“For 24 hours a day, we three ‘girls’ with complementary work schedules monitored Axis programs, reporting to our supervisors what we cut and why. Of course, we could listen to what we cut! We performed our duty conscientiously without really being aware of its importance.” This reference to “neutrality” is revealing, for it illustrates how Switzerland could be “neutral” in a formal political sense but not morally neutral. She did not allow her citizens to be barraged with totalitarian propaganda.
Denise Lecoultre was also involved in helping refugees. She recalls: “The first refugees were those who had the courage and the means to flee, such as those from the professions who arrived with their families, sometimes with their savings. They dispersed in various Cantons and, for the most part, integrated there, their children attending schools and uni versities. The Swiss Quaker Association provided considerable help and care for these immigrants. Thanks to a family I knew, I was able to attend their meetings and so became aware of the growing dangers of the Nazi dictatorship.
“Courses on postwar mutual aid were organized so that the young of all nationalities would go to the aid of the populations of the devastated countries as soon as the war was over. In 1944, after taking such a course at the School of Social Assistance at Zurich, I spent a period of probation for a few months at the Hôtel des Terrasses in Territet-Montreux, where women refugees were lodged. They were Russians, Yugoslavs, French and Italians who had been ‘utilized’ by the invaders and had managed to escape, pregnant or with their babies. There were some thirty to forty refugees, mostly women, and about twenty babies. I assisted the principal by accompanying the future mothers to the maternity ward and back to the hotel, and by being available to help them resolve their problems. The organization of this home was simple. The atmosphere was full of conviviality and tolerance.
“Early in the morning, all the refugees and those responsible for them gathered together on the ground floor for roll call and the distribution of duties, allocated according to the varied qualifications of our refugees. For example, two Jewish Italian doctors looked after the health of the mothers and children; a Jewish Italian woman supervised the preparation of meals for the babies. She knew a good deal about infant nutrition and gave advice to the inexperienced foster mothers who helped her; her husband (a former bank director) helped the principal with administrative matters.
“The mothers cleaned their rooms or dormitory, then helped with the care of the children; everybody could come and go in accordance with a prescribed rotation for meal times. All of us, Swiss and refugees, took our meals in the same dining room. The menus of the adults were somewhat monotonous. The staple was boiled potatoes, sometimes with a little jam or cheese. The babies received minced veal liver, high-quality milk products and fruit.”
As soon as the war ended, arrangements were made for the refugees to return home. “At Montreux station, when a train was departing for Italy, I was saying goodbye when suddenly a young woman whom I had accompanied to the maternity ward during my training period handed me her baby as she got on the train… and vanished. Other Italian refugees on the train took the baby back through the open window, promising they would find its mother. I still often think about that child.”
For Swiss children, mobilization meant the sudden departure of fathers and brothers. Gertrud Seiler has a vivid memory of the day the war began in September 1939: “General mobilization! What an unforgettable day! I was only 14. When Father got orders to report to the army, he was in the middle of a delicate process at the factory. He dropped everything, dashed home and immediately packed to leave. We stood around him, deeply depressed and full of anguish. Father hardly spoke and refused to be seen off by any of us. I disregarded his wish and tagged along with him for a short distance. I clung to his hand and felt his fingers tightening around mine. I said more than a thousand words! His features were tense and twitching as he bent down to kiss me farewell. The only words he was able to utter were ‘Bhüet Di Gott!’ [God bless you]. His blessing accompanied me all my life! He then went off… alone. Would we ever see him again? What would become of our country? How was Mother going to manage with her four children and with the family business losing most of its male employees? Tears, anguish and prayers swept through our whole country.12
“In the spring of 1940, when the threat seemed greatest, our government ordered civilians from border areas to prepare a backpack with strictly indispensable gear and emergency food rations. So each of us had, by our bedside, a backpack for a possible evacuation, should we be attacked by the Germans.” While it is unclear exactly where such civilians would have been directed, obviously it would be south, away from the front. In France, there was a massive civilian exodus away from the advancing German armies.
As the war dragged on, shortages of all kinds worsened. Gertrud Seiler recalls: “Most private homes were equipped with little cast-iron stoves. Only one room could be heated. We made paper briquettes out of old newspapers. Bedrooms were cold. It took hours to fall asleep. Electric stoves were not allowed.
“School children from the age of 14 on were compelled to contribute at least two weeks of their vacation to help farmers. I ended up on a farm that had 40 cherry trees. While at first it seemed great fun to pick cherries, we soon ached all over from standing on a ladder the whole day. We had to whistle while picking cherries, in order not to eat too many!
“I know of hardly any Swiss families who did not take in children from occupied countries to give them a period of recovery. In the war years, we had at least five children. They were supposed to stay three months. Most stayed much longer. It was good to see them gradually losing their fear, putting on weight and becoming normal children again.”
Snow was falling as this author interviewed Rita de Quervain at Davos in 2000. “I was 14 when the war broke out. Father was in the army most of the time. Fascist Italy built roads on the Italian side to Switzer land. Father was stationed near the Gotthard, the first time in 1939 and the second time when Germany retreated from northern Italy.”13 That is a rugged Alpine region where an attack would have been stoutly resisted.
The founding of the Swiss Confederation at the Rütli meadow in 1291.
The union was intended to be a perpetual alliance against invaders.
Image: Otto Schön, Die Schweitzergeschicte in Bildern, Verlag der J. Dalp’schen Buch und Kunsthandlung in Bern (K. Schmid), 1872
The Battle of Dornach, 1499.
Switzerland defeated the First Reich in the Swabian War.
Image: Otto Schön Die Schweitzergeschicte in Bildern, Verlag der J. Dalp’schen Buch und Kunsthandlung in Bern (K. Schmid), 1872
The Swiss wielded the pike and halberd with a thirst for blood.
To the insult “Sauschwob” (German pig), which already existed as a term as far back as 1499, “Saunazi” (Nazi pig) was added to the Swiss sneers for the Third Reich.
Image: Otto Schön Die Schweitzergeschicte in Bildern, Verlag der J. Dalp’schen Buch und Kunsthandlung in Bern (K. Schmid), 1872
General Henri Guisan assembled the officers at the Rütli on July 25, 1940, after France fell, exhorting them to resist any invader at all costs.
Photo: Swiss Mililtary Department.
Corps Commander Herbert Constam, former head of the Swiss military shooting school and the highest-level Jewish officer.
German intelligence’s assessment: “Very capable. Non-Aryan. Enemy of Germany.”
Photo: Swiss Military Department
General Henri Guisan, Commander in Chief of the Swiss armed forces, reviews Alpine sniper exercises.
German intelligence said of Guisan: “Intelligent, very cautious. Behind h is overt correctness stands h is sympathy with the Western Powers.”
Photo: Swiss Military Department
This wing of a Swiss fighter aircraft has been peppered with German machine gun fire in a dog-fight, but Swiss planes shot down 11 Luftwaffe aircraft.
Photo: Swiss Military Department
; Jewish refugee boys at the Rütli on Swiss National Day 1945, from the Hôme de la Forêt, which cared for young survivors from Buchenwald.
Photo: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Norbert Bikales
German panzers were another new threat in 1940. The author amid rows of tank barriers still standingat St. Maurice, where the Swiss hoped to ambush the Germans between narrow mountain passes.
Ski troop maneuvers in the Reduit, th e Alpine redoubt which would have been Switzerland’s main defensive area in the event of an invasion.
Rifle with tank mortar shell. Constam drafted tactics combining sharpshooters with anti-tank grenadiers which General Guisan ordered to be implemented in operational plans.
Photo: Die Schweitz in Waffen: Ein Erinnerungsbuchüber den Aktivdienst 1939/45 für Volk und Armee.(Vaterländischer Verlag A.G., Murten und Zürich, 1945), p. 80
Carrier pigeons are released by Swiss soldiers to send messages in the Reduit. Switzerland ended its carrier pigeon service in the 1990s, the last country to do so.
Photo: Swiss Military Department
German panzers and the Luftwaffe would not have been effective in the Swiss Alps.
Photos: Swiss Military Department
The Women’s Auxilliary Service (Frauenhilfsdienst or FHD) played a key role in the Swiss Military.
FHD members observe and chart intrusions into Swiss airspace by foreign aircraft.
A military encampment with typical straw bedding. The woman on the left makes surea gas
mask is in proper order while the other two examine the contents of a backpack.
In this training exercise filmed by the Swiss weekly newsreels of the “Ortswehr” (Local Defense Force), a boy scout speeds by on his bicycle to spread news of an invasion. Note his M1889 rifle.
As the newsreel continues, snipers take their positions ready to ambush the invaders and fifth columnists.
stills from SwissNewsreel (Wochenschau), Landesverteidigungund Ortswehren, August 1943
“Ortswehr” partisans prepare to throw Molotov cocktails at an approaching enemy vehicle.
“Total war requires total defense,” admonishes the newsreel.
stills from SwissNewsreel (Wochenschau), Landesverteidigungund Ortswehren, August 1943
War mobilization, September 1939.
In minutes, this farmer dropped his scythe, donned his uniform and grabbed his rifle, said his goodbyes, then left to join his militia unit.
Still from Swiss Newsreel
Women and children were left to do all of the farm work when the men were mobilized.
The workload increased as the economic strangleh old tightened.
Switzerland was forced to grow far more of her own crops.
Image: La Suisse en Armes: Mobilisation 1939. (Éditions Patriotiques, Morat, 1940), p. 170
Food and consumer goods were heavily rationed. Above are ration coupons for shoes, hot meals, food and clothing.
Original coupons courtesy of Peter Baumgartner-Jost
After the fall of France on June 24, 1940, Hitler’s General Staff ordered attack plansto be drawn up against Switzerland. Several were submitted, including the one to the right dated August 12, 1940, underthe title “Der Deutsche Angriff Gegen Schweiz.”
Image: Bundesärchiv/Militärchiv, Freiburg am Breisgau, Germany
Operationsentwurf Schweiz—Tannenbaum (Draft Operations Plan Switzerland—Chrismas Tree), October 1940.
Bearing the signature of General von Leeb, this was the cover letter for the Tannenbaum attack plan against Switzerland.
Image: Bundesärchiv/Militärchiv, Freiburg am Breisgau, Germany
General Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, who planned the invasion of Switzerland in 1940.
He assigned the task of “Sonderaufgabe Schweiz” to Army Group C, which was positioned along the western border of Switzerland.
Operation “Tannebaum” (Christmas Tree)—the German plan for invading Switzerland, October 1940.
Wehrmacht forces (blue arrows) would attack from occupied France in the west, Germany in the north and Austria in the East. Italian forces (black arrows) would attack from the south
German intelligence map of Swiss troop positions prepared for the General Staff in October 1941. Swiss divisions and brigades are shown at the borders, in the plateau and especially in the Alpine Reduit.
Image: Bundesärchiv/Militärchiv, Freiburg am Breisgau, Germany
“So Würd’s bessere!”
Kicking the foreign dogs out. From Switzerland’s leading satirical magazine, Nebelspalter, May 1938.
Image: Gegen Rote und Braune Fäuste (Nebelspalter Verlag, Rorschach, 1949)
Shooting the Nazis in the butt with a crossbow. Satire at the Caberet Cornichon. “The Rat Catcher,” 1939.
Image: Elsie Attenhofer, Caberet Cornichon (Benteli Verlag, Bern, 1975), p. 158
“Die Allerletze Zusammenkunft”
The final reunion—the dead Hitler and Mussolini ascend over the ruins of cities and piles of corpses (Nebelspalter, May 1945).
“Die neuen Freunde.”
The new friends—Nazi Germany and Communist Russia drip with blood after partitioning Poland (Nebelspalter, September 1939).
Image: Gegen Rote und Braune Fäuste (Nebelspalter Verlag, Rorschach 1949)
Switzerland arranged the rescue of 1200 Jews from Theresienstadt in February 1945. Here they enjoy a warm meal at a school in St. Gallen.
Photo: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Stadtarchiv (Vadiana), St. Gallen
Helping the victims of war. Needy children, mostly from France, were cared for by Swiss families for several months at a time to recuperate. The tags shown here identified each child at train stations.
Photo: Still from Swiss newsreel footage
Swiss soldiers—who protected everyone, including refugees—slept on straw. Some refugees who were able-bodied men did the same. Refugee women and children stayed in hotels and private houses.
Photo: Swiss Military Department.
Many American B-17 Flying Fortresses flying bombing missions over Germany were shot up or ran out of gas. The lucky ones were able to crash-land in Switzerland, which provided safety to over 1,700 American airmen.
Photo: USAAF
General Henri Guisan, the Swiss Commander in Chief, met with American intelligence operative Allen Dulles, who assigned the code number ‘839’ to Guisan.
Guisan passed on intelligence about Nazi preparations for bacteriological warfare to Dulles.
Photo: Swiss Military Department
Allen Dulles, head of the American OSS (Office of Strategic Services), stationed in Bern, Switzerland, which became America’s window on the Third Reich.
Images: Allen W. Dulles Papers, Princeton University Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library
Boys at arms in World War II.
Young Swiss train as cadets with service rifles
Photo: Gottlieb H. Heer & E. A. Geßler, Armee und Volk: Sechs Jahre Landesverteidigung (Verkehrsverlag A.G., Zürich, 1946)
The man on the left skates by on a mini-scooter with a 1911 bolt action rifle, while the boy on the right carries the assault rifle 1990, the current Swiss military service rifle.
These scenes from the parade at the Swiss Federal Shooting Festival in Morgues, July 2000, show the continuing Swiss tradition of allowing citizens to bear arms, ready at any time to defend the country.
Photos: Author
The annual Rütli Schützenfest (shooting festival) takes place annually at the historic meadow where the Swiss Confederation was born. November 2002.
Photo: Author
“Father was a chemical engineer for manufacturers who traded with firms in Germany and Italy before the war. He went to Germany and found some for, and some against, the Nazis. After he returned, he reported what he saw in Germany to Swiss intelligence. Anti-Nazism was strongest in German-speaking Switzerland because they understood Nazism the best. Had the Nazis attacked Switzerland, Father would ha
ve been eliminated.” The author heard similar comments from many Swiss, who knew that opponents of the Third reich in occupied countries were executed.
“The son of a German family living in Switzerland went to the Gymnasium with my future husband. The boy later studied theology in Germany and then joined the Wehrmacht. His mother was the head of an organization—German Women of Zurich. Her sister was the Secretary of the German Consulate in Zurich. They acted against Switzerland by sending information and preparing the organization in the event Ger many took over.
“We were frightened in 1940 after the fall of Belgium and Holland. I was in a program organized by the Girl Scouts in Zurich to help elderly people. I would go to the old-people’s home at 5:00 a.m. Every morning and look into the sky to see if the Germans were attacking. Everyone knew the Luftwaffe always began its attacks in the early morning. Later, when Germany became too engaged elsewhere, the fear subsided, and I no longer had to wake up at 5:00.”
Swiss and the Nazis Page 23
