Those who thought the end of the war was imminent, the Lindt report began, must consider the still relatively high state of morale of the German troops. The Wehrmacht remained a force to be reckoned with. “It would be at the very least imprudent to conclude,” Lindt wrote, “that the German army can collapse in a few weeks. The war is not finished.”44
While the Allies had broken through the encirclement of Switzerland, transportation had not reopened to improve the economic situation. The window needed strengthening, as the subsequent German reconquest of Briançon demonstrated. The zone occupied by the Allies was very narrow.45
Between June 1940 and June 1944, the reasons for Swiss mobilizations and specific troop movements were cloaked in secrecy. But the present partial mobilization could be readily understood by the soldier: the sounds of combat could be heard in Switzerland, and the war was at the western border.46
Gigantic pincers were trying to envelop the German armies, continued Lindt: one from Marseille, the other from Normandy. Both Allied and German military operations included numerous freestanding actions. The danger of Allied or German invasion was clear: “To complete an encirclement, the commander of an armored column could decide that he would reach his objective more quickly by crossing a part of Swiss territory. On the other hand, a German detachment may be very well tempted to escape encirclement, extinction, or capture by entering our borders.” Either side could conduct lightning raids into Switzerland for resupply. Lindt’s report added:
To face all these possibilities, which are not in a faraway future but can become reality from one day to the next, we must solidly protect our borders. . . . In these times, neutrality as such does not count. Armed neutrality alone counts.47
The Lindt report specified the threats to Swiss security in the European theater. In Burgundy, the Allies were closing in on the Germans, who might try to escape destruction by entering Swiss soil. In the region of Belfort, the part of German General Blaskowitz’s army that was not annihilated in the Rhône Valley was reforming and trying to break out through a narrow passage. These troops could also overflow into Switzerland. Swiss bridges on the Rhine were also tempting to both the Germans and the Allies. “It is our duty,” Lindt emphasized, “to avoid at all costs the use of Swiss territory by one or the other for its operations.”48
In a reversal of the 1940 scenario, the Allies might intrude into Switzerland to avoid German fortified lines. The Germans might try to prevent this by a quick invasion of Switzerland. Switzerland’s best hope remained that “the belligerents would be dissuaded by our will to defend our neutrality.”49
The Lindt report illustrates the view of the most defense-minded, anti-Nazi elements of the Swiss leadership of the peril the country faced in the fall of 1944. Lindt thereafter prepared a weekly report of similar nature, hundreds of which were produced and sent to army commanders.
Once transportation with France was reopened, approximately 4,000 French children arrived in Switzerland in one week alone. Caught in the war zone, they had become destitute after retreating Germans had swept through their towns and villages.50
In August, the Swiss government eased immigration restrictions to let in up to 14,000 additional Hungarian Jews. This action was the result of the protests of numerous social-welfare groups, Christian churches, newspapers and political leaders who opposed the government’s restrictive policies and advocated opening the borders to all fleeing Jews. Placing the Swiss record in perspective, David S. Wyman, who wrote a study of United States policies that prohibited Jewish immigration, noted:
In relation to its size Switzerland was unquestionably more generous in taking in refugees than any other country except Palestine. At the end of 1944, some 27,000 Jewish refugees were safe in Switzerland—so were approximately 20,000 non-Jewish refugees and about 40,000 interned military personnel. . . . The country’s borders were wide open to all who were in danger because of their political beliefs, to escaped prisoners of war, and to military deserters. Usually, the following categories of Jews were also allowed to enter: young children (and their parents if accompanying them), pregnant women, the sick, the aged, and close relatives of Swiss citizens.51
Although Switzerland maintained her centuries-old tradition as a refuge for dissidents and took pity on children and the weak, the authorities would not allow the free immigration of able-bodied adults without children who belonged to ethnic groups, including Jews and gypsies, that were being subjected to extermination. Many Swiss citizens opposed or protested this policy, which was based on the traditional view that the nation-state has an obligation to protect only her own citizens and others lawfully within her territory. From a humanitarian perspective, the governments of all the democracies, including Switzerland and even the United States, had deplorable policies regarding Jewish and other refugees during World War II.
The Swiss have not been faulted regarding their internment of Allied troops, who were thereby protected from Axis prison camps. British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden cautioned U.S. Ambassador John Winant on August 21 against pressuring the Swiss to stop all exports to Germany and to prohibit all German transit traffic. Eden stated:
We attach very high importance to avoiding forcing the Swiss to take action which would result in a rupture of Swiss diplomatic relations with Germany. This would necessarily mean that Switzerland would cease to act as protecting power at a moment when this may be more necessary than ever before. After the recent murder of our airmen in Germany we are genuinely alarmed at the possibility that the last moment before total defeat the Gestapo might run amok and commit wholesale murder of British and American prisoners of war. Obviously this is more likely to happen if the restraining influence of the protective power is removed.52
Actually, in August Switzerland had already placed a ceiling on exports to Germany. The Swiss response to American demands made clear that Allied progress would enable Switzerland to decrease trade with Germany even more:
The war as it nears the Alps changes aspects of the transit problem and has a bearing on its solution. . . . Traffic in both directions has in general decreased and not increased since spring. In the spirit of true neutrality which guides them, they will see to it that it follows the trend circumstances demand.53
As of October 1, 1944, the Federal Council prohibited the export of arms, aircraft parts, ball bearings, fuses, radio and telegraph apparatus, and other military supplies to any belligerent—the first total prohibition on war exports enacted by a neutral. The Simplon route through the Alps was closed to transit traffic by the end of the month.54 Despite these concessions, in early November the Allies ordered a halt to all Swiss rail and truck traffic into France. Switzerland remained almost completely isolated.55
The Swiss also clarified to the Allies that Nazi leaders and Gestapo members would not be granted asylum in Switzerland. The Federal Council declared in November that, while Switzerland retained her sovereign power to grant asylum to worthy persons, “asylum could not be granted either to persons who have displayed an unfriendly attitude toward Switzerland or who have committed acts contrary to the laws of war or whose past gives evidence of conceptions incompatible with fundamental traditions of law and humanity.”56
Emphasizing August Lindt’s earlier warning that no one should consider the Wehrmacht defeated, on September 17 British Field Marshal Montgomery launched a massive air and land assault to flank the German Westwall in the north. German divisions that had been considered decimated at Normandy showed surprising new strength, and the British 1st Airborne Division was nearly annihilated near Arnhem.
From September through December, the French and Germans fought one of the last great battles of the war between the Vosges Mountains and Switzerland, whose borders extended perilously near the combat zone. General Guisan wrote: “In case we were attacked, even if it was only in this small projection of our territory, we had the duty to return fire immediately and very effectively. Our parry at this very place was of symbolic value, with
considerable effect on our external and internal situation.”57 As this statement makes clear, the Swiss would have defended themselves against any aggressor, whether Axis or Allied, though any conflict with the Allies would have grieved them.
A Swiss division guarded the narrow strip near the combat zone. On November 16, the French attacked the Germans between Belfort and Swiss soil. In two days, the French liberated Delle, close to the Swiss village of Boncourt, as combat continued all along the Swiss border in the Montbéliard region. The Allies advanced 18 miles along the Swiss border in three days. Some 200 German soldiers were disarmed and interned by Swiss soldiers. On the 19th, the Americans entered the fray. The Germans retreated eastward, although shelling continued at the border. The border battle lasted until Christmas.58
On November 8, German V-2 rockets rained on London and Antwerp. The Führer had a seemingly unlimited capacity to keep striking back with ever more sinister weapons.
At Yalta on October 13, Stalin had proposed an invasion of Switzerland, supposedly as a strategy to circumvent Germany’s Westwall, but the Allies refused. Winston Churchill called the plan both illegal and militarily senseless.59 Churchill wrote to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden on December 3:
I put this down for the record. Of all the neutrals Switzerland has the greatest right to distinction. She has been the sole international force linking the hideously sundered nations and ourselves. What does it matter whether she has been able to give us the commercial advantages we desire or has given too many to the Germans, to keep herself alive?60
In an instruction to Eden on the same date, Churchill expressed astonishment at Stalin’s “savageness” against Switzerland, adding: “He called them ‘swine,’ and he does not use that sort of language without meaning it. I am sure we ought to stand by Switzerland.”61 Stalin had always hated the Swiss for their capitalism and democracy.
Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller, who after the war became a paid informant for American intelligence, recalled that “the Swiss did not want any country to invade their territory and would have fought to the death to prevent it.” The Swiss feared that the Allies would cross into Switzerland to flank the German lines in the west, and, as noted, Stalin advocated just that. Müller commented:
If the West had invaded Swiss territory, the Germans might well have had to fight these people [the Allies] on Swiss land and the result would have been catastrophic, I’m sure, and I pointed this out in the right circles, that the Americans and British would bomb all the Swiss cities flat in a few days and shoot the refugees on the roads. After all, the Swiss knew what happened in Dresden and had no illusions.62
The cities of Dresden and Hamburg were subjected to massive Allied fire-bomb attacks that resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths. Cities in France, Italy and the Low Countries had also been targeted by Allied bombers if they became part of German defense lines. In any event, Müller was certain that the Swiss “would have fought to the death against you, us or the Soviets. They would have lost but it wasn’t worth it. At least not as far as we were concerned.”63
Debate continued in 1944 within the Nazi hierarchy about whether to invade Switzerland. In 1943 SS General Walter Schellenberg had secretly met with General Guisan, who convinced Schellenberg that the Swiss would resist to the end. (Allen Dulles’ agents had also met with the SS general to discuss anti-Hitler matters and peace prospects.) In his self-serving memoirs, Schellenberg wrote:
While Hitler’s fortunes declined rapidly, I had to make frequent and desperate use of my position with Himmler to insure that at least Swiss neutrality was respected, and I honestly feel that it is largely due to my influence with and through Himmler, which I was never tired of exerting to the utmost, that a “preventive” occupation of Switzerland did not take place.64
Schellenberg claimed that his activities almost brought his doom at the hands of Müller’s Gestapo, especially after it intercepted a radio message about negotiations with Allied representatives in Switzerland.
In an attempt to prevent the invasion, Schellenberg also contacted former Federal President Musy, who, he recalled, “had one aim— the saving of as many as possible of the hundreds of thousands of concentration camp inmates.”65 Secret meetings between Musy and Himmler then took place at the end of 1944 and again on January 12, 1945. Himmler agreed to a mass evacuation of concentration camp inmates in exchange for tractors, cars, medicines and other scarce items. Musy offered foreign currency, to be credited to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Himmler did not understand, according to Schellenberg, “that the freeing of thousands of Jews was important from the point of view of Germany’s foreign policy; he seemed only to be concerned with the effect such an action would have on the Party clique and on Hitler.” Schellenberg could tell that Himmler wanted to clear himself from his past activities against Jews. It was suggested that the United States should recognize Switzerland as a place of transit for Jews who would eventually emigrate to America. Musy agreed to confer with certain Jewish organizations in Switzerland.66 Himmler reluctantly authorized Schellenberg to coordinate the release of a number of prominent Jews and French. Fighting Gestapo reluctance, Schellenberg arranged for the emigration of some prisoners.67
Saly Mayer, a prominent Swiss Jewish leader, negotiated with the SS in an attempt to rescue Jews. Between August 1944 and April 1945, he periodically met with SS Colonel Kurt Becher in St. Margrethen, Switzerland, to discuss “the price of abandoning the gassing.” Becher said he had Himmler’s permission to bargain for the exchange of Jewish lives for matériel and money. While the Allies were not about to provide either, Mayer dragged out the negotiations to buy time until an Allied victory and succeeded in getting numerous Jews released and brought to Switzerland.68
As they advanced, the Allies were more able and willing to reopen the world market to the Swiss, who were by then increasingly able to function without imports from Germany. In addition, coal shipments from Germany to Italy over Swiss rails were curtailed, and numerous other concessions were made to the Allies. On the day the agreement was signed, the Allies declared: “The Allied Governments fully understand Switzerland’s unique position as a neutral, a position which they have always respected.”69
In mid-December, the U.S. State Department’s Western European experts issued a paper on current policy toward Switzerland. It stated squarely: “For political reasons and for reasons arising out of the benefits to us of Switzerland’s neutral position and her future potential usefulness in the economy of Europe, it was inadvisable to place too great a pressure upon the Swiss Government at this time in order to attain pure economic warfare objectives.” Agreeing with the August statement by British Foreign Secretary Eden, the American paper explained that Swiss neutrality was recognized by the major powers and was important to the Allied cause:
As a result of this neutrality Switzerland performs certain indispensable services for all the belligerents and claims in return the right to trade with such of them as will help maintain its essential economy and internal stability. As far as the United States is concerned, Switzerland serves as the protecting power for our general interest and in particular for our prisoners of war in Germany and Japan. It is the agreed policy of the British and U.S. Governments to avoid forcing Switzerland to a break with Germany. Such a break would make it impossible for the Swiss to continue to represent British and U.S. interests in Germany and might likewise affect their position in so far as Japan is concerned. It is essential as the situation in Germany becomes more and more disturbed that we endeavor to obtain their greatest degree of protection, not only for U.S. general interests but especially in regard to matters relating to prisoners of war. But it should be remembered that the effectiveness of Switzerland’s protection can be much altered by a severe deterioration of its relations with Germany short of complete rupture.70
The State Department report also recognized Switzerland’s services in assisting refugees:
Related to but not directly c
onnected with the protection of U.S. interests by Switzerland are her humanitarian efforts, undertaken at the request of the U.S. Government, on behalf of the Jews in Central Europe. At our request, she has recently agreed to admit some 15,000 additional Hungarian Jews in spite of the increased strain on her general food problem.71
Although the Allies’ high hopes of summer that the war would be over by Christmas were not fulfilled, the Allied high command nevertheless believed that Germany’s collapse was imminent. France had been retaken in the west, and in the east the Soviet army had advanced into Hungary and Poland. The vise was closing, and the Reich’s losses in resources and manpower surely had crippled Hitler’s ability to stave off an inevitable Allied victory. On December 16, however, two German armies, comprising 300,000 men and thousands of armored vehicles, burst from the Ardennes in a surprise counteroffensive. They broke the American front and SS panzer spearheads advanced on the Meuse. Two weeks later, a Luftwaffe armada of 700 planes hit Allied airfields in Belgium and France. The Allies restructured their front, Montgomery from the north and Patton from the south rushing forces to seal the breakthrough. This Battle of the Bulge continued through January.
The new exhibition of German strength demonstrated the continued threat to the Swiss, for the German divisions launched in the Ardennes would have been sufficient, too, to invade Switzerland. The war was by no means over, and only after his death could the Führer’s capabilities and limitations be accurately evaluated.72
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