The World of Yesterday but hated politics and shunned political engagement. His autobiography shows some reluctance to analyse Nazism as a political ideology; he tended simply to regard it as the rule of one particularly evil man, Hitler. Zweig was struck that the "Berghof", Hitler's mountain residence in Berchtesgaden, was just across the valley from his own house outside Salzburg. Berchtesgaden was an area of early Nazi activity. Zweig believed strongly in Europeanism against nationalism. Zweig also describes his passion for collecting manuscripts, mostly literary and musical. Zweig collaborated in the early 1930s with composer Richard Strauss on the opera "Die schweigsame Frau", which
Fortified Sector of the Lower Rhine Rothau. As Allied forces approached the Rhine in November 1944, the Germans destroyed many of the bankside fortifications that had escaped damage in 1940. Most of the Rhine defences were simply abandoned after World War II. Most of the first line of blockhouses on the banks of the river were destroyed when the river was widened as part of navigational improvements in the 1970s. Many village line positions remain, but have been stripped by salvagers. Fortified Sector of the Lower Rhine The Fortified Sector of the Lower Rhine ("Secteur Fortifié du Bas-Rhin") was the French military organization that in 1940