Word: rhineland
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Wars I and II. Completed in 1918, it had been named for General Erich von Ludendorff, later to be Adolf Hitler's sponsor. Its seizure occurred nine years to the day after Hitler had brazenly violated the Versailles and Locarno Treaties by sending German troops into the demilitarized Rhineland...
...hostile armies since Napoleon passed over it at Strasbourg in 1805. * As a military factor, the Remagen bridgehead offered the chance of a drive to the northeast, outflanking the Ruhr; or a push to the southeast, forcing a German withdrawal from the Saar and the rest of the Rhineland south of the Moselle...
...from the Siegfriedian fastnesses of the Rhineland, a German officer wrote to his wife: "A storm is shaking the German tree and all the weak leaves are falling. . . . But . . . look every day at our picture by Dürer of Ritter, Tod und Teufel ["The Knight, Death and the Devil"-see cut]. . . . Go fearlessly along that small bit of road which still separates us from finality...
...stand on the little Erft River, which is less of an obstacle than the Roer, but which splits into several troublesome branches in front of Cologne (see map). He had shown how he could fight with substandard troops on river lines, in woods, and in his fearful maze of Rhineland fortifications-and what he had shown was very good. But there comes a point at which skill and tricks are swamped by power...
...diplomatic understanding showed France's determination to act as a Big Fourth despite her exclusion from Yalta. General de Gaulle, who once said that the Rhineland must be French "from one end to the other," agreed to let the Belgians share in its occupation and to have an outlet on the Rhine. Brussels was pleased with the arrangement. The Quai d'Orsay was pleased with itself: "France," said an unofficial spokesman, "is thinking again in terms of resuming her old role of supporting the smaller powers...