As the war wore on, Swiss engineers developed improved designs for the submachine gun, the anti-tank rifle, the tank grenade launcher, the rocket tube, the flamethrower, mines, hand grenades and explosive devices. The air defense was equipped with light and heavy anti-aircraft guns. The artillery was reorganized and partially motorized. By the end of the war, anti-aircraft guns and artillery together included 5,126 guns of different calibers: 1,317 field cannons and howitzers, 696 fortress guns, 166 mountain guns and 2,947 anti-aircraft guns.73
While the Swiss militiamen had not actually participated in war, explained Hans Senn, who would later become a Chief of the General Staff, “the soldiers received tough physical training and were accustomed to deprivations. They mastered their arms in sharpshooting and under combat conditions.”74
Switzerland had produced 240 million rounds of infantry ammunition in 1941, 120 million in 1942 and 60 million in 1943. Chief of the General Staff Jakob Huber explained that there was so much stored ammunition in the Réduit by 1944 that “if one assumes only one hit in 1,000 rounds—less would be a disgrace for the Swiss shooting people (Schützenvolk der Schweizer)—we could kill one million enemies with rifles and light and heavy machine guns.”75 Swiss sharp-shooting skills would have been far more efficient, as the Wehrmacht well knew.
Chapter 10
1945
The Liberation of Europe
AS ONE SWISS RIFLEMAN REMINISCED YEARS LATER, SWISS soldiers had little time to think during the entire period of the war. The young soldier was mostly concerned with making sure his rifle was clean. Most men and women put in double time in their jobs, and the load kept them from thinking about what would happen next. They had only a third of the ration of the average American G.I.; bread could not be eaten until it was two days old, because some government official thought stale bread was more filling. Despite privations, the Swiss did not despair but retained a strong national spirit. Hitler was seen as an unpredictable madman, and the Swiss people feared a German invasion until the very end of the war.1
As the Allied forces tightened their grip on the Nazi empire, the question of Swiss economic relations with Germany once again came to the fore. American Secretary of State Edward Stettinius announced on January 3 that Swiss-American economic relations would be overhauled. According to one report, the Allies sought a prohibition on all Swiss exports to Germany. The Swiss were still selling Germany a reduced quantity of machine tools, precision instruments, and other non-war items. They allowed the transit of coal to northern Italy but barred the movement of all goods from Italy. During this period, it should be noted, Germany was also still trading with Sweden.2
The Swiss interpreted Secretary Stettinius’ announcement as an attempt to force their country to become a weapon against Germany. The socialist Bern Tagwacht (Daily Watch) newspaper asserted that American pressure was part of a plan that started with the Soviet Union’s refusal to open diplomatic relations with Switzerland. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung noted:
The American demands, as announced, suggest a reckless disregard for the naked material existence of a nation of 4,000,000 people that for the past five years has been defending its independence and neutrality with a firm hand and even in the most critical hours today is housing and feeding more than 100,000 refugees.3
The press emphasized the fact that the United States had not offered to replace essential German coal with Allied deliveries.4
President Roosevelt dispatched his special assistant Lauchlin Currie to Switzerland to negotiate economic matters. The Americans recognized that Switzerland had a commercial treaty with Germany and appreciated Swiss diplomatic services representing the United States to that country.5 In fact, Secretary Stettinius’ remark about the “overhaul” of American-Swiss economic relations was misunderstood; the Department of State clearly recognized the advantages of Swiss neutrality to the Allied cause.6
To counter press reports critical of Switzerland, the Department issued a declaration to the United Press affirming that friendly relations would be maintained between Switzerland and the United States. It noted that Switzerland had to maintain diplomatic relations with the belligerents in order to serve as protecting power for the United States, and that Switzerland’s democratic system, as well as her traditional friendship with America, continued to be appreciated.7
Why the sudden objections to Swiss trade? According to Newsweek, reports critical of Swiss trade with Germany “came from certain government quarters whose objective is to align United States policy with that of the Soviet Union.” The accusations did not represent the policy of the State Department, however, and when Secretary Stettinius asserted that the U.S.-Swiss economic relationship was under discussion, his aim in fact was to strengthen ties. An American military mission in Bern was at that time negotiating the purchase of watches and precision instruments for use by U.S. troops in France. While these purchases would deprive the Germans of such goods and compensate the Swiss for German trade losses, they were not contingent on Switzerland’s severance of economic ties with Germany.8 Furthermore, Switzerland could not protect American interests in Germany, including looking after war prisoners and arranging exchange of the wounded, if she compromised her neutrality.9
The Department of State, recognizing the benefits of Swiss neutrality, favored a balanced approach. The Treasury Department and other agencies narrowly concerned only with issues such as trade with Germany and German assets, instigated various measures against the Swiss toward the end of the war and even after cessation of hostilities.10
The French exile newspaper Pour la Victoire (For Victory) deplored the attacks on Switzerland, which had been, since 1940, “an oasis in the fascist desert.” In the “moral confusion” engendered by six years of war, the Anglo-American press was “launching poison arrows against the only democratic country to hold its own in the face of the passions of its neighbors.”11
Allied-Swiss trade talks, which began on February 12, culminated in agreement on all issues on March 9. The agreement included Swiss trade with belligerents, carriage of goods by rail, export of electricity (which would assist French reconstruction), prevention of the concealment by defeated belligerents of looted property, and the supply of food and raw materials to Switzerland. The report concluded that “the Allied delegates were able to see for themselves how deeply rooted democracy is in the minds of the Swiss.” Under the agreement, trade with Germany was reduced to negligible proportions, and Germany was denied transportation facilities to and from northern Italy.12
The Swiss also revoked their bank privacy law for deposits by Nazi officials, froze German assets, and prohibited exchange of German gold for Swiss francs. American negotiator Currie remarked: “This really ends the last hope of the Nazis for establishing themselves through the safe haven of property held abroad.”13
The greatest aerial assaults on rail systems in history took place against Germany on February 22. American planes attacking southern Germany just north of the Swiss frontier, between Basel and Stein-am-Rhein, also accidentally dropped bombs on five Swiss villages and towns, killing 16 persons. The bombs hit minutes before American economic delegation head Lauchlin Currie arrived in Schaffhausen to lay wreaths on the graves of the victims of the earlier disaster. The State Department expressed shock and distress at the latest bombing accident.14 The same day, hundreds of American airmen were released from internment in Switzerland and returned to the ranks in Britain.
Hitler continued to launch surprise offensives. On February 17, the Sixth SS Panzer Army, which had been transshipped from the Ardennes, attacked with 600 tanks against the Soviets around Lake Balaton in Hungary.
In Switzerland, again, on March 4, 6 were killed and 50 injured in Basel and Zurich when American Flying Fortresses and Liberators dropped explosives and incendiaries and machine-gunned cars on freight-yard sidings. Numerous houses burned or were blasted. Swiss radio called the bombings precision work and not an “accidental release of bombs by a crashing plane.”15<
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Lt. General Carl A. Spaatz of the U.S. Army Air Force spent 24 hours in Bern to meet with General Guisan and the Swiss high command concerning the prevention of further Allied bombardments, a problem he called “even more urgent than his conduct of Allied aerial operations over the Western Front.” Swiss Councillor Karl Kobelt of the Military Department expressed the “grave revulsion of feeling” by the public of the bombings of Zurich and Basel, which were easily identifiable from the air.16 Four more Swiss were killed and extensive damage done on March 11, when a single plane bombed Basel and six planes bombed Zurich.17
Also in March, the Swiss investigated subversives responsible for a pamphlet which falsely claimed that it was being distributed in the name of Swiss officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers. The pamphlet accused the Federal Council of considering Allied demands that Switzerland enter the war on their side, allow free transit of Allied armies through Switzerland to attack Germany from the south, and the use of Swiss airfields for Allied attacks on Germany. This propaganda piece came in response to the Swiss government’s blunt refusal of a German request for 200 “asylum safe-conducts pending transfer to Argentina” for prominent Nazis.18
The Swiss refusal coincided with an immediate increase in border patrols to prevent political undesirables from entering the country. Recalling Germany’s surprise attacks on neutrals, as well as considering the Nazis’ increasingly desperate position, the Swiss were not taking any chances.19
Indeed, the Nazis could still be expected to take the most inhumane and unexpected measures. In late March, after partisans wounded an SS-Obergruppenführer who headed the Gestapo in the Netherlands, German police executed 400 Dutchmen.20 Nazi V-1 and V-2 rockets continued to rain on London, Antwerp and other cities until March 27. Thousands of the rockets remained in the Wehrmacht inventory and could easily have been launched against Switzerland.
A quarter-of-a-million German civilians and foreign worker refugees, the New York Times reported on April 18, were headed for Switzerland’s borders. In response, the Federal Council ordered the recall of army formations to watch for “undesirable individuals.” Strong measures were being prepared to keep out war criminals such as Gestapo and Elite Guard (SS) men.21
On the 20th, thousands of refugees fleeing the Reich in search of asylum in Switzerland reached the border at Lake Constance. Some French, Polish and Russian workers were allowed into the country. Panic spread on the German side as the French First Army made its way toward the Swiss frontier, where it was expected to cut off the Reich’s province of Baden, from which six divisions of Wehrmacht, Volkssturm and SS forces were attempting to escape. Small arms and light artillery combat could be heard just across the border.22 In the coming days, thousands of foreign workers continued to stream into Switzerland and were cared for by the International Committee of the Red Cross. No Germans were allowed in. The French advance into Baden accelerated the flow.23
By April 22, the French had reached the Swiss border at Schaffhausen, cutting off Baden from the Reich 120 kilometers to the north. The Germans prepared an all-out defense of the “Baden Redoubt.” Explosions rocked Basel the next day as the Wehrmacht blew up rail facilities in southern Germany. German deserters seeking to enter Switzerland were treated curtly, since it could not be determined whether they were war criminals. Refugees being admitted were examined for contagious diseases, and several cases of smallpox were discovered. The increasing dangers and the massing of SS troops in Austria’s Vorarlberg caused the Swiss to close their eastern frontier.24
The Allies also continued to advance against the Germans in northern Italy in early 1945. The Swiss received intelligence from partisans, who crossed into the Swiss canton of Ticino where they received material support, that the Germans might retreat with a scorched earth policy. The Swiss feared that Germany’s best combat force, the same Army Group C that had figured prominently in earlier Nazi invasion plans, now led by Field Marshal Kesselring, might finally bring the war into Switzerland in an effort to reach the suspected Nazi mountain redoubt in the Alps of Austria and Bavaria.25
By March 11, General Eisenhower had also received reports that Hitler would command a last stand in the “National Redoubt” in the Alps. General Omar Bradley wrote that “this legend of the Redoubt was too ominous a threat to ignore and in consequence it shaped our tactical thinking during the closing weeks of the war.”26 Allen Dulles noted that German forces on the Italian front were considered to be as intransigent as those in Berlin. As the Wehrmacht desperately attempted to hold on to the Apennines, German troops in Italy were expected to play a decisive role in a last stand of the Nazis in an Alpine redoubt.27
Just as the Allies feared the Nazi war machine to the end, it is hardly surprising that the Swiss feared a possible Nazi attack until the final days of the war. When Hitler saw the inevitability of defeat, he ordered that Europe be destroyed—not only Italy and France, but Germany itself. Known to be moody and impulsive, he could have easily given the order to attack Switzerland.28 The Red Army was advancing in Austria, and Germany’s strategic options were narrowing. German armies retreating from northern Italy would have been the troops best placed, and with the most incentive, to attempt a breakthrough of the Swiss border.
To prevent further catastrophes, Swiss intelligence, acting in a private capacity, began to mediate a possible surrender of the German force in northern Italy. Acting on his own and not as the representative of neutral Switzerland, Major Max Waibel, head of the “N1” intelligence bureau in Lucerne, contacted Allen Dulles in Bern.29 Dulles credited Waibel with playing a major role in orchestrating the early surrender of the German troops in Italy, which was a great relief to Allied war planners:
As we later proceeded to develop our secret and precarious relations with the German generals early in 1945, we would have been thwarted at every step if we had not had the help of Waibel in facilitating contacts and communications and in arranging the delicate frontier crossings which had to be carried out under conditions of complete secrecy. In all his actions Waibel was serving the interests of peace.30
On March 3, emissaries met in Lugano to discuss the unconditional surrender of the Germans. On March 8, SS General Karl Wolff met Allen Dulles in Zurich and agreed to recommend surrender to Field Marshal Kesselring.31 To show good faith, Wolff promised to discontinue warfare against Italian partisans, to release to Switzerland hundreds of Jews from Bolzano and to guarantee the safety of hundreds of American and British prisoners.32
On March 15–19, American and British representatives together with Major Waibel met SS General Wolff at Ascona, on Lake Maggiore in Switzerland, and agreed that the surrender would take place on March 21 at Caserta, headquarters of the Allied high commander for Italy, British Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander. The Soviets, who had not known about the negotiations, were invited to attend.33
Stalin, convinced that the Western Allies were negotiating behind his back, suspected betrayal. Ever since the German attack on the Soviet Union, he had feared the West would make a separate peace. Stalin’s pressure on the Allies killed the possibility of a March surrender. In April, the Germans were again ready to surrender. After exchanges between Stalin and Roosevelt, however, on April 21 Dulles was again ordered to inform the Swiss to cease negotiating the surrender of German Army Group C in Italy. Thus, because of Soviet pressure on the White House, surrender was delayed once more, and the war continued.34
Dulles confided to Waibel that Stalin sought to delay the German surrender in Italy in order to give the Communists more time to organize and seize political power in eastern Europe. The Soviets were also worried that a quick German surrender would allow the Western Allies to occupy Trieste, key to the Adriatic. If the Germans delayed a surrender, however, and continued fighting in the area west of Venice, in the shadow of the Alps, then Soviet or Yugoslav Communists could seize Trieste first. Stalin had encouraged Marshal Tito to move quickly across northern Italy all the way to the French border, where the Yu
goslavs could link up with French Communist partisans. The result would be a Soviet-controlled belt in western and southern Europe. The spilling of the blood of his American and British allies occasioned by a delay in the German surrender hardly mattered to the Soviet dictator when such objectives were at stake.35 Given Stalin’s historic perfidy, such as his previous pact with Hitler and Soviet territorial ambitions, such motives would have been entirely in character.
General Wolff called a meeting of German commanders, who decided that Army Group C should consider itself free to surrender. However, Gauleiter Hofer, who commanded the Tyrolean mountains, suggested an armed retreat into Switzerland and a surrender to the Swiss. Wolff replied that the southern Swiss defenses would repel such a move.36
Thus, a Wehrmacht retreat to Germany through Switzerland, or even surrender there (which meant internment and not prison), was impossible.37 Though Switzerland was not a belligerent on the Allied side, her strong defenses nevertheless assisted the Allies in blocking a Wehrmacht retreat. In contrast, had the Nazis been able to occupy the Swiss Réduit and make it a part of a German National Redoubt, the war might have lasted longer.
On April 23, General Wolff appeared at the Swiss border and requested a meeting with Major Waibel, who may have obtained General Guisan’s confidential approval to continue assisting surrender negotiations. Allen Dulles obtained permission to attend the negotiations, which took place in Lucerne. Field Marshal Alexander instructed that they fly to Naples. On April 29, two envoys from German Army Group C, whose forces were estimated at between 600,000 and one million men, signed surrender documents in Caserta, near Naples. This was the best remaining German combat force and the first to surrender unconditionally.38
There was a last-minute hitch. The surrender papers were signed and in the hands of the two German envoys, but the documents needed to be delivered to German headquarters in Bolzano, in northern Italy, to be verified by the high command there. The envoys flew back to Switzerland with Waibel with the intent to drive through Austria and from there to Bolzano. Reaching Allen Dulles’ home at 23 Herrengasse in Bern at midnight, they found themselves at the Austrian border the next morning, but Swiss border guards would not allow them to pass. Dulles called on Walter Stucki, acting Swiss Foreign Affairs Minister, early on the morning of April 30, explaining to him that
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