Jews with rifles waging guerrilla warfare were obviously hampering the activities of the Nazis. Similarly, the Swiss Shooting Federation believed that despite the role of the panzers and heavy weapons on European battlefields, the rifle-carrying infantryman remained invaluable: “The calm individual single shot is still the most important thing. . . . A little war behind enemy lines is being fought with well-aimed, single shots by infantrymen. Our purpose is confirmed: we must make every effort to heighten the training of marksmen.” Swiss marksmen thus promised the same treatment to Wehrmacht invaders as was meted out by the Russian partisans.15
German military training as of 1942, and probably long before, emphasized marksmanship skills at 100 meters.16 The Swiss population at large, whether of military age or not, regularly participated in rifle competitions at 300 meters, although military training entailed distances of anywhere from 50 to 600 meters. Although the Germans were formidable foes on the battlefields of other European countries, none of these countries had a reputation for good marksmanship.
In a March 16 speech, Military Department chief Karl Kobelt stated that “Switzerland does not want peace at any price and never at the price of her honor.”17 Addressing marksmen in eastern Switzerland, Kobelt referred to the founding of the country six-and-a-half centuries earlier:
It was the supreme goal, the fight for freedom, that gave the small mountain people the strength to win. . . . If we lose our freedom, it will have to be won again, because the Swiss can only live in freedom.18
A report in Fribourg Canton typifies the Swiss preparations for a war of all the people against an invader:
On April 11, the chief of the I Division spoke at Fribourg on the role of the noncommissioned officers and the shooters in the event of rapid mobilization and under enemy fire, wherein orders perhaps will be lacking or not delivered to them. This raises the value and importance of shooting as applied to the specific terrain that the troops of our canton will have to defend.19
As explained in the Training Manual for the Infantry 1942 (Ausbildungsvorschrift der Infanterie 1942), the Swiss infantry combat unit consisted, at full strength, of a squad leader and ten soldiers. The unit was armed with a light machine gun, a submachine gun, and nine carbines, one of which featured a telescopic sight. Two soldiers carried equipment for the launching of anti-tank shells and two antitank weapons. The unit might also have had hand grenades and, in exceptional cases, land mines.20
The light machine gun was the primary weapon for the firefight. It could be shot at 600 meters and, in favorable conditions, at 800 meters with success. The submachine gun was not only the automatic weapon for use under the arm at the shortest distances, but also offered good hit probabilities at targets up to 200 meters. Normally the shooter fired in quick single shots or bursts at short distances.
The telescopic-sight carbine belonged in the hands of a superior marksman. This rifle could be used at distances over 500 meters when sufficient time existed for carefully aimed shots or when ammunition was low. The regular carbines could be used out to distances of 600 meters, if the targets were at all recognizable.21
The unit was well supplied with ammunition. Excluding the two anti-tank weapons supplied with five rounds each, the squad of eleven soldiers could shoot around 1,800 bullets at the enemy before drawing new supplies from their parent unit or arms caches.
Given the natural cover in the Alps and the Jura, the countless hills, crevices, and bodies of water at the border and in the Plateau, these combat units would have been deadly against any German invasion. Roughly half a million soldiers would have been divided into units of just eleven. One can imagine the damage a seemingly infinite number of swarms of these units could have inflicted on the Wehrmacht.
Yet for the time being, the war between Germany and Switzerland continued to be waged with words instead of bullets. Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels complained in his diary on May 7 that the Swiss had recalled their representative to a film organization. “This stinking little state [dieser kleine Dreckstaat] is trying to provoke the International Motion Picture Association.” He insisted that the association impose a general boycott on the Swiss.22
The press, especially in Switzerland’s German-speaking areas, strongly opposed National Socialism and criticized any concessions the government made to the Reich. Berlin’s Völkischer Beobachter attacked Switzerland as “the reservation park of democracies,” peopled by “Berg-Semiten,” mountain Jews. A popular Nazi song went:
Switzerland is a porcupine,
We will take her as dessert;
Then we’ll go to the wide world
And get us Roosevelt.23
The Swiss joked that only the Nazis would eat porcupine.
The Nazi assault on the Swiss press continued. In mid-October, Dr. Paul Schmidt, Press Chief of the German Foreign Office, charged that the Swiss press had a “negative attitude” toward the New Order. As Swiss reporters listened, he continued: “There will be no place for such editors in the new Europe. We will make short shrift of them. Perhaps they will find their future home in the steppes of Asia, or maybe it would be best simply to send them off into the Great Beyond.”24
From Switzerland, the Neue Berner Zeitung shot back: “The National Socialist conception of a new European order is absolutely incompatible with the freedom of Europe’s states and peoples.” Under a headline “Wir machen nicht mit!” (loosely, “We won’t play ball”), Zurich’s Volksrecht also responded: “The prospect of death can scare no one who must imagine what the ‘New Europe’ of tomorrow will be like, from the way it looks today.”25 The Federal Council protested Schmidt’s death threats through the Swiss minister in Berlin.26
Dr. Schmidt was at it again on November 21, blaming the Swiss for allowing British bombers to fly over their territory en route to targets in northern Italy. Schmidt claimed that Switzerland, which “flatters itself on being a democratic country and flaunts particular sympathies for Britain,” tolerated the flights, which resulted in the deaths of women and children.27
On June 15, 1942, it was reported that the Swiss were preparing for full mobilization. Domestic trouble in the Reich was anticipated; Italian soldiers had not been paid and were clamoring for food, and traffic on the “underground railroad” by which refugees and deserters from the German military forces escaped into Switzerland had greatly increased. Interned German soldiers confirmed that an “escape organization” existed in the German Army, just as one existed for civilians. Two German airmen from the faraway Russian front deserted into Switzerland.28
On July 5, Hitler attacked the Swiss press for glowing reports about Soviet military power, deploring that “not only in England and America, but also in Stockholm and in Swiss cities the population believes in Jewish claptrap.” The Führer fumed that Jews must have special influence in Switzerland because her people cared only about matters such as milk-interests, grain prices and clocks. In addition to all the other characteristics of the Swiss that Hitler disliked, he hated them because of their free market capitalism, which he associated with Judaism.29
The Swiss National Day celebration on August 1 was marred by air-raid sirens and a blackout. General Guisan’s order of the day stated: “Soldier of Switzerland of 1942! To remain master of your own destiny, sole master after God, hold to the watchword I gave you at the beginning of the year: Stand firm and faithful.”30 Three days later, on August 4, the Federal Council decreed that military tribunals rather than civil courts would try all persons, including civilians, accused of crimes against state security.31
In August, the British staged a large amphibious raid against the French port of Dieppe. Using a Canadian division, Churchill had intended to demonstrate that Nazi-held Europe was vulnerable to surprise attacks made possible by the strength and mobility of the Royal Navy. The Canadians, however, were met by a wall of fire from German tanks and guns. Most of the invaders were killed or captured before the remnants were rescued in a hasty evacuation. It would be almost two years
before the Allies would attempt another invasion of northern Europe.
On August 26, Hitler, in one of his harangues to his military advisers, stated bluntly: “A state like Switzerland, which is nothing but a pimple on the face of Europe, cannot be allowed to continue.” Hitler denounced the Swiss as a racial miscarriage, “a misbegotten branch of our Volk.”32
For all his threats and the numerous General Staff operational plans to attack Switzerland, Hitler hesitated to commit the Wehrmacht to combat on Swiss ground. Nazi military intelligence was well aware of the military prowess of this “pimple.” It prepared a Little Swiss Information Manual (Kleines Orientierungsheft Schweiz), issued September 1, 1942, to acquaint German soldiers with Swiss defenses. The manual stated:
The Swiss militia system enables a complete use of all those fit for military service with relatively low expense. It invariably results that the warrior spirit arises in the Swiss people and allows the installation in the small country of a very strong and expedient organization, resulting in the quick readiness of the army for war.33
The Swiss soldier, the manual continued, is characterized by love of home, toughness and tenacity. His shooting performance is good. He dedicates himself to the great care of arms, equipment, uniforms, horses and pack animals. “Particularly the German Swiss and the Alpine soldier would be good fighters.”34
After Hitler launched World War II in 1939 by invading Poland, the Swiss decreed that foreigners in their country must have a visa.35 Early in the war, French civilians and Belgian and Dutch soldiers found refuge in Switzerland. Many left again through Vichy France. Once the Axis occupied Vichy France and thus completely surrounded the Swiss in November 1942, however, there was no longer any escape route, and the Swiss government, fearing food shortages, became reluctant to accept new refugees. It was known that other countries such as the United States would not accept refugees. In the first half of 1942, the United States granted only 30 visas.36
Meanwhile, Switzerland continued to play her traditional humanitarian role. The International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva handled millions of letters to and from prisoners and provided assistance to wounded soldiers.37 It resisted Axis pressure to extradite political refugees and, while an “independent” Vichy France existed, Swiss officials helped endangered persons to escape from it and through it.
In August, the Swiss border was briefly closed to Jewish refugees. Heinrich Rothmund, police chief of the federal Ministry of Justice and Police, commanded his men to prevent persons from entering Switzerland, especially over the French border. This drastic policy change led to such a public outcry, however, that within days border guards were ordered to accept Jews under sixteen, families, and the elderly.38 Once again, the Swiss people had protested successfully against policies established by government bureaucrats. Edgar Bonjour, the preeminent scholar on Swiss neutrality, notes:
Left to themselves, the Swiss people would have swept away all frontier barriers and taken in all the thousands who were striving to save their lives, if nothing else, from fury at their persecutors. But the government was soon warning the people of the dangers of the “overcrowded boat,” and stressing the inexorable limits set to the granting of asylum.39
Wartime immigration policy was debated in the National Council, the lower house of Parliament, on September 22. The government’s anti-immigration policy was attacked. A government spokesman warned that fifth columnists could infiltrate the country if the borders were opened. However, he acknowledged that numerous refugees were being granted asylum.40
Swiss citizens resorted to ingenious methods to assist refugees. A Swiss doctor bandaged a Jewish woman as a ruse and, crying emergency, took her right past the guards on both sides of the German border. She then stayed in a Swiss home which took in several other Jewish refugees until she could make her way to the United States.41
During this period, the average number of refugees fleeing into Switzerland was 175 per night, for a total of more than 14,000 by October 3, 1942. The mostly destitute refugees, in particular those seeking to escape slave labor, came from the north and from Vichy France in the southwest. Soon the previously lax border control was tightened and a Commissioner for Refugees was appointed.42
For purposes of comparison, it is instructive to examine American refugee policy during this period. In July 1940, the U.S. State Department directed its consuls not to issue visitors’ or transit visas unless the person had an exit permit from his home country. An American edict of June 1941 made it all but impossible for refugees with relatives in the Reich to come to the United States. At that time the Vichy government unsuccessfully sought the resettlement of thousands of French Jews in the United States. The State Department did not recognize Jews, as such, to be political refugees. It was later decided that children from Vichy could enter, but between March 1941 and August 1942 only 309 refugee children were admitted into the United States. Of the 460,000 visas available for admission to the United States between 1938 and 1942, only 228,964 were issued.43
On November 8, 1942, the Allies invaded North Africa, prompting the Nazi occupation of Vichy France so that the Germans could guard the Mediterranean coast. Premier Pétain objected, but offered no resistance.44 The noose thus tightened around Switzerland.45 The Nazi takeover of Vichy France included an incident that illustrated what it meant for Switzerland to be a protecting power for the interests of belligerents. A Wehrmacht soldier with a submachine gun took over the United States Embassy in Vichy just before the arrival of the Swiss representative, Minister Walter Stucki. Stucki burst into the embassy brandishing his only weapon—a Swiss Army knife—with which he managed to drive the soldier from the building.46
The Nazis seemed to be postponing an invasion of Switzerland until they could defeat the major powers. Germany could, of course, also invade when the Gotthard and Simplon tunnels were no longer of military value. Meantime, the Germans kept Swiss industry supplied with coal.
The Allies restricted imports from Switzerland and threatened to blacklist Swiss firms.47 The Swiss spent most of the year negotiating with the Allies over trade terms. Without coal from Germany, Swiss industry would collapse, and an unemployed work force would be a seedbed for National Socialist agitation. To get coal, Switzerland had to export products to Germany. Yet this Swiss-German trade also allowed Switzerland to manufacture goods for the Allies. The Swiss obtained transit permits from Berlin and Rome allowing shipment of goods to the Allies, who in turn would ship raw materials to the Swiss. The Allies and the Axis were both concerned, of course, that their raw materials not be used to manufacture goods for their enemies. Controls could not be strictly implemented, however, and in fact the Allies and the Axis, both of which needed Swiss products, had to approve trade agreements allowing Swiss trade with their enemies.
The chief American negotiator, Winfield Riefler, promoted trade with the Swiss for the purpose of employing the Swiss work force to produce for the Allies and of strengthening the Swiss military. He argued against some of his British colleagues that refusing to trade with Switzerland because the Swiss traded with Germany would only force the Swiss to trade more with Germany. At the end of 1942, it was agreed that, in the first four months of 1943, Switzerland would export goods valued at two and a half million Swiss francs to the United States and Britian. In return, the British and Americans would supply specified raw materials for the exclusive use of the Swiss Army. This trade allowed the Swiss to decrease shipments to Germany.48
Now that the United States had been forced into the war by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, some Americans suddenly took a dim view of neutrality on the part of other countries.49 Yet despite Germany’s influence over Swiss imports and exports, American public opinion still recognized, as Newsweek reported, that “Nazism never was able to take deep root among the freedom-loving mountaineers.”50
The burgeoning American war effort now required Swiss goods more than ever before. Machine tools, ball bearings, and especially jewel bearin
gs (almost all made in Switzerland by watchmakers) were much-needed imports. This trade reflected the real feelings of most Swiss. In a telling example, while the Germans would not allow the Swiss to export chronographs, which the Allies used for air bombings, the Swiss smuggled them out disguised as ordinary watches. Diamond dies were also surreptitiously exported to Britain. Swiss customs agents were in collusion with the manufacturers.51 U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson noted that the delivery of industrial diamonds to Allied countries “required more than cooperation by the Swiss, often complicity in illegality or indifference to it.”52
In response to the new dangers posed by the sudden Nazi occupation of Vichy France, in November 1942 General Guisan and the Federal Council issued “Orders to the Population in Case of War,” which was a revised version of the no-surrender order of April 18, 1940. It began with the usual admonition:
Switzerland will defend itself in an attack with all its powers to the end.
Any news that doubts the will to resist of the Federal Council or the Army leadership, or that portrays it as broken, are inventions of enemy propaganda and false.53
Just as when originally issued, this order was remarkable. It asserted that there would be no surrender—ever—and that any statement or broadcast of surrender by the government or the military must be considered false. It made surrender impossible. It reaffirmed to the populace the high duty to resist to the death and sent a message to the Nazis that any invasion would be very costly in blood.
The order further instructed that any men who were capable of fighting but not enlisted, and who wished to volunteer to defend the country, should report immediately to the Ortswehren, the local defense organizations created in 1940. Persons who were not members of an officially recognized armed force were told not to participate in armed hostilities. These directives were intended to make sure that every armed man or boy would have the Swiss armband and thereby be entitled to treatment, if captured, as a prisoner of war and not be shot on the spot. However, the order continued: “Everyone will otherwise support the actions of our troops with all his power.”54
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