Between the Alps and a Hard Place (16 page)

Eight days later, when President Pilet Golaz spoke to the nation after France's surrender, his speech was as sad as de Rougemont's article. But speaking on behalf of the Federal Council (to which he had not submitted the text), Pilet Golaz said he was obliged not just to talk, but also “to provide, to decide, to act.” In his cleverness, he chose to spell out only one policy and to leave the rest as fuzzy as possible. That policy was to “surmount every obstacle” in order to “assure to all—and it is a primordial duty—the bread that nourishes the body and
the work that comforts the soul.” To this end he told the Swiss people to forget political argumentation, to obey the Federal Council even when they did not like it; he warned that the council would not be able to explain what it was doing. The rest of the speech was a series of regrets for a world that had been swept away, and commiseration with the Swiss people for a future life that would be worse in every way. The people would have to work harder for less, give up large hopes to ensure the minimum, forget humanitarianism, think only about fulfilling their immediate duties, and not gripe. It was a lot like President Jimmy Carter's disastrous 1979 speech to the American people in which he told Americans to accept an age of more limited horizons, to look wistfully on past grandeur, to learn to like government power, and to blame themselves for any feelings of “malaise.”

Insofar as the speech was an exercise in interest-group politics, it was a rousing success. The Socialist press hailed its commitment to full employment no matter what, and industrialists expressed satisfaction. The Germans liked it. But the speech energized no one, gave no confidence in the future, and opened the door to suspicions that the Federal Council might be selling out to the Germans. Then, shortly thereafter, when news spread that Pilet Golaz had granted an audience to three representatives of the pro-Nazi National Front, those suspicions came to dominate Swiss politics and to ruin his career.

But Pilet Golaz did not promise the National Front anything. He did not even issue a polite joint communiqué. Rather, the National Front issued its own statement, which tacitly suggested that the president had negotiated with the Front rather than just listened to its demands. For the most part, these demands did not sound so different from government policy. In foreign
affairs, Switzerland should show a “loyal friendship” with the victorious powers. Domestically, economic policy should aim at “bread and work for all,” doing away with political parties and establishing a “responsible” executive capable of tough decisions. As regards religion, the Frontists made no mention of the Jews and insisted only that religion be pushed out of politics. In sum, the content was not shocking.
¹⁵
Nor, from an objective standpoint, was anything wrong with the president's meeting with law-abiding citizens to discuss their ideas. Moreover, for Pilet Golaz, meeting with the Frontists behind closed doors was a way of giving the Germans cheap satisfaction. There is no evidence that he planned to give them, or the Germans, anything. And in fact he did not give them anything. Within three months he had put the Front out of business and many of its operatives in jail.

Swiss public opinion nevertheless was shocked by the meeting, as it had been by Pilet Golaz's returning the remains of German aircraft shot down during the battle of France to Germany and issuing a thinly veiled apology. Public opinion labeled Pilet Golaz an accommodationist. He was too proud to defend himself, and although the Federal Council held on to him for four more years, his image was fixed for the worse in the summer of 1940. He immediately became a liability to his colleagues in domestic politics. As time showed that Pilet Golaz's judgment about the war had erred on the side of pessimism, he became a symbol of his country's subservience to the Germans. His replacement, Max Petitpierre, was welcome both to the Swiss and to the Allies, having been chief of the watchmakers' Chamber of Commerce, and hence the man in charge of supplying the exports most prized by the Allies.

Yet Pilet Golaz's and the council's technocratic policies were defensible. First among them was a plan to lessen the country's dependence on Germany for food. During the nineteenth century Swiss agriculture had followed its natural comparative advantage and concentrated on the export of cheese, other milk products such as chocolate, and then tinned meat. Switzerland imported most of its grain, oils, and fibers. In 1940, with normal international trade cut off, Switzerland would have eaten only at the Reich's pleasure had not the council adopted the radical plan of agronomist Friedrich Traugott Wahlen—to plant every plantable square meter in the country, including soccer fields, public gardens, and private yards. This meant reducing the nation's cattle by about a third, and milk production even more. It also meant drafting men, women, and children from the cities for forced labor on the land, as well as for felling trees and making charcoal. In return, the production of grains doubled, potatoes nearly tripled, and oilseeds were up by a factor of fifty. Switzerland even exported some food. The Swiss did suffer rationing, although the minimum ration never went below 2,400 calories, most qualified for more, the rural population was practically exempt, and many if not most people augmented their rations with food they grew or purchased privately in the countryside. So, the Federal Council's authoritarianism produced better nutrition than anywhere in continental Europe or Britain.

As for industrial workers, they certainly did not lack jobs throughout the war. But as Pilet Golaz had intimated in his speech, life turned out worse. Prices rose quickly, by 60 percent, while wages rose slowly, by only half that amount. But it was not the Federal Council's fault. The next chapter will show that the decrease in purchasing power was due to the fact that the Axis's military encirclement had left Swiss industry with
only one customer, one that had nearly absolute power to set the sales list and the terms of trade—at least during the first thirty months of the war. Yet the politically significant fact is that the Federal Council did not tell the people that they were being exploited by a rapacious Reich. The council judged, probably correctly, that the people were already all too prepared to vent their anti-German feelings, and that their doing so would have done no good and possibly much harm.

Pilet Golaz had said, after all, that the council would not be able to explain all its actions. So, for want of the facts, by the end of the war workers' circles were abuzz with rumors that the difference between the value of their work and the pittances they received must somehow have enriched the Swiss elites. No. The lion's share of the difference was fed to the Reich's war machine, and the rest went to build the Swiss army. The people also resented the government's authoritarianism. When Wahlen suggested that the autarkic agricultural system be retained after the war, public reaction was scornful. One can understand the bitter point of view of Pilet Golaz and his colleagues: Their competence had delivered food, work, and safety—the best that circumstances would allow—and still the people were ungrateful.

The calculations that underlay the council's attitude were indeed “realistic.” Why in 1940–1941 should a responsible government not have listened to the accommodationists' logical argument—namely, that the New Europe was being made whether tiny Switzerland liked it or not, and that the essence of policy competence lay in finding some role for Switzerland with as little pain as possible? The accommodationists argued that the resisters were offering blood, sweat, and tears before a catastrophic defeat and, afterward, much worse. By
contrast, competent policy would aim at trading concessions in foreign policy and economics for internal political freedom. The resisters, for their part, argued that the Nazis, if victorious, would never grant Switzerland internal independence except if forced to by Swiss military deterrence. That, too, was obvious. They hoped for but did not bet on the Allies' victory. Instead, perhaps foolishly, they bet that if the Swiss people bolstered their fighting spirit they would be able to muster military deterrence. The council acknowledged both sets of arguments.

Did the council “Finlandize” Switzerland? When the Soviet Union attacked Finland in the winter of 1940, everyone in Switzerland identified with the Finns. They cheered Finland's glorious defense of the Mannerheim Line, as well as its heroic guerrilla warfare, and were enormously saddened by Finland's final ordeal—cession of territory, a heavy indemnity, as well as loss of control over domestic and foreign policy (but, thank God, not occupation). Avoiding Finland's fate was a very hot topic. Fortunately for the Swiss, because the Reich never demanded of Switzerland as much as the Soviets had demanded of Finland, the confrontation never came to blows. In foreign policy the Reich demanded silence rather than support. Not too bad. In economics, the tribute demanded was not intolerable. And as regards domestic policy, the Nazis were content enough to swallow their failures to interfere. So the Finlandization of Switzerland's foreign policy reached its (relatively low) peak in July 1940, and three years later was in rapid decline. Domestically, Finlandization never really occurred, though the threat was almost always present.

That threat of Finlandization came from the fact that the council's technical, economic, interest-group approach to politics
did nothing to inspire the Swiss people to be themselves and defend themselves. The Federal Council's leaders—Pilet Golaz, Finance Minister Walter Stampfli, and Karl Kobelt—were deaf to the appeals of the heart, to the deepest aspirations of their countrymen. It did not occur to them that they should occupy themselves with what President George Bush later called “the vision thing.” And so the Swiss people gave their hearts to the resisters.

The resisters did not prevail by being what we call “policy wonks.” One of the two principal resisters' organizations, the minuscule Gotthard League, issued a manifesto on domestic policy whose welfare statism was not all that different from government policy nor even from that of the pro-Nazi fronts. The other, the National Resistance Action (
Aktion Nationaler Widerstand
), spoke more in terms of traditional Swiss economic liberalism. But that was not the point. Rather, both organizations put out one simple, appealing message: The Switzerland we have known is good. Nazism is bad. Let us do everything in our power to preserve our way of life into the future.

Of course the Nazis helped the resisters' cause immeasurably. By mid-1941 the image of an efficient, if authoritarian, “New Europe” had been canceled out by the nightmarish reality of compulsion and camps. The accommodationists had no positive theme to sell, and they did not even try hard to sell it. No one could feel good about himself by agreeing with the accommodationists. By contrast, the resisters touted on the one hand the cacotopia of Nazism, and on the other the hope that, with noble resolution (not to mention Allied victory), good old Switzerland might come back.

The Federal Council was jealous of General Guisan. Everywhere he went, people crowded around him, cheered him,
prayed and wept for him, wanted him to touch their children. His car could hardly traverse a village without setting off a celebration. None of the councilors elicited any positive popular feeling at all. Exasperated, the president for 1943, Finance Minister Walter Stampfli, had a placard affixed to his car identifying him in three languages as the president of the confederation. This elicited either laughter or resentment.

What did Guisan have that the technically competent federal councilors didn't? When his country's fate looked darkest, he put himself at the head of the cause of hope, against new evils, and for the restoration of all good, familiar things. And he was lucky. That's all.

B
ESIEGED IN THEIR CAPITOL by Brennus's barbarians from the north, the Romans had struck a bargain—so many measures of gold for lifting the siege. But as the gold was being weighed out, the Romans complained that the scales were fraudulent. Brennus's reply, “Woe to the vanquished,” is usually translated as “To the victor belong the spoils.” To show that power trumps agreements, Brennus tossed his sword onto the balance. Legend has it that just then Furius Camillus (whose family name, then as now, implies a powerful emotion) appeared with the Roman army and declared, sword in hand, “Not with gold is the fatherland ransomed, but with iron.” Since Camillus beat Brennus, the scales' accuracy was irrelevant. Had the battle gone the other way, it still would have been irrelevant: Brennus and the furious Roman agreed on one thing—the weight of gold matters less than the weight of swords.

Almost two-and-a-half millennia later, when the Swiss were besieged by the barbarian from the north and his Roman camp follower, they bargained nonstop about credit, about the terms of their merchandise trade, as well as about the uses to which the besiegers wanted to put the Swiss currency. In this respect,
keep in mind Montesquieu's dictum on economics: “Commerce is the profession of equals”—that is, true economic transactions take place when buyers and sellers are influenced only by the value they put on the goods exchanged. When one of the parties throws a sword into the balance, the relationship ceases to be economic. During the Second World War, both the Germans and the Swiss threw swords into their bargains. Those swords, of course, were of vastly different sizes at various times, and a third set of swords was floating around—that of the barbarians' main enemies, the British and the Americans. So determined were these enemies to defeat the barbarians that they made demands on the Swiss regarding merchandise and currency not so different from those that the barbarians themselves were making. Obviously, the Swiss tried to balance the two sets of demands in their own interest.