Allen Dulles became the last American to enter Switzerland legally before the Nazi occupation of Vichy France. Although he was officially attached to the American legation, Dulles described his real tasks as an assignment to “gather information about the Nazi and Fascist enemy and quietly to render such support and encouragement as I could to the resistance forces working against the Nazis and Fascists in the areas adjacent to Switzerland.”55
Dulles established the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Bern. As the only neutral nation bordering Germany and Italy, Switzerland was the perfect location for his spy mission—the American window on the Reich. Numerous refugees had found asylum there in the six prewar years of the Reich, and some continued to make the perilous border crossing. According to Dulles, certain German officials and citizens who traveled to Switzerland on business were also willing to give information about conditions in Germany.56
One of Dulles’ first tasks was to gather intelligence about underground anti-Nazi movements in Germany. Besides refugee labor and church leaders, Dulles soon came into contact with Hans Bernd Gisevius, a Gestapo official who would later conspire with Wehrmacht officers in an attempt to assassinate Hitler. Assigned to the German Consulate General in Zurich, Gisevius was actually sent to Switzerland by the conspirators to make contact with the Allies. As Dulles wrote, such men “felt that a victory of Nazism and the extinction of liberty in Europe, and possibly in the world, was a far greater disaster than the defeat of Germany.” They wanted to hasten that defeat before Germany was totally destroyed.57 Bern became a center not only for anti-Hitler plots but also for smuggling currency to assist Jewish refugees.58
Aid and encouragement to resistance movements in France and northern Italy were also primary objectives of the OSS. The American legation helped the French maquis (resistance fighters) in the mountains south of Lake Geneva communicate with arms suppliers. Sam Woods, American Consul General in Zurich, assisted interned U.S. soldiers and airmen in escaping from Switzerland through Axis lines.59 The Nazis suspected Swiss intelligence of passing Axis secrets to the Allies. They rightly saw General Guisan as their enemy and an Allied sympathizer, although Guisan scrupulously honored his duties as military chief of a neutral country.60
With the Vichy French state, Switzerland’s last corridor to the outside world, under Gestapo jurisdiction, many Swiss feared that the Führer would complete the process of controlling the entire continent and invade. Time magazine commented:
Less doggedly independent lands would have toppled long ago, but Switzerland’s reaction to the new situation was to answer the obvious question before it was asked. Said the democratic Volksrecht: “It is of the greatest importance that we leave no doubt in anybody’s mind that not even the most hopeless situation will make us capitulate voluntarily, and before we can be commanded we have got to be beaten.”61
Without saying which was the first, Time commented: “Man for man, Switzerland probably has the second best army in Europe today.”
In late November, seven Swiss soldiers were sentenced to death for treason. Infantryman Ernst Leisi watched one evening as a platoon of 20 soldiers marched by. They carried carbines, but no packs or helmets. He thought that they must be going to a shooting match. Not so. These were members of the same platoon as artilleryman Ernst Schrämli. They were acting as a firing squad, and they would execute their former comrade a few minutes later. Schrämli was convicted of passing military secrets to the Germans concerning a new type of armor-piercing ammunition. The Parliament upheld his death sentence, although a few leftists voted for life imprisonment.62
During the war, thirty-three death sentences for treason or espionage would be pronounced by the Swiss. Seventeen Swiss would finally be executed for treason. Once the appeal was denied, the traitor would be shot immediately by a firing squad composed of his own army unit. A total of 245 Swiss, 109 Germans and 33 others would be convicted of treasonous offenses. These measures helped deliver the message to Berlin that any attempts to coerce Switzerland into the New Order would be met with strenuous resistance.63
Despite repeated press barrages, as the year ended the Nazis were more pessimistic than ever about winning over public opinion in Europe’s remaining neutral nations. On December 15, Goebbels wrote in his diary: “Sentiment has turned very much against us in Sweden and in Switzerland. . . . My articles in the Reich are for the present about the only source of information on which the elements friendly to Germany in the neutral countries can depend for their moral uplift.”64
By contrast, there was growing optimism elsewhere. On Christmas Eve, international skier Arnold Lunn mused about the preceding years in Switzerland and England: “There were months when we faced the peril of losing something even more precious than the mountains, our island fortress, and with that fortress the last hope of enslaved Europe.” Still, Lunn retained “unquestioning faith in final victory.”65
During the year the bread ration in Switzerland had averaged only 225 grams a day—less than the ration in Germany, Sweden, and occupied France and Denmark. While their standard of living continued to deteriorate throughout the war, the Swiss stubbornly maintained their spirit and the military capacity to resist any invasion.
Chapter 8
1943
“A Pistol at Their Heads”
“SWITZERLAND, AXIS CAPTIVE”? DESPITE SWISS RESISTANCE WHICH had thus far deterred an invasion of their country, such was the portait offered by writer Charles Lanius in the Saturday Evening Post in January 1943. He began with a dramatic, if inaccurate, statement: “I’ve just escaped from a Nazi-occupied country. The name of that country is Switzerland.” Switzerland’s four million people were surrounded by 125 million hostile neighbors. “The Swiss are a people living with a pistol at their heads.” According to Lanius, German Minister Hans Sigismund von Bibra really ran Switzerland.1 The theme of the article was the domination of the Swiss economy by Germany. Lanius conceded that the majority of the Swiss hoped for an Allied victory.2
Outraged by Lanius’ article, Walter Lippmann published a reply in the New York Herald Tribune which could be considered the most significant statement in American journalism on Switzerland’s role in the war. A founder of The New Republic, Lippmann had influenced Woodrow Wilson’s concept of the League of Nations and would later win two Pulitzer prizes for journalism. Lippmann began by suggesting that Lanius “certainly did not mean to do an injustice to a nation which is of such moral importance to America and to all the United Nations,” yet “unintentionally he has wronged the Swiss and hurt our own cause.”3 Lippmann wrote:
What was not so obvious to Mr. Lanius, though it should have been, is that the Swiss nation which is entirely surrounded by the Axis armies, beyond reach of any help from the democracies, that Switzerland which cannot live without trading with the surrounding Axis countries, still is an independent democracy. The “engulfing sea of 125,000,000 hostile neighbors” has not yet engulfed the Swiss.
That is the remarkable thing about Switzerland. The real news is not that her factories make munitions for Germany but that the Swiss have an army which stands guard against invasion, that their frontiers are defended, that their free institutions continue to exist and that there has been no Swiss Quisling, and no Swiss Laval. The Swiss remained true to themselves even in the darkest days of 1940 and 1941, when it seemed that nothing but the valor of the British and the blind faith of free men elsewhere stood between Hitler and the creation of a totalitarian new order in Europe. Surely, if ever the honor of a people was put to the test, the honor of the Swiss was tested and proved then and there. How easy it would have been then for them to say that they must hasten to join the new order, and lick the boots of the conqueror of Europe. Their devotion to freedom must be strong and deep. For no ordinary worldly material calculation can account for the behavior of the Swiss.4
The behavior of the Swiss was of critical importance, Lippmann continued, because the majority were, “by Hitler’s standards, members of the Ger
man race,” who lived on Germany’s border and within its economic jurisdiction. He concluded:
Yet they have demonstrated that the traditions of freedom can be stronger than the ties of race and of language and economic interest. Could there be a more poignant, a more dramatic, a more conclusive answer to the moral foundations of Nazism than that which Switzerland has given?5
In Switzerland the Journal de Genève, commenting on these articles, compared the persistence of the Swiss to endure in the present war, which the Americans praised, to “the spirit of the American pioneers.”6
The Nazis themselves certainly did not consider Switzerland to be, as Lanius put it, “Nazi-occupied.” Two days after his article was published, the Swiss Federal Council ordered the seizure and forbade the sale of the latest edition of the German publication Meyers Konversations Lexikon, Volume 9, for “insulting language towards this country.” The book presented “appreciations of Switzerland today” in these words, according to the New York Times:
A country that, like London and Paris, is no longer anything but a dumping place for doubtful individuals who abuse their liberty. . . . It is peopled by a medley of criminals, particularly Jews.
The Switzerland of today is a backward State detached from the German Empire. But even today the greater part of its inhabitants belong to the ‘German body’ [Deutscher Volkskörper].7
“Switzerland stands today an island in a Nazi ocean,” a Times editorial commented. While forced by economic necessity to produce for the Nazi war machine, “spiritually they refuse to be conquered.” The Times continued:
Perhaps the Swiss didn’t mind being called “a medley of criminals, particularly Jews.” To be called a criminal by a Nazi is to receive a high compliment. To be called a Jew by a Nazi is to be classed with those who have suffered martyrdom for freedom’s sake.8
Even with Nazi bombers minutes away, the Swiss had suppressed Nazi organizations in their country. Their pastors denounced anti- Semitism. While the Swiss protested Allied flights over their territory, they would shoot down Nazi planes. “Hitler may yet, in some last despairing thrust, occupy their country. He won’t conquer it.”9
The Swiss were able to continue shipping highly strategic products to the Allies throughout the war, either with German approval or by smuggling. Of the strategic war materials, the most important items were jewel bearings, used in the flight instruments of bombers. In March, American Minister Leland Harrison urged that Swiss requests for military supplies be favorably considered. Secretary of State Cordell Hull told the Joint Chiefs of Staff regarding the shipment of supplies to Switzerland: “It is in our vital interests that the Swiss Army be maintained at the highest possible standard of military preparedness and efficiency. While supply routes to Switzerland are still open, advantage should be taken to bring the Swiss Army up to the level essential for the defense of Switzerland, regardless of any present or pending agreement of a compensatory nature.” The State Department understood that the Swiss Army needed to remain strong to resist German demands to send troops through Switzerland or otherwise violate her neutrality.10
On January 6, 1943, General Guisan sent a confidential report to the federal cabinet on the increased danger of a future “Fortress Europe,” in which the Nazis would attempt to seize the passes and tunnels of the Alps along with its defensive positions. An invader would try to seize these key points in a surprise attack, before the Swiss had time to destroy them.11
The American military attaché in Bern prepared an intelligence message dated January 29 that the German General Staff was “studying [a] new plan [for the] invasion of Switzerland” and that, on an Allied invasion of Italy, “Germany could not have large parts of a mountainous frontier held by a nation which was,” in the words of this American officer, “only [an] advance guard of [the] Allies.” The German plan was a “surprise air invasion before the Swiss could concentrate in their National Redoubt,” in which “parachute and air landings troops neutralize troop concentrations” and “motorized and mechanized ground invading forces” make an assault across the borders. The Germans had prepared a scale map of the Réduit, a copy of which was obtained by Allied intelligence.12
By February 2, the last German holdouts in Stalingrad had laid down their arms. An entire army of a quarter-million men had been wiped off the map. Thus released from the siege, half-a-million Soviets were added to the westward offensive that threatened to destroy the entire German Army Group South. During the days of heady German expansion, the Swiss had been in the Nazis’ sights; now Switzerland’s neighbor had become a wounded animal that might do anything to survive. If the Germans continued to fall back from Russia pursued by the Red Army, all of central Europe could become a desperate battleground.
In February and March, 1943, OSS operative Allen Dulles met secretly with two German spies, one of whom worked under General Walter Schellenberg, the chief of SS foreign intelligence. The content of the meeting is unknown, but it took place at the time when Wehrmacht generals were plotting assassination attempts against Hitler.13
On March 3, General Guisan had a secret meeting with Schellen-berg, whose organization conducted espionage against Switzerland and areas nearby. The Swiss had all bases covered. As Allen Dulles noted, he (Dulles) had lines of communication open with Swiss intelligence officer Max Waibel, while Colonel Roger Masson of the Swiss General Staff had contact with Schellenberg, head of Himmler’s intelligence service.14 Masson set up Schellenberg’s meeting with Guisan.15
Schellenberg’s motive for meeting with the General was apparently to size up the Swiss leader for purposes of planning future operations to incorporate the Swiss Alps into Germany’s defenses.16 Guisan explained his own purpose as follows: “I did not want to neglect any occasion to confirm in our northern neighbor’s mind the sentiment, which was evidently not strong at all, that our army would fulfill its mission under all circumstances and would fight against anybody attacking our neutrality.”17
Meeting at the Bären Inn in the town of Biglen in northern Switzerland, Guisan told Schellenberg in no uncertain terms that Switzerland would resist any invader and that a Nazi assault would result in instant destruction of the Alpine railroads.18
In early 1943, Italian planners continued to discuss an invasion of Switzerland.19 Hitler retained similar designs, partly because of his concern about an Allied invasion of Italy. On March 14, the Führer warned his commanders that “the loss of Tunisia will also mean the loss of Italy.” Plans for “Case Switzerland” were therefore revived in the event that a collapse in Italy allowed the Allies to reach the Alps. Schellenberg reminded the commanders that Switzerland would succumb, if at all, only through conquest.20
In Munich on March 20, 1943, General Eduard Dietl, who had commanded mountain troops in the invasion of Norway, and more recently on the Murmansk front in alliance with the Finns, prepared a “Switzerland command” that would use air transport and parachute forces.21 The day before, Swiss intelligence, with its “Wiking Line” source in the German high command, reported to Bern that the Germans were planning an invasion. It was believed that German mountain troops were concentrating in Bavaria. This episode became known as the März-Alarm (March Alarm).22
The German General Staff had, indeed, been discussing a strategic retreat from Russia into “Fortress Europe”—of which Switzerland could be made a pillar. The SS had orders to prepare such a plan and wished to incorporate the Swiss Alpine positions. Fortunately for the Swiss, Hitler decided against a strategic retreat in the East at this time because of recent German success there.23 German Field Marshal Erich von Manstein had halted the huge Soviet offensive in the southern sector, rolled it back, and on March 12 the Germans had retaken the Soviet Union’s fourth-largest city, Kharkov.
According to one account, a week later it was learned that the warning resulting in the März-Alarm may have been planted by the Germans to encourage the Swiss to keep their troops mobilized in order to deter an Allied invasion through Switzerland. T
he rumor may also have been started as leverage for the benefit of German trade negotiators then engaged in talks with the Swiss, who had recently reduced credit and exports to Germany.24
According to another account, when “Wiking” warned Swiss intelligence of “Case Switzerland,” Swiss Colonel Masson naïvely asked Schellenberg if it was true. This tipped the latter off to the fact that a leak existed in Hitler’s headquarters. Since any element of surprise was lost for a German attack, which the Swiss were now preparing to defend against, Schellenberg later told Masson that he had persuaded the German command against launching an invasion.25
OSS operative Allen Dulles was aware that the Nazis made plans to invade Switzerland in 1943 during the last stages of the battle for North Africa. Dulles later reflected:
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 Switzerland would certainly have been very high.
During his tenure as the chief American agent in Switzerland, Dulles made clear to the Swiss that “the stronger they were in their preparations against a German attack, the better we liked it.”26
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