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Switzerland and British Strategy: Toluol, Trams, and Transit Rights

NEVILLE WYLIE

in Britain, Switzerland, and the Second World War

Switzerland's success in deterring a German attack after 1940 writs large in popular depictions of Switzerland's wartime history, and played a decisive part in helping to elevate neutrality as the ... More

Switzerland's success in deterring a German attack after 1940 writs large in popular depictions of Switzerland's wartime history, and played a decisive part in helping to elevate neutrality as the country's core foreign policy maxim during the cold war. This chapter shows that although British military observers were impressed by Swiss defences, Switzerland rarely featured in British strategic deliberations, nor was it deemed sufficiently important to justify releasing military and strategic resources for Swiss use through the blockade. Moreover, the defence of the Alpine railway tunnels, upon which Swiss deterrent strategy relied, ultimately worked to Britain's disadvantage as it guaranteed the Axis unfettered access to Swiss transit facilities. The chapter examines Britain's lacklustre diplomatic and military efforts to reduce Axis transit traffic across Switzerland.Less

Berlin and the Return Home

Paul C. Gutjahr

in Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy

Chapter Nineteen traces Hodge’s final months in Europe, including the six months he spends in Berlin which he considers the highpoint of his trip. In Berlin he meets and befriends Ernst Hengstenberg ... More

Chapter Nineteen traces Hodge’s final months in Europe, including the six months he spends in Berlin which he considers the highpoint of his trip. In Berlin he meets and befriends Ernst Hengstenberg and Johann Neander, and attends the lectures of Alexander Von Humboldt. He partakes of many “Awakening” evening sessions with friends. He then travels home via France, England and Scotland.Less

Conclusion: The Retreat of Nations

Tait Keller

in Apostles of the Alps: Mountaineering and Nation Building in Germany and Austria, 1860-1939

The conclusion follows the developments in the Eastern Alps during and after the Second World War and discusses how mountaineering illustrated the dichotomy of individuality and collective identity ... More

The conclusion follows the developments in the Eastern Alps during and after the Second World War and discusses how mountaineering illustrated the dichotomy of individuality and collective identity that informed views of nature and nationhood in Germany and Austria. The Alps had become a repository for the hopes, fears, and longings held by many Germans and Austrians. Alpinism’s evolving meaning reflected the various notions of nationhood that converged on the peaks at different times. While post-war tourism helped decouple the mountains from a nationalistic past, Alpine tourism’s quandary of consumption versus conservation remained unresolved. International cooperation among states along the Alpine Arc attempted to address the dilemmas of tourism. Just as Europe moved towards an ever closer union, so too did national parks in the Alps. In 1991, the Alpine countries and the European Union ratified the Convention on the Protection of the Alps that coordinated management efforts and linked the reserves into a single network. Yet if the attraction of the Alps is as alluring as ever in the new millennium, their ambiguities are still equally confounding, particularly concerning the relationship between tourism and nationhood on the Alpine frontier.Less

Vancouver Island and the Trinity Alps

Barbara R. Stein

in On Her Own Terms: Annie Montague Alexander and the Rise of Science in the American West

This chapter studies the time when the women conducted surveys of two regions in the Pacific Northwest: the Trinity Alps in northern California and Vancouver Island in British Columbia. It notes that ... More

This chapter studies the time when the women conducted surveys of two regions in the Pacific Northwest: the Trinity Alps in northern California and Vancouver Island in British Columbia. It notes that this occurred before they bought the land in Grizzly Island. The discussion examines each expedition separately, and takes note of the specimens that they were able to recover from these sites. It shows that these specimens not only increased the holdings of the museum, but also provided important material for Grinnell and his staff to interpret and study. The specimens found in the expedition to the Trinity Mountains formed the basis for Kellogg's 1916 publication, the “Report upon mammals and birds found in portions of Trinity, Siskiyou and Shasta counties, with description of a new Dipodomys.” The chapter ends with a note that Alexander and Kellogg returned to the Trinity Mountains one last time, in the summer of 1948.Less

Modern Myths and Monsters

James K. Agee

in Steward's Fork: A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains

This chapter focuses on the myths and mysterious creatures of the Klamath Mountains. It describes a local legend about a turquoise dragon and an expedition to the Trinity Alps to find a giant dragon. ... More

This chapter focuses on the myths and mysterious creatures of the Klamath Mountains. It describes a local legend about a turquoise dragon and an expedition to the Trinity Alps to find a giant dragon. The Klamaths are also the center of the Bigfoot myth, and reported sightings have increased from the last two years of the 1950s and after 2000. The chapter also discusses the murder at Chanchelullia Gulch and the part played by the western hound's tongue (Cynoglossum grande ) in one of the most sensational crime stories of the 1950s in California.Less

Steward’s Fork

James K. Agee

in Steward's Fork: A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains

Steward's Fork was the initial name of Stuart Fork, a fork of the Trinity River that ends about five miles upstream of Trinity Lake and about two miles up from the Trinity Alps Resort. Like the many ... More

Steward's Fork was the initial name of Stuart Fork, a fork of the Trinity River that ends about five miles upstream of Trinity Lake and about two miles up from the Trinity Alps Resort. Like the many forks of a river, this book represents the steward's fork as different pathways toward sustainable future for these landscapes. It focuses on the Klamath Mountains and emphasizes that the stewardship of their ecosystems requires special attention. The book proposes the involvement of individuals and communities in the protection and management of natural resources, and the need to make intelligent decisions for the sustainable future of the Klamath Mountains.Less

Crossing the Alps After September 8, 1943

Susan Zuccotti

in Holocaust Odysseys: The Jews of Saint-Martin-Vésubie and Their Flight through France and Italy

On September 8, 1943, U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower announced that Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who had replaced Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister of Italy, had agreed to an armistice with the ... More

On September 8, 1943, U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower announced that Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who had replaced Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister of Italy, had agreed to an armistice with the Allies. Prior to the announcement, Axis army commanders had already agreed that the Italians would relinquish much of their occupation zone north and west of Nice to the Germans. Italian officials were reluctant to leave the Jews at the mercy of the Germans and discussed measures to protect them. Anticipating that Germany might eventually seize Italian-occupied France, an escape route was planned for Jewish immigrants and refugees that would take them out of Saint-Martin-Vésubie to Italy by crossing the Alps. This chapter looks at their exodus after September 8, 1943 and describes the experiences of Jews who survived the odyssey.Less

Evolutionary Naturalism on High: The Victorians Sequester the Alps

Michael S. Reidy

in Victorian Scientific Naturalism: Community, Identity, Continuity

A disproportionately large percentage of the most prominent evolutionary naturalists, and almost every member of the X-Club, traveled and climbed in the Swiss Alps. John Tyndall and Leslie Stephen, ... More

A disproportionately large percentage of the most prominent evolutionary naturalists, and almost every member of the X-Club, traveled and climbed in the Swiss Alps. John Tyndall and Leslie Stephen, in particular, were simultaneously the most vocal of the evolutionary naturalists and the two most accomplished alpinists of their age. The height of their climbing came in the early 1860s, the same years in which they formulated their agnosticism. This paper will examine their journals and letters to uncover the role that mountaineering played as they formulated and defended a naturalistic framework. The questions the mountains forced them to ask, whether through beauty or desolation, order or chaos (what William Clifford termed “cosmic emotion”) helped influence their common project of formulating an ethic based on nature rather than God.Less

Mobility, Kinship and Commerce in the Alps, 1500–1800

Laurence Fontaine and David Siddle

in Migration, Mobility and Modernization

This chapter, which explores the dynamics of pre-industrial economies in the Alps, examines probate inventories and dowry settlements, and family and business archives of the rural families in Savoy ... More

This chapter, which explores the dynamics of pre-industrial economies in the Alps, examines probate inventories and dowry settlements, and family and business archives of the rural families in Savoy and Dauphiné. First, it examines dowries and probate inventories as indicators of increasing wealth, and then describes the role of merchant families and kinship networks in the expansion of commercial activity in the mountain regions.Less

Snowball earth? (1835–40)

in Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform

The explanatory problems raised by erratics and scratched bedrock remained at the heart of debates about geohistory as a whole, because they impinged crucially on the problems of reconstructing the ... More

The explanatory problems raised by erratics and scratched bedrock remained at the heart of debates about geohistory as a whole, because they impinged crucially on the problems of reconstructing the part of geohistory closest to the present world. This chapter describes how these problems came much closer to being resolved. The three rival explanations of erratic blocks and scratched bedrock surfaces—that they were traces of a “diluvial” mega-tsunami, or of submergence in a sea with drifting and melting icebergs, or of vast glaciers extending from a newly elevated mountain range—were joined in the later 1830s by a fourth and even more sensational possibility. Louis Jean Rodolphe Agassiz proposed that the whole earth—or, at least, the northern hemisphere as far south as north Africa—had been covered by a static sheet of ice during an “Ice Age,” before the sudden and geologically recent upheaval of the Alps; the latter had merely produced a tilted surface of ice, down which the erratics could slide from Alps to Jura. Only after this had a warming climate melted the static ice-sheet and turned its remnants into slowly retreating valley glaciers. Agassiz integrated this “glacial theory” into his larger picture of geohistory, by suggesting that the Ice Age had been just the most recent in a succession of catastrophic climatic crises in the history of life.Less

Leadership and War (221–216)

Dexter Hoyos

in Hannibal: Rome's Greatest Enemy

This chapter describes how, succeeding Hasdrubal as leader in 221, Hannibal extended Carthaginian power to most of northern Spain. A clash with Saguntum, a small town under Rome's protection, led to ... More

This chapter describes how, succeeding Hasdrubal as leader in 221, Hannibal extended Carthaginian power to most of northern Spain. A clash with Saguntum, a small town under Rome's protection, led to war in 218 and his march from Spain across the Alps. With a heavily depleted army and despite most of his elephants perishing soon after, he defeated the Romans in three major battles down to 216: at the river Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae. But he also encountered the delaying tactics of Fabius Maximus the Delayer and almost came to grief. Despite his victories he decided against attacking the city of Rome itself, a decision he would regret.Less

The Missing Witness,: An Original Drama in Four Acts

M. E. Braddon

in Sensation Drama, 18601880: An Anthology

The Missing Witnessis set in the Swiss alps and features a romance plot aborted by a jealous villain and saved by the servant Genevieve, the ‘missing witness’ of the title. It offers a wonderful ... More

The Missing Witnessis set in the Swiss alps and features a romance plot aborted by a jealous villain and saved by the servant Genevieve, the ‘missing witness’ of the title. It offers a wonderful example of an extended sensation scene involving not one, but two hand-to-hand fight scenes on a treacherous mountain pass, the first ending with the hero seeming to plunge to his death and the second with an avalanche engulfing the heroine and the stage. Unfortunately the play was hastily withdrawn when the actor playing Gustave, Mr. J. F. Stephenson, misjudged his ‘sensation leap’ and broke his leg only three weeks after its opening at the Alexandra Theatre in Liverpool. Here we follow the printed edition of the text as published by John and Robert Maxwell, Braddon’s husband and stepson.Aided by these familial arrangements Braddon had become adept at managing and maintaining control over her published work, so there was no need for her to engage with another theatrical publisher.Less

German Uplands and Alpine Foreland

Eduard Koster

in The Physical Geography of Western Europe

From north to south in Germany there is a rough symmetry in the distribution of the major geological and landform units. Quaternary glacial and fluvioglacial deposits and landforms characterize the ... More

From north to south in Germany there is a rough symmetry in the distribution of the major geological and landform units. Quaternary glacial and fluvioglacial deposits and landforms characterize the Northern Lowlands and the Alpine Foreland in the south. Relief in both these areas is relatively flat, mostly of the order of a few tens of metres to 200 metres. The central part of the country, roughly between a line from Bonn–Dortmund–Hannover–Leipzig–Dresden in the north and the river Danube in the south, is dominated by uplands and basins, mainly consisting of Palaeozoic and Mesozoic rocks, exhibiting a relief of several hundred metres. This central region is bordered in the western and eastern part by fault block mountains and massifs consisting of Palaeozoic, partly crystalline rocks. These massifs attain heights of c.500–1,500 m. Based on a combination of morphotectonic evolution and landform associations, most authors distinguish five major landform regions: • The North German Lowlands as a part of the North European Lowlands, extending from the north-western tip of France, through Belgium and The Netherlands to the Polish–Russian border and beyond. The southern border of this region more or less coincides with the 100–200 m contour lines as well as with the maximum extension of the Fennoscandian ice sheets. The usual thickness of the glacial/fluvioglacial sediment sequence is between 100 and 300 m; the maximum thickness is almost 500 m. In contrast to Ahnert (1989b), the Lower Rhine graben and the Munster Embayment are included in this region by Semmel (1996) and Liedtke and Marcinek (2002). • The Central German Uplands. This region is characterized by a relief between 200 and 1,000 m, locally to 1,500 m, old Palaeozoic (Variscan) massifs, denudational landforms with planation surfaces, cuestas, hogbacks, basins, and deeply incised river valleys. Concerning the southern border of this region there also appears to be some difference of opinion. Semmel (1996) obviously includes the Saar-Nahe Upland and the Thüringer Wald, the Erzgebirge, the Bayerischer Wald, and Böhmer Wald. This is also the case with the geomorphic map in the Nationalatlas by Liedtke et al. (2003). Liedtke and Marcinek (2002), however, do not include the Saar-Nahe Upland nor the Bayerischer Wald and Böhmer Wald. Less

Countdown to War

Emanuele Sica

in Mussolini's Army in the French Riviera: Italy's Occupation of France

This chapter focuses on the eve of World War II, as the Italian Fascist regime embarked on a collision course against the French Third Republic over the question of the irredentist territories such ... More

This chapter focuses on the eve of World War II, as the Italian Fascist regime embarked on a collision course against the French Third Republic over the question of the irredentist territories such as the County of Nice and colonies such as Tunisia. The Pact of Steel, signed on May 22, 1939, virtually tied the destiny of Italy to that of Adolf Hitler and Germany, and the Secret Supplementary Protocols forecasted an alliance in the eventuality of a war. However, Benito Mussolini was adamant with the Germans that no war should be started before 1942, realizing that in the summer of 1939, Italy and its armed forces were anything but prepared for war. This chapter shows that the Italian Army was not in line with Mussolini’s brazen threats to invade France, a truism demonstrated in his troops’ disastrous performance in the four-day Battle of the Alps in June 1940. The campaign resulted in a meager booty—the medium-size town of Menton and a few pastures—for Mussolini at the cost of ruining his country’s relations with France.Less

Introduction

Andrew Denning

in Skiing into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History

The introduction examinesthe core concept of Alpine modernism, demonstrating the inherent tension in Alpine skiing between nature and modern culture. It shows that this tension is not a recent ... More

The introduction examinesthe core concept of Alpine modernism, demonstrating the inherent tension in Alpine skiing between nature and modern culture. It shows that this tension is not a recent development; it has animated skiers from the earliest development of the sport in the Alps. Indeed, the sport’s uneven synthesis of the tension between modernity and the natural world formed the cardinal appeal of skiing in the twentieth century. As a short discussion of the secondary literature indicates, Alpine skiers echoed the modernist movements that developed in contemporary European high culture, but the sport’s connection with mass culture vernacularized these avant-garde sentiments. Similarly, the sport synthesized a wide range of leisure pursuits to appeal to a wide constituency. Finally, because skiers defined themselves based on their relationship to the Alps, the sport and its historical effects can only be understood on a transnational scale.Less

An Uphill Climb

Andrew Denning

in Skiing into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History

This chapter explores the two main subjects of the book–skiing and the Alps–before they came into contact with one another. It begins by tracing the history of the Alps before skiing, showing how ... More

This chapter explores the two main subjects of the book–skiing and the Alps–before they came into contact with one another. It begins by tracing the history of the Alps before skiing, showing how industrialization and state centralization rendered Alpine communities peripheral and backward in the nineteenth century. Simultaneously, the Romantic movement began to celebrate the austere beauty of the Alps as a counterpoint to modern urban environments and their corrupting influence. It then traces the history of skiing from its ancient roots to the development of the modern sport in nineteenth-century Norway, where skiing became intertwined with Romantic definitions of Norwegian nationalism. The chapter concludes by discussing the importation of the sport to central Europe in the last decades of the nineteenth century, particularly to German university towns and Alpine health and tourism centers.Less