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 Area of Silesia Fortified Area of Silesia The Fortified Area of Silesia () was a set of Polish fortifications, constructed along the interbellum border of Poland and Germany in the area of then-divided Upper Silesia. It spreads from the village of Przeczyce in the north to the town of Wyry in the south, along the line of sixty kilometers. Headquarters of the area was placed in Chorzów and its commandant was General Jan Jagmin-Sadowski. As a result of the Plebiscite in Silesia and the Silesian Uprisings, the highly industrialized area of Upper Silesia, which had belonged to the German Empire, was divided between