Between the Alps and a Hard Place (11 page)

Indeed, the foremost military question was whether the country as a whole
would
resist. Hence the army's most significant battle of the war was precisely against those whose commitment to resist was shaky, as well as against outright subversion.

The greatest threat to a besieged army is subversion of morale and policy by uncertain high-ranking officers and civilian authorities.
²⁶
This is the kind of treason that none dare call by its name because it so often prospers. Next to it, the subversive activities of foreign agents is small stuff. Not surprisingly, before the defeat of France foreign agents had little luck because Switzerland's leadership was resolute and its national unity was greater.
²⁶
But in 1940 the danger came from the weakness of domestic leadership. Switzerland's battle against subversion then became a
military
campaign for the country's soul.
²⁷

The Nazis set about subverting Switzerland as they had subverted Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and the rest. They organized a core of semi-professional party toughs who would intimidate ordinary people through threatening marches, street violence, and fiery rallies. At the highest political levels, Nazi leaders worked to convince the Establishment that it was futile to resist. In Switzerland the first part of the plan failed miserably. The second nearly succeeded as a result of Germany's preponderance in 1940–1942.

Switzerland's Nazi Party, which had been active since 1934, was under orders from Berlin to agitate for an
Anschluss
to unite the German Swiss with the Reich.

Several things went wrong. First, the Swiss authorities made it impossible for the Nazis to commit the acts of intimidation that had served them so well elsewhere. Second, and most important, very few German Swiss joined the organization; in fact, Nazism was less distasteful to the French-speaking cantons than to the German-speaking ones. Finally, on February 4, 1936, Wilhelm Gustloff, the leader of Switzerland's Nazis, was assassinated, and the Swiss government refused to allow any Swiss citizen to succeed him.
²⁸
A year later, the Swiss government officially made the German Embassy responsible for the party's actions. Under this scrutiny the party vanished into insignificance. Its members were tracked by the Swiss police, and by 1940 the party had dissolved.

During the mid-1930s the entire Swiss establishment, including the trade unions, recognized that Nazism discredited the very idea of a multiethnic state, of democracy and economic liberalism, as well as of centuries-old civil liberties—everything that Switzerland stood for. Nevertheless, there were narrow limits to what a liberal government could do to counter massive propaganda from a totalitarian neighbor. Plans for a Swiss
propaganda ministry came to nothing. But the government established a private foundation,
Pro Helvetia
, to drum up Swiss patriotism. It sponsored movies, speakers, and the successful Zurich National Exposition of 1939. Almost as an afterthought, the organization established a military branch, Army and Hearth. This was to mean nothing until the outbreak of war, and nearly everything thereafter. During the late 1930s, as country after country was falling under the Nazi spell, Switzerland enjoyed an outburst of patriotism. In March 1939 Swiss Economics Minister Hermann Obrecht pledged that, in contrast to other European appeasers, no one from the Swiss government would “go to Berchtesgaden” on pilgrimage to Hitler. His statement was widely applauded.
²⁹

So, until the fall of France, worries about fifth columns were vastly overblown. On May 14, 1940, when a German invasion seemed imminent, the Federal Council ordered the arrest of every politically active German, plus all prominent Swiss Nazis. It's a tribute to Swiss liberty that the order was countermanded when the invasion did not come.
³⁰
In short, in patriotic Switzerland traditional Nazi subversion failed as nowhere else.

Germany's military successes in 1940, however, undermined Swiss confidence. Germany's defeat of France, and its apparent defeat of Britain, seemed to validate every bit of the Nazi critique of European liberalism and to augur a collectivist future controlled by Germany (together with the Soviet Union). Nazi Germany's New European Order offered rebirth through peace, order, work, social security. “What's the point,” asked some sophisticated Swiss, “of being the only ones to resist the New Europe with utter futility and disregard for our safety—for the sake of what has failed?” Patriotic defiance, and the Alpine redoubt, seemed a thin answer.

To forbid Switzerland from saying out loud that Germany was its enemy, the Reich combined the threatening reality of its overwhelming force with the blandishment of a parent toward its mischievous child. The German Embassy and the German press were accusing Switzerland of violating its neutrality by allowing expressions of dismay at Germany's victories, and by insufficiently appreciating the virtues of the Nazi political system. Moreover the Swiss press was introducing into German discourse all sorts of mockery of Nazism. For example, it parodied the Nazi claim of crusade,
kreuzal,
into
hakenkreuzal
—twisted cross-ade. By so doing, the Germans maintained, Switzerland was contributing to the loss of German blood (
Blutschuld
). Germany threatened to reevaluate its respect of Swiss neutrality if Switzerland did not fix the problem. The Swiss Establishment's preference for complex, fuzzy ways of looking at a challenge whose face was too fearsome, and its inability publicly to identify the enemy who threatened the country, undermined cohesion in the armed forces and society.

By July 1940 the Swiss troops believed that, regardless of what their general was saying, neither the government nor even their own senior officers would give the order to fight. When they went home, they absorbed the civilian environment's tendency to accommodation. Above all, it was not clear that accommodation with Germany or even with Nazism was any longer wrong. Perhaps those who were opposing collaboration were mere extremists who were endangering the country. Maybe
they
were the real enemy. In a phenomenon all too familiar to Americans who lived through the Cold War, anti-totalitarianism became suspect. Consequently, to hold its own soldiers together, the army had to face basic political questions—and set the tone of discourse in the country at large.

On July 25, 1940, General Guisan gathered the army's 650 field grade officers to the spot where the Swiss Confederation had been founded in 1291—the Rütli meadow above Lake Lucerne. There, on sacred ground, speaking solemnly and switching occasionally to heavily accented German, he reiterated the army's duty to defend the country, explained the redoubt plan, and ordered the officers to convey to the troops their own determination and confidence. Although he did not mention the words “Germany” or “Nazi,” Guisan condemned faint hearts who would not stand against aggression. The Reich expressed outrage. After the Rütli speech, General Guisan toured the country, spreading the same message. One observer described the general's speeches as subtly “recalling to divine law those who had forgotten the prayers of their youth.”
³¹
For General Guisan Swiss patriotism was next to godliness, and the army was its embodiment.
³²

The army, however, was anything but united. Nor is it fair to characterize the Federal Council as unpatriotic. Yes, it took a softer line than Guisan. But none of its members had Nazi sympathies. Still, public opinion quickly contrasted the Rütli speech, and Guisan's endless tours of the country plus the programs of Army and Hearth, with President Pilet Golaz's uninspiring speech of June 26. The general was on his way to becoming the national hero, credited with everything that went well, while Pilet Golaz and the Federal Council were doomed to be cast as the goats.

Still, the popular perception has an element of truth. Although only a handful of marginalized Swiss were as ready to celebrate their country's defeat as many mainstream Americans ended up being willing to celebrate America's failure to stop Communism in Vietnam, nevertheless army leadership is
the reason why many Swiss refused to go along with the Nazi enterprise.

Three of the army's most prominent officers—Hans Hausamann, Oscar Frey, and Max Weibel, friends of the general to a man—had been so shocked by Swiss President Pilet Golaz's June 26 radio address that they formed a secret cell pledged to resist Nazism to the death, regardless of any orders to the contrary. General Guisan discovered the amateurish plot, shook the ringleaders' hands, and sentenced them to punishments that amounted to brief vacations. He did not hesitate to use these officers as the intellectual core of Army and Hearth's programs.

Those programs succeeded in giving audiences what they could not get anywhere else—namely, large amounts of factual information. Army and Hearth provided troop commanders with
Wehrbriefe
, sets of talking points on the evolution of the war and of Swiss defense preparations, explanations of Germany's role in the Swiss economy, discussions of refugee policy, the rationing system—in short, the sort of things that would have come through a free press. In addition, the organization sent professional speakers around to the troops and trained promising troops to be speakers. These speakers were provided with talking points on basic subjects, usually laid out in Thomistic format: propositions (generally those of the accommodationists) followed by objections to the propositions and then discussion. For example, Speech Plan #22, titled “The Jewish Question,” set out the basic theses of anti-Semitism and then refuted each one with facts, statistical analyses, and ethical argument.
³³
Soldiers were encouraged to tell the folks back home what they had learned.

In the days following France's disaster, many officers became convinced that a direct effort was needed to rescue civilian public
opinion. At the end of July the bulletin of Army and Hearth said, “At this time, the officer must become the educator of our people.” On three occasions during the summer Guisan asked the Federal Council to lead public opinion to support the army's mission. By the fall the army had taken matters into its own hands. On October 21 Guisan established a civilian section of Army and Hearth, which in the end conducted 328 courses and delivered some 4,000 lectures. The Federal Council tried to starve it for funds, but no matter. The section got its materials, ably written (and
gratis
), from a group called
Aktion Nationaler Widerstand
(National Resistance Movement), which included the general's friends in the army as well as backbench members of parliament. It, in turn, got its authority from the general.

The Federal Council was upset. The Germans objected, especially to Swiss Colonel Oscar Frey's anti-Nazi speeches, given in uniform, to civilian audiences on the border. The Federal Council forced Frey to desist, even as it allowed Nazi Gauleiter (party official) Fritz Sauckel to address the German community in Basel. But recall, this was 1941; Germany seemed sure to win, and it was easy to view people like Colonel Frey as loose cannons who would bring nothing but harm on their country. Yet in October 1942, after a speech by Gauleiter Bohle, chief of all Nazis abroad, to Germans in Switzerland at the Zurich
Hallenstadion
, the Swiss government banned all large gatherings by foreigners. By then, the balance of power was shifting and the Reich's triumph no longer looked so sure.

The Swiss Federal Council also had to deal with objections to the army's role from within the army itself. Colonel Gustav Däniker was prestigious, very well connected, and an admirer of the
Wehrmacht
who thought his general was incompetent and irresponsible. Returned from Berlin in March 1941, Däniker officially requested in May that the council take action against
the press for having defamed Germany, as well as against General Guisan for having jeopardized Swiss-German relations. The council took no action. But the very fact that the council had entertained his request showed that a substantial number of high-ranking army officers thought Army and Hearth was doing harm. (Däniker cited as the chief example of the press's irresponsibility reports that the Reich was preparing to attack the Soviet Union. When the invasion occurred three months later, Däniker was discredited and the general was able to relieve him of his command.)

At any rate, to the council the general was no hero. In December 1940 the general's best friend on the council, Rudolf Minger, was replaced by Karl Kobelt, who disagreed with Guisan's approach. In addition, the retirement and death of the council's other senior member, Hermann Obrecht, left the national executive bereft of anti-Nazi hard-liners, leaving the general even more isolated politically. But the public supported Guisan. When the Federal Council banned all pro-Axis organizations on November 19, 1940, it was under mounting public pressure orchestrated by Guisan. In response to violent German protests, on November 26 the council also banned all Communist organizations. The general could not have been happier. In 1942 and 1943 pro-Nazi fronts tried to reorganize under different names. The council was even more harsh, putting their leaders in jail.

In the end, the value of all of Switzerland's military measures, from the retooling of its infantry to the redeployment of its aviation, to its fight against subversion, was determined by events in places like Stalingrad, Kursk, Midway, and El Alamein. Had these battles gone the other way, General Guisan's future might not have been so bright.

Politics

F
OR DEMOCRACIES ABOVE ALL, war is the ultimate election.
¹
The prospect of being killed bearing arms for a particular polity, or just for standing by it, forces people to decide just how much they like it, what price they are willing to pay to continue living under it. In World War II Swiss democracy confronted Nazi Germany, a power that denied with seemingly irresistible, deadly force everything that Switzerland stood for. Hence the Swiss had to decide in a host of practical ways just how much they valued independence and their way of life.