Unit 1 Fighting with the Forces of Nature

Before Reading

   1. An English Song -- The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald 

2. Napoleon Bonaparte

3. World War II

4. Map Reading

Global Reading

1. Part Division of the Text

2. True or False

3. Questions and Answers

4. Text Analysis

Detailed Reading

After Reading

1. Useful Expressions

2. Spot Dictation

3. Blank Filling

4. Discussion 

5. Talk about the Pictures

6. Writing Practice

7. Sentence Translation

8. Proverbs and Quotations

Supplementary Reading

       1. Culture Notes

       2. Reading

       3. Comprehension Task

1.  English Song -- The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald 

(1). Background of the Song

The song you are about to hear is based on a true story. It tells the tale of the sinking of a ship called The Edmund Fitzgerald that was caught in a storm on Lake Superior back in November 1975, with the loss of all on board.

Lake Superior is an enormous lake and the wind can at times make it dangerous to shipping, whipping up huge waves. November is a particularly dangerous month for such storms. This had long ago been noticed by a local native American tribe, the Chippewa, who used to speak of how death threatened from the lake when storm clouds gathered in November. According to legend, the big lake, which they called Gitche Gumee, was without mercy in that month, never giving up those it had marked for death.

It is this legend that starts the song before it moves on to talk of The Edmund Fitzgerald. The Edmund Fitzgerald, like many other ships that sail the lake, was built to carry iron ore. Filled with ore these ships lie low in the water and can find themselves in difficulties in rough weather. So, with a full load on board we can imagine the anxiety that must have begun to creep into the hearts of the sailors on board ­The Edmund Fitzgerald as they felt the cold wind beginning to rise and heard the sound of it singing as it blew through the wires. For, despite the fact that the captain and crew were all experienced, ‘well-seasoned’ as the song says, they all knew the dangers of November storms. Before long their worse fears started to come true and the storm had risen to a hurricane. The despair of the crew is captured in the words of the cook. First he comes on deck to tell the sailors it is too rough to cook, they will have to wait for their supper. The next we hear from him he is saying goodbye to his shipmates. Water is pouring into the ship. The captain sends out a distress signal, but that is the last that is heard from the ship. It is swallowed up by the lake, leaving nothing behind but the mourning families of the twenty-nine sailors and the sound of the church bell ringing in their memory.

Now let’s listen to the song.

(2). Questions about the Song

Where and when did the storm take place?

Why did the crew fear the worst?

(3). Blank Filling

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald 

The (=legend) lives on from the Chippewa on down

Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee

The lake, it is said, never (=gives up) her dead

When the skies of November turn gloomy

With a load of iron ore (=twenty-six) thousand tons more

Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty

That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed

When the (=gales) of November came early

The ship was the pride of the American side

Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin

As the big freighters go, it was (=bigger than) most

With a crew and good captain well seasoned

Concluding some terms with (=a couple of) steel firms

When they left fully loaded for Cleveland

And later that night when the ship's bell rang

Could it be (=the north wind) they'd been feeling

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound

And a wave (=broke over) the railing

And every man knew, as the captain did too

Twas the witch of November come stealing

The (=dawn) came late and the breakfast had to wait

When the Gales of November came slashing

When afternoon came it was freezing rain

(=In the face of) a hurricane west wind

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck saying

Fellas, it's (=too rough to feed) ya

At seven PM a main hatchway caved in, he said

Fellas, it's been good to know ya

The captain wired in he had water coming in

And the good ship and crew was (=in peril)

And later that night when his lights went out of sight

Came the (=wreck) of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Does any one know where the love of God goes

When the waves turn the ( =minutes to hours)

The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish  Bay

If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her

They might have (=split up) or they might have capsized

They may have broke deep and took water

And all that (=remains) is the faces and the names

Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings

In the rooms of her (=ice water) mansion

Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams

The (=islands) and bays are for sportsmen

And farther below Lake  Ontario

Takes in what Lake Erie can send her

And the iron boats go as the mariners all know

With the Gales of (=November) remembered

In a musty (=old hall) in Detroit they prayed

In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral

The church bell chimed till it rang twenty-nine times

For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald

The legend (=lives on) from the Chippewa on down

Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee

Superior, they said, never (=gives up) her dead

When the gales of November come early

2. Napoleon Bonaparte

(1). A Brief Introduction to Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769−1821): emperor of the French, who consolidated and institutionalized many reforms of the French Revolution. One of the greatest military commanders of all time, he conquered the larger part of Europe.

During 1802—1815 Napoleon tried to gain control of the whole of Europe. He had great success against all his enemies exceptBritain, whose navy under Nelson defeated the French navy at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and whose army fought the Peninsular War against him from 1808 to 1814, making him weaker in his other campaigns. In 1812 Napoleon lost half a million men when he invadedRussiain winter, and in 1814 the British, Russians, Prussians and Austrians entered Paris. They sent Napoleon to rule the island of Elba in the Mediterranean, but he collected an army around him and returned to Paris. He was soon defeated again, at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and was sent to the island of St Helena in the south Atlantic, where he died in 1821.

(2. Napoleon’s Chronology

(3). The Battle of Waterloo

 The Battle of Waterloo is the final and decisive action of the Napoleonic Wars, which effectively ended French domination of the European continent and brought about drastic changes in the political boundaries and the power balance of Europe. Fought on June 18, 1815, near Waterloo, in what is nowBelgium, the battle ranks as a great turning point in modern history.

(4). Napoleon’s Campaign  

While allies in name,FranceandRussiawere never real friends.Russia's economy was being hurt by Napoleon Bonaparte's Continental System that banned trade withBritainand internal pressures forced Tsar Alexander to turn a blind eye to those who broke it. Bonaparte decided to bring the Russians back into line and gathered a Grand Army of more than 500,000 men—including contingents from all France's allies—to frighten them.

Bonaparte left the army on 5 December to return to Paris where a coup had been foiled and to raise another army. His troops dragged themselves on and on 7 December finally crossed the Niemen out of Russian territory. They had survived, but only 20,000 of them.

3. World War II

(1). Chronology of the War

September 1, 1939

The Second World War in Europe started with German armies pouring across the Polish frontier.

April, 1940

Denmark andNorwaywere conquered.

May 10, 1940

Hitler’s troops drove into France and within the following six weeks, Holland,BelgiumandLuxembourghad surrendered as hadFrance.

June 22, 1941

Hitler launched his long-term attack on the Soviet Union.

September, 1942-February, 1943

A decisive battle was fought at Stalingrad, which was the turning point of the war.

December, 1941

TheU. S. A.entered the war after Japanese planes bombed the American naval base at Pearl  Harbor.

June 6, 1944

American, British and Canadian forces landed in Normandy and opened the second front in Europe.

May 2, 1945

The Soviet army took Berlin.

May 7, 1945

Germany surrendered.

(2). A Brief Introduction to the War

(Adolf Hitler's invasion of Poland in September, 1939, ignited（点燃）World War II. One by one, Europe’s nations fell beforeGermany’s mechanized armies. OnlyBritainheld firm. While the allies（同盟国） conferred（协商）, treachery （背叛）approached from the East. On December 7th, 1941, Japanese planes attacked Pearl  Harbor. The next day, theUnited Statesentered the war. Fighting continued for almost four more years, spreading to North  Africa and the Pacific. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Allied troops began the liberation of Europe. Within a year,Germanysurrendered. To subdue（使屈服）Japan, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Japanformally surrendered on September 2, 1945. World War II claimed more than 27 million lives and caused 33 enormous human suffering.)

(3). Adolf Hitler

1). A Brief Introduction to Adolf Hitler

（＝Adolf Hitler (1889−1945): German political and military leader and one of the 20th century's most powerful dictators. Hitler convertedGermanyinto a fully militarized society and launched World War II in 1939. He made anti-Semitism a keystone of his propaganda and policies and built the Nazi Party into a mass movement. He hoped to conquer the entire world, and for a time dominated most of Europe and much of North Africa. He instituted sterilization and euthanasia measures to enforce his idea of racial purity among the German people and slaughtered millions of Jews, Sinti and Roma (Gypsies), Slavic peoples, and many others, all of whom he considered inferior.）

2). Hitler’s Chronology

April 23, 1889

Born in Braunau, upperAustria, son of a customs official.

1914 – 1918

Volunteer in German Army. Wounded, gassed, and decorated.

September 1919

Joined German Workers' party, which he reorganized as the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) party.

November 11, 1923

Arrested for leading the Munich Beer Hall putsch (coup) against the German national government.

January 30, 1933

Appointed chancellor after Nazis win one-third of votes.

August 19, 1934

Following the death of Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler assumed presidency while maintaining his other title as chancellor.

March 7, 1936

Sent troops into the Rhineland in violation of treaties of Versailles and Locamo.

September 1, 1939

InvadedPoland, provokingBritainandFranceto declare war onGermanytwo days later. April 30, 1945

Committed suicide in Berlin bunker.

4). Siege of Leningrad

Also known as the 900-Day Siege, blockade by German forces of theUSSR’s second largest city during World War II, from September 1941 to January 1944. The total destruction of Leningrad was one of Adolf Hitler’s major objectives in his Russian campaign and had been specifically mentioned in the Barbarossa directive of December 18, 1940. The Nazi leader had described the city as a center of Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia. There was to be no place for Leningrad in the Nazi “New Order”.

5). Battle of Stalingrad

(1942 – 43) Unsuccessful German assault on the Soviet city in World War II. German forces invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and had advanced to the suburbs of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) by the summer of 1942. Met by a determined Red Army defense commanded by Vasily Chuikov, they reached the city’s centre after fierce street fighting. In November the Soviets counterattacked and encircled the German army led by Friedrich Paulus, who surrendered in February 1943 with 91,000 troops. The Axis forces (Germans, Romanians, Italians, and Hungarians) suffered 800,000 deaths; in excess of 1,000,000 Soviet soldiers died. The battle marked the farthest extent of the German advance into the Soviet Union.

6). Joseph Stalin

(=Joseph Stalin (1879−1953): general secretary of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (1922−1953) and chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR(1941−1953). Under his leadership theUSSRwas built into a modern economic and military power that repelled Hitler's armies in World War II and rivaled theUnited Statesduring the Cold War period.)

5. Map Reading

1). Napoleon’s Russian Campaign, 1812

1.    Find the following place names: Moscow, Borodino, and Neman River.

2.    What happened in Borodino?

2). Hitler’s Russian Campaign, 1941−1944

1.    When did the Hitler’s Russian Campaign happen?

2.    How long was the Leningrad being besieged?

Global Reading

1. Part Division of the Text

2. Further Understanding

(1). True or False

1)    “The icy defender” refers to the Russian river. (F) 

(= The icy defender refers to the bleak Russian winter.)

2)    Napoleon and his troops gained the quick victory inRussiaas they had expected. (F)

(= To Napoleon’s surprise, the Russians refused to stand and fight. They retreated eastward, burning their crops and homes as they went.)

3)    Napoleon didn’t capture the capital ofRussia. (F)

(= Napoleon captured the capital ofRussia: Moscow.)

4)  Hitler began an invasion of the Soviet Union that was the largest military land campaign in history. (T)

5)  German troops adopted scorch-earth policy when they enteredRussia. (F)

   (= Stalin instructed the Russian people to burn and destroyed farms and factories.)

6) Hitler failed to capture Moscow because of the strong resistance from Russian people.(F)

(= Hitler failed to capture Moscow because of the severe winter inRussia.)

(2). Questions and Answers

1)    What happened to Napoleon’s Grand army when it was retreating from Moscow?

(= The Russians launched hit-and-run attacks on the French from fields and forests. On the other hand, the temperature dropped to minus 4 degrees Celsius and Napoleon’s army didn’t have enough clothes, food and shelter.)

2)    Why didn’t the Russian people defend their homeland in the face of Napoleon’s offensive?

(= They would like to take advantage of their nature situation to fight for them.)

3)    What tactics did Hitler use in his invasion of the Soviet Union?

(= He planned to use the tactics called blitzkrieg, or “lightning war”, which had defeated the rest of Europe.)

4)    What was the significance of the battle of Stalingrad?

(= It was one of the most important battles. It endedGermany's ongoing offensive against the Soviet Union, and along with the second Battle of El Alamein paved the way for Nazi Germany's eventual defeat.)

5)    What conclusion does the author draw from Napoleon and Hitler’s military campaigns?

(= The elements of nature must be reckoned with in any military campaign.)

(3) Text Analysis

A Comparison-and-Contrast Analysis of the Two Invasions