The Mountains Roar: The Alps during the Great War

This article sheds light on the relationship between the environment and war by examining the role the Alps played for Germans and Austrians in the First World War. The historiography of the Great War often portrays nature as a passive victim. Although it suffered the storms of heavy industry and military technology, the natural world was not just a silent casualty of combat. On the Alpine Front, the mountains played an active and crucial role in the war. The landscape conferred heroic stature on the soldiers who battled on the heights and survived the Alpine extremes. The war also transformed in crucial ways how soldiers conceived of the mountains. No longer viewed as simply the playground of Europe, the peaks became ramparts protecting the borders of an embattled land. The Alps acquired increasingly chauvinistic overtones, all the more so when they endured the onslaught of destruction. Besieged but never broken, the mountains became powerful symbols for those who still dreamt of Germany victorious. The ecological legacy of the First World War in the Alps reveals the lasting cultural and political dimensions of the conflict.