Found new info here from a book review:
Target
Switzerland
Review by: Dave Kopel
Book review of "Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World
War II" by Dr. Stephen P. Halbrook, Published by Sarpedon
Publishers, 25.00 cloth 319 pages. Buy this book from
Amazon.com
If all you know is what you read in the papers, then you must think
that Switzerland is one of the most despicable countries in the
world. Switzerland, rather than joining the Allied cause, stayed
neutral World War II. After the war, Swiss banks helped themselves
to the deposits of holocaust victims, rather than giving the
deposits to the victims heirs. Case closed?
Not at all, historian Stephen Halbrook shows in his new book Target
Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality In World War II. Wrongful as
was the bankers post-war behavior, the behavior of the Swiss
people during the war was morally exemplarysuperior, indeed to the
conduct of most of the rest of Europe. As Winston Churchill
recalled, "of all the neutrals Switzerland has the greatest right
distinction... She has been a Democratic State, standing for
freedom in self-defense among her mountains, and in thought, in
spite of race, largely on our side."
Except for Britain, France, and Canada, virtually all of the Allied
nations during World War II joined the war only because the Axis
declared war on them, Halbrook reminds us. Even after Pearl Harbor,
the United States remained neutral in the European war, until
Hitler declared war on United States a few days later.
Nazi maps showed that the Third Reich would eventually include
Switzerland, just as it would include all portions of Europe with
German-speaking people. While the majority of Switzerlands
population is German-speaking (the rest being French, Italian, or
Romansh) the nation was virtually unanimous in hoping and praying
for the defeat of Germany. Infuriated by the lack of ethnic
solidarity, and by the strongly anti-Nazi stance of Switzerlands
free press, Hitler predicted that Switzerland would be liquidated
and that he would be known as the butcher of the Swiss.
As Halbrook details, in every stage of the war, the Axis had
powerful military reasons to invade Switzerland. Before the fall of
France, the non-alpine part of Switzerland offered at inviting path
to sweep into France and avoid the Maginot Line. After France fell
and Italy entered the war, Switzerland offered the only convenient
transport of military men and supplies between Italy and Germany.
After the Allied landing in Italy, Germany's need to swiftly deploy
troops into Italy became even more urgent. As the war came to
conclusion in 1944-45, the Nazi leadership laid plans to make a
stand in the Alps, but Switzerland stood right in the middle.
By the summer of 1940, there was only one country on Germany's
borders whose free press and rights of assembly allowed the Third
Reich to be publicly and lawfully denounced as the evil empire that
he was. In every country on Germany's borders--except
Switzerland--Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and other targets of
Hitlers hate were sent to extermination camps. But there was no
Holocaust on Swiss soil. Switzerland protected her own Jews, and
sheltered many more refugees of all religious backgrounds. Had
America sheltered refugees at the same per capita rate as
Switzerland, the United States would have taken in over three
million refugees. Instead America accepted hardly any.
In all the countries that Hitler conquered, the economy was
plundered for use in the Nazi war machine. As a neutral,
Switzerland did trade with Germany and Italy, and with the Allies.
(For the Allied trade, the Swiss smuggled out precision ball
bearings and other military equipment disguised in consumer
products like watches.) But unlike in the countries which Hitler
conquered, the only products that Hitler could get from Switzerland
were what he could buy at full price.
Target Switzerland includes the maps of the evolving Germans
invasion plans for "Case Switzerland." Yet although the Germans
several times massed troops on the Swiss border for an invasion,
the invasion never went forward. With so many reasons to invade
Switzerland, why did the Nazis desist?
The Nazis could have eventually have conquered Switzerland, but at
a fearful price. The Wehrmacht expected 200,000 German casualties;
it would have taken a very long time to remove the Swiss military
from the Alpine Reduit to which they planned to make a stand. And
by the time the Swiss were defeated, every bridge and train track
and everything else of value to the conquerors would have been
destroyed.
The reason that Switzerland was too difficult to invadein contrast
to all the other nations which Hitler conquered in a matter of
weekswas the Swiss militia system. Unlike all the other nations of
Europe, which relied on a standing army, Switzerland was (and still
is) defended by a universal militia. Every man was trained in war,
had his rifle at home, was encouraged to practice frequently, and
could be mobilized almost instantly. The Swiss militiaman was under
orders to fight to the last bullet, and after that, with his
bayonet, and after that, with his bare hands. Rather than having to
defeat an army, Hitler would have had to defeat a whole
people.
Conversely, the Swiss citizen militia, with its extensive network
of fortifications, had no offensive capability. The Swiss militia
was not going to sweep into Berlin; modern Swiss-bashers who
condemn the nation for not declaring war fail to understand that by
keeping the Axis out of Switzerland, the Swiss were already doing
everything they could for the Allied cause.
From the Anschluss of Austria to the Fall of France, Hitler
swallowed nation after nation where cowardly ruling elites
surrendered the country to the Naziseither before the shooting
began, or a few weeks afterward. But such a surrender would have
been impossible in Switzerland, explains Halbrook. The Swiss
governmental system was decentralized, with the separate 26
cantons, not the federal government, having the authority. The
federal government did notify the Swiss people that in case of a
German invasion, any claim that there had been a Swiss surrender
should be disregarded as Nazi propaganda. And because the military
power was in the hands of every Swiss man, the federal government
would have been unable to surrender had it ever wanted to. Nothing
could stop the Swiss militiamen from fighting to the very
end.
Americas Founders admired Switzerland as a Sister Republic
amidst the despotisms of Europe. The American Founderslike the
Swissunderstood the moral implications of a universal militia
system: a people who are trained to self-reliance and
responsibility will defend their freedom to the utmost. But a
people who rely on a professional standing army may not have the
nerve to resist tyranny.
When, as William Shirer wrote from Berlin, the lamps of freedom
were going out all over Europe, they burned brighter than ever in
Switzerland, as the Swiss people maintained their democracy, their
right to assemble, and their freedom of religion. And the Swiss
people saved thousands and thousands of refugees from the gas
chambers. A well-regulated militia really was necessary to the
security of a free state.
Winston Churchill and Adolph Hitler both understood how much
Switzerland damaged the Axis causeon both a military and a moral
plane. Stephen Halbrooks excellent bookthe first in English to
tell Switzerlands history during the waris the story of how a
small, isolated nation, faced with mighty enemies and gigantic
dangers, can demonstrate true greatness.
But I guess the real reason why Germany refrained from invading
Switzerland is this:
The réduit national (Fortress
Switzerland) took shape: at almost any point after 1940, Hitler
could have crossed the frontier and taken the entire populated
lowlands Basel, Zürich, Bern, Geneva and the countryside
without a fight, and reduced independent Switzerland to a
scattering of snowbound bunkers in the high Alps. But such an
invasion would have impoverished the Reich and, in reality,
Switzerland was safe: the military kudos to be gained by Hitlers
having a subdued, occupied Switzerland subject to Allied bombing
was vastly outweighed by the material benefit of his nurturing a
nominally neutral, independent Switzerland that remained
enthusiastically open for business.