Between the Alps and a Hard Place (12 page)

Even more than the United States of America, Switzerland is renowned for democracy. At the national level no less than in small villages, the Swiss decide public business by referendum. Nowhere else do constitutional law and custom put so short a leash on officials. And yet, as World War II loomed and raged, Swiss officials often acted with little regard for democracy or public opinion. So, as the war went on, the Swiss government largely lost the confidence of the people. The outsized popularity of General Guisan was the reverse side of the widespread loss of faith in government.

Switzerland doesn't fit the mold of the traditional nation-state. The two-thirds of the Swiss people who live in the northern end of the country, the Rhine and Aare valleys, speak Germanic dialects. Their literary heroes and villains, their philosophical categories, come from the broad traditions of Vienna, Dresden, Cologne, Kiel, Berlin, and Bonn. The roughly one-fourth who live in the upper Rhône valley and west of the Sarine River speak French and look at life through a lens focused on Paris. The one in twelve Swiss who live in the Ticino valley and the Grisons canton speak Italian and partake of the culture of Dante and Manzoni. The rural Grisons on the Italian and Austrian borders is also home to the Romansch minority, who are closest to the Helvetians of the Roman Empire. Just as important, each city and valley has its own dialect and its own traditions of independence. Although all schools teach at least two Swiss languages, most Swiss live physically, intellectually, and emotionally in their own linguistic communities, knowing little of the others' textbooks, entertainers, newspapers, radio, and TV personalities. In reality, Switzerland is composed of four civilizations, twenty-six semi-sovereign cantons—six of which count as half cantons but are in almost all respects equal to the others—and about three thousand self-governing localities.

Forging any sort of unity out of such diversity would be impossible except for the very widespread sense that the rest of Europe has been going to the dogs for centuries, and that only the wise, moderate, old-fashioned Helvetian inhabitants of Europe's headwaters have a grip on an ancient, decent way of life. The Swiss take great pride in their differences from the rest of Europe.

First among these is, precisely, diversity. But note, the Swiss tolerate their country's differences so well because each can retreat into a small community in which there are few if any variances. People trust one another on the basis of their ability to speak dialects or with accents peculiar to their tiny localities.

The second Swiss distinction from Europe is freedom, secured by an armed people. The third is economic liberalism. Even though no stranger to Europe's collectivist trends, Switzerland is always several degrees more liberal than its neighbors.

Thus, though a
Valaisan
takes his intellectual bearings from Paris, he is typically repelled by the thought of being submerged in a large state exclusively with other French speakers and ruled by economically
dirigiste
bureaucrats. For him, living with a majority of
SchwyzerDeutsch
is emphatically not like living under Germans. The Germanic population is even more committed to Swiss independence—especially from Germany. After all, the desire to get away from powerful German princes was the original
raison d'être
of the Swiss Confederation. But also, whereas French Swiss are confident of cultural equality with other Frenchmen, if not with Parisians, the Germanic Swiss know that they will always be seen as highland bumpkins by the
Hochdeutsch
. Only in Switzerland can the Germanic Swiss be first-class citizens. As for the Italian speakers, they may be the most fervent patriots of all, knowing full well how much worse life for them would be if they were dominated by the corrupt culture of the lower peninsula. The Romansch are uniquely Swiss. Ultimately, every Swiss prizes the opportunity to stay aloof from the quarrels of large nations. All in all, this engenders a powerful nationalism sometimes rendered insufferable by pretensions of moral superiority.

Because of its diversity, freedom, liberalism, and direct democracy, Switzerland abhors central power—especially executive power. It is not unusual for the people (to whom scholars and journalists commonly refer as “the sovereign”) to reject proposals made by vast parliamentary majorities, or to approve motions disapproved by the political establishment. A 1991 referendum rejected Switzerland's moving to join the European Union, ardently advocated by the whole political establishment. As for the executive, each department of government functions under its own chief, responsible to the parliament. At the outbreak of World War II there were (and there remain today) seven departments: Political (foreign affairs), Military, Interior, Justice and Police, Postal and Railroads, Public Economy, and Finances and Customs. Together, the chiefs of the departments constitute a Federal Council that collectively exercises executive power. The presidency rotates among the council's members. In Switzerland the Federal Council acts by mutual deference and consensus, if not unanimity. Consensus on the need for consensus produces strong (some say stifling) pressures for moderation.

As in other democracies, political parties bridge the separation of powers. In the Swiss case (as in the case of the present European Parliament of Strasbourg) they also bridge the different nationalities. Through the first two decades of the twentieth century, German, French, and Italian Swiss elected more “radicals”—traditional European liberals—than any other party. The other major parties were the Farmers, Workers, and Citizens—an agrarian party—and the Catholic Conservatives, a kind of Christian Democratic Party. By the 1930s the Socialist Party was gathering more votes than any of them—some 28 percent—but still the other three parties excluded it from the Federal Council. The three parties shared the seats on the Federal
Council, appointed major bureaucrats, and developed ever closer relations with the country's economic powers. For good or ill, they were the country's Establishment, and had begun to build a kind of oligarchy.

The Swiss parliament formally elects the Federal Council every four years. In practice, the leaders of the major parties, who are often members of the council, are the leading elements in the “political chemistry” that proposes candidates to the parliament to fill any vacancy among council members. When the parties propose and parliament elects a new federal councilor, they try to maintain a roughly proportional representation of the major cantons, of the three nationalities, as well as of the major parties. So important is maintaining these balances that the members of the council often shift portfolios amongst themselves to accommodate the proper new member in a proper role. In 1940, for instance, when longtime Foreign Minister Giuseppe Motta died, Enrico Celio was nominated to replenish the council's ranks—lest the Italian region lose its sole representative on the council. But since the wartime Foreign Ministry required experience that could have come only through service on the council, the position went to the then Postal and Railroads minister, Marcel Pilet Golaz. All the regions and government parties agreed.

The Swiss government gained power in the years leading up to the war because of the dangers of the world crisis and the apparent success of Swiss statesmanship. In 1939 the Federal Council was led by Motta, an unassuming man who earned the respect of the League of Nations, built what seemed a solid relationship with Mussolini, and kept Hitler at bay. Then there was Hermann Obrecht, who left a profitable banking career to craft his country's economic survival in the coming war. And
there was Rudolf Minger, the Bernese farmer whose rebuilding of the army reminded people of Cincinnatus. These humble patriots' habits and manners inspired trust unmixed with fear. Why not put the country's fate in their hands?

On August 30, 1939, the same joint session of parliament that elected General Guisan also voted “full powers” to the Federal Council for the duration of the war. In so doing, the parliament appointed a committee fully representative of itself (including Socialists) to oversee the council's exercise of “full powers.” But the people's representatives soon learned that the committee members so enjoyed being in on the council's secrets and powers that they would not even tell their parliamentary colleagues—now reduced to the role of uninformed kibitzers—what was going on. With good reason, members of parliament and citizens alike quickly became distrustful.

Specifically, while the Swiss people had trusted the veteran Giuseppe Motta to weave through the quarrels of Europe, they did not have the same trust in the new foreign minister (and president for 1940), Marcel Pilet Golaz. In sum, a year into the war the Swiss people found that the death or resignation of Motta, Obrecht, and Minger had transformed the Federal Council to which they had given “full powers” for the duration of the war into a playground for the vain (Pilet Golaz) and the weak (Justice and Police Minister Eduard von Steiger). One of the perennial lessons of politics is that whereas extraordinary leaders may be safely entrusted with unusual responsibilities, their ordinary successors may not. It is easier, moreover, for a people to give up its local and democratic liberties than to take them back.

The great lesson of the Swiss experience, then, is that the voters' ability to choose between strongly argued alternatives is even more important in emergencies than in ordinary times.

The political system's strong inclination to consensus stopped where the Socialist Party was concerned. In 1918 the Socialists, led by their Leninist wing, led their growing constituency into violent strikes. As Hitler's rise to power was threatening the Swiss, the Socialist Party was demanding the disestablishment of the Swiss army. To the cozy cohabitation of three linguistic communities the Socialists preferred proletarian internationalism. To armed independence they preferred pacifism. To economic laissez-faire they preferred economic redistribution. In short, to the Establishment they represented the negation of all things Swiss.

In the mid-1930s, however, the party underwent major changes. In 1935, largely out of fear of the Nazis, the party accepted the principle that the workers should participate in national defense. In 1937 it led a collective bargaining agreement between labor, capital, and the government that was hailed as “Peace in the Workplace.”

Nevertheless, mild and decent as Socialist leader Max Oprecht might have been, and despite all he had done to purge the party of extremists, at the outbreak of the war the other parties still feared inviting the Socialists into the Federal Council. After all, the Socialist Party still contained a Communist wing, led by Leon Nicole. Since Hitler was allied with Stalin, these Swiss Communists were agitating against the Swiss army and making common cause with the pro-Nazi fronts. After the Reich's invasion of Russia, however, the Socialists became the fiercest advocates of resistance to Nazi Germany and expelled their Communist members, whose activities the Federal Council then banned. By then, of course, resistance itself had become very much
the
issue. Hence by
excluding the Socialists the traditional parties weakened the country's resolve. Also, since the Socialists were the country's largest party, their exclusion from what was essentially a war cabinet detracted from Swiss democracy-by-consensus. Then again, much of what the Federal Council did during the war had that effect.

In 1943 the Federal Council finally allowed the Socialists to join the government, after the party made big gains in that year's election. The belated entry of the country's largest party into the government meant a return to Switzerland's tradition of democracy, and more. Socialists in the Federal Council were able to correct the Establishment's disastrous policies on freedom of the press and loosen its restrictions on refugees. They also, however, worsened its economic policy. Still, important public choices are better made democratically than by councils of experts, if for no other reason than that elections can remove leaders of bad policy.

Switzerland's wartime political troubles arose in part from the 1930s consensus on three propositions, largely shared by other Europeans as well as Americans. The first premise was that unemployment poses a mortal and perpetual threat to the good life because there will always be a surplus of workers and a shortage of jobs. Hence the state must take any and all measures to promote and safeguard jobs, including subsidies, currency manipulations, and trade restrictions and preferences. The objective of international economics, then, must be neomercantilism—“beggar thy neighbor.” The second proposition held that the people's scarce job opportunities are threatened most directly by immigrant labor. So the state must do what is necessary
to drive out foreigners who are stealing jobs and to keep others from coming in. The third proposition was “no more war.” The government must do whatever necessary to keep the country out of others' quarrels. For a small country in the heart of Europe in the 1930s, this meant accepting restrictions on freedom and democracy so as not to displease Nazi Germany. The three propositions shared one underlying premise: The State must use all its powers, even arbitrarily, to achieve these goals.

In 1935 the perceived need to steer the economy through the Depression first led the country to accept arbitrary exercise of “emergency” power by elites and bureaucrats. Their liberal democratic virginity gone, the Swiss would then grant their Federal Council even greater powers to deal with the challenges of Nazism and war.

Consider the Federal Council's 1935 request for two years of “full powers” for economic purposes: