Switzerland: Neutral or Nazi Ally? - WW2 Special

by Panzer
Switzerland is a small mountainous country with a German-speaking majority sitting in the heart
of Europe. But throughout World War Two it manages to stay neutral, somehow escaping
Hitler’s clutches despite most its neighbours falling to them. Here’s how the Swiss did it.
I’m Spartacus Olsson, and this is a WW2 in Real-Time special episode on Swiss neutrality.
Swiss neutrality is actually something laid down in international law. In the midst of
the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the European Powers decree in both the Treaty of Paris and
at the Congress of Vienna that Switzerland should remain “permanently neutral” to act
as a buffer zone in the heart of Europe between France and the Austrian Empire.
It’s a similar idea to the promise of Belgian neutrality some decades later at the Treaty of
London - only that time Belgium is supposed to be a buffer between France and Germany.
But we all know how Belgian neutrality works out in both 1914 and 1940, so how come the
Swiss manage to hold onto theirs? Well for starters, it has some pretty
impressive defensive capabilities. Switzerland is famous for its professional mandatory army.
Every male from the age of 20 to 48 has to be trained for a minimum of
three-months and store government-issued military equipment in their home.
When war breaks out in September 1939, the retirement age is pushed back to 60, training
is extended for four months, and 400,000 men, around 10% of the entire population,
are mobilised. About one-fifth of them are sent directly to positions along the frontier,
with the rest held in reserve to bolster defensive lines whenever the attack comes.
Thing is, after the fall of France in the summer of 1940, the Swiss are
literally surrounded by an openly expansionist power: Nazi Germany, who also incidentally believe
that the two-thirds of Swiss citizens who speak German should live in their Reich. Not only that,
but it’s now clear to the Swiss that their current defensive strategy is
hopeless against modern Blitzkrieg tactics, which can easily slice through the weak
points in the lines and be deep inside the country before anything can be done about it.
At first, some Swiss leaders opt for a policy of appeasement. The head of foreign affairs,
Federal Councillor Marcel Pilet-Golaz, delivers an infamous radio address on June 25
where he announces a partial demobilisation and warns his countrymen that they must be
prepared to play a part in the new Europe. People throughout Switzerland are alarmed at this speech,
especially as it sounds too similar to those coming out of newly established Vichy
France. People are left demoralised and confused, so to rally the nation, commander-in-chief of the
Swiss Army, General Henri Guisan, take his entire senior officer corps, some 500 men,
on a boat across Lake Lucerne to the meadow of Rütli, the fabled site where the Old Swiss
Confederacy was supposedly founded in the Middle Ages. There he calls for the
resistance against any and all invasion, and to never give in to defeatism. It ignites a
new spirit of patriotism among the gathered troops, and spreads throughout the country.
On that meadow, Guisan also lays out his defensive strategy, and this now kicks into gear.
It is an expanded version of the 19th-century era defensive plan of a National Redoubt,
known to the Swiss as Schweizer Reduit, or Réduit national, or Ridotto nazionale, or Reduit nazional