Consistent with her policy of neutrality, Switzerland is not a member of NATO, which is now expanding into Eastern Europe. Referenda voted on by the people have also mandated that the country remain outside the European Union and the United Nations, although this could change in the future. Switzerland’s lack of membership in the UN has not prevented her from participating in initiatives against chemical warfare or providing medical assistance in war-torn areas. Switzerland also contributes sizable sums to various UN humanitarian organizations. Membership in NATO would allow the armed forces to participate more fully in joint training exercises, but the historic commitment to strict neutrality has prevented this. Still, the Swiss military has played certain roles outside the country in cooperation with NATO, including the Partnership for Peace program, and has participated in certain United Nations activities. Whether the Swiss armed forces should join other countries in armed intervention in countries torn by civil war, such as the former Yugoslavia, continues to be debated.
The deeper political question is whether Switzerland should continue to maintain her traditional neutrality in the absence of an immediate threat. Some in Switzerland endorse membership in NATO while others call for the abolition of the Swiss Army because there is no further need for it. Yet neglect of defense in times of apparent calm is an act of naïveté in view of the volatile nature of people and governments. The threat that Switzerland parried in the 1940s—because of its will to prepare for the worst—arose in a blink of the eye in the context of history. The question of membership in a binding military alliance is, ultimately, a question of sovereignty. Switzerland’s robust independence has worn well—for Switzerland, for Europe and for much of the world. It should not be too readily compromised.
Epilogue
IF THE EXAMPLE OF SWISS RESISTANCE IN WORLD WAR II PROVES anything, it proves that federalism, with its concomitant idea of limited government, and democracy, with its distrust of rule by the few, go hand in hand. During the years 1938–41 country after country was served up to Hitler, as if heads on a platter, after a political elite decided, either following brief resistance or no resistance at all, to surrender. The radically democratic Swiss, by contrast, retained their tradition of the armed citizen and refused to recognize a Führer, whether their own or someone else’s. Instead, they prepared, beginning at the level of the individual citizen, to resist with arms to the end.
Although Germany originally consisted of a collection of states, after 1933, as noted by William Shirer, Hitler “abolished the separate powers of the historic states and made them subject to the central authority of the Reich, which was in his hands.” Reichsminister Frick explained: “The state governments from now on are merely administrative bodies of the Reich.”1
The benefits of direct democracy are clear. At the cantonal level, the ability of citizens to vote on the laws that affect them means that the people are sovereign. At the federal level, the initiative and the referendum offer the people the ability to govern themselves.
Again, federalism and direct democracy go hand in hand. True democracy means power from the bottom up rather than from the top down. In Switzerland, the individual and the family influence local affairs at the community and cantonal levels. The cantons govern according to the will of their citizens. The federal government is simply the unified cantons. In this system of federalism, the U.S. Constitution parallels that of Switzerland in that limited sovereignty is delegated to the federal government, but residual sovereignty is retained by the states or the people.
To defend her independence and unique system of government, Switzerland continues to maintain a citizens army, which by its very nature could never be used to institute tyranny or to wage imperialist wars against her neighbors. Though not militarist, this militia was strong enough to successfully deter aggression in World War II, while the standing armies of almost every other European army either collapsed or were ordered not to fight by fainthearted ruling elites.
In the United States, the original federal and state militias were abandoned. Although the armed populace was considered the militia, it was supposed to be “well regulated” and trained under federal and state law. The maverick private groups in the United States today calling themselves “militias” are not what the Framers had in mind when they affirmed the concept of a unified citizenry in arms. Switzerland’s citizens army is equivalent neither to America’s National Guard, the membership of which is restricted, nor, of course, to the so-called “militia” movements.
The institution of neutrality means, in theory, that one fewer country is available to initiate, or to participate in, a potential war. Historically, wars are started by rulers, who order commoners who have nothing against each other to kill or be killed. Swiss armed neutrality has been dictated by necessity but has also been a benefit to the world in that it enabled Switzerland to work in humanitarian causes and provided a site where conflicts could be resolved among belligerents in a climate of security.
World War II was the supreme test of these fundamental principles. The Swiss capacity for universal armed resistance by the entire population and spiritual resolve to resist to the death were major factors in deterring Adolf Hitler’s anticipated attack. This proved the success, not the failure, of Switzerland’s institutions of federalism, the citizens army and limited government.
For over two centuries, the United States and Switzerland have been recognized as “Sister Republics” because of their common ideals. Americans admire the little man standing up to the big bully. And Americans of the war generation were well aware of the story of how the Swiss stood up to Hitler. They read the newspapers and saw the maps of Nazi Europe as it expanded from 1938 onward, always making democratic Switzerland seem ever smaller in the sea of Nazi tyranny. The fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II captured great public interest, but the Swiss story has not heretofore been widely shared with the postwar generation. Many Americans seem to be only vaguely aware of Switzerland’s reputation as a democratic nation of riflemen who offered armed deterrence to the prospect of an Anschluss by the Führer.
Influenced by English writers, America’s Founding Fathers, who made the Revolution and then adopted the Federal Constitution and Bill of Rights in the late eighteenth century, were inspired by the Swiss example. The Founders depicted Switzerland as a democracy standing alone in a continent of tyrannical monarchies.
The American republic was founded on the principles of federalism, democracy and neutrality, which were strongly influenced by the Swiss model. Switzerland’s policy of armed neutrality in World War II, which stemmed from these ideals, was morally sound because it did not constitute moral neutrality. The Swiss well understood what a Nazi victory would have meant for all of Europe and publicly opposed Nazism despite the threat of invasion. The ideals of human rights and the sanctity of individual life remained the motivating ideals of Switzerland throughout the war, even as they were abolished elsewhere in Europe wherever the Third Reich and the Soviet system advanced.
Switzerland has entered her eighth century as Europe’s only direct democracy. Since 1291, this country has preserved her independence by mobilizing her entire population of armed men to resist any and all foreign aggressors. In recent centuries, with the exception of the Napoleonic incursion, Europe’s tyrannies have been deterred from attempting to invade Swiss soil.
From the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries, Americans have studied the Swiss militia as the model of a democratic fighting force. The Swiss model required every man to serve in the militia and to keep a rifle at home. When World War II came, Switzerland was the only country in Europe whose entire populace had the capacity to wage a partisan armed struggle against an invader. Over three-fourths of a million soldiers, out of a population of just over four million, were mobilized, and boys and old men were armed in local defense organizations. Women, too, would have fought in the event of a Nazi aggression, just as they did when Napoleon invaded.
Switzer
land’s institutions played a key role in her being the only country on continental Europe to be surrounded but never conquered by the Nazis. The Nazis despised Switzerland because of her democratic traditions. Propaganda Minister Goebbels called Switzerland “this stinking little state,” while Hitler implored that “all the rubbish of small nations still existing in Europe must be liquidated.”
Had the Germans attacked, the Swiss were instructed to disregard any alleged “official” surrender as enemy propaganda and, if necessary, to fight individually. A nation of sharpshooters was prepared to snipe at German soldiers at long range from every mountainside.
Switzerland had few heavy arms, although any Nazi panzers that made it past mined roadways would have found the mountains impassable. During the war, Swiss fighter planes shot down 11 Luftwaffe aircraft over border skies.
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising exemplified what a small number of oppressed people could do by obtaining even a few arms. Jewish resistance fighters drove the Nazis from the Ghetto and inspired the free world with their heroism. While the revolt was crushed, its participants killed many Nazis. Similarly, Switzerland, with the highest percentage of trained citizen soldiers in the world, posed an obstacle that was unacceptably costly to the Nazis.
The Swiss strategy of defense from their Réduit National was simple: An opposition to the death by select troops at the border would be followed by a relentless war conducted from the Alps—the place the Swiss chose to engage the invader. The vast majority of Swiss strongly opposed Nazi ideology. There was no Holocaust on Swiss soil.
As so often in the history of World War II, the final verdict belongs to Winston Churchill: “Of all the neutrals Switzerland has the greatest right to distinction. . . . She has been a democratic State, standing for freedom in self-defense among her mountains, and in thought, in spite of race, largely on our side.”
For centuries, Switzerland has symbolized the ideals of individual rights, direct democracy, federalism and armed strength for defense, never for aggression. She has been neutral in military conflicts, but was never morally neutral; her people have always sided with freedom. Swiss traditions were put to the supreme test during World War II and were vindicated.
Chapter Notes
PREFACE
1 William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), 114.
2 Ibid. at 137.
PROLOGUE
1 Rapport du Général Guisan à l’Assemblée Fédérale sur le Service Actif, 1939–45 (Bern, 1946), 203.
2 Julius Caesar, De bello Gallico, I. 1–29.
3 John J. Zubly, The Law of Liberty: A Sermon on American Affairs (Philadelphia, 1775), 35.
4 Ibid. at 35–36. Spellings are as in the original.
5 Ibid. at 36-37.
6 John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (London 1787), I, 47–48.
7 Ibid. at 32.
8 Zubly, The Law of Liberty, 38; John McCormack, One Million Mercenaries: Swiss Soldiers in the Armies of the World (London: Leo Cooper, 1993), 7. See Oberst M. Feldman and Hauptmann H.G. Wirz eds., Schweizer Kriegsgeschichte (Bern: Oberkriegskommissariat, 1915–1935), I, Heft 1, 74–78.
9 McCormack, One Million Mercenaries, 8. See Feldman & Wirz eds., Schweizer Kriegsgeschichte, I, Heft 2, 15.
10 Zubly, The Law of Liberty, 38.
11 Ibid. See Feldman & Wirz, Schweizer Kreigsgeschichte, I, Heft 2, 26–32; McCormack, One Million Mercenaries, 9.
12 Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions, I, 28–30. The above uses the original spellings. See Feldman & Wirz, Schweizer Kriegsgeschichte, I, Heft 2, 33–37.
13 McCormack, One Million Mercenaries, 27–29; Feldman & Wirz, Schweizer Kriegsgeschichte, I, Heft 2, 154–62.
14 McCormack, One Million Mercenaries, 29–32; Feldman & Wirz, Schweizer Kriegsgeschichte, I, Heft 2, 162–95.
15 Feldman & Wirz, Schweizer Kriegsgeschichte, I, Heft 2, 203–76; James Murray Luck, A History of Switzerland (Palo Alto, CA: Society for Promotion of Science & Scholarship, 1985), 107–08; McCormack, One Million Mercenaries, 33–34.
16 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses, L. Walker, trans. (New York: Penguin, 1970), 332. See Feldman & Wirz eds., Schweizer Kriegsgeschichte, I, Heft 2, 354–71.
17 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. L. Ricci (New York: New American Library of World Literature, 1952), 73.
18 Machiavelli, The Discourses, 308, 321, 309–310.
19 Machiavelli, The Art of War, E. Farneworth transl. (Indianapolis: Bobbs- Merrill, 1965), 46–47.
20 F. Freymond, “Neutrality and Security Policy as Components of the Swiss Model,” in Marko Milivojevićc and Pierre Maurer, eds., Swiss Neutrality and Security (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 180; James Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire (London: MacMillan, 1889), 308.
21 McCormack, One Million Mercenaries, 173.
22 Boston Gazette, April 1, 1771, 3.
23 Charles S. Hyneman & Donald S. Lutz, American Political Writings During the Founding Era (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1983), I, 238.
24 James H. Hutson, The Sister Republics: Switzerland and the United States from 1776 to the Present (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1991), 9. See “The Sister Republics,” Rapport Annuel 1992 (Bern: Bibliothèque Nationale Suisse, 1993), 41–57.
25 Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions, 38–39.
26 Robert A. Rutland, ed., The Papers of George Mason (University of North Carolina Press, 1970), III, 896–97.
27 Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1981–93), IX, 966.
28 Ibid. at 1040–41.
29 See Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right (Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute, 1994).
30 Jürg Stüssi-Lauterburg, Föderalismus und Freiheit (Brugg: Effingerhof, 1994), 19.
31 Luck, A History of Switzerland, 282–85.
32 Chronik der Schweiz (Zürich: Chronik-Verlag, 1987), 315.
33 Interview with Jürg Stüssi-Lauterburg, Sept. 1996.
34 Feldman & Wirz eds., Schweizer Kriegsgeschichte (Bern 1923), III, Heft 8, 8–31; Luck, A History of Switzerland, 305–06.
35 McCormack, One Million Mercenaries, 163; Luck, A History of Switzerland, 308; Chronik der Schweiz, 319; Feldman & Wirz eds., Schweizer Kriegsgeschichte (Bern 1923), III, Heft 8, 31–38
36 Luck, History of Switzerland, 310–11.
37 Ibid. at 318–29.
38 Jürg Stüssi-Lauterburg, “A History of Change,” Army 1995: The Past and Future of the Swiss Army (Genève: Intermedia Com, 1997), 61.
39 Commentaires de Napoléon Premier (Paris: Imprimerie Impérile, 1867), III, 464–65, quoted in Stüssi-Lauterburg, “A History of Change,” Army 1995, 65.
40 Hans Rudolf Kurz, Histoire de l’Armée suisse (Lausanne: Editions 24 Heures, 1985), 13, 18–19.
41 Robert C. Brooks, Civic Training in Switzerland: A Study of Democratic Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930), 365.
42 Ibid.; Feldman & Wiwrz, Schweizer Kriegsgeschichte, IV, Heft 11, 36, 43, 57.
43 Joachim Remak, A Very Civil War: The Swiss Sonderbund War of 1847 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 157.
44 Kurz, Histoire de l’Armée suisse, 24–26; John Hitz, The Military System of the Republic of Switzerland (Washington, DC: Franck Taylor, 1864), 11; Luck, History of Switzerland, 390–93.
45 Stüssi-Lauterburg, “A History of Change,” Army 1995: The Past and Future of the Swiss Army, 70.
46 Christian Reinhart, Kurt Sallaz, & Michael am Rhyn, Die Repetiergewehre der Schweiz: Die Systeme Vetterli und Schmidt-Rubin (Dietikon-Zürich: Stocker-Schmid, 1991), 11–12; Edward C. Ezell, Small Arms of the World (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1983), 676; Schweizerischer Schützenverein, Hand- und Faustfeuerwaffen: Schweizerische Ordonnanz 1817 bis 1975 (Frauenfeld: Huber, 1971), 67–69.
47 Reinhart, Sallaz, & am Rhyn, Die Repetiergewehre der Schweiz, 110; Feldman & Wirz
eds., Schweizer Kriegsgeschichte, IV, Heft 12, 127.
48 Stüssi-Lauterburg, “A History of Change,” Army 1995, 69.
49 Luck, History of Switzerland, 406.
50 Kurz, Histoire de l’Armée suisse, 36–37; Stüssi-Lauterburg, “A History of Change,” Army 1995, 69; Feldman & Wirz, Schweizer Kriegsgeschichte IV, Heft 12, 117; Christopher Hughes, The Federal Constitution of Switzerland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 17.
51 Remak, A Very Civil War, 175.
52 Stüssi-Lauterburg, “A History of Change,” Army 1995, 73.
53 Richard Munday, Most Armed and Most Free? (Brightlingsea, Essex: Piedmont Publishing, 1996), 16.
54 George W. Wingate, Why School Boys Should Be Taught to Shoot? (Boston: Sub-Target Gun Co., 1907), 6–7.
55 Reinhart, Sallaz, & am Rhyn, Die Repetiergewehre der Schweiz, 154–59, 203, 164.
56 The Officers Training Corps: The Australian System of National Defense, The Swiss System of National Defense, Senate Document No. 796, 63rd Cong., 3rd Sess. 1915, 123.
57 Kurz, Histoire de l’Armée suisse, 60; Georg Thürer, Free and Swiss (London: Oswald Wolff, 1970), 143.
58 Luck, History of Switzerland, 793–94.
59 Kurz, Histoire de l’Armée Suisse, 60.
60 Edgar Bonjour, Swiss Neutrality: Its History and Meaning (London: Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1952), 108.
61 Kurz, Histoire de l’Armée Suisse, 70–71.
62 Bonjour, Swiss Neutrality, 103, 106.
63 Kurz, Histoire de l’Armée Suisse, 64.
64 The Military Law and Efficient Citizen Army of the Swiss, Senate Document No. 360, 64th Cong., 1st Sess. (1916), 77.
65 Ibid. at 78.
66 Julian Grande, A Citizens’ Army: The Swiss System (London: Chatto & Windus, 1916), 9.
CHAPTER 1
1 William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1990), 190–91.
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