Читать книгу Through the Italian Alps. The GTA - The Grande Traversata delle Alpi онлайн

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Piedmont played a key role in the latter years of the World War II conflict. After 1943 – when the authoritarian regime in Italy capitulated and the armistice was signed with the Allies – military chaos broke out in Italy as troops were temporarily leaderless. Many took to the hills to form companies of partisans as the resistance movement grew. Due to its northerly location Piedmont was amongst the last places to be liberated (in 1945) by the Allied advance. Its mountains provided perfect hideouts and protected bases for operations designed to disrupt the Nazi occupiers and their local fascist partners. Air drops of essential material by the Allies helped the effort. In one example planes flew from bases in North Africa to the Pesio valley outside Cuneo, as part of the operation led by the UK Special Forces and known as ‘Mission Charterhouse’.

Typical Walser house in Val Vogna (Stage 41)

Little by little the post-war period in Piedmont witnessed population shifts from the uplands to the Po plain, drawn by jobs as industrial development got underway, peaking in the 1950–60s. Turin, for instance, meant the Fiat automobile factory, and Ivrea Olivetti office technology. Hand-in-hand with the growth came a dramatic increase in demand for power. The abundance of water on hand in the Alps made hydroelectricity a natural choice. Dams, gigantic conduits and hydroelectric plants dating back to the 1950–60 period – its heyday in Italy – are encountered across the Graians and the Maritime Alps.