By the spring of 1945, what was left of Hitler’s Mountain Troops 1939-1945: The Gebirgsjager were carrying out a fighting withdrawal through Hungary and Austria, while on the receding Eastern Front those Gebirgs units still in action were ad hoc formations, fighting alongside Hitlerjugend, Volkssturm, Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS personnel. Even by this late stage of the war, the level of determination and courage shown by the Gebirgsjäger formations was quite exceptional, considering many soldiers were totally aware that there was no prospect of victory. However, in the closing days of the war, most mountain soldiers were determined to withdraw west and surrender to the Anglo-American forces rather than the Red Army. Few of them harboured any illusions as to the kind of treatment that they would receive from the Russians. It was for this reason that many of the remaining units decided to take their fate in the west.
Although by early May 1945, the Gebirgsjäger was all but destroyed, in the eyes of these once elite mountain men they marched into captivity and laid down their arms in the sound knowledge that no military formation in history had achieved more. They had battled across half Russia, they had shown their skill and endurance in all types of warfare, and gone on and fought bitter battles as they slowly withdrew westwards to the very gates of Berlin, and beyond.
Nobody could deny that these men, in their brief and extraordinary existence, had won a reputation for their skill and gallantry in combat. Throughout the war, each Gebirgs soldier had looked upon himself as an elite fighting machine. Even in defeat, as many dispirited troops shuffled off to the prisoner-of-war camps, scores of Gebirgsjäger soldiers retained a measure of composure and defiance for they knew they were Hitler’s Mountain Troops 1939-1945: The Gebirgsjager.