I am reading a very interesting book at the moment about Switzerland during the Second World War. This book also touches upon the Nazi plan to attack Switzerland and the determination of the Swiss to resist.

Companions of the Oath

It is July 25, 1940. General Henri Guisan, Commander of the Swiss Army, has summoned 600 of his highest officers to a jagged mountainside in central Switzerland near Lake Lucerne overshadowed by Alpine peaks -- the Rütli Meadow.

During the preceding weeks, France, the Netherlands and Belgium have fallen to the forces of Nazi Germany, and the British Army has evacuated the continent, leaving its heavy equipment behind. Denmark and Norway have succumbed to German arms a few months before, Poland the preceding fall. Austria and Czechoslovakia were swallowed up by the Third Reich through bloodless coups, wrought by intimidation, during the previous two years. Fascist Italy threatens Switzerland's southern border.

Surrounded by totalitarian aggressors and occupied lands, the Swiss stand alone.

General Guisan faces his officers, who are arrayed in a semicircle before him. Urging them to prepare for total resistance to aggression that could come from any direction, he says:
I decided to reunite you in this historic place, the symbolic ground of our independence, to explain the urgency of the situation, and to speak to you as a soldier to soldiers. We are at a turning point of our history. The survival of Switzerland is at stake.The General had chosen his site well to deliver this call to resistance. For history and tradition tell that in this spot, the Rütli Meadow, the Swiss Confederation was formed on August 1, 1291. On that date, leaders of three Alpine cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, who had successfully defended their democratically governed communities from foreign invasion, came together to form an alliance for mutual defense. They called themselves the Eidgenossen -- Companions of the Oath -- and vowed to help each other in fighting any enemy who threatened their independence.

The history of Switzerland's armed neutrality in the modern era, including the Swiss' valiant defense of their homeland in World War II, cannot be divorced from the record of her men-at-arm since that first meeting at the Rütli Meadow more than seven hundred years ago. For centuries, Swiss fighting men earned a reputation as the most ferocious in Europe, and their dominance of the battlefield, combined with their refusal to live under the rule of foreign kings, became a unique example in Europe of the successful defense of a nation's freedom."

Stephen P. Halbrook, Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II (Rockville Centre: Sharpedon, 1998), pp.1-2

I don't have much to say about the article, but as far as Switzerland goes: I don't don't like. Maybe because it revolves (too much) around banking and that almost every dictator, war criminal etc. in existance has lived in exile there...

I've always admired the Swiss military system.

I've always admired the Swiss military system.
Best military system in the world, noone messes with them. If they'd have just a few ICBM's as deterrent, they'd be safe forever.

Best military system in the world, noone messes with them. If they'd have just a few ICBM's as deterrent, they'd be safe forever.
Indeed....it certainly defeats the pathetic argument "professional"(ie all volunteer armies) are superior to militia/conscript armies, when many of the "professional" armies in Europe and North America use Swiss weaponry and Swiss expertise is sought after throughout the world's militaries and private security companies. I remember having a debate with Sulla about this some time back.

"Our primary focus, however, is on Switzerland's political and military efforts to defend her independence during the period 1933-45. Switzerland was immediately threatened when Hitler came to power in 1933. The threat did not abate until the final defeat of the German Wehrmacht in 1945. This is the first publication in English to give a year-by-year account of Switzerland's preparations to resist a direct Nazi attack and to combat fifth column elements. This is also the story of the Nazi abhorrence of Swiss democracy and the reciprocal hatred -- by most Swiss -- of Nazism."

Ibid., p.xi

The Swiss were rather close with the Germans Fade, I can see how they don't like being reminded of that, but they collaborated to a large extent. They sent medical teams to the eastern front for example which were only there to treat Germans, not Russians.

"Much has been made in recent years of what are described as Swiss accomodations to Germany during World War II, particularly in banking practices. These accomodations -- a direct, if regrettable, consequence of encirclement -- merit serious and detailed treatment. The media focus on international banking transactions, however, has resulted in a distortion of the historical record that misrepresents the true Swiss experience during the war."

Ibid., p.x

This thread brought back thoughts of a very vivid Margolis article:

SWITZERLAND?S LONG-HIDDEN SECRET

Champex, Switzerland - The simulated rock camouflage screens masking the embrasures of the mountain fort?s 105mm guns were lowered, allowing me to look down to the town of Orsi貥s, 350 meters below us, and onto the narrow road leading to the strategic Grand Saint Bernard pass.

Switzerland is only now beginning to reveal its deepest military secret: the hundreds of large forts and smaller defensive works built from 1940-1960. Upgraded, upgunned and made proof against nuclear contamination after World War II, the near invisible Swiss forts, dug into the sheer walls of its mountains, covered with lethal interlocking fire all passages through the nation?s high Alpine region.

From heavily defended Orsi貥s to Montreaux, at the eastern end of beautiful Lake of Geneva ? a mere 50 kms - there are at least 14 major forts, and hundreds of smaller bunkers for mortars and machine guns. At the center of this valley of death lies the mighty fort of Dailly, along the defile of St. Maurice, the Gibraltar of the Alps, an entire mountain turned into Europe?s most massive fortress.

I mention these forts again because a pack of American lawyers and professional victims groups seeking to extort money from Switzerland are accusing the Swiss of collaborating with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during WWII. These claims are lies. After the fall of France in 1940, Hitler and Mussolini were preparing to invade Switzerland after it refused to join the Axis. Hitler sneered he would quickly crush ‘these insolent herdsmen and cheesmakers.?

Switzerland, then a nation of only 5 million, mobilized 800,000 men. Swiss citizen soldiers were ordered to hold the mountain forts and passes, and wage guerilla war. ‘Leave your wives and children behind. Fight to your last bullet; then fight to the death with your bayonet? came the chilling command. This little nation, since 1291 Europe?s oldest democracy and freest nation, would not be conquered. Hitler and Mussolini wisely backed off.

After WWII, the Swiss briefly feared invasion by the US and Britain. Then, from 1960-1990, Switzerland became the target of potential Soviet invasion. The Red Army, in a mirror image of Germany?s WWI Schlieffen Plan, devised a massive strategic outflanking movement of NATO armies in Germany: an attack from Czechoslovakia, west through neutral Austria, then into Switzerland. Soviet tanks armies would race across Switzerland?s flat northern plain on a Zurich-Neuchatel-Geneva axis, drive into France?s Rhone valley north of Lyon, then come up behind NATO forces, cutting them off.

The Swiss reacted to the Soviet threat by keeping 600,000 men under arms, upgrading their forts, and came close, in the early 1960?s, to building nuclear weapons.

Now that the Soviet threat is gone, Swiss are slowly reducing their defenses and plan to cut their citizen army to a paltry 190,000. But today, as in the past, each Swiss male is liable for military service and keeps his automatic weapon and ammunition at home. As Machiavelli rightly observed, ‘the Swiss are most heavily armed, and most free.?

The Cold War may be over, but Switzerland today still finds itself under foreign threat. The US and EU are heavily pressuring Switzerland to lift its vaunted banking secrecy and reveal names of account holders. Recently, Switzerland reluctantly agreed, under threat of severe economic reprisals, to withhold taxes from accounts of EU depositors in its banks, and remit them, without naming names, to the appropriate governments.

The Swiss, who are intensely passionate about their liberties and independence, are also under other pressures from the European Community, which now surrounds it. The EU is trying to get the Swiss to adopt its semi-socialistic labor laws, human rights legislation, commercial codes and mind-numbing regulations on every product from chemicals to cheese.

If the Swiss refuse to comply with Big EU Brother, they risk being shut out of the EU market around them. The Swiss are finding themselves in much the same position as Canada does with its huge, often testy American neighbor.

Like the rest of western Europe, Switzerland?s population is aging, and foreign workers must be imported. Today, 25% of the total population is foreign born, and growing. Many Swiss, particularly in rural areas, feel their nation is being sold off, its cherished values of hard work, thrift, and honesty lost, and its pristine, crime-free society undermined by waves of newcomers from poor nations.

But younger urban Swiss want to join the EU and move freely in its vast economic area. Key Swiss industries, notably the beleaguered national airline, urgently need European partners and access to the EU. But once Switzerland?s doors are opened to unhindered EU investment, this world?s best-run country risks becoming just another homogenized, bureaucratic, Euro-bland society.

The choice is stark: give up independence for economic gain or suffer the consequences. As one who lived many years in Switzerland, and holds it very dear, my opinion: wealthy Swiss have enough material goods. But they can never have enough freedom. Swiss mountaineers fought ferociously for centuries to guard their political and economic freedoms. Their heirs should do no less. If the Swiss could face down Hitler and Mussolini, they can certainly hold the EU at arm?s length.