With the beginning of the wars of the Reformation, fewer Swiss fighters ventured abroad. Nevertheless, some Swiss mercenaries continued to fight abroad, as far away as Britain’s war against the Zulus in 1879. Since their valleys now contained both Protestant and Catholic cantons that lived in uneasy peace, the Swiss were eager not to add to the power of foreigners who might come and break that peace. This is the beginning of Switzerland’s neutrality, which began in fact in the sixteenth century, in name in the seventeenth. Moreover, though the Swiss had become known abroad as military professionals, Swiss territory was characterized by the age-old militia tradition. Every able-bodied man would be expected to fight for his community with whatever weapon he could bring.
But this combination of parochial focus and military nonpro-fessionalism served the Swiss less and less well as their neighbors consolidated into states, ever bigger and better armed. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Switzerland’s recurring military problem was that the professional armies of France or Austria, trying to get at one another, would traverse or even appropriate a Swiss canton. The militia of the affected canton would be too little, and help from others would be too late. The cantons would sometimes find it easier to get help from the other major power than from other Swiss. At the height of Louis XIV’s power at the turn of the eighteenth century, they even dealt with faraway Britain. Because of the looseness of their confederation, the Swiss were prey to subversion as much as to bigger armies. Still, the Swiss Confederation did maintain a kind of armed peace with the whole world from 1521 to 1798.
By the end of the eighteenth century the wars of the French Revolution brought bigger armies and more subversion than the confederation could handle. Gradually, Switzerland lost all but a façade of independence and became a French satellite. The French incorporated the Valtellina into their newly formed satellite, the Cisalpine Republic (the present Italian province of Sondrio). The French also occupied the Geneva area. Bonaparte freely traversed Switzerland to fight in Italy. And the cantons were divided internally by French propaganda about liberty, equality, and fraternity. So, when a French army marched on Bern in February 1798, it did not meet serious resistance. The Swiss were required to supply contingents to the Napoleonic armies. The only Swiss military feat of the age came on October 12, 1812, when a detachment sacrificed itself covering the French crossing of the river Berezina at the start of Napoleon’s catastrophic retreat from Russia.
Modern Switzerland
In 1815, when the Swiss Confederation reemerged from the Congress of Vienna with a formal guarantee of neutrality, it sought to create a military instrument to guard its neutrality. Until 1848 the central government could only request that the cantons supply a single army from throughout the country. The federal government’s executive consists of a Federal Council, whose members are each in charge of a department—for example, the Military Department, the Political (Foreign Affairs) Department, and so on. The ceremonial post of president of the confederation rotates among the federal councilors. The country’s bicameral parliament is much less powerful than ordinary legislative bodies, because the Swiss people make most decisions on important matters by referendum. But when war among neighbors threatens to spill over into Swiss territory, the councilor on military affairs proposes, and the parliament elects, some military officer to the wartime rank of general, a rank somewhat reminiscent of the ancient Roman constitutional office of dictator. The general asks the Federal Council to mobilize the army. Mobilization is a momentous step because it takes out of the economy nearly all men of military age. Therefore, during extended military emergencies like World Wars I and II, the general and the Federal Council have to negotiate about how much of the army is to be rotated on and off active duty. The general, however, has the authority to use local contingents as seems best for the whole. In 1874, heeding the lessons of the Austro-Prussian and Franco-German wars, the Swiss created a General Staff and modernized military operations, at least to the point of relieving soldiers of the cost of their rifles. But the militia tradition continues: every man a soldier. Indeed, not until World War II would soldiers be compensated for the loss of their livelihoods. But even then, Swiss cavalrymen had to bring, or pay for, their own horses.
Even casual visitors to Switzerland have been impressed by the extent to which the country is militarized. Any weekend of the year, the railroad stations are full of civilians-turned-soldiers for training. They leave their automatic weapons piled up on the platform. Nobody but foreigners pays attention. Or you can see policemen nodding politely to men walking out of banks with machine guns—reservists must keep their personal weapons at home, and they often take them to work on the way to training. Troops are accustomed to guns from childhood. Switzerland is the only country other than the United States where guns are easily bought. While other European men play cards or golf, Swiss men are likelier to enjoy target practice. The country has few golf courses but many shooting ranges. Ever since 1657 the city of Zurich has had a three-day holiday, called Knabenschiessen, to introduce twelve-year-old boys (and now girls) to shoot. People of all ages can be seen bicycling through the streets with guns slung on their backs, heading for shooting sport.
On his twentieth birthday every able-bodied man becomes liable to at least nineteen days’ military service every two years for a period of twenty-two years. Higher ranks must serve until age fifty-two, or (for higher officers) sixty-two, and in emergencies until age sixty-five. Swiss men are also required to take part in an “off-duty shooting program.” At the end of service, they get to keep their personal weapons. Conversations with men at the top of Swiss society quickly uncover that, in contrast with their counterparts in Europe or America, their knowledge of military affairs is deep and their sympathy is lively. A successful professional in any field is almost surely a field grade officer of infantry, artillery, or combat engineers. Once I was interviewed by the anchorman of the French language television news, who happened also to be a colonel of artillery. Nowhere else in the West (Israel excepted) would that have been the case.
The Swiss armed forces are also unlike others in that, even in modern secular times, they emphasize the Christian duty to fight to the death for their community. Swiss secularists find other sources for patriotism. Nevertheless, anyone familiar with the professional military literature of modern Europe and America cannot help but be shocked by Colonel Pierre Altermath’s article in the November 1995 issue of Revue Militaire Suisse, entitled “Long Live Our Militia System!” The article cites Martin Luther’s well-known blessing of bearing arms to protect others, repress evil, and safeguard the faith. It cites Jesus’ “No greater love hath a man than that he give up his life for his friends,” as well as St. John’s admonition to love in deed as well as in word. The prophets Ezekiel and Habakuk, as well as contemporary spiritual guides, are also cited in support of the main point: We Swiss men are committed to our duty to fight and die for our country. While there is nothing unusual about such an article in Swiss military literature, there is nothing remotely like it in modern Western military literature or practice . Imagine, then, the state of mind of Swiss soldiers in earlier times.
The Swiss army that mobilized 250,000 frontline troops for World War I was technically on the same level as the armed forces of its neighbors. Switzerland’s army was seriously motivated, socially solid, and technically competent. Its senior officers had attended the war colleges of France and Germany. Its heavy artillery was the German 120 mm from the Franco-Prussian War, while the field artillery consisted of the French mainstay, the 75 mm. The machine guns were good local models. And the Swiss were well dug into trench lines on their northern and western borders.
Yet on the eve of World War I no one imagined that the Swiss army would stand up to any of its neighbors’ armies alone. In 1907, when France seemed the likelier aggressor, Swiss Colonel Theophil von Sprecher exchanged memoranda called Punktationen with the German army detailing the conditions of collaboration in case of
a French invasion. By 1917, however, when it appeared that Germany might want to use Swiss territory to bring to bear against France the divisions newly released from the Russian front, the same von Sprecher initiated talks with the French General Staff. In short, Swiss neutrality depended mainly on the willingness of Switzerland’s neighbors to deprive one another of the advantages of going through Swiss territory. The Swiss army would help by forcing any attacker to mount a major offensive and by delaying success long enough for help to arrive. But the Swiss always made it clear that help would not be welcome a moment sooner than called for.
Swiss men of military age spent World War I rotating from civilian life to the trenches. While in uniform, they suffered under the harsh Prussian training regimen of their general, Ulrich Wille. When at home, they suffered hunger and increasing poverty brought on by the loss of traditional international trade, especially a drastic drop in agricultural imports. Only farmers got rich selling foodstuffs at scalpers’ prices. Social cohesion suffered. Meanwhile the Swiss read about the far worse sufferings of their French, German, and Italian brethren beyond the borders. By war’s end the Swiss people shared—albeit to a lesser extent—the antimilitarism and revulsion to war that characterized the rest of European civilization. Like elsewhere in Europe, Swiss cities were filled with Socialist demonstrators and with the cry “Never again!” In 1918, much as in Germany, Marxist-led demonstrations threatened to overthrow the government. In 1932 Swiss troops had to break up a Socialist demonstration, shooting and killing eleven people. In short, in the years after World War I, even the Swiss were less mindful of military security than usual.
That is why the Swiss people narrowly approved entering the League of Nations in 1920. The Swiss conditioned their membership on the special assurance that they would not be required to take part in any war. Thus did they think that they could reconcile engagement with neutrality. Indeed, in Switzerland as elsewhere the League was sold to voters not as an obligation to go to war to safeguard other peoples’ rights, but as assurance that “the league” as a whole would somehow safeguard each member’s rights—another set of reasons for mindlessness about military matters. When the League reacted to Italy’s 1935 takeover of Abyssinia by driving Switzerland’s Italian neighbors to the south into worrisome cooperation with its German neighbors to the north, the Swiss revived the notion of armed neutrality.
Before the Storm
The illusion that the Great War had ended wars faded more quickly in Switzerland than elsewhere. As we will see, Adolf Hitler was much less a mystery to the Swiss, especially to the German-speaking majority, than to other nations. Nor was the idea of rearmament as shocking to the Swiss as to other Europeans and to Americans. In addition, while other countries were cursed with bad leadership during the 1930s, the Swiss drew some unusually good cards, including Rudolf Minger, who became head of the Federal Military Department in 1930. In the first two years after Hitler came to power, Minger raised the defense budget from about 95 million francs to about 130 million. In 1935 he went beyond the budget process, directly to the public, proposing an issue of defense bonds worth 235 million francs and campaigning for direct purchase by the public. The Swiss people responded by buying 335 million francs’ worth of the bonds. By 1939 another 171 million was added. By referendum, the Swiss agreed to lengthen military retraining and to extend the age of military obligation for the lower ranks to sixty. So, on the eve of World War II, a nation of 4.2 million people stood ready to field an army of 440,000 men backed by a corps of 150,000 armed volunteers over sixty or under eighteen years of age, and another 600,000 civilian auxiliaries.
By the outbreak of war, new weapons were beginning to come into service. But, like most other armies that had not guessed the character of modern, mechanized warfare, the Swiss had not bought wisely. The Swiss, like most everyone else, envisaged a replay of World War I.
The combined air corps and anti-aircraft corps had bought fifty excellent German ME 109 air superiority fighters. But because the General Staff was blind to the use of aircraft to support ground operations, Switzerland had bought no bombers and no ground attack aircraft, like the Stuka. As for anti-aircraft artillery, the Swiss had four Vickers and four Schneider 75 mm guns, plus thirty-four modern Oerlikon 20 mm weapons. The mission of the combined air and anti-aircraft forces was to protect Swiss airspace and Swiss airfields, but if the ME 109s had tried to fight for air superiority, they would have been swept from the skies by sheer numbers. More likely, they would have been destroyed before ever leaving their undefended airfields. Forty-two AA guns were obviously insufficient for defending airfields or anything else.
Moreover, the ground forces were not equipped for modern warfare. Each battalion had only one infantry cannon that could be used against tanks, plus just two grenade launchers. Obviously, the idea of armored warfare had not crossed Swiss planners’ minds. The war for which they had planned would have consisted of shooting oncoming infantry from border trenches. To that end there were sixteen thousand machine guns, four hundred French 75-mm field guns, entirely horse-drawn, and only fifteen 120-mm guns. In addition, there were various small caliber mountain guns. The only motorization for the infantry came from commandeered civilian vehicles (a maximum of 15,000 taken away from the civilian economy) plus 50,000 horses taken away from agriculture. Pictures from that time show rows of machine guns hitched to a variety of taxicabs and family sedans, smartly lined up. The Swiss cavalry rode horses.
The strength of the army lay in its 440,000 men, organized in six infantry divisions, three cavalry divisions, and a half-dozen brigades, and in the good, deep fortifications and trenches the Swiss had built along the borders. About one-fifth of the army would occupy these positions, while the rest would wait close behind the German and French borders ready to rush to wherever the attacker might be. The earthworks would absorb the enemy’s artillery fire, the defenders’ machine guns would take their toll, and the main army field divisions’ counterattacks, including those by the horse cavalry, would keep the enemy out of the country—until help could arrive.
The first news of the German campaign in Poland showed all this to be a pipe dream. The German armored spearheads had sliced through the kind of army that Switzerland had. The intellectual process by which the Swiss adapted to their new circumstances is of more than historical interest.
On August 30, 1939, the Swiss parliament activated the wartime post of “general” and entrusted it to Henri Guisan. The new general instantly complained that there was no plan for operations. But no strictly operational plan could fit the Swiss army for the circumstances in which events were plunging it. Guisan’s first response was to pull the army back from the strictly artificial border fortifications to ones resting on terrain features.
Contrary to the belief of those who do not look at maps, Switzerland has only its back to the Alps. The roof of Europe shields Switzerland only from the south and the east—that is, from Italy and substantially from Austria as well. From the west—that is, from France—Switzerland is moderately accessible through the Rhône valley and across the hills of the Jura. But the north and northeast of Switzerland, bordering on Germany, are open, rolling plateaus crossed by gentle rivers and lakes. Three-fourths of the Swiss people are located in these accessible regions, as well as the preponderance of their industry and agriculture. This non-Alpine Swiss terrain is better for defensive tactics than northern France—but it is also pretty good tank country. By contrast, the steep valleys of the Alps are natural fortresses. Of course, only one-fourth of the Swiss people live there. In sum, Switzerland’s terrain can be useful for defense, but only to the extent that the defenders can exploit it under any given technological conditions and against a given kind of opponent.
A glance at the map of Switzerland (fig. 1) shows that a nearly straight line of rivers and lakes roughly parallels the northern border, from the Rhine at Sargans in the east, following the Wallensee, Linth, Zurich Lake, and Limmat almost to the Gempen plateau above
the Rhine near Basel in the northwest. Guisan ordered most of the army to pull back behind these waters and dig in, while keeping the border troops in place. But this new plan left some 20 percent of the country open to occupation, including Basel and Schaffhausen, and put the biggest city, Zurich, right on the front line. It also meant that the costly border positions would henceforth be useful only to slow the enemy a bit. Yet events would quickly show even this sacrifice to be grossly insufficient—the Swiss military would be driven much farther down this path of logic.
Figure 1
The general’s arrangements for help from France would turn out worse. Conventional wisdom had it that the only strategic choice facing Swiss military commanders was whether to deploy the preponderance of forces in the north (against Germany) or in the west (against France). Like most of his countrymen, Guisan never had any doubt that the threat came from Germany. But the country’s formal neutrality, as well as the presence of high-ranking officers who would have been happier if the threat had come from the other direction, obliged Guisan to act formally as if he were dispassionate about his basic strategic choice. Hence he had to plan with the French in secrecy. Guisan was personally acquainted with top French officers such as Gamelin, Georges, and De Lattre, with whom he had toured the Maginot Line. As go-betweens he used Major Samuel Gonard, who had studied at the Ecole de Guerre in Paris and who traveled there often as a civilian lawyer, as well as Major Samuel Barbey, a novelist who also had good connections in the French army.
The result was an informal but nevertheless written agreement by which the French army would provide artillery fire support to the northwest end of the Swiss army position on the Gempen plateau, and move its own troops there directly to back up the Swiss. The Swiss actually improved roads leading onto the plateau and built revetments for heavy artillery for the French army’s eventual use, effectively linking the Maginot Line to the Swiss fortifications. In addition, elements of the French 7th (later the 45th) Army corps would cross the border near Geneva and move northeast. For the sake of symmetry in case of discovery, Guisan began secret exploratory talks with Germany through Major Hans Berly, who had good contacts in the Wehrmacht. But these never resulted in concrete plans.
Between the Alps and a Hard Place Page 5
