Three heavy machine guns were hidden above the position in the rocky bluffs at different angles from ground level. If the enemy managed to get inside one cannon position, the tunnels to the other weapons were protected by a machine gun behind a heavy metal wall with a small opening to throw hand grenades. Machine gun bullets and shrapnel would have ricocheted off the tunnel walls to increase the deadly effects. Assaulting these dug-in positions would not have been an attractive proposition, even for the most battle-hardened German commandos and paratroopers.
Sleeping quarters with straw mattresses accommodated three shifts of soldiers for each 24-hour period. Infantry normally slept in quarters inside the mountain, but in times of high alert stayed outside in cold and windy foxholes. It goes without saying that male refugees and internees who also slept on straw mattresses down in the valleys had it far better than such soldiers guarding the Réduit.
Fortress Fürigen was one of many such strongpoints that protected the Réduit during World War ii. Many continued in use through the Cold War, and Fürigen was not finally closed as a military outpost until 1986. Its reopening as a public museum presents an opportunity to observe a well-preserved example of a small Réduit fortification.
As previously mentioned, the Réduit was located between three major fortified areas at the valleys entering the Alps: in the east, Sargans, where the Rhine cuts a valley from the Alps near the border with Austria; in the south, the Gotthard, which faced Italy; and in the west, St. Maurice, the narrowest point of the valley where the Rhone empties into the lake of Geneva facing France. After the Germans suddenly appeared on Switzerland’s western border in 1940, this front assumed additional importance.16
The St. Maurice fortifications were carefully conceived for maximum effect. The Rhone valley resembles a giant “V” lying on its left side. The lake of Geneva to the west opens the “V,” and the sides are towering mountains. St. Maurice lies at the base of the mountains on the eastern side. After the town, the valley continues to widen, but the narrow passage at the town makes St. Maurice the ideal place to meet the enemy. Any invading force would be funneled into the narrow end of this “V,” where death and destruction would rain from hidden enclaves in the mountains on each side. The greatest concentrations of defensive positions are in the heights above St. Maurice.
The Rhone flowing past St. Maurice divides the cantons of Valais and Vaud. Nineteenth-century fortifications lie in ruins among vineyards running up from the river’s banks.17 Today, as during the war, cattle graze among rows of tank traps called Toblerones because they are shaped like the Swiss chocolate of that name. The surrounding mountains are likened to Emmental cheese because they are so full of fortified holes and tunnels.
Colonel Alexandre Morisod, Commandant of the Fortifications Corps at St. Maurice-lavey, guided this author on a tour of the St. Maurice stronghold, a tour which would have been a top-secret briefing until recently.18 Ascending the mountains, one is immediately struck by breathtaking Alpine scenery and, if lucky, by the sighting of a Chamois. You can make out observation points way up on the tops of mountains which served to identify targets and direct artillery fire.
Camouflaged doors conceal entrances into the fortifications. Once inside, there is a vast underground maze of tunnels leading to gun positions, communications facilities, mess halls and sleeping quarters. Under ground funiculars carried men and supplies. There are whole rooms filled with power and ventilation equipment and every other facility necessary for this town within the mountain. Stretches of hallways of hollowed-out stone are broken at intervals by enormous steel doors and other interior defenses designed to thwart enemy intrusion.
Cannon with bores ranging from 5.3 cm to 12 cm were able suddenly to appear from and immediately disappear back into the mountain positions. The most common cannon used during the war were the BK 7.5 cm and the PzT 10.5 cm with an armored turret. One specimen examined by the author had a barrel six meters in length. It received ammunition from an elevator which extended 50 meters further underground. At the bottom, shell components were assembled by a machine according to the desired load. The shells are about a meter and a half long and weigh 75 kilograms, of which 45 kilograms is the projectile. From the highest point, one can shoot all the way to lake Geneva or to the French border.
Still present is “Big Fritz,” a gigantic though slow-firing gun originally put in service during World War i. A later 1942-model cannon had a 15-cm bore, 18-kilometer range, and fired 7 or 8 rounds per minute. The 1958 15-cm model shoots 25 rounds per minute for a distance of 25 kilometers. At least until recently, troops continued to practice long-distance live fire at targets in desolate, uninhabited places high in the mountains. Accuracy is pinpoint and the reverberating boom is unmistakable.
While there were 48 antiaircraft positions in the vicinity, Luftwaffe bomber attacks would have been ineffective because defenses were hidden in bluffs and steep mountainsides rather than on flat land. The valley was too narrow for a massive panzer attack, and any tanks that ventured here would have been hit with a terrible fire from all sides. Infantry would have fared even worse. The soldiers would have been trapped in narrow passages and caught in a crossfire from above.
This description is only partial. It covers just some salient aspects of the St. Maurice fortified area, a critical component of the Alpine Réduit. It does, however, illuminate why the Swiss chose to concentrate their forces in the Réduit as the best location to resist a German attack. Engagement of the main Swiss Army with German forces at the border or on the plateau would have been suicidal, turning the more populated areas into battlegrounds and the cities into bombing targets. It is clear that German strategists had sufficient wartime intelligence to know that an attack on the body of the Swiss forces in the Réduit would have entailed enormous casualties.
Aside from its advantage in terrain, Switzerland held another edge over the Nazis: its commitment to employ every able-bodied male citizen in the country’s armed forces. In Switzerland, the practice of marksmanship was not only a constitutional right but a civic duty. No one was excluded for having the “wrong” ethnicity, religion or political preference. In Nazi Germany, by contrast, selected groups were forbidden to bear arms, and even denied citizenship itself. Possession of any kind of firearm, even by Aryan Germans, was closely controlled by the state.
By the start of World War ii the Nazis’ virulent ethnocentric nature was well known, particularly to German-speaking Swiss who could follow Hitler’s propaganda over the radio. Even so, few imagined the depths of depravity to which the regime would sink. In 1940, after the fall of France, Germany initially had treated its hundreds of thousands of French and British POWs according to the Geneva Conventions. It was not until the following year’s invasion of the Soviet union that the horrific racial nature of Hitler’s military ambitions became manifest. Whereas the victory in the West had been won by the traditional German Army, with SS units playing a minor (often ridiculed) role, 19 the war in the East quickly became marked by atrocities. Regular formations were followed into Russia by SS Einsatzgruppen (Special Groups, or more accurately, murder squads) who committed widespread massacres of the civilian population, particularly Jews. By the fall of 1941, reports had begun to emerge from the East about this new, more sinister, phase of the war. Unfortunately, it was only to get worse, as the Germans decided to systematize their brutality.
On January 20, 1942, at a special meeting in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, a committee of about twenty leaders from Nazi military, diplomatic, and economic circles adopted the so-called Wannsee protocol, a document chilling in its bureaucratic detachment, which outlined steps to be taken to accomplish the “final solution of the Jewish question.”20 The conference was directed by Chief of the police and the Security Service (Sicherheintsdienst, or Sd), SS-obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, acting under the authority of Reichsmarschal Herman Göring, and covered disposition of the Jews in all of German-occupied Europe.
Detailed minutes were taken. “Approxima
tely 11 million Jews will be involved… distributed as follows among the individual countries….” The listing included “Switzerland 18,000.” The Wannsee Nazis, however, did not control all of Europe. They still did not control Switzerland, nor the Jews who lived or found refuge there. These people, some of the very few who not only survived but were protected by a national government, would escape the Holocaust because Switzerland remained unoccupied. Every citizen, including every Jewish man, was issued a military rifle for defense of the country. Within other countries listed in the minutes, including former “neutrals,” it was already too late for most. Jewish populations were to be methodically eliminated by deportations that would culminate in genocide.
All of the intricate machinery of Nazi brutality would have come down on Switzerland had the country surrendered to the Germans. But the country did not surrender or yield to the most outrageous of German demands. Although isolated in Axis-held Europe, Switzerland managed to avoid the horrors which everywhere else became the symbol of Nazi oppression. Neither Swiss Jews nor Jewish refugees in Switzerland would be deported by the Nazis to the death camps.
A small group of Swiss known as “Frontists” supported Nazism. In October 1940, Frontist leader Robert Tobler in a speech and a pamphlet attacked Swiss Jews as being anti-military and demanded that they be ex pelled from the Swiss militia army. Saly Mayer, president of the Federation of Swiss Jewish Communities (Schweizerischer Israelitischer Gemeinde bund, or SIG), wrote to lieutenant Colonel Isidor Nordmann, emphasizing that Swiss Jews served in the military with enthusiasm. A copy of the letter went to General Guisan, who replied firmly:21 “L’armée est en dehors de toutes questions de confession!” (“The army is outside of all questions of religion!”). In the military forces, Swiss Jews were no different than Swiss protestants or Catholics. Guisan referred the matter to the civilian authorities.
In December 1940, Federal Councilor Rudolf Minger—the tough anti-Nazi head of the Military department—met with Rabbi Eugen Messinger in Bern. Minger reaffirmed that “no anti-Jewish legislation would be adopted for as long as Switzerland was Switzerland.” Minger added that this was not “because of a particular affinity for the Jews, but because of democratic principles that were the basis of [Swiss] democracy.” indeed, the military had no affinity for any ethnic or religious group. Minger condemned Tobler’s Frontist agitation. Rabbi Messinger recorded that “Federal Councilor Minger expressed his high regard for the work of Jewish officers and soldiers.” in a letter to a Jewish soldier, SIG head Saly Mayer endorsed General Guisan’s statement that the army is “outside of all issues of religion.” Mayer added: “We will consider this our guideline for this and future cases.”22
In February 1941, Heinrich Rothmund, the head of the Federal police for Foreigners, wrote to SIG as follows: “The Swiss population, from the worker to the intellectual, considers Jews foreign elements until they have become fully integrated.” This could have been said about any group migrating to Switzerland. More importantly, Rothmund firmly rejected the assertion that Jews could not be assimilated:
There are numerous Jewish soldiers and officers in the army…. Yet, besides public schools, the army, beginning with basic training of recruits, is the best integrator there is. In addition, army service is an honor. Whoever wears the honorable uniform and does his duty has the right to be treated with due esteem.23
In short, by bearing arms in defense of Switzerland, any person could demonstrate loyalty and entitlement to all the rights of citizenship in the Confederation. The service of Swiss Jews in arms, Rothmund made clear, made them every bit as much a part of the Swiss polity as anyone else.
Swiss Jews themselves are most suited to tell the story. It is noteworthy that the fact of their being Jewish is hardly mentioned. They were Swiss.
The late Robert Simon Braunschweig, a prominent military figure who would become head of the Federation of Swiss Jewish Communities, was born in 1914. His family had members in both the orthodox and Reformed branches of the Jewish faith.24 Braunschweig remembered that, at age five, “i saw a parade of two army brigades and decided at once to become a Swiss soldier. In the same year, i saw my first automobile, a taxi. I felt that i had found my future profession.” That profession would be performance testing of military vehicles and racecars.
“I entered service in 1934. I was in the 9th division, and later the 3rd Army Corps. I served in all cantons of Switzerland, for a total of 7,000 days, primarily with motorized units, including light combat vehicles with machine guns and motorized artillery. We had only seven Czech tanks but got more by 1939.” Braunschweig’s rank as first lieutenant is listed in the 1938 Swiss Army’s guide to military officers.25
“Mobilization day—September 1, 1939—was chaotic. I assembled my unit for road transport, and we drove to Bellinzona in the Canton of Ticino. I was assigned to planning in the staff of the Frontier Brigade, part of the 9th division.
“At the second mobilization (in May 1940), we thought the Germans would attack. Motor officers were scarce, and I was reassigned to the 4th division in Baden, an old communications hub on the Limmat River. My motorized light gun company was to survey the north bank of the Rhine where German tanks had been spotted. We anticipated that they were poised to attack us, but in fact they were preparing to attack the French Maginot line.
“France fell, leaving Switzerland with an open and not very defensible flank. I had a conversation with one of my commanding officers, asking him: ‘What will you do with your Jewish lieutenant?’ He answered: ‘The two of us will die together.’ We both had heard the German song with the words ‘When we go back [from France] through Switzerland….’
“The day France fell, a few Swiss officers and soldiers disappeared and were never seen again. They were pro-Nazi. Were they killed by Swiss?” Braunschweig did not elaborate further on this intriguing suggestion, which is not mentioned in the historical literature. He clearly thought this possible.
“I later returned to my post in the staff of the 9th division and led my unit to the south, to the Gotthard sector where the heights provided a solid barrier against an attack. The Réduit was just about finished. We were in a mountain of very hard stone, could not be seen, and had artillery positions with very good guns. It was just below Andermatt, and was constructed partly by polish military internees. They were marvelous—more Swiss than the Swiss. The girls did not like it when they left! By October 1940, construction was complete.
“There was a dam close by. We did not know if Germany would bomb it, which would have flooded the canton of Uri. Germany did not have many mountain troops and would have had a hard time coping with the mountain terrain. We were certain ours would do their best. Our motorized troops were effective in the Alps.
“My duties were to check the road networks for visibility from the north and from the air, prepare for winter problems, keep vehicles in repair, school drivers for access to our new mountain artillery positions, and monitor reserves for fuel, oil, and anti-freeze ethyl alcohol. There were shortages. We had more ethyl alcohol than fuel, but knew that they could be mixed together. In the fall of 1940, we experimented mixing diesel fuel with ethyl alcohol and got good results.
“These were times of great fear. I had many friends in France, the united States, and England, and i gathered intelligence through my unofficial contacts. My uncle was president of the Jewish Society, and we both had contacts in Germany. He brought back information. I knew young men who organized trade with Germany. These trade contacts saved Switzerland. We did not know what was happening at first. I knew the Nazis were against Jews, so it made me want to resist all the more. The whole army was the same. We thought the Germans were coming to Switzerland and prepared for invasion.
“I knew an officer, with whom i did not get along, who was shot for treason. Swiss counterintelligence tricked him by feeding him false information, and he told the Germans.”
During the entire period of the war, Braunschweig recalls hearing only a sin
gle anti-Semitic comment. He was stationed in the Gotthard part of the Réduit, assigned to the staff of the 9th division. “it was the summer of 1942. I sat in our office with my major. I was a lieutenant. He said: ‘i have bad news for you. I just went to the division Staff Chief and proposed to make you First lieutenant at the end of the year. But the Chief said: ‘is this necessary? Just now?’” While the reason was not stated, Braunschweig continued:
“I was flabbergasted. ‘And now?’ ‘don’t worry. Our own boss will be back in a few days, and this guy will be gone.’ I was elated. He went on: ‘May i ask a very personal question?’ ‘Yes, of course.’ ‘Why don’t you Jews like your kids to marry Christians? if a decent Jewish chap wants to marry one of ours, we are very happy.’ But then he roared: ‘But a Catholic will never cross our door!’ He ended up laughing at himself, a bit ashamed.”
If the Major was slightly bigoted, it had no effect on Braunschweig’s promotion. “At the end of the year i had my two stars.”
The Swiss government and the military, as a matter of policy, defended its Jews. The country had long been known as a haven for political and religious dissenters, and its multilingual population came from different faiths. The military branch known as Heer und Haus (Army and Home) published its defense letter No. 26 under the title Die Judenfrage (The Jewish Question) on May 29, 1943. These publications were distributed to civilians as well as to military personnel.26 Letter No. 26 stated:
Article 4 of the Federal Constitution states that every Swiss is equal before the law. Democracy is based on the principle of tolerance, tolerance of different views, but also—and to be sure, nowhere like in Switzerland—vis-à-vis different races, different languages and different religions. Mass, race, and class hatred are fundamentally undemocratic principles. Anti-Semitism is simply intolerance, it is therefore undemocratic and tears at the roots of our democratic way of thinking.27
Swiss and the Nazis Page 18