Rasputin1234

I thought maybe I could start a discussion about Swiss involvement during the last Great War. I admittedly don't know all that much, except that they mostly avoided fighting (as the Swiss are wont to do) and came away pretty unscathed compared to the rest of the continent.

Anyone out there with some good knowledge or facts about how they pulled this off?

pikeshot1600

At one time, I had a biography of General Henri Guisan of the Swiss army who commanded during WW II. Unfortunately I got rid of it with a lot of marginal books when I moved.

As I recall, the Swiss had war plans to throw in with the French, under certain circumstances, if the French war effort required it. They would hold that flank, even in France if necessary, and defend against any German move through Switzerland. The expectation was that the second war would be somewhat like the first.

Unfortunately, France fell so quickly in 1940 that such an opportunity was lost. As much coal and foodstuffs came from Germany, the Swiss had to "turtle up" and be prepared to defend their territory - which of course they would have done.

Switzerland would have been harder to subdue than the Balkans in 1940-41. Another strategic consideration was that the Italians were on their southern flank. It was a bad situation militarily.

The Swiss did the German dance, but the Allies operated plenty of intelligence missions based on Swiss territory (with the plausible deniability of the Swiss).

In Guisan's biography, however, there were indications that a number of Swiss officers had Nazi sympathies, and they had to be watched, or in some cases placed under arrest for some "reason" to take them out of circulation.

urtel

As i know Switzerland was firence defend they neutrality, at last in air, they shoot any war planes who enter they territory(both sides), and later they forced those “lost” planes(usually alliance bombers) to land on Swis airports and take pilots as war prisoners....we are talking about 100s of them not 1-2 or 10...
And off curse they banks make world finacial marked to work for whole war, guess both sides need them for this one too, easier way to tranfer money from one block to anoder was trought they banks and that money was used for everything behind enemie lines...

Kevinmeath

Switzerland's position was awkward as they could not really fight off any German invasion and win, they may have held it for awhile but cut off from all aid it would have been hopeless.

They really had little option but make the 'best out of a bad job'.

However 'the best' they did make of it.

Kraken

The Swiss alps were heavily entrenched with German snipers.

Rasputin1234

^Could you explain this more?

The more I read, the more I actually admire the Swiss' ability to avoid the bloodshed and horror that were occurring in all the surrounding nations. Like someone said, they would have put up a great fight against German invasion but in the end would have been pulverized. They managed to avoid such a fate while at the same time not sinking to the level of collaborators

Kevinmeath

True but that brings up questions over the morality of neutrality, you might argue that they sat back and allowed everyone else to fight and die for their freedom.
On the other hand what else could they do?
That debatable, on the one hand they had little choice but to co-operate with the Nazi's, on the other they did very nicely out of regime and provided a secure location for a great deal of loot.

Asher

It seems the Swiss were able to benefit from the war in various ways we've just been finding out in the last decade or so. The bank deposits may be just the beginning. Much of this might not have been particularly nefarious--but secrecy (which appears to be incorporated into Swiss laws to a rather unusual degree) breeds suspicion.

SirOrmondeWinter

As I recall the Swiss Air Force actually shot down about 9 German planes which had strayed over their territory for the loss of 2 of their own. Must have been very confusing for everyone as they flew German ME109s too

beorna

Maybe even 11 aircrafts. But these were no Me109, but for example a He-111 H IInd group of KG 53.And there were other He 111, to, e.g. of KG 55. As it seems were all of them bombers returning home, some even damaged in air fights over France. The german government severely protested and in the end threatened Switzerland with retaliation. Switzerland then did not shot down further german aircrafts and excused.

On september 5th 1944 2 P-51 B from the 339th FG shot down a swiss Bf-109 E-3 of 1st Ltn. Heiniger. In april 1944 allied bombers bombed the swiss city of Schaffhausen with B-24 bomber, 50 people died, 100 were wounded. There were as well allied attacks on basel and Zürich. In total 84 Swiss citizens were killed by allied bombings, 260 wounded. The swiss air force claims as well the capture of 198 B-17, Liberators and B-24, 14 of them shot down.

During the war there were 900 german violations of the Swiss territory and 5600 allied violations.