A small segment of the Swiss military was not immune to the siren song of Wehrmacht successes. A subordinate sent to German General Staff Major Ritter von Iylander an article published in a Swiss periodical, by Dr. Gustav Däniker, Colonel of the Swiss General Staff, entitled “Qualification of an Army.” Colonel Däniker had communicated to the [German] Military Attaché in Bern: “if my essay can contribute to show that the exceptional achievements of the German Army are recognized and admired in Switzerland, then it will achieve more than it normally would, given its modest content.”82 General Guisan stripped Däniker of his position and replaced him with Herbert Constam.
Faced with its own blitz in 1940, England remained unbowed. The OKW continued to describe pervasive “English propaganda in Switzer land.” English was often spoken in Geneva, where English men and women of all age groups frequented hotels, restaurants, cafes and bars. A few hardy Americans were also present. A striking red, white, and blue scarf was noted by a German agent in a Geneva bar. Great sympathy for Poland was evident throughout all of Switzerland, which hosted many polish internees. The polish legation in Bern and polish consulates elsewhere—all financed by England—remained open, and an exclusively polish technical college operated in Winterthur.83
In a Christmas Eve report, the OKW castigated the Swiss for their rejection of the “New European Order.”84 There would be four more years of such reports. While the year 1940, so fraught with threats of invasion, was now passing, the Axis encirclement of Switzerland would tighten even more.
CHAPTER 6
SWITZERLAND IS A PORCUPINE
While Nazi blitzkriegs battered Europe, a popular Wehrmacht song made fun of the Swiss:
Die Schweiz die ist ein Stachelschwein,
Switzerland is a porcupine,
Die nehmen wir zum Dessert ein.
We will take her as dessert;
Dann geh’n wir in die weite Welt
Then we’ll go to the wide world
Und holen uns den Roosevelt.
And get us Roosevelt.1
The Swiss themselves, listening to German radio, joked that only Germans would eat porcupine. However, the image of a bristling hedgehog was apt. At the Swiss border, German soldiers saw concertina wire raised like the sharp quills of a porcupine, intermixed with tank traps and machine gun bunkers, erected to slow a Wehrmacht onslaught. After France fell in 1940, leaving Switzerland surrounded by the Axis, Swiss forces were concentrated in the Alpine Redoubt, or Réduit, the oval outline of which resembled a porcupine.
The hedgehog also relates to the traditional Swiss battle array of massed warriors with pikes, halberds, and other long-reach pole arms. Swiss pikemen used these virtually impenetrable formations to defeat German knights and infantry in the Swabian War of 1499.2 The victories of Swiss peasants against overwhelming odds—far larger numbers of enemy warriors in elaborate armor—were constantly recalled to inspire resistance to Hitler’s armies.
Within a year of Hitler’s seizure of power in Germany, a Swiss military journal made a pointed reference to a late-medieval invasion that ended with the Battle of Sempach in 1386.3 Some 1,300 poorly armed Swiss faced 6,000 overconfident Austrian knights. In the battle that followed, the Swiss hero Arnold Winkelreid singlehandedly created a hole in the Austrian lines by drawing an armful of enemy pikes into his own body. His comrades succeeded in breaking through the Austrian ranks, and the Swiss overwhelmed the heavily armed invaders. A sculpture of Winkelreid in the act of catching the spears stands in the central cupola of the Swiss parliament building today.
Other such episodes from Swiss history were recalled and analyzed to remind the Swiss that they could turn the tables on a numerically superior enemy. One such morale booster distributed to Swiss militia soldiers by the army high command in the second quarter of 1940 was entitled “The Fighting Spirit of the Swiss Confederation.”4 it retold the stories of small but determined groups of Confederates who defeated the great armies of Europe. Significantly, the booklet also stressed the Swiss tradition of individual initiative and personal daring in battle. Everyone knew a concerted German assault would aim to cripple or destroy the formal Swiss command structure, leaving units, or even individuals, to act on their own.
The Swiss also followed closely—and gained confidence from—the resistance tiny Finland put up against invasion by the Soviet union, which at the time had become Nazi Germany’s tacit ally. During the Winter War of 1939–40, the Finnish army, only half as numerous as Switzerland’s, held out for almost three and a half months against overwhelming Soviet forces. The Finns had only 100 airplanes and 60 ancient tanks but, like the Swiss, they had few equals in rifle marksmanship.5 Russian paratroopers were shot in the air, and those that were missed were shot when they hit the ground.6 Even after suing for peace, the Finns managed to keep most of their territory.
In those few months, Finnish sharpshooters killed or wounded astonishing numbers of Russian troops. In one battle only three Finns died as against 1,000 Russians.7 A single Finn, Simo Häyhä, who previously had won numerous marksmanship trophies, is said to have killed over 500 Russian soldiers.8 overall, one million Russians perished in the invasion, versus just 25,000 Finns, according to Nikita Khrushchev.9
As with the Finns, marksmanship was a national obsession for the Swiss. The Germans were well aware of the risks posed by sharpshooters. After the war, at the Nürnberg war crimes trials, U.S. Prosecutor (later Senator) Thomas J. Dodd examined the defendant Baldur von Schirach, Reich Youth leader, about prewar military training among German youth. The following exchange occurred:
von Schirach: Switzerland gave her young men much more intensive rifle training than we did and so did many other countries.
Mr. Dodd: Yes, I know.
von Schirach: I do not deny that our young men were trained in shooting.
Mr. Dodd: I hope you’re not comparing yourself to Switzerland, either.
von Schirach: No.10
Indeed not. While von Schirach was suggesting that pre-war Ger many was not militaristic simply because it trained young men to shoot, he obviously could not compare shooting programs within the Third Reich with those of Switzerland. In radically democratic Switzer land, every male on reaching the age of 19 was enrolled in the militia army and issued a military rifle to keep at home. The national sport was not skiing but shooting, and everyone, from teenagers to the elderly, was encouraged to participate.
In Switzerland, not only was every able-bodied man enrolled in the militia army, even youngsters and old men were issued rifles. These latter were also encouraged to join Ortswehr units and wear an armband so that, under the terms of the Hague Convention, they would have rights as uniformed combatants if an invasion occurred. When the war broke out, as Ortswehr member Max Jufer remembers, older men and young boys alike shook their fists and exclaimed, “We shall hit them. We will kill seven before we are killed.” if paratroopers came, Jufer was sure Ortswehr members would have picked them off in the air.11
Switzerland’s landscape offered many advantages for defending forces. Even the relatively flat plateau has sharp inclines, defiles, gorges, and other natural obstacles. Roads and bridges were mined and ready to be destroyed. The plateau would no doubt have fallen to a Wehrmacht invasion, but at a high cost. The Alpine Réduit was a different story. Panzers and the Luftwaffe would have been ineffective among the narrow passes, steep slopes, high winds, and snow. The natural cover was a sniper’s dream and would have allowed Swiss sharpshooters to resist German infantry attacks almost indefinitely.
With the outbreak of war, Swiss border troops dug in across the Rhine River from Germany and made ready to bear the initial onslaught. Most Swiss forces, however, were concentrated well behind the border along the Limmat River. This line featured numerous interconnected fortifications in addition to natural strongpoints. Blockhouses for machine guns, positions for artillery, tank traps, and underground tunnels and quarters for troops may still be seen today—many in woods, and some in residen
tial areas. A few are now open to the public as museums.
The fortifications in northern Switzerland had been actively under construction since 1934, when the Swiss parliament recognized the potential threat of German invasion. After Austria’s Anschluss in 1938, major fortifications were also built in the mountainous vicinity of Sargans to protect Switzerland’s eastern entrance at the Rhine valley. By 1940, fortifications extended both along the frontier with Germany and along what was called the “Army Position,” or Limmat line, which stretched from Sargans to the lake of zurich, along the Limmat River, and through the northern Jura mountains.12
The defenses of the Limmat line around the city of Baden exemplify Swiss defenses before the fall of France in 1940, when a Wehrmacht attack was still expected to come from Germany. This author was shown the remaining fortifications by dr. Walter lüem, the leading expert on the subject today.13 The Divisionär (Major General) of the 8th Mountain division had prevailed on General Guisan to position the defenses on the south side of the Limmat, where steep banks rise up against a precipitous mountainside. The Germans would have had to cross the river and face murderous fire from artillery, machine guns, and rifles hidden throughout those commanding heights.
Before reaching the Limmat, the Wehrmacht would first have to cross the Rhine, where Swiss pillboxes with machine guns swept virtually every inch of ground. The road and railroad bridges across the river were mined and could have been destroyed in 30 seconds. Every soldier had permission to blow up any bridge. The 8th division was responsible for the area between the Rhine and the top of the steep mountain range on the south bank of the Limmat.
Near the top of the slope on the Limmat’s south bank, the pillboxes are linked by extensive underground tunnels protected on top by two meters of concrete. Today, though the locations are overgrown, they are still accessible to the determined hiker. The underground passages have numerous openings for machine guns. On the surface of the mountain, the steps and paths that were cut into the hill for patrols are still used by hikers. There were also forward observation posts for artillery pieces that were located eight kilometers to the rear. The Swiss had 7.5 cm guns with a range of 11 kilometers, 12 and 15 cm howitzers with 8–9 kilometer range, and 10.5 cm Bofors guns with 18–19 kilometer range.
Most of the field artillery was horse-drawn and otherwise adapted to the rough terrain. Those units included 2,500 men and 1,700 horses, which had to be stabled in the mountains. The only motorized artillery was the Bofors cannon. (A Swiss Bofors, manufactured in Thun, could fire 10 rounds per minute.) during World War ii, even the highly mechanized Wehrmacht depended in part on horse-drawn artillery. In fact, such artillery played a major role in the Eastern campaigns, especially when motorized units bogged down in mud. Swiss military horses served many purposes in the mountains. Besides pulling heavy weapons, they brought in materials and supplies to defensive positions inaccessible to other kinds of transport.
Within a standard 200-man Swiss infantry company, 66 men were assigned to light artillery squads using 12-cm and 10.5-cm field cannon. The remainder were infantry, whose weapons included three Model 1911 heavy machine guns—similar to the venerable Maxim, which continued in use by all of the warring parties. The company would field roughly 130 riflemen armed with Karabiner 31 (K31 or Model 1931 carbine) service rifles. Most Swiss males were highly skilled riflemen. Further, the K31 rifle was considered superior to the standard German service rifle, the Mauser Karbiner 98k (Model 98k carbine, “k” meaning kurz, or short).14
Both were bolt-action rifles, but the Swiss rifle could be fired more rapidly because its six-shot magazine could be loaded from above the action with a stripper clip or removed and replaced with another charged magazine. The German rifle’s five-round non-detachable magazine could be loaded only from above. More importantly, the Swiss rifle was better adapted to long-distance precision firing—i.e., sniping—due to its lighter trigger pull, better-contoured grip, more easily focused sights, and more accurate cartridge. The Swiss K31 continues to be widely used in 300-meter rifle matches today.
Swiss strategy for an attack in the vicinity of Baden took advantage of natural bottlenecks through which German forces would be forced to proceed. Three rivers converge there—the Aare, the Limmat, and the Ruess, each carving its way through impassable mountain terrain, leaving the roads in the narrow valleys as the only passage for an army. At the end of the bottleneck is Reuenthal, which was heavily fortified with camouflaged cannon emplacements, extensive underground tunnels and quarters, and antitank and machine-gun nests. Although there were only 600 heavy cannon in the entire country, 124 were positioned in this area.
Since Switzerland depended on its part-time militia and had a minimal standing, or professional, army, its few crew-served weapons were inadequately supplied and trained, at least at the beginning of the war. The 3rd light infantry stationed near Baden used the obsolete Model 1882 12-cm field cannon, which fired only 1–2 shots per minute. These weapons had first been replaced way back in 1903 with the German designed Krupp 7.5-cm cannon, which fired 6 shots per minute. Luckily, scrap dealers would not buy the obsolete 1882 models, so they could be salvaged from storage and put back into service in 1939. German observers certainly must have laughed at the archaic Swiss. But finally Swiss guns were replaced in 1942–43 with a newer Krupp design. While acquisition of modern artillery lagged during the interwar years, the Swiss military did obtain a respectable supply of advanced designs by the midwar period. Some armaments were imported, but domestic manufacture was greatly encouraged.
From positions in the rolling hills outside Baden, one can easily see 17 kilometers through the valley to the German town of Waldshut, the natural geographical position from which the Wehrmacht would have launched an attack. It is the point where the heaviest crossfire could be concentrated. Regardless of which side of the Reuss River the Wehrmacht attacked, it would have been squeezed between the river and sharp bluffs to a narrow passage of only 200 meters. This would have been the ultimate murderous bottleneck into which would be poured massive artillery, antitank, and rifle fire.
These defensive dispositions explain why many considered Switzer land to be an extension of France’s Maginot line, which the German command was reluctant to assault frontally. To avoid the massive French fortifications, the Germans had the choice of two indirect invasion routes into France: the northern route through Belgium and Holland, and the southern route through Switzerland. In view of the Swiss terrain and Swiss preparations, the decision was easy to make. The Wehrmacht went through neutral Belgium and Luxemburg around the northern end of the Maginot line, bypassing Switzerland’s defenses altogether.
The Limmat line fortifications were primary defenses only until July 1940, when the strategic situation abruptly changed. At that point, the Wehrmacht could attack Switzerland from occupied France in the west. Fascist Italy had also entered the war, threatening Switzerland from its southern border. Surrounded on all sides, the Swiss command decided to pull the bulk of Swiss forces into the Alpine Réduit. It was only after d-day in 1944 that the Limmat line defenses were made ready again, when the Swiss had reason to believe that counterattacking or retreating German forces might spill over into Switzerland.
Today, in the vicinity of Baden and in numerous other places in Switzerland, one can still see rows of tank traps as well as bunkers, blockhouses, and positions for machine guns, antitank guns and artillery. These structures may be found in residential neighborhoods, cow pastures, dense forests and mountains. Many remain camouflaged and almost as invisible as they were during the war.
As noted, an outline of the Réduit—the Alpine positions where the Swiss forces were concentrated—resembled a porcupine. Its nose sticks out with the Sargans fortifications in the east, its underbelly lies in the south with the Gotthard fortifications, and its tail is in the west with the St. Maurice fortifications. All entrances into the Réduit area were strongly fortified with large numbers of interconnected positions for infan
try, antitank defense, and artillery, some in subterranean battery locations and others above ground with fields of fire facing out in all directions.
The major fortifications—Sargans, Gotthard and St. Maurice—protected the main valleys extending into the Alpine Réduit. Its northern entrances were defended in the gaps where the plateau gives way to the Alps. One such strong point was the Fortress Fürigen, located on a lake near Lucerne. It is open to visitors today and, then as now, from the outside one sees nothing but rocky vertical bluffs. The fortress is completely camouflaged and hidden from view.15
One entrance appears to be rock but is actually plaster on screen wire over a heavy metal door. There is a cannon just inside the door, and a sign: “Warning! Before you shoot, open the camouflage door!” one can only imagine the dismay of any Swiss artilleryman who forgot. At first the plan was to open for each firing and then close for the reload. But the plaster disintegrated with constant use; so the door was kept open and, apparently, closed at the conclusion of bombardments. Such are the design problems of new installations. In any case, ventilation was inadequate; gun smoke would fill the room, and each soldier had to wear a mask with a tube attached to pipes which brought in fresh air. With the noise and the smoke, it would be easy to become disoriented and, perhaps, forget the door!
The position consisted of two 7.5-cm Model 1940 cannon made by “W+F” (the Waffenfabrik, or arms factory in Bern), supplied with 1,000 rounds. This weapon could fire 16 rounds per minute to a distance of 12 kilometers. Charts showed preset fire coordinates to hit specific locations, and live fire was practiced against targets in the mountains. Observers stationed up the mountain would phone the cannoneers to make fire corrections.
Swiss and the Nazis Page 17