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This chapter discusses the management of the Rhine River. Topics covered include the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine, International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine, and other international commissions and initiatives.

This chapter accounts the advance across the Erft River and the capture of the Remagen Bridge over the Rhine River. It reports that Gemund and Schleiden, two names which loomed large in the Boche December offensive, were captured by V Corps troops. The chapter provides an account of the taking of Cologne, the Reich's third-largest city, against light resistance and with only a few troops still holding out. It further reports that General Terry Allen's 104th Div cleared the city while the 3rd Armed Div continued the attack, to clear the enemy from the division sector north and west of the Rhine. The chapter estimates that more than 100,000 civilians still remained in Cologne, many of whom came out of their dugouts and wrecked houses to watch the troops roll in.

This chapter covers operations from each army crossing the Rhine until the end of the war in May 1945. It highlights the encirclement of the Ruhr Pocket as well as the fighting in the Harz Mountains. It also discusses the role of cavalry in protecting the truck-mounted infantry, allowing very mobile operations. It shows how cavalry led the U.S. First and Ninth Armies to the Elbe, and the Seventh and Third Armies to Czechoslovakia and Bavaria.

Following the Roman conquests in Europe west of the Rhine River in the 50s BC and south of the Danube in 15 BC, a frontier zone was established that was to endure for 500 years. Written sources yield limited information about interaction through merchant ventures and diplomatic missions. But archaeological evidence provides a vast amount of data about the geography, character, scale, and chronology of interactions between individuals and communities on the two sides of the border. Using the Cross-Cultural Interaction Model, this paper explores the evidence for interaction in four identifiable zones ranging from Roman bases on the edge of the empire through a frontier region and an outer rim to new centers established far beyond the imperial boundaries.

As outlined in chapter 1, “determining the site” in old established wine regions such as Burgundy, Tuscany, and the Rheingau has been achieved through centuries of acquired knowledge of the interaction between climate, soil, and grape variety. Commonly, vines were planted on the shallow soils of steep slopes, leaving the more productive lower terraces and flood plains for the cultivation of cereal crops and other food staples, as shown, for example, by the vineyards along the Rhine River in Germany. The small vineyard blocks of the Rhine River, the Côte d’Or, Valais and Vaud regions of Switzerland allowed winegrowers to dif­ferentiate sites on the basis of the most favorable combination of local climate and soil, which underpinned the concept of terroir. In much of the New World, by contrast, where agricultural land was abundant and population pressure less, vineyards have been established on the better soils of the plains and river valleys, as exemplified by such regions as the Central Valley of California, the Riverina in New South Wales, Australia, and Marlborough in New Zealand. Apart from the availability of land, the overriding factor governing site selection was climate and the suitability of particular varieties to the prevailing regional climate. In such regions, although soil variability undoubtedly occurred, plantings of a single variety were made on large areas and vineyard blocks managed as one unit. Soil type and soil variability were largely ignored. Notwithstanding this approach to viticulture in New World countries, in recent time winegrowers aiming at the premium end of the market have become more focused on matching grape varieties to soil and climate and adopting winemaking techniques to attain specific outcomes for their products. For established vineyards, one obvious result of this change is the appearance of “single vineyard” wines that are promoted as expressing the sense of place or terroir. Another reflection of this attitudinal change is the application of precision viticulture (see “Managing Natural Soil Variability in a Vineyard,” chapter 6), whereby vineyard management and harvesting are tailored to the variable expression of soil and local climate in the yield and sensory characteristics of the fruit and wine.