The Eye Of The Hurricane

Switzerland In World War Two

Urs Schwarz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367292034
• eBook ISBN: 9781000301304
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Despite the voluminous research published about World War II, there has remained a surprising gap; there is little, perhaps nothing, on the role of Switzerland. It was in the neutral Swiss oasis-where a perilous balancing act was required for survival-that a combination of determination and delicate negotiation continued to frustrate the Axis powers. Urs Schwarz cuts through the myths surrounding this period in a narrative based largely on his experiences as both participant and observer. He was a soldier, then a journalist in war-torn Berlin, and, beginning in 1942, foreign editor of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. These experiences, and subsequent extensive research, result here in a unique and discerning-and colorful-history.

Chapter One
Electing the General

The Armed Forces

In the late afternoon of August 30, 1939, the two chambers of the Swiss Parliament meeting in joint session elected (by 202 votes out of a total of 229) Henri Guisan as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. After the vote, the presiding chairman of the National Council, whose mother tongue was French but who at that moment expressed himself in German, wishing to have the newly elected general ushered in, ordered his aides, by a slip of the tongue, “to search for the general.” He had literally translated the French word cher-cher, corresponding to “invite, bring in,” to the German suchen, which means to “look or search for somebody in an unknown place.” This caused some hilarity in an otherwise solemn and tense moment.

The new commander-in-chief, whose appointment had been agreed upon shortly after the Munich crisis of 1938, both by the government and the political leaders in Parliament, had, of course, been waiting in the wings. He immediately entered the council chamber, unescorted, and pronounced, in French, the traditional oath of office. At that same instant, he was promoted from the rank of corps commander to the rank of four-star general. (The Swiss military system has only one general, and that only in time of war or serious threats. In peacetime the highest rank is corps commander.)

Henri Guisan, born in 1874, the son of a country doctor in the sturdy peasant environment of the canton of Vaud, had been interested in jurisprudence and theology but finally studied agriculture. He managed a farm of his own, with plenty of time to devote to military duties. As a militia officer he had served in the field artillery and on the general staff with such success that in 1926, he was promoted to division commander. At that point he joined the corps of professional officers.

A wave of enthusiasm swept over the parliamentarians and, beyond the walls of the Federal Palace in Berne, throughout the whole country. The election of this high-ranking officer had been hoped for, and indeed expected. He seemed to represent the best of Swiss military traditions; the elegant silhouette of this horseman was well known throughout the nation. Many thousands who had served under him or had otherwise met him knew his simple ways, his firmness, and his kindness.

The moment was one of solemnity indeed. The constitution and the law confers on the general (once he is elected to his unique rank and position) almost unlimited powers. So sweeping are they that they never have been fully exercised, even by former generals such as Henri Dufour in 1847, 1849, 1856, and 1859, Hans Herzog in 1870, or Ulrich Wille in 1914, but always exercised in a limited way, based on negotiation and compromise between the military and the federal government.¹ In principle, subordination of the military to the civil power was always considered as an axiom of national policy and never questioned. Actually, on that afternoon of August 30, 1939, the two chambers of Parliament had enacted a law giving the government (the Federal Council) full powers for maintaining the security, independence, and neutrality of Switzerland, for defending the economic interests of the country, and for insuring its economic survival.

Notwithstanding, the election of the general carried this simple message to every Swiss man and woman, even to those ignorant of the full constitutional and legal significance of the act: We are entering upon a time of crisis, perhaps war. The army will be mobilized. Life “as usual” is at an end. Strenuous testing times of sacrifice and unknown dangers are upon us.

The previous day, the federal government had ordered the mobilization of the forces for the immediate protection of the national borders. Frontier guard units had been formed by men living in localities near the frontier-regular army soldiers with full military training and instruction. Within hours they had occupied the lightly armed fortifications commanding the accesses toward the interior of the country, had installed the explosive charges necessary to blow up bridges and narrow passages of strategic importance for an attacker, had set up barbed-wire obstacles, and had laid minefields in critical sectors. At the same time the entire personnel of the air force and the antiaircraft artillery had reported for duty to the various air bases. However weak, the air force was combat-ready within hours. It included, at that time, about 150 Swiss-built airplanes of doubtful military value and 50 excellent German Messerschmitt Me-109 fighter planes.

On September 1, when it was known that Germany and the Soviet Union had invaded Poland without declaration of war, the new commander-in-chief went before the federal government and requested the general mobilization of the army. It was ordered the same day. When at noon on September 3, 1939, the United Kingdom declared war on the German Reich and the Second World War was on, the army was ready in its assigned sectors: 435,000 men, grouped in three army corps and assorted specialized units, were ready to move into the positions that would be dictated by the developing war beyond the frontiers. It was an impressive force considering the small total population of 4.2 million at that time.²

The traditional policy of neutrality necessitated total military preparedness. Accordingly the forces, once mobilized, were deployed to meet threats from any direction imaginable. The main concentrations of troops were directed toward the northeast and northwest. In these sectors the country was most vulnerable, and the military threat in case of a war between Germany and France was most serious. The task of the forces deployed in these directions was to prevent either the German or the French army from invading Swiss territory in an attempt to outflank the fortifications confronting one another across the Rhine River north of Basel. In addition to this, three fortified areas barred access to the strategically important alpine passes. Other forces faced west, south, and east.

The Spirit of 1939

The rise of National Socialism in Germany had been viewed by the vast majority of the Swiss population as a disaster, both for Germany and for the world. The events of 1934, when Hitler ordered the assassination of his potential opponents on the right and the left, had revealed the criminal character of Hitler’s regime. It was openly denounced as such by the Swiss press. In the German-speaking part of Switzerland, where the people could and usually did listen on the radio to the incredibly violent Sunday speeches of the Führer, he was viewed as a reckless demagogue, both dangerous and ridiculous. The monster rallies of National Socialism seemed both ludicrous and disgusting to the sober and thoroughly democratic Swiss. The age-old and innate Swiss dislike of the Germans, of their language, their verbosity, and their arrogance, was never far below the surface in spite of close business, cultural, and family connections, and it now came out into the open. This dislike was gradually transformed into a fundamental hatred by the spectacles of German recklessness and the antics of the National Socialist leaders and their brown hordes.

It was not surprising that in the French-speaking areas of Switzerland, where most people could not understand all this neo-German jargon, it took much longer to open people’s eyes to the real character of National Socialism. In this part of the Swiss Confederation interest centers around France-in the press of Geneva, Lausanne, and Neuchâtel, for example, local events in Paris are reported like other local events nearer home-and there is practically no family or business relationship with what is commonly considered as the barbarian country to the north, so the new German political system did not arouse much interest. For a long time many Suisses romands believed that Hitler was a conservative force of order and a bulwark against Communism.

The anti-National Socialist and anti-German feeling of the overwhelming majority of the Swiss found powerful expression in the press-and also on the tiny stages of some popular cabarets. The state-controlled German press reacted strongly and never tired of ridiculing Switzerland for being small and politically backward, for its lack of understanding of true greatness as represented by the German Reich and its Führer, and for its lack of interest in the brilliant New Order, which Hitler was preparing for the whole of Europe, etc.

The invasion and annexation of Austria on March 11, 1938, an inglorious end to the independence of a small neighboring country, had come as a deep shock to the Swiss. They understood that Austria had been undermined by the National Socialist propaganda so that the country fell without firing a shot, without even a token sign of resistance. They also understood that the antidemocratic movements that had evolved within Switzerland in recent years were trying to prepare a similar fate for their own country. These movements, inspired from Italy and Germany as everybody knew, were small in size yet great in arrogance.

The dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 by the application of German threats, aided and abetted by the cowardly passivity of the European powers, generated a deep apprehension and a desperate resolve in wide sections of the Swiss population to resist a similar fate.

The military attack against Poland in September 1939, and the defeat of a nation that traditionally enjoyed sympathy in the alpine republic and that had been considered as a model of military strength, came as a new shock. Could any one now doubt, after these precedents, that the German war machine would soon turn against other neighboring countries, especially against a country so provocative to the German tyrant and his advisers because it was democratic, small, in part German-speaking, and had a press that never hid its dislike for the new Germany and its hatred for National Socialism, and even ridiculed the great Führer himself? Some German publications had openly advocated the inclusion of at least the German-speaking parts of Switzerland in the Grossdeutsche Reich-the rest might go to Italy and to France. Subversive groups in Switzerland, as we shall see, openly propagated a similar program.

Pro-German Movements and Subversion

As early as 1923, under the influence of the triumph of Fascism in Italy, antidemocratic movements had begun to evolve in Switzerland.³ They were a mixture of different ingredients, had divergent ideological trends, and sprang from many roots. First of all, the spirit of imitation is always alive in Switzerland, perhaps due to its smallness and a longing for national splendor by people frustrated by the diminutive size of their own country. One finds conservative elements basically critical of the liberal, Masonic, and anticlerical roots of the Swiss Conferation as founded in 1848, together with advocates of the Roman Catholic vision of a corporative state, perhaps combined too with some lingering anti-Semitism. Then there is hatred of the bourgeoisie and of big business, the quest for greater social equality as well as a deep dislike of Communism as developed in the Soviet Union. There are those who naively thought National Socialism a bulwark against Communism. There were also the romantic admirers of the heroic military traditions of the Swiss nation who did not believe in neutrality. Members of the lunatic fringe joined hands with misled patriots, well-meaning critics of real national weaknesses associated themselves with frustrated unsuccessful people rejected by the closely knit, tradition-bound Swiss society. The economic crisis of the thirties, with many unemployed or underpaid, added its share of discontented people from the working class.

At least a dozen organizations were founded-combining, splitting, and quarreling constantly in the course of the years, changing names, and federating again. To list them all would be extremely tedious. The first, and largest, was the National Front, which in costume, terminology, and behavior faithfully copied the German example. The Communist party also, which owed strict allegiance to Moscow, unfolded a frenetic propaganda and attracted many.

A typical illustration of the almost lunatic character of these movements is found in the tragic fate of a young Swiss, Maurice Bavaud, who attempted to assassinate Hitler on November 9, 1938, was sentenced to death, and was executed in Berlin in 1941. The young man was a fervent Roman Catholic and a passionate anti-Communist, basically antidemocratic, yet was induced by his friends to kill Hitler, whom they found neither anti-Communist nor anti-Semitic enough.⁴

According to the leader of one of these groups, called the Eidgenössische Soziale Arbeiterpartei, the number of sympathizers for totalitarian systems of different shades was, in 1939, about forty thousand.⁵ In reality it was probably less. The noise, the demonstrations, their quarrels, and their own journals, however, projected the image of a powerful movement. Most writings of a later date reflect this exaggerated view of the influence of these minorities. Since the overwhelming majority, which was unflinchingly patriotic and democratic, did not by far make nearly such a fuss, most writers-serious historians as well as journalist-novelists, television producers as well as moviemakers of our day-have succumbed to the fascination of those arrogant movements.

These pro-Nazi organizations were not large, but they were dangerous; not because they appealed to any significant sector of the Swiss people, but because they were a hotbed in which German propaganda, espionage, and subversion could thrive. Subversion was clearly planned. Students were recruited in Germany to be sent to Switzerland with the task of winning sympathizers among their colleagues. The Germans living in Switzerland were forced by cunning, pressure, propaganda, and open threats to organize themselves along the pattern of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP). In Switzerland the party had set up a center which was headed by Wilhelm Gustloff, who behaved among his compatriots as the unchallenged totalitarian leader. On February 5, 1936, he was assassinated by a medical student of the University of Berne, a young man of Yugoslav nationality, David Frankfurter. He said that he sought revenge for the Jews martyred in Germany. In December of the same year Frankfurter was sentenced in the Swiss city of Chur to eighteen years in prison for murder.⁶

The federal government refused to give the party permission to appoint a successor to Gustloff. So it was that the German legation in Berne, under diplomatic cover and a little more discreetly, assumed the same function. To the Swiss police, army, and the public there was no doubt that the Germans had established a network of agents who, in case of a war, would commit acts of sabotage and would be supported by members of the pro-National Socialist groups, such as the National Front.

These organizations became, as we shall see, very active in the moments of greatest danger and discouragement after the defeat of France in 1940. Convinced that the “New Europe” of Hitler’s making was just around the corner, they finally amaigamated into one party called the Nationale Bewegung der Schweiz (NBS), the National Movement of Switzerland. The federal government, under the prevailing influence of the foreign minister and president for 1940, Marcel Pilet-Golaz, had condoned their almost treasonable activities far too long, out of fear of Germany.

On November 17, 1940, the general sent to the government a report of the intelligence service of the army describing the NBS as endangering the security of the state. In the letter of transmission Guisan added, “These activities inspire serious apprehensions if adequate measures are not taken against them before it is too late.”⁷ Two days later the Federal Council (government) gathered its courage, dissolved the National Movement and all possible successors, and prohibited its journal. On November 26 the government prohibited the Communist party, which, as then was revealed, was in close contact with the extremists of the right. A sigh of relief went through the whole country, and confidence in the government, which had been severely harmed by the many signs of weakness it had shown throughout the fateful years of 1939 and 1940, began to be restored.

Facing the Blitzkrieg

When World War II broke out in September 1939, the general had been elected, the army mobilized, the Swiss nation-in spite of the antidemocratic movements-was united in its will to remain neutral in the struggle and, if attacked, to fight for its independence and institutions. A national exhibition-a most colorful fair called the Landesausste...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Electing the General
• 2 Secret Agreements for Survival
• 3 The Hurricane Breaks Loose
• 4 Fortress Switzerland
• 5 The War Economy
• 6 A Twofold Blockade
• 7 Spies in the Fortress
• 8 A Country’s Privilege and Burden
• 9 Stronghold of Humanity
• 10 Negotiating Surrender in Italy
• 11 Deterrence Achieved
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index