The collective determination to resist, at any cost, at the national, group and individual levels throughout Europe might have stopped Adolf Hitler far earlier. There should have been more and earlier resistance, including armed resistance, by states and peoples alike. More than most European countries, the Swiss prepared themselves for such resistance. Spiritually, they made the commitment to expend the national resources to make their military preparedness credible.
General Henri Guisan symbolized the spirit of the Swiss citizen—the citizen who was a trained marksman since youth and who gained confidence from the announcement that surrender was never an option. The genius of Guisan was that he masterminded a strategy that was entirely within Swiss historical traditions. Throughout the war, the Führer had simply not been willing to pay the bloody price that the Swiss would have extracted. Both when Germany was at the peak of its power and later, when it sought to create a “Fortress Europe,” the Nazis declined to launch the Wehrmacht against Switzerland. Guisan, the Swiss riflemen and their mountains, alone out of all Europe, deterred Hitler from swallowing them up.
A half-century later, the place of General Guisan in history is indisputably positive. He will be remembered forever as the leading figure of Switzerland who led the nation honorably through its darkest hour by fostering the will to resist.75 While military leaders are usually remembered for their combat activities, Guisan will be remembered as the general who stood up to Hitler and made him blink— saving the country from devastation.
Chapter 11
ARMED NEUTRALITY TO THE 21ST CENTURY
IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE WORLD WAR WOULD be replaced by the Cold War, and an economically and militarily strong Switzerland continued to be vitally important to Europe. In a 1950 policy statement, the U.S. State Department praised the Swiss contribution to the reconstruction of Europe and confirmed American endorsement of Swiss armed neutrality:
The Swiss Confederation is an important factor in European economic recovery and a positive force in the maintenance of free democratic institutions in Europe. While traditional neutrality precludes their political or military alignment with the West, the Swiss can nevertheless be relied upon to defend their territory resolutely against any aggressor.1
The Swiss emerged from World War II convinced of the value of their militia system. A decade after the end of the war, now retired General Henri Guisan praised the virtues of military rifle shooting as the national sport: “It is not for nothing that in every Swiss house is a firearm with its ammunition, always ready to defend our freedom and independence.” In no other country was “keeping a weapon by everyone the symbol of free men.” The present generation was obliged, Guisan continued, to impart shooting skills to their youth.2
Total Resistance (Der Totale Widerstand) by Swiss Major H. von Dach, written in 1958 with the Nazi experience still fresh in mind, expressed the Swiss philosophy: “We believe it is better to resist until the last. We believe that every Swiss woman or man must resist.”3 Civilian resisters would have no shortage of arms, because practically every Swiss family had either a Model 1911 rifle or K31 carbine, not to mention the arms held by hunters and marksmen.4
Most of von Dach’s work concerned how to organize and wage guerrilla warfare and conduct underground operations. He admonishes that the arms found in every household “must be cleverly concealed as their illegal possession may mean a death sentence.” The enemy will set a deadline for surrender of arms, will assure those who comply that they will not be punished, and will initially adhere to this policy, to create trust. The sense of security will be false:
Should you be so trusting and turn over your weapons, you will be put on a “black list” in spite of everything. The enemy will always need hostages or forced laborers later on (read: “work slaves”) and will gladly make use of the “black lists.” You see once again that you cannot escape his net and had better die fighting.5
In such a struggle, the imperative for the Swiss must be: “Death rather than slavery!”6 Some Swiss authorities looked askance at von Dach’s thesis because it did not consider international law, under which partisans not in an official force are not protected if they become prisoners of war and can be executed.
However, this was the philosophy successfully applied by the Swiss in the war to dissuade a Nazi attack. It must be surmised that many Swiss civilians, men and women, would have resisted a Soviet invasion in the Cold War era, just as they would have resisted a Nazi invasion a decade before, by waging partisan warfare. The official Soldier’s Book (Soldatenbuch) of the postwar period equated the citizen and the soldier and instructed on how to wage total war.7
After the Soviet Union swallowed up one Eastern European country after another—some of them not very far away—Swiss defense policy was directed toward protection from Soviet aggression. The air force, tanks, and artillery were modernized. The growing nuclear threat led to increasing civil defense measures, including massive construction of fallout shelters. Civilian defense was professionally organized and taught to the population at large.8
The threat was real. As Czechoslovak General Jan Sejna would later disclose, in the 1970s the Warsaw Pact planned, in the event of a European war, to make strategic air landings in Switzerland and to capture all vital centers within three days.9
To this day, the Swiss Constitution provides that every Swiss male is subject to military service and is to be issued arms which he may retain. “In this, Switzerland is unique in the world, exhibiting a remarkable degree of trust in her citizens, whose right to bear arms is considered as natural as the right to vote, and as such showing that Swiss direct democracy, armed and based on the idea of a social contract between rulers and ruled, is real.”10
In the late 1950s, the Model 1931 bolt-action carbine was declared obsolete and the Model 1957 Sturmgewehr (Stgw 57 assault rifle) began to be issued to the citizen soldiers. Using a 24-round magazine, the Stgw 57 is selective fire, meaning that it shoots in semiautomatic (one shot per trigger pull) or full automatic (continuous fire as long as the trigger is held back), at the option of the user.11
Following the adoption of a new service rifle, the roughly 200,000 Stgw 57 rifles remaining at arsenals, pursuant to the 1997 Federal firearms regulation (the first ever passed by the Swiss Parliament), are being rendered exclusively semiautomatic and are being sold to Swiss citizens, male and female, at the bargain price of about 60 Swiss francs each.
The current service rifle is the Model 1990 Sturmgewehr (Stgw 90 assault rifle). This handy selective-fire rifle, which also features a three-shot burst, holds twenty 5.6mm cartridges (which are interchangeable with 5.56mm NATO cartridges), has a folding stock, a bipod, high-tech plastic, and precision diopter sights.12
The K31 carbine and the models Stgw 57 and 90 rifles are the three rifles typically used in 300-meter rifle competitions that are held every weekend all over Switzerland except in winter. These rifles are commonly seen being carried by ordinary citizens on trams and buses or on the shoulders of pedestrians and bicyclists en route to and from shooting ranges. Swiss shooting traditions also live on in the annual Feldschiessen, shooting festivals held everywhere in the country on the same weekend each year, except in Geneva, which holds its festival a few weeks later. There are also countless cantonal and local matches, in which women have been participating in increasing numbers. Historical shoots are held to commemorate the great events of the Swiss past—the Rütli, Morgarten, and St. Jakob an der Birs shoots are only a few.13
The Federal shooting festival (Schützenfest) is conducted over a three-week period once every five years. Last held in Thun in 1995, it attracted 72,000 competitors, over one percent of Swiss citizenry, making it by far the largest rifle match in the world.14 By comparison, the 1995 National Matches at Camp Perry, Ohio, America’s “World Series” of the shooting sports, in which both civilians and military personnel participated, had only 4,000 competitors. Had the same percentage of the population participated as in the Swis
s matches, 2,500,000 Americans would have shot at Camp Perry.
As has been the tradition since medieval times, the young are instructed in the use of weapons. One of the highlights of the year in Zurich is the Knabenschiessen. The city closes down for the afternoon as boys and girls compete with the Stgw 90 rifle. In 1997, the shooting queen and king, aged 15 and 17, respectively, won out over some 4,000 other teenagers and were crowned in the traditional festive ceremony.15
Swiss male citizens, with few exceptions, serve in the army and keep their arms at home, even after retirement. Major bus stops display not only the bus schedule but also a large poster with the training schedule of every unit of the Swiss Army for the year. Uniformed soldiers carrying their assault rifles are regularly seen at train stations and in other public places. Today, climbers in the Swiss Alps may witness army helicopters darting among the peaks on maneuvers. A close look at a rocky mountainside might also reveal a hidden bunker with a cannon.
Despite the prevalence of arms in the population, Switzerland is an exceptionally peaceable and safe society—not in any sense militaristic. Her tradition of defense preparedness and a citizenry trained in martial skills is allied to her tradition of nonaggression and neutrality. Virtually the only European country able to stay out of European wars since the fall of Napoleon, Switzerland renounced all imperialist ambitions as long ago as the Battle of Marignano in 1515.
Evidence of World War II defenses abound. Concrete tank obstructions litter the cow pastures along the Rhine. Bunkers for heavy machine guns dot farms and hillsides. Almost all bridges still have cavities to hold explosives; the major ones are still wired. Fortifications consisting of scores of rooms carved inside mountains are still maintained, either as museums or for current training and defense.
Today, Switzerland’s citizens army is equipped with state-of-the-art weapons that include a wide array of advanced-design machine guns, mortars, rocket launchers, anti-tank guns, Stinger missiles, tanks, artillery, helicopters and anti-aircraft guns. Jet fighters include the Mirage, the Tiger II and, most recently, the American-built F/A-18 Hornet.16
Switzerland has banned, however, the use of antipersonnel land mines. The Federal Law on War Matériel prohibits the use, production, or possession of these weapons.17
The robust Swiss democracy provides for citizen initiatives at the Federal level to be voted on by the populace. In 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell, 64.4 percent of the voters rejected an initiative to abolish the army outright. Majorities in all cantons other than the Jura and Geneva voted no. The supporters of this initiative then adopted a piecemeal strategy, but the voters again, in 1993, rejected initiatives to preclude purchase of the F/A-18 fighter jet from the United States and to deny funds for the building of a military training facility. More recently, attempts have been made to bring initiatives to cut military expenditures by one-half and to prohibit exportation of armaments.18
The portion of the Swiss political spectrum consisting of pacifists has thus gone full circle. After campaigning against the army in the 1920s and early 1930s, the pacifists, who were mostly socialists, finally entered into a coalition with the other political parties to strengthen defense against the threat of the Third Reich. This alliance created the will and ability of the entire populace to resist Nazism and Fascism to the end. The Socialist Party had resolved in 1942 that “the Swiss should never disarm, even in peacetime.”19 Opponents of the 1989 initiative to abolish the army thus contended that the lessons of World War II were being completely disregarded. Once again, it was argued, pacifists were willing to believe in the inherent goodness of surrounding governments and to assume that Switzerland needed no defense.20
A current Swiss armed forces publication, The Army of a Small, Neutral Nation: Switzerland, explains the militia system of national defense, with the purpose of convincing foreigners that any aggression would be extremely costly and not worthwhile to the aggressor.
The militia army is also a force for social cohesion in the nation. Active units consist of 20- to 30-year-olds, although soldiers to age 50, and officers to age 55, can be called. “The acceptance of a superior, especially an officer, by his men,” says the publication, “is less a problem than might be expected in an egalitarian society where one is accustomed to making his own political decisions, right down to the last detail.” This democratic militia takes advantage of the experience and skills of its members in their civilian capacities, resulting in appropriate assignments to specific weapons or services. Bank presidents and farmers serve together, and this provides important unifying experience in the society at large. For total mobilization, the Swiss Army can rely on over 600,000 soldiers, including a number of specialized women volunteers.21
Based on its Constitution and international law, Swiss defense incorporates permanent neutrality and the pledge never to start a war: “The nation’s goal is peace in freedom.” The repulsion of armed aggression against Swiss territory is the imperative. “Should the army suffer reverses, it is to continue resistance in the form of guerrilla warfare. The aim of such action is to ‘make it impossible for the aggressor to control the occupied area and to prepare that area for liberation.’”22
The policy of dissuasion which kept the Nazis out of the country in World War II continues today:
The army clearly contributes to the avoidance of war by demonstrating its ability and readiness to fulfill the tasks expected of it under the conditions just described, by convincing foreign observers that the Swiss army is capable of maintaining long-term resistance and inflicting heavy losses on an aggressor, by minimizing a potential aggressor’s chances of success in view of the will of the Swiss people to resist and the material means of resistance available to their army.23
The Swiss armed forces today are organized according to the concept of “Army 95,” named after its reorganization program, which became effective in 1995. As formulated in the Federal Council’s report leading to the adoption of this program, Swiss security goals include: peace in freedom and independence; maintenance of freedom of action; protection of the population; defense of the national territory; and contribution to international stability, mainly in Europe.24
According to former Chief of Staff of the Swiss Armed Forces Hans Senn, the “Army 95” plan will reduce the army from 800,000 to 400,000 by the year 2005, by reducing the age of active service. The plan, however, retains the important principle that every male will continue to serve, and the maintenance requirements of technologically complex weaponry will increase the small number of full-time professionals.25
The lessons of World War II remain relevant today. As Dr. Senn states, timely preparation and the will to defend are decisive. Why did Switzerland have the means and will to resist and others did not? She was not a kingdom; she had her traditions of democracy, a citizens army and independence.
As a youngster in 1933, Dr. Senn recalls that the Swiss were already anti-Nazi. That year, he was engaging in military exercises with his fellow cadets in the canton of Aargau. A Berlin newspaper published a picture of the youngsters with the caption: “The Swiss make propaganda of their defense capability.” That “propaganda” would inspire the nation to keep the Nazis out, and it has kept out most intruders since 1291.
In a 1997 interview, Lt. General Arthur Liener, Chief of Staff, explained the character of the Swiss armed forces. The Swiss system is unlike any military force in the world. Nor does it bear any resemblance to the American National Guard. Composed primarily of civilians, its members are professional in that their military duties often reflect their jobs in civilian life. Military duty is not mere training for some other occupation.26
“There are 400,000 small arsenals in Switzerland,” stated Liener. “Personal arms and ammunition are kept in the home of every militiaman.” The ammunition consists of 50 rounds of 5.6mm cartridges for the Stgw 90 assault rifle, sealed in what looks like a thin coffee can. Given that 400,000 militiamen possess their own small arsenal at home, the entire army can
be mobilized in 24 hours, and much of it can be mobilized in as little as 4 hours. All matériel is dedicated to a fixed unit. This is unlike all other military forces in the world; Germany, for instance, has an armed force of 330,000 but matériel for 650,000. (By comparison, the U.S. Army numbers 480,000 active-duty soldiers. While this does not include other branches of service, the Army is by far the largest.)
Unlike World War II strategy, mobility rather than fixed position is emphasized. Military forces can reach anywhere in Switzerland within two hours. The new fleet of F/A-18 fighter jets purchased from the United States is the backbone of the air defense.
Why does Switzerland need a military force, in view of the peace that currently prevails in Europe? Who are Switzerland’s potential enemies? These are questions asked today by Swiss youth for whom World War II is a distant memory. Liener replied that Switzerland, as a neutral, belongs to no traditional alliances. The armed forces must be able to defend the country against any aggression. As long as other countries have armed forces and the potential for aggression, Switzerland must be able to defend herself. For evidence of turmoil not too far away, one need only look at the Balkans or the former Soviet Union.
Liener was being diplomatic when he failed to mention the historic enemy to the north. Although a peaceful neighbor now, Germany’s sheer size and might, particularly since the reunification of the country, raises questions that go to the heart of Swiss defense preparedness. How can a small nation like Switzerland permanently maintain her independence in the shadow of such a powerful neighbor? For much of its history, Germany has not shared Switzerland’s democratic tradition, and its overwhelming economic power is potentially threatening.
Soviet Russia was a bitter enemy of Switzerland during much of this century. The end of the Soviet empire, which held Swiss democracy and capitalism in contempt, does not, however, mean that Switzerland will not be threatened from the east in the future.
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