In 1935 a new rifle, the K31 carbine, was introduced into the Swiss army, even as the Germans were adopting a new design of their own, the Mauser 98k, which became their standard service rifle throughout the war. Not surprisingly for a nation in which marksmanship was (and is) the national sport, the Swiss design was far superior to the German in terms of accuracy, weight, handling and ease of loading. The advantages of the Swiss model became more evident at longer distances, and even the Swiss 7.5mm bullet had a better aerodynamic shape and weight combination than its German counterpart, giving it more accuracy and a greater range. Almost 350,000 units were produced by 1945, and the K31 remains in wide use today in target matches. Had the Germans attempted an invasion during World War II, they would themselves have been the targets of Swiss snipers armed with this superior rifle, firing from rugged mountain terrain.124
More important than material preparations was the cultivation of the Swiss national spirit, expressed with the term geistige Landes-verteidigung (défense nationale spirituelle in French), meaning spiritual, ideological, or moral national defense. Federal Councillor Philipp Etter even authored a book with that title.125 The primary attributes of this philosophy were “united community, the intrinsic value of democracy, and reverence for the dignity and freedom of the person.”126 National defense was seen as wholly dependent on the virtue and character of each citizen:
The armed defense of the country is a primary and substantial task of the state. The mental defense of the country falls primarily not on the state but on the person, the citizen. No government and no battalions are able to protect right and freedom, where the citizen himself is not capable of stepping to the front door and seeing what is outside.127
The meaning of “spiritual national defense” evolved as the threat to Switzerland’s existence grew. This concept of moral dedication to defense of the homeland and democratic ideals was Switzerland’s answer to National Socialism, and the term applied to the distinctly Swiss military, economic, political, and cultural philosophy.128
Beginning in 1933, Switzerland expended large sums of money and human effort to arm herself and to have the capacity to resist a Nazi invasion. Though many Swiss spoke German, they had no desire to give up their unique Swiss liberty to join Hitler’s increasingly menacing Reich.
Chapter 2
1938
Anschluss of Switzerland?
A KEYSTONE OF NAZI DOCTRINE WAS THE REUNIFICATION OF the German “Volk” into the Reich, regardless of existing national boundaries. Following World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had been dissolved, and Austria had been established as a predominantly Germanic state. Some public sentiment both there and in Germany favored an Anschluss (Union) between the two countries, though this annexation was explicitly forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. For Hitler, who had already renounced the World War I surrender agreement, Anschluss became a foreign policy imperative. The new Chancellor of Austria, Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg, thought he could protect his country’s sovereignty by appeasing Hitler. Nazi criminals in prisons were freed and Nazis were appointed to high office.1 Not for the first time, appeasement failed and German plans to force an Anschluss progressed.
Franz von Papen, Nazi Minister to Austria, summoned Schuschnigg to a meeting with Hitler on February 12, 1938 at Berchtesgaden, the Führer’s mountain retreat near the Austrian border. Hitler’s harangue to Schuschnigg about Austria’s shortcomings culminated in thinly veiled threats to overpower the smaller nation. After several hours, German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop appeared with an ultimatum. Schuschnigg was told that the “agreement” must be signed without further discussion. All the top ministries would be given to Nazis, and the military forces and economies of the two countries would begin a merger process.2 Hitler told Schuschnigg: “You will either sign it as it is and fulfill my demands within three days, or I will order the march into Austria.” Schuschnigg finally signed and promised to persuade the Austrian President, the ultimate authority, to sign.
Schuschnigg arrived in Vienna the next morning and found President Wilhelm Miklas, who balked. The government was a single-party dictatorship, and free elections had not been held since 1933.3 In the next few days, Schuschnigg maneuvered to avoid acceding to the Führer’s demands, backed by growing military threats. However, the Chancellor was anxious to avoid violence and decided that the Army and the Militia of the Patriotic Front (the dictatorship’s party) should not resist.4 Despite his capitulation, Berlin also demanded that Schuschnigg resign. In a radio broadcast to the nation announcing his resignation, Schuschnigg declared: “President Miklas has asked me to tell the people of Austria that we have yielded to force since we are not prepared even in this terrible hour to shed blood. We have decided to order the troops to offer no resistance.”5 Field Marshal Hermann Goering and Austrian Nazi collaborator Arthur Seyss-Inquart meanwhile faked a telegram from the provisional Austrian government requesting the intervention of German troops to prevent bloodshed.6 Hitler entered his native Austria on March 12 and was greeted by enthusiastic crowds.7
Thus Germany, with a population of sixty-six million, annexed Austria, a nation of seven million.8 Not a shot was fired in the Anschluss.
Switzerland immediately reinforced her guards along the Austrian frontier. Now two-thirds of her borders—820 of 1,180 miles—were with the German and Italian dictatorships. Switzerland had only four million people, but she was committed to democracy and independence. Federal Cabinet members remained in Bern over the weekend. The New York Times commented:
A grave view of the situation was taken here partly because of the methods Chancellor Hitler used, which are strongly condemned even by those who think Austria is a special case, and partly because of what these methods and Hitler’s program for unifying the whole “German race” foreshadow not only for Czechoslovakia but for Switzerland.
The immediate effect of this, it is pointed out, is to make Switzerland a democratic peninsula in a politically autocratic and economically autarchic league. . . . The danger of a German attack on France via Switzerland is believed to be greatly increased thereby.9
On March 13, the total Anschluss law was proclaimed in Austria, complete with plans for a farcical plebiscite to be held in the future. The new President, Seyss-Inquart, announced: “Austria is a province of the German Reich.” On the 14th, Hitler was in Vienna.10
The day Hitler paraded through the Austrian capital, there appeared in bookshops throughout the city maps which showed the territories “belonging” to the Reich. German-speaking Switzerland was included.11
That same day, however, the German ambassador in Bern assured the Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs that the Führer had no ambitions regarding Switzerland. Just days later, though, the newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung, in a statement that would have required Propaganda Minister Goebbels’ approval, asserted that “no branch of the German race has the right or the possibility of withdrawing from the common destiny of all the Germans.” Another German publication chimed in: “Austria has had the experience of what can be called Verschweizern [“Swissing”], meaning the tragedy of a people which has been made to believe that they were a nation while in reality they were only part of a community of the same language.”12
Simultaneously, Switzerland was flooded with a special, reduced-cost edition of the magazine Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, filled with photographs showing the enthusiasm with which the German troops had been welcomed in Austria.13 During the same period, Field Marshal Goering published a map of the Reich which included most of Switzerland. The Swiss frontier was called “the boundary of the internal separation of the German people,” and German-speaking Swiss were called “exiled citizens of the German Reich.” The materials were incorporated into a school text, and the Swiss filed a formal protest in Berlin.14
That year, German writer Christoph Steding published The Reich and the Illness of European Culture, a “scientific” work promoting racism and totalitarianism. He depicted Swiss neutrality and neutralit
y in general as a moral defect based on weakness of will. According to his theory, neutrality embodied rootlessness and the refusal to recognize destiny.15
Because of her weak political and military structure, Austria could be conquered without bloodshed in a few days as a result of one meeting lasting several hours between Hitler and Austria’s Chancellor, a few telephone calls, some meetings within the Austrian ruling elite, and the announcement that the armed forces would not resist. A few leaders could surrender the country and guarantee that no armed resistance would occur.
In Switzerland, in contrast, no leaders had sufficient authority to surrender the nation. The Swiss Army was not subject to the commands of a political elite who might order it not to resist. Instead, both political and military power were decentralized and dispersed right down to the locality and the individual household. This system made capitulation much less likely and guaranteed that any invasion would be met with resistance at thousands of separate points. Nearly a million citizens, many in places where tanks could not go and the German air force could not be effective, would resist individually or in small groups, taking rifle shots at the invader.
The elimination of independent Austria led to a strengthened will to resist as well as additional defensive measures in Switzerland. The Swiss accelerated completion of their fortifications from Basel all the way to the Italian Tyrol. Mines were laid under bridges across the Rhine and on roads running to the frontiers.16
Meanwhile, Swiss fascists, a tiny minority of the population, advocated swallowing up cantonal power in a strong central government with a national Führer.17 The call fell on deaf ears, especially in rural areas where the citizens had practiced pure democracy for centuries.18
Basel’s National Zeitung newspaper described the fifth column activities and methods of subversion that had succeeded in Austria. It commented:
The Nazi coup in Austria had hardly been carried out when the Austrian border patrols were provided with huge books containing complete lists of former Austria’s citizens, alphabetically arranged, in which “traitors” were distinguished from those who were to be permitted to pass the border. Why should we believe that we Swiss have been spied upon a lesser extent—that a blacklist of patriotic Swiss has not also been prepared? . . .
So it is imperative that we keep our eyes and ears open. Today every Swiss citizen must solemnly resolve to spot those agents of Anschluss and resignation, whether they are old citizens or new ones.19
In fact, Nazi agents were conducting espionage and planning fifth column activities. German intelligence operatives at a training center called the Panoramaheim (Panorama House) in Stuttgart taught the arts of subversion and bomb-making to those few treasonous Swiss saboteurs and fifth columnists they could identify. To counter these activities, the Swiss military organized the counter-spy SPAB (Spionage-Abwehr).20
When the Swiss Parliament opened its spring session on March 21, the following declaration was read on behalf of the Federal Council:
On March 13, the federal state of Austria, with which Switzerland maintained cordial relations of good neighborliness, ceased to exist as an independent state. This historical event, which took place before our eyes, is of immense importance. The wish to unite the peoples of Germany and Austria was not a new aspiration; it had already given rise to armed conflict in the last century; that wish has now been realized. . . .
None [such wish] threatens our democratic institutions, which are essential to the life of the Confederation and of its 22 cantons. It is Switzerland’s secular mission in Europe to guard the passage over the Alps in the interests of all. It is the unanimous and unshakable will of the Swiss people to accomplish this mission and to assure the respect of its independence at the price of its blood. . . .
The Swiss people are united in the determination to defend at any cost, to the last breath and against anyone, the incomparable country which is theirs by God’s will.21
Every member of Parliament, except two Communists and the sole pro-Nazi, agreed with the following statement, which was read in German, French and Italian by deputies who represented the majority and also the Socialists:
All the political groups of the two houses approve the declaration of the Federal Council. They solemnly affirm that the entire Swiss people—without regard to tongue, confession or party—are prepared to defend the inviolability of their territory against any aggressor to the last drop of their blood. . . .
The Swiss people are prepared to consent to the sacrifices necessary for their national defense, but the military armament of the county would be useless if it did not rest on the spiritual and moral forces of the whole people.22
Before the Austrian Anschluss, Switzerland had feared attack from the northeast and had positioned her troops accordingly.23 Now an attack could come from the east as well.
On April 29 the Federal Council, believing that membership was inconsistent with absolute neutrality, determined that changed circumstances required Switzerland to withdraw from the League of Nations. The Council declared:
Swiss neutrality has a specific character which distinguishes it from any other neutrality. It is one of the essential conditions of the internal peace, of the union, and hence of the independence of a nation composed of elements which differ in language and culture. . . . The maintenance of this centuries-old institution is as precious for Europe as for Switzerland itself. It is neutrality which has held together for centuries peoples of different race, language and religion.24
The Council of the League of Nations acceded to Swiss requests that the Swiss no longer participate in League sanctions, declaring that: “The unique position of Switzerland has resulted in her perpetual neutrality founded on a secular tradition and the recognition of human rights.”25 Underlying Switzerland’s withdrawal from the League, of course, was the combination of her growing appreciation of the German threat and her diminished view of the ability of the League to influence developments. Switzerland would instead rely on her own strength to defend her borders.
Accelerated defense preparations in Switzerland continued.26 With talk of war ever present, many feared a German invasion of France through the region of the Jura, around Basel. While Basel, near the German border, would be hard to defend, the general staff noted that an invader would subsequently have the entire Swiss citizens army of probably 400,000 on its left flank. To repel German attack, according to the New York Times, the Swiss took the following measures:
1. Military service was extended. “There is no standing army in Switzerland, but every able-bodied man must serve for a time in the militia.”
2. The Swiss negotiated with an American manufacturer to buy new fighter planes.
3. “The supply of tanks is being increased, although tanks are of little use in mountainous terrain,” as the Times reported.
4. Swiss soldiers took home their guns and uniforms after their terms of duty each year. The frontier guards placed munitions caches in their villages, machine-gun emplacements, land mines, etc.
5. The large Swiss gold supplies were moved inland. Because of fear that Germany might make a bold grab for this gold, bullion was removed from the vaults of the national bank at Zurich to be stored in vaults near the Gotthard Pass in the Alps and near Bern.
6. The frontier was strengthened near Austria.
7. New pillbox fortresses were built along the Italian frontier.
The report further noted that the pro-Nazi National Front had essentially died out. It had held 10 of 120 seats on the Zurich Municipal Council, but lost them all in the election held after the German annexation of Austria. The Times article concluded: “Switzerland is the oldest republic in the world. It has a tradition of six centuries as the hub in a revolving wheel of war. Armies have been coming to grief in its mountains since the defeat of Charles the Bold at Murten.”27
In 1938, the Swiss Army was organized into three army corps, including nine divisions (three of which were specially-trained mountain divisions), and thre
e mountain brigades. Troops who resided near the borders would defend the frontier while the general army mobilized.28
“The purest democracy in Europe, if not in the world” was the subject of an August 1938 New York Times analysis, stating:
Switzerland, an island of liberty and harmony in a sea of dictatorship and discord, has been a citadel of peace through stormy centuries. But it has not been a wholly passive peace. The Swiss are ready to fight, if need be. They demonstrated that last Spring when the Nazis seized Austria. Grimly the Swiss waited for the next move, in their calm, undramatic way—with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets.29
While Hitler and Mussolini ruled a combined 120 million people, the Swiss numbered but 4 million, a few more people than resided in the state of Missouri. Its land area was less than a third of New York State. Zurich, its largest city, numbered 300,000, about the same as Columbus, Ohio. “Yet,” said the New York Times, “the merits of the Swiss Confederation among the world’s democracies are far out of proportion to its size and population or the ranking of its cities. It is a land of hard work and frugal habits, of justice and cleanness and tolerance, of the very essence of live-and-let-live. There one finds no extremes of wealth or poverty, no billionaires, no paupers.”30
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