Between the Alps and a Hard Place (6 page)

Swiss military planners sought to provide one and only one element of what their country needed to avoid an invasion. Some historians portray a split between those military leaders who were more willing to confront the Germans militarily and those more inclined to propitiate them with political-economic concessions.
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Yet this distinction is largely false. After the fall of France in June 1940, all recognized that any fight with Germany could only end in defeat. After that date, all Swiss professional controversies about military policy were strictly about how, not whether, to lose and die. Whether Switzerland's defeat came slowly or quickly, whether it was costly or not for the aggressor, would determine the country's honor and therefore its future. Still, the point was to avoid the fight. Despite the serious professional and personal disputes among them, Swiss military leaders agreed, to a man, that their preparations would
have to be part of an overall strategy including political and economic disincentives to invasion.

Switzerland's supreme commander, General Henri Guisan, not a professional soldier but a farmer, was a French speaker, a Francophile, chosen for his post because of his visceral anti-Nazism. Writing after the war, he had every incentive to burnish his already glorious reputation for stressing military resistance over concessions. Nevertheless, Guisan began the report on his tenure as follows: “I understood that the role of the Army was to offer to each of the belligerent parties a sufficient obstacle so that adding the force of the military argument to that of political and economic arguments, it would discourage aggressive designs.”
⁵

Colonel Ulrich Wille, Jr., was very different. A Swiss general's son, a German speaker steeped in Germanic culture, and a professional soldier whose ambition to succeed his father was negated by Guisan, Wille so despised his chief professionally that he actually plotted against him. Yet his views on the role of the army were identical to Guisan's. At the crucial June 22, 1940, meeting of the High Command, Wille did argue for demobilizing more troops so that the Swiss economy could more quickly satisfy German economic demands. But at the same time, as well as at the July 6 meeting, when Germany's victory seemed certain and accommodationist feeling was at its height, he and his Germanophile staff argued that Swiss troops ought to deposit their weapons in a mountain redoubt that would be a harder nut for Germany to crack because it “would not permit the movement of large [German] units any more than of Stukas.”
⁶
Four days earlier Wille's close associate and intellectual guide, the equally Germanophile Colonel Hans
Frick, had written to his chief: “[I]f there is yet something left for us to throw into the balance against exorbitant German demands, it is the army and only the army. . . . In the conditions in which we now find ourselves we have need of radical [military] solutions if we want to survive with honor.”
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In sum, according to nearly the whole spectrum of Swiss military thinking, accommodation and military defiance were inextricable parts of the same strategy.

The following is the story of how the Swiss army helped its country achieve its great objective by manipulating one variable—the military cost of invasion. This is a story of maximizing a few assets and finessing many liabilities—of making lemonade out of lemons. The story begins with Switzerland's military tradition, its preparation for the Second World War, and the brutal reality check of June 1940. After that we will follow the process by which the Swiss arrived at their stark deterrent strategy and look at the value of the military instrument they built. Then, after considering the role of Swiss intelligence and intelligence in Switzerland, we will examine the army's role in combating subversion within its ranks and in society. The Swiss army's political contribution to the country's spirit of resistance to defeatism was arguably more important than anything it did in the purely military field. An army's heart and mind are often its most important weapons.

It is not unusual for mountain country to breed fierce, clannish fighters. Of the ancient Helvetians, Julius Caesar wrote,
“Cum virtute omnibus praestarent
” (They stood above all others in [military] virtue).
⁸
During the Holy Roman Empire the Swiss cities were known for upholding their rights against
greater nobles by keeping military stores to ride out sieges, and for raising tenacious militias. Indeed, the Swiss Confederation dates from a 1291 meeting of representatives of the cantons of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden in response to oppression from the powerful southern Germanic princes of the house of Habsburg. During the Renaissance, when mercenary militias rented themselves to most of Europe's princes, the Swiss acquired a reputation as unusually tough pikemen. In 1512 Machiavelli wrote that Swiss infantry had not once suffered defeat, either from cavalry or from other infantry.
⁹
The relative valor of these troops may have been due to the fact that, whereas other mercenary bands were made up of scattered riffraff, the Swiss units consisted of people who had grown up together and stood by one another. Swiss mercenaries were also prized as bodyguards. Louis XVI's Swiss guards died to the last man in his defense. To this day the pope is guarded by a Swiss force. In the old sections of Swiss cities, tourists can still see the homes built by the mercenary contractors.

With the beginning of the wars of the Reformation, fewer Swiss fighters ventured abroad. Nevertheless, some Swiss mercenaries continued to fight abroad, as far away as Britain's war against the Zulus in 1879. Since their valleys now contained both Protestant and Catholic cantons that lived in uneasy peace, the Swiss were eager not to add to the power of foreigners who might come and break that peace. This is the beginning of Switzerland's neutrality, which began in fact in the sixteenth century, in name in the seventeenth. Moreover, though the Swiss had become known abroad as military professionals, Swiss territory was characterized by the age-old militia tradition. Every able-bodied man would be expected to fight for his community with whatever weapon he could bring.

But this combination of parochial focus and military nonpro-fessionalism served the Swiss less and less well as their neighbors consolidated into states, ever bigger and better armed. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Switzerland's recurring military problem was that the professional armies of France or Austria, trying to get at one another, would traverse or even appropriate a Swiss canton. The militia of the affected canton would be too little, and help from others would be too late. The cantons would sometimes find it easier to get help from the other major power than from other Swiss. At the height of Louis XIV's power at the turn of the eighteenth century, they even dealt with faraway Britain. Because of the looseness of their confederation, the Swiss were prey to subversion as much as to bigger armies. Still, the Swiss Confederation did maintain a kind of armed peace with the whole world from 1521 to 1798.

By the end of the eighteenth century the wars of the French Revolution brought bigger armies and more subversion than the confederation could handle. Gradually, Switzerland lost all but a façade of independence and became a French satellite. The French incorporated the Valtellina into their newly formed satellite, the Cisalpine Republic (the present Italian province of Sondrio). The French also occupied the Geneva area. Bonaparte freely traversed Switzerland to fight in Italy. And the cantons were divided internally by French propaganda about liberty, equality, and fraternity. So, when a French army marched on Bern in February 1798, it did not meet serious resistance. The Swiss were required to supply contingents to the Napoleonic armies. The only Swiss military feat of the age came on October 12, 1812, when a detachment sacrificed itself covering the French crossing of the river Berezina at the start of Napoleon's catastrophic retreat from Russia.

In 1815, when the Swiss Confederation reemerged from the Congress of Vienna with a formal guarantee of neutrality, it sought to create a military instrument to guard its neutrality. Until 1848 the central government could only request that the cantons supply a single army from throughout the country. The federal government's executive consists of a Federal Council, whose members are each in charge of a department—for example, the Military Department, the Political (Foreign Affairs) Department, and so on. The ceremonial post of president of the confederation rotates among the federal councilors. The country's bicameral parliament is much less powerful than ordinary legislative bodies, because the Swiss people make most decisions on important matters by referendum. But when war among neighbors threatens to spill over into Swiss territory, the councilor on military affairs proposes, and the parliament elects, some military officer to the wartime rank of general, a rank somewhat reminiscent of the ancient Roman constitutional office of
dictator
. The general asks the Federal Council to mobilize the army. Mobilization is a momentous step because it takes out of the economy nearly all men of military age. Therefore, during extended military emergencies like World Wars I and II, the general and the Federal Council have to negotiate about how much of the army is to be rotated on and off active duty. The general, however, has the authority to use local contingents as seems best for the whole. In 1874, heeding the lessons of the Austro-Prussian and Franco-German wars, the Swiss created a General Staff and modernized military operations, at least to the point of relieving soldiers of the cost of their rifles. But the militia tradition continues: every man a soldier. Indeed, not until World War II would soldiers be compensated for the
loss of their livelihoods. But even then, Swiss cavalrymen had to bring, or pay for, their own horses.

Even casual visitors to Switzerland have been impressed by the extent to which the country is militarized. Any weekend of the year, the railroad stations are full of civilians-turned-soldiers for training. They leave their automatic weapons piled up on the platform. Nobody but foreigners pays attention. Or you can see policemen nodding politely to men walking out of banks with machine guns—reservists must keep their personal weapons at home, and they often take them to work on the way to training. Troops are accustomed to guns from childhood. Switzerland is the only country other than the United States where guns are easily bought. While other European men play cards or golf, Swiss men are likelier to enjoy target practice. The country has few golf courses but many shooting ranges. Ever since 1657 the city of Zurich has had a three-day holiday, called
Knabenschiessen
, to introduce twelve-year-old boys (and now girls) to shoot. People of all ages can be seen bicycling through the streets with guns slung on their backs, heading for shooting sport.

On his twentieth birthday every able-bodied man becomes liable to at least nineteen days' military service every two years for a period of twenty-two years. Higher ranks must serve until age fifty-two, or (for higher officers) sixty-two, and in emergencies until age sixty-five. Swiss men are also required to take part in an “off-duty shooting program.” At the end of service, they get to keep their personal weapons. Conversations with men at the top of Swiss society quickly uncover that, in contrast with their counterparts in Europe or America, their knowledge of military affairs is deep and their sympathy is lively. A successful professional in any field is almost surely a field grade officer of infantry, artillery, or combat engineers. Once I was
interviewed by the anchorman of the French language television news, who happened also to be a colonel of artillery. Nowhere else in the West (Israel excepted) would that have been the case.

The Swiss armed forces are also unlike others in that, even in modern secular times, they emphasize the Christian duty to fight to the death for their community. Swiss secularists find other sources for patriotism. Nevertheless, anyone familiar with the professional military literature of modern Europe and America cannot help but be shocked by Colonel Pierre Altermath's article in the November 1995 issue of
Revue Militaire Suisse
, entitled “Long Live Our Militia System!” The article cites Martin Luther's well-known blessing of bearing arms to protect others, repress evil, and safeguard the faith. It cites Jesus' “No greater love hath a man than that he give up his life for his friends,” as well as St. John's admonition to love in deed as well as in word. The prophets Ezekiel and Habakuk, as well as contemporary spiritual guides, are also cited in support of the main point: We Swiss men are committed to our duty to fight and die for our country. While there is nothing unusual about such an article in Swiss military literature, there is nothing remotely like it in modern Western military literature
or practice
. Imagine, then, the state of mind of Swiss soldiers in earlier times.

The Swiss army that mobilized 250,000 frontline troops for World War I was technically on the same level as the armed forces of its neighbors. Switzerland's army was seriously motivated, socially solid, and technically competent. Its senior officers had attended the war colleges of France and Germany. Its heavy artillery was the German 120 mm from the Franco-Prussian War, while the field artillery consisted of the French
mainstay, the 75 mm. The machine guns were good local models. And the Swiss were well dug into trench lines on their northern and western borders.

Yet on the eve of World War I no one imagined that the Swiss army would stand up to any of its neighbors' armies alone. In 1907, when France seemed the likelier aggressor, Swiss Colonel Theophil von Sprecher exchanged memoranda called
Punktationen
with the German army detailing the conditions of collaboration in case of a French invasion. By 1917, however, when it appeared that Germany might want to use Swiss territory to bring to bear against France the divisions newly released from the Russian front, the same von Sprecher initiated talks with the French General Staff. In short, Swiss neutrality depended mainly on the willingness of Switzerland's neighbors to deprive one another of the advantages of going through Swiss territory. The Swiss army would help by forcing any attacker to mount a major offensive and by delaying success long enough for help to arrive. But the Swiss always made it clear that help would not be welcome a moment sooner than called for.