Swiss and the Nazis

by Stephen Halbrook

  Published by

  CASEMATE

  Copyright © 2006 Stephen P. Halbrook

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. For additional information contact Casemate Publishers, 908 Darby Road, Havertown, PA 19083.

  ISBN 1-932033-42-4

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Part I: A WAR OF WORDS AND NERVES

  1. The Eyes of German Intelligence

  2. Hanging Hitler in Satire

  3. Counterattack of the Newsreels

  Part II: PREPARING FOR INVASION

  4. I Was a Militia Soldier Then

  5. Blitzkrieg 1940

  6. Switzerland Is a Porcupine

  Part III: STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL: FOOD, FUEL, AND FEAR

  7. The Spirit of Resistance

  8. Gas Masks and Potato Bread: An Oral History

  9. The “J” Stamp, the Lifeboat, and Refugees

  Part IV: ESPIONAGE AND SUBVERSION

  10. The Consequences of Encirclement

  11. Intruders in Our Midst

  12. America’s Window on the Reich: Allen Dulles in Bern

  Conclusion

  Source Notes

  Bibliography

  INTRODUCTION

  By every strategic rationale, Switzerland should have fallen to the Nazis in World War II. She lies directly exposed on the German border, and during the course of the war became completely surrounded by the Axis powers. The majority of her people are ethnically German, and her population was outnumbered by the Axis at least thirty to one. While the Swiss Alps were eminently defensible, the north of the country, containing most of its population and industry, was relatively flat and easily accessible to mechanized forces. As a landlocked nation in the heart of Europe, Switzerland was beyond the reach of potential allies.

  Further, to Adolf Hitler, political neutrality meant nothing, and national borders were no obstacle to his Wehrmacht. Pre-war Nazi theorists drew up maps that depicted Switzerland’s obliteration, most of it incorporated into Germany with smaller parts designated for client states along ethnic lines. By 1940, every country surrounding Switzerland was either a member of the Axis or under Nazi rule. The Wehrmacht finalized plans for blitzkrieg attacks against Switzerland.

  But Switzerland was not overrun. Its army hunkered down at the border and in its Alpine fortresses, swearing to exact a high price in blood from any invader. The Nazis constantly sought opportunities to subvert and to strike, but dissuaded by Swiss resistance and skillful Swiss diplomacy, and with overwhelming distractions elsewhere, the opportune time to wreak destruction never came.

  The reasons for Switzerland’s survival in World War II are several, and in the final analysis the gigantic scale of the Nazi war in Russia, which began in June 1941, holds first place. If Hitler had achieved the quick victory over the Soviet Union that he expected, traditional Swiss courage, along with the country’s elaborate defensive preparations, would have been overwhelmed by brute force. Instead, as the war seesawed back and forth in the East, and later in the West, the Swiss were left with a waiting game, their mobilizations timed against each rise of Axis fortunes, the Swiss themselves never knowing when a Wehrmacht onslaught would finally be launched.

  Switzerland’s policy of deterrence took three major forms. The first consisted of its unique military system, in which every able-bodied man served in the army and was well trained in firearms. This allowed Switzerland to field a greater percentage of its population than other countries, and far more than the other small states that had fallen to Hitler. Second, and less well known, is the fact that the Swiss wired their infrastructure, particularly their transportation system—bridges, rails, and their strategically vital Alpine tunnels—informing the Germans that it would be destroyed the minute an invasion began. Though the cost of such destruction would have been incalculable to the country itself, the Germans were left with no doubt that the Swiss would go to any lengths to defy an invader, even to the point of devastating their own country.

  The third primary form of deterrence was improvised during the war by commander-in-chief of the Swiss Army Henri Guisan, after the fall of France resulted in German panzers arrayed along the country’s exposed western border. In 1940 Guisan decided to negate the tactics and machinery of Nazi blitzkrieg by moving the bulk of Swiss forces to a fortified zone in the Alps called the Réduit National (National Redoubt). Involving a massive movement of troops as well as a colossal construction enterprise, this strategy meant that, henceforth, German armor and airpower would be useless against Switzerland’s main forces. Instead of a quick war using mobile tactics, the Wehrmacht would be faced with a protracted struggle amid the Alps, with Swiss marksmen and hidden artillery emplacements pre-targeting every narrow approach.

  These measures, along with others taken by the Swiss, both spiritual and material, succeeded in deterring Hitler in his desire to absorb the Alpine Republic, until in the end the Nazis themselves were destroyed by more powerful outside forces.

  The result was that there was no Holocaust in Switzerland, no slave labor, and no seizure of Swiss machinery or transit systems for unrestrained Nazi use. The thousands of refugees who found shelter in Switzer land were never stigmatized, much less deported to the death camps of the Reich. Switzerland was and is a multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious democracy with a tradition of tolerance. Nazi Ger many, with its institutional racism and leadership cult, represented everything the Swiss abhorred.

  Given her geographical location at the heart of central Europe, as well as her multilinguistic composition, Switzerland’s neutrality had been codified in European councils as early as 1515. Once considered the foremost warriors of Europe (and drawn upon for centuries afterward as mercenaries) the Swiss received ratification by the international Treaty of Vienna after the Napoleonic Wars as comprising an independent confederation that should take no part in future European wars. Thus, Switzer land adopted political neutrality as the primary principle of her foreign policy, through the Franco-Prussian War and World War I, until her concept of armed neutrality was put to the ultimate test in the 1940s, when she found herself surrounded by Axis forces. During this period the Swiss, standing fast to their independence, were called upon to duplicate the courage of their forebears.

  In a December 1944 memo to Anthony Eden, a supremely circumspect Winston churchill wrote: “of all the neutrals Switzerland has the greatest right to distinction…. She has been a democratic State, standing for freedom in self-defense among her mountains, and in thought, in spite of race, largely on our side.”1

  Led by General Henri Guisan, the Swiss armed forces spent the war prepared to resist invasion at any cost. When General Guisan died in 1960, the largest and most magnificent wreath was sent by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was then President of the United States. Five years earlier, Eisenhower had occasion to review a company of Swiss troops and wrote: “Rarely in my military experience have I had the opportunity to see a more perfectly trained unit.”2 Switzerland was the centuries-old “Sister Republic” of the United States, and her ubiquitous military force—in which every male was armed and trained as a marksman—enjoyed a unique reputation.

  Allen Dulles, head of America’s spy network operating against Germany from his base in Switzerland during World War II, wrote: “At the peak of its mobilization Switzerland had 850,000 men under arms or standing in
reserve, a fifth of the total population…. That Switzerland did not have to fight was thanks to its will to resist and its large investment of men and equipment in its own defense. The cost to Germany of an invasion of Switzer land would certainly have been very high.”3 German intelligence reports indicate with grim clarity that Switzerland would not roll over and capitulate like other neutrals, and even some of the Allies. The Swiss, as in the tradition of their famed mercenary regiments, would fight to the death.

  Today, it is easy to criticize Switzerland for remaining neutral throughout the war. Why did the Swiss not join the Allied military campaigns against Germany? What about Swiss commerce, including manufactured exports and coal and food imports from Germany? Why were not all refugees at the Swiss border admitted? By holding fast to its independence, did the Swiss confederation somehow prolong the war?

  These were the charges that suddenly emerged some fifty years after World War II had ended and which quickly gained public currency, even though they were based on carefully chosen anecdotes or highly selective interpretations of the record. The charges reflected very little in-depth knowledge of the realities of the war, the positions taken by the Allies, or the options available to Switzerland. Most importantly, the accusations failed to take into consideration the patriotic nature of the wartime Swiss, whose army was determined to resist aggression.

  Sparking the charges were lawsuits filed in New York in the mid-1990s claiming that, after the war ended, Swiss banks refused to pay the dormant accounts of Holocaust victims to survivors. The banks responded that the deposits were paid to all persons who provided evidence of legal entitlement. (Switzerland has never had escheat laws, which allow the government to confiscate money in dormant accounts after a specified number of years.) After a negative politico-media campaign and the threat of a financial boycott, but no judicial trial of any of the claims, two large commercial Swiss banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion.4 The Swiss National Bank, supported by an overwhelming majority of the Swiss public, refused to take part.

  The merits of these charges against banks and financiers will not be reviewed here, but rather, the history of the Swiss people’s clear determination during World War II to remain independent and preserve their democratic institutions.

  At this writing, the wartime generation is passing, but their living memories and their firsthand knowledge of real-life conditions in Switzerland during the war remain invaluable. Life then was not easy and neither were the choices. The Federal government in Bern had the difficult task of restraining the Swiss press—in fact, the defiant nature of the entire country—so as not to provoke a Nazi onslaught. Many civilians feared an invasion, but there were also thousands of young men trained in marksmanship, stationed in carefully prepared positions, who thought to themselves, “Let them come.” It is difficult to relate the complete story of Switzerland in World War II, but reviewing the firsthand experiences of the country’s own wartime generation, as well as German archives that contain the Nazis’ attack plans, is essential.

  This author sought to bring some balance to the historical record in English with the publication of Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II (1998),5 which recounted the Nazi threat and Switzerland’s military and political response, together with the plight and the will to resist of the Swiss people at large. That book took a chronological approach, interweaving Swiss ideological defiance and military preparations in reaction to the Nazi menace for the entire life of the Third Reich.

  Target Switzerland filled a void in World War II history and generated considerable interest in the United States as well as abroad, where it has appeared in German, French, Italian and Polish language editions.6 The book won the 2000 Max Geilinger Foundation award for works contributing to Swiss and Anglo-American culture and the 2002 Foundation for Western Thought (Stiftung für Abendländische Besinnung) award.7

  The following pages can be viewed as a sequel, although perusal of Target Switzerland is definitely not a prerequisite. This new work presents an additional, more intimate picture of significant attitudes, plans and events which could only be treated briefly in the previous work but which are critical to understanding how the Swiss dissuaded a Nazi invasion and occupation. It presents the recollections of scores of survivors of that epoch, and its oral history contains perspectives and experiences not found in official documents or historical overviews. It also reveals Nazi plans for subversion and conquest based on comprehensive research in the German military archives.

  This book is organized into four units. The first, A War of Words and Nerves, depicts how the Swiss mobilized an active “spiritual defense” of their country as war clouds gathered and broke. Chapters describe the use of the press and cabaret as satirical weapons against totalitarianism, and the role of Swiss newsreels in building the spirit of resistance. German prewar subversion plans and reports on the negative mood of the Swiss people toward the Third Reich are also analyzed.

  The book’s second unit, Preparing for Invasion, concerns military preparations by both the Swiss and the Germans against each other. In a series of interviews, Swiss soldiers and officers recall their experiences about an epoch when every day could have been “the day” when all hell would break loose and they would meet the enemy. Blitzkrieg plans against Switzerland devised by the German Wehrmacht in 1940, including German assessments of Swiss resistance, are described in detail. Switzer land was an armed camp, with countless fortifications along rivers and in the highly defensive Alpine terrain, against which the Axis could have attempted access only with extreme costs in blood.

  Struggle for Survival: Food, Fuel, and Fear, the third unit, presents oral histories of daily life during the war with its shortages and alarms, rumors and tedium. Jokes and slurs the Swiss devised to characterize Hitler’s “Swabians” across the Rhine are retold. The role of women in the military and the economy are probed. A chapter on the refugee crisis investigates what role Swiss officials played in Germany’s prewar adoption of the “J” stamp on Jewish passports, how Switzerland became a lifeboat for thousands of refugees, and how asylum policies were liberalized as the persecution of Jews escalated and was publicized.

  Espionage and Subversion, the fourth and final unit, covers larger strategic issues as well as fascinating intelligence activities in Switzerland during the war. Aggressive intentions against Switzerland—from attack plans to bickering within the Gestapo about who would rule the conquered Swiss territory—persisted throughout the war. One chapter focuses on Davos, today’s international meeting site, where the Swiss struggled against an active fifth column and which became an internment site for American airmen who managed to bring down their crippled bombers in the safety of Swiss territory. The final chapter profiles Switzerland as America’s window on the Reich—how from Bern, Allen Dulles operated the OSS (the U.S. spy agency), helped at crucial junctures by clandestine information from Switzerland’s own intelligence services.

  None of these critical topics was addressed in the 25 volumes issued by the Bergier commission. The Bergier reports, mistakenly perceived as exhaustive, actually addressed only certain issues, such as Switzerland’s economic relations with Germany, and did not utilize firsthand accounts by ordinary Swiss citizens still living or give a systematic analysis of Swiss experience during the war.8 Without trade, Switzerland could not manufacture arms to defend itself against the Axis, feed its population, prevent collapse, or host refugees. While most European countries were conquered by the Nazis, provided slave labor to them, and failed to prevent the deportation of their Jews to death camps, Switzerland success fully avoided all of these horrors.

  The Bergier reports include no volumes on some fundamental aspects of Swiss life during the war, including Nazi blitzkrieg plans, Swiss military defenses, Swiss ideological resistance against Nazism, and the patriotic willpower of an Alpine democracy that survived intact when every surrounding nation had fallen to Nazi arms or intimidation. These topics are covered in this book, and brin
g to the attention of scholars and the public alike aspects about the role of Switzerland during World War II that are little known in the U.S.

  It is pleasing to note that in recent years interest in the actual record of Switzerland in World War II has increased. A growing body of impeccable scholarship on Switzerland during the Second World War is emerging, including both original works and others translated from German or French.9

  Americans in particular should realize that while their own homeland was not threatened by invasion during the war, Switzerland was under constant threat. If Hitler had found the opportunity to concentrate his main forces against the Alpine republic, it surely would have been conquered, albeit at the cost of a gigantic number of casualties. The fact that the war flowed around Switzerland, rather than through it, is tribute enough to Europe’s oldest democracy, and America’s “Sister Republic.”

  * * *

  This book could not have been written without the help and cooperation of scores of people, particularly members of Switzerland’s “active service” generation who gave interviews to the author. Other individuals provided tours of military fortifications, arranged conferences with historians and military officials, and furnished a steady stream of out-of-print books and documents. Many such persons are identified in the text or endnotes. The author is grateful for the assistance of all such persons, regardless of whether their names are mentioned.

  The author is especially grateful to Jürg Stüssi-Lauterburg and the staff at the Swiss Military Library in Bern for helping to locate documents. George Gyssler, Paul Rothenhäusler, and Peter Baumgartner-Jost assisted in arranging interviews for the oral history portions of the book. Similarly helpful was Hans Wächter, who was an artillery officer in the war and now is President of Aktion Aktivdienst 1939–1945, which promotes awareness of the Swiss army during the war. Sebastian Remus, a professional German archive researcher, shifted through thousands of documents pertaining to planned hostilities against Switzerland in the German Military Archives. Therese Klee-Hathaway assisted with translations from German, including Swiss German dialect. Lisa Halbrook indefatigably scoured through reams of archival documents. Tom Ryan and Steve Smith provided invaluable and diligent editorial assistance. Needless to say, the author is solely responsible for the interpretations and any inaccuracies in the work.