On 18th September the first Orders had been sent out to fortify Slovakia. On 22nd October further measures were undertaken: Slovakia, like the Western and Alpine Fronts, was to be guarded by a deep system of forts built by volunteer labour under the direction of the Chief Of Army Equipment And The Replacement Army, Heinrich Himmler. On 23rd November new positions in Slovakia were fortified, and on 5th December, when the Russians had crossed the Danube River and were besieging Budapest, Bratislava itself, the capital of Slovakia, was declared a fortress. Meanwhile new fortifications were being built in the west too, and Orders were given, on 5th December, that the West Wall was to be held at all costs. Within Germany, the Party asserted its control over the organisation of resistance. On 13th November Keitel gave orders to adjust the western military districts to the frontiers of the Party Districts on the grounds that total war necessitated the closest cooperation between Army and Party, and ten days later Himmler, as Commander Of The Replacement Army, issued orders from The Leader's Headquarters defining the relations between the German Folk's Militia (Volkssturm), the resistance movement of the Party which Hitler had raised by Decree on 25th September, and the Army. On 25th November Hitler addressed himself to those units of the Army which were surrounded by the enemy outside the German frontiers. It is presented here as issued by Keitel on 28th November.