Of course, freedom of expression was not available everywhere. Among oppressed populations, as in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, the slightest hint of resistance was forbidden and systematically rooted out. With censors and party enforcers lurking on every corner and public news nothing but a party line, words had to be ambiguous. Praise of the existing system was expected, and speaking one’s mind on any topic, however trivial or innocuous, was dangerous, even fatal. No one was safe from state censors. So there was a long, spiritually enervating conspiracy of silence.
Switzerland, on the other hand, is the oldest democracy in the world, and its traditions of freedom—of speech and of the press—were firmly established ages ago. Swiss at every level of society have always taken great pride in debating issues publicly. While a limited press censorship was deemed necessary during the war, the man on the street could say anything he wished. As a result, the oral history of Switzerland before and during the Second World War is both lively and informative. Switzerland was “open” at a time when Germany, Russia, France, Italy and other nations were closed societies.
So what were the Swiss saying as the Nazi colossus closed in around them? Switzerland’s geistige Landesverteidigung (spiritual national defense) against Nazism was as important as actual military preparations, and extended through all levels of Swiss society. Moreover, the vocabulary of Widerstand (resistance) was anything but polite. The Swiss used many insulting terms in reference to Nazi Germany, even as the military odds grew more dangerous and the Swiss found themselves the last remaining democracy on the continent.
Repeating those terms today should by no means reflect on Swiss attitudes toward modern Germans. Though rooted in history, they also do not accurately reflect Swiss sentiment prior to the Nazi period. During the Great War, for example, much of the population was philosophically as well as politically neutral, at least at the start. Unfortunately, pejorative terms about any national group often fail to distinguish between the leaders and the led, and when Hitler rose to power in Ger many it became a delicate if not impossible task to distinguish between Nazis and the broader mass of German people who supported or tolerated Nazi rule. But one thing is clear: the derogatory language used by many Swiss to describe the Ger mans under Hitler reflected a widespread rejection of National Socialism. Hitler’s racist, expansionist credo, driven by personality-cult politics, was anathema to everything the Swiss had stood for since the founding of their independent confederation in 1291.
Children picked up their parents’ attitudes. For instance, the earliest memory of Hitler’s assumption of power in 1933 by then eleven-year old Bruno Capol of Windisch is characteristic. Like graffiti spray-painted on buildings today, “so at the very beginning of Hitler’s takeover we found chalk-cartoons showing a man hanging at the gallows with a swastika and the following words:”
Heil, heil, heil! Hail, hail, hail!
Hitler soll an’s Seil! Hang Hitler on a nail!
Und es tönt an allen Ecke, Shout it loudly to the sky,
Adolf Hitler soll verrecke! 2 Adolf Hitler’s going to die!
This singsong schoolboy rhyme uses the vulgar term “verrecke,” which means to die miserably.3 In English the term “croak” approximates the insulting meaning of the German. The Nazis used the term against Jews.4 Swiss graffiti turned this insult upside down to say: Let Hitler croak!
Of course, at first Hitler was just another voice out of the raging anarchy that was Germany. Ruling coalitions were formed and almost as quickly fell. For all anyone knew the so-called “Führer’s” government would be just as chaotic and short-lived. The following “Joke of Little Hansli,”5 which circulated in Switzerland during this early period, expressed in Swiss dialect the strong possibility of a quick change:
Eusi Katz het Kaetzli kha, Our cats had kittens,
Sieben a der Zahl. seven in the count.
Sechs sind fuer d’Hitler g’sie, Six are for Hitler,
Und Eis isch Radikal. and one is a Radical.
A few weeks later, Hansli was asked to repeat his verse, but he recited a revised version as follows:
Eusi Katz het Kaetzli kha Our cats had kittens,
Sieben a der Zahl. seven in the count.
Eis isch fuer d’Hitler g’sie, One is for Hitler,
Und sechs sind Radikal. and six are Radicals.
“But Hansli,” the joke continued, “you told it differently before!” He replied: “Inzwischen sind ihre Augen uf g’ange.” (“Meantime, their eyes have opened.”) So there was clearly a “before” and an “after.” Germans recognized Hitler’s real agenda too late, and by then even “radical” solutions were no longer possible. Hitler’s regime would not fall, and those who opposed it were rapidly silenced or disappeared into the camps. The Nazi consolidation of power moved with whirlwind speed, and the implications were recognized as ominous, as expressed in the following anecdote.
At the 1934 federal shooting competition in Freiburg, Peter Voser’s father was firing when suddenly a “Special edition” of the newspaper arrived. “Hindenburg is dead, Hitler is Reichspräsident!” screamed the headlines. Voser recalls: “The men dropped their pistols, went over to the tent and discussed the event, saying ‘Hitler, this Sau (pig), now he is fully in power, now there will be war, there will be war….’”6
In German “Sau” is a very strong term, akin to “cochon” in French or “bastard” in English. It carries the meaning of “dirty swine” or “son-of-a-bitch.”7 And it is frequently used as a prefix to convey disgust. But the whole Swiss vocabulary of revulsion and disgust rapidly came into play. Consider the following. “Schabe,” which means “cockroach,”8 sounds similar to “Schwabe,” which means “Swabian,”9 a person from southern Germany. “Schwaben” (Swabia in English) is the region and medieval principality in southwestern Germany chiefly in the area comprising modern Baden, Wurttemberg, and West Bavaria.10 So the wordplay was not long in coming, wordplay that moved easily through the mountains that separate high German from the Swiss German dialects.
A recollection by Swiss Füsilier (Infantryman) Wenk, Stabskp. (Headquarters Company), Füsilier Battallion 69, entitled “D’Schwabe chöme!” (“The Swabians are coming!”)11 contains the following:
In January 1940 we were set up in Höri near Bülach. Our headquarters were in a small, old farmhouse. The bedroom was on the upper floor. We had to leave our backpacks, clothes, shoes and everything else in the farmer’s small living room. But we always had our weapons with us because at that time the situation was dangerous.
In the next paragraph in Wenk’s Swiss German account, “Swabian” is used both as a contemptuous word for Germans and for cockroaches. “Nun, eines frühen Morgens wird Alarm geschlagen, und einer ruft: ‘D’Schwabe sind ibroche!’” This passage reads in English:
Early one morning, someone sounded the alarm by calling: “The Swabians have broken in!” it was pitch dark, and we all grabbed our weapons and ran downstairs. A soldier was standing there, laughing as he turned on the light. In fact, the Swabians had broken in, but the “Swabians” were only “cockroach” Swabians. And I think there were more of these “invaders” than there ever were Germans. Cockroaches were everywhere, in shoes, backpacks, pants, socks. It took us more than an hour to throw out the enemy. We had been lucky once again.
Behind lighthearted wordplays like these, of course, was a very serious threat. Whether humorous or dead serious, derogatory slang expressions were increasingly directed against the Nazi regime and its supporters. Colonel Rudolf Ursprung explained:
In 1939 I was studying law at the University of Berne. From 1939 to 1945, the year of my graduation, I served a total of about 23 months on active duty. I spent most of my active duty as lieutenant with the border protection unit in Extzgen, a small village on the Rhine.
The soldiers were forced to dig trenches not far from home, to cut trees to build positions, to sleep on straw instead of working and living on their farms, and all this because the damned “dirty Swa
bians” were terrorizing the world from across the Rhine. In our area we called the Germans “Swabians,” and the Swabians were put at the same level as Hitler and the National Socialists. The anger against Hitler knew no bounds, and we cursed the situation created by him and the hardship in which we found ourselves because of him.12
Germans were often called “Sauschwabe”13 or in Swiss German “Sauschwob,” meaning “Swabian pig.” A Swiss soldier recalled that they clipped off the ends of bullets issued for their rifles to make the bullets create deadlier wounds against the expected Wehrmacht invaders. His uncle stationed at Lake Constance quipped, “We have no chance, but we would rather die than fall in the hands of the Schwabe.”
Dr. Ramon Meier, a 12-year-old boy at the time, recalled the time of the Nazi blitzkrieg against France and Western Europe:14
During the second general mobilization [May 1940] the cadets and students serving in the auxiliary service were given a room at the local headquarters in Glarus. While we were waiting for new orders in the room, we were looking out of the window and noticed a German Nazi that we knew walking by. We cried “Sauschwab” [German pig] which caused the insulted man to head back into the headquarters. But we had already left through the back door. We were in the vicinity of the train station when an auxiliary service soldier in a car stopped us and ordered us to go back to the headquarters. He said that if we did not do as ordered he would call the police. He then reported us to the commander and we anxiously awaited our punishment. To our surprise and that of the “Häschers” [bloodhound] (the German having left in the meantime), the major only said: “Boys, you were right, just don’t say it out loud in the street.”
Max Salm, a teenager at the time, remembers: “in 1940, to counter any potential fifth column, the young were encouraged to join the Ortswehr [Local Defense]. We had no training except shooting courses from age 15. We were given old Model 1889 rifles. We wanted to shoot as many Ger mans as possible. ‘Sauswabian’ was a generally used term for Germans.”15
Verena Rothenhäusler lived 10 kilometers from the Rhine, heard alarms at night, and lived in almost constant fear of hostilities. She was in the Landsdienst, helped farmers after school and during holidays, and had been trained by her father to shoot a rifle—which she would do if the Nazis came. “My mother called a German ‘Saunazi’ [Nazi pig], a term which could also apply to a Swiss with Nazi sympathies.”16
Right across the border in Germany, any speech or writing which could be interpreted, however indirectly, as opposition to the Nazis brought immediate arrest and punishment. University student Sophie Scholl was beheaded in 1943 because she and her White Rose cell of resisters in Munich had “most vulgarly defamed the Führer, thereby giving aid to the enemy of the Reich and weakening the armed security of the nation.”17 They had distributed flyers questioning the war in Russia after Stalingrad, at a time when most Germans knew virtually nothing of the full extent of the disaster there.
And what about the Germans and German sympathizers in Switzerland? Peter Voser recollects of daily life in Baden, Switzerland, in those days:
The Jews were not being harassed, but the Swabians had to pay attention. It was not good to be a German in Switzerland at the time. A German who was criticizing Hitler was okay, but a German who was speaking in support of Hitler would get harassed. At the Gymnasium we had a German who was an ardent Nazi. We irritated him constantly because of that.18
“I was 13 in 1939,” remembers Dr. Hans Widmer. “i grew up in Orlikon near the railroad station. Father called Germans ‘Boche,’ a derogatory French word.19 He never called them Germans.”20 Other sources note use of the term “Sal Boche” (dirty German), which was used by French-speaking persons in Switzerland.21
Georges-André Chevallaz, who would later become the President of the Swiss Confederation, recalled: “i was born in 1915. My father was a teacher at Verdu near Lake Neuchâtel at the border with France. Every one was against Hitler. A Nazi was called a ‘boche.’ I had no fear about the Germans coming, because I was young and I hated Germany. I remember the April 1940 order that any surrender announcement must be regarded as enemy propaganda. This was the policy for the entire war.”22
Swiss resistance to potential tyrants from the north was not new. It went back hundreds of years, and traces of a colorful vocabulary can be found in Swiss writings dating to the first Reich. In 1493 the imperial Diet of Worms attempted to impose a common penny tax on the Swiss and to subject them to the jurisdiction of an imperial Chamber of Justice. This sparked a conflict, known as the Swabian War, that would result in the Swiss winning their independence from the Holy Roman Empire.
The enmity was mutual. Professor Luck writes: “in south Germany, pamphlets and poems insulting to the Swiss appeared, and the name Schwabe (cockroach), with contemptuous overtones, found its way about.”23 in the Swabian War of 1499, the Swiss fought the German and Austrian Landsknechte (heavy infantry) of Maximilian i, a Habsburg and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Just as in World War ii, the Swiss built fortifications all along the Rhine River and stayed armed and ready for immediate mobilization.24
In the winter of 1498–99, soldiers shouted insults back and forth across the Rhine. Albert Winkler explains the incident that sparked the first fighting as follows:
At Gutenberg, the Landsknechte mocked the Swiss by composing unchristian songs that offended the pious Confederates. The final affront came when the German mercenaries offended the Swiss’ sexual preferences. The Swabians displayed a cow and called to the Confederates to come over and make love to the animal. The men then mooed like cows and calves. Shortly, the Swiss leader from the state of Uri, Heini Wolleb, took a group of men across the river and burned a house and stall. At this point, the war began in earnest.25
Such ancient verbal hostilities came repeatedly into play during the Third Reich. A Wehrmacht veteran states that, during World War ii, the Germans called the Swiss “Kuhschweizer” (cow Swiss).26 indeed, “Schweizer” is defined in part as: “(a) Swiss, (b) dairyman.”27 Swiss border residents recollect “Kuhschweizer” and “Schwaben” being yelled across the Rhine.28 This had been going on for almost five centuries.
Germans residing in Switzerland used a similar insult. Armin Camenisch, who was born in 1933, remembers: “The Germans called the Swiss by a very old name: ‘Kuhschweizer’ (cow Swiss). In Chur, a man named Ude Kirchmeyer was thought to be the future Gauleiter [governor] when the Germans invaded. His son was always fighting, and I once kicked him in the stomach. When the war ended, the Swiss seized the Nazis and sent them to the border with Austria, turning them over to the French.”29
The following joke recalled by Gustav and Margot Durrer about a border exchange told during World War ii probably had an equivalent in the 1499 war:
One morning, at the Swiss-German border, a German soldier handed over a package to a Swiss soldier. When the package was opened, it was found to contain cow manure (Kuh Fladda). The next morning, at the same border, the Swiss soldier handed over a beautifully wrapped package, containing a big piece of Swiss cheese, and a note: “each country sends its best!”30
Such catcalls and insults often preceded real conflicts. And these were bloody indeed as the feisty and increasingly independent Swiss resisted attempts to bring them into the expansive northern “Reich.” Combat in the Swabian war involved the use of the “hedgehog” defense and the “push of pike” between massed forces. At Triboltingen, the Swiss claimed to have killed 1,300 Swabians and sustained casualties of only 20. At Frastanz, the Swiss reported 3,000 enemy dead to only 11 Swiss.31 At Calven, 4,000 Austrians died to 2,000 Swiss. The battle at Dornach resulted in 3,000 Landsknechte dead to 500 Confederates. “We are the peasants who punish the nobles,” bragged the Swiss.32 These statistics, whether accurate or not, would inspire the Swiss to resist outsiders for centuries to come.
In the Swabian War, the Swiss emerged victorious and established their independence. Beaten on the battlefield, Maximilian agreed in a peace treaty signe
d at Basel to abrogate the tax and the judicial imposition. The independence of the Helvetic Confederation was recognized de facto. There would be no Grossdeutschland. However, the existence of this independent Confederation remained a thorn in the side of the rulers to the north. And the Swiss example was not lost on others. At the time of the peasant uprisings against the church and the nobility that swept southern Germany like wildfire after Luther, this song was heard:
The peasants tried to learn
Evil tricks from the Swiss
And become their own lords.33
The peasant rebellion was ruthlessly put down, but the Swiss “porcupine” over the years was successful. The image stuck, and put fear into the hearts of many a would-be invader who risked battle in the deadly mountain passes. The almost mythic horde of Swiss pike men resembling a porcupine took on a new meaning during World War ii, as the whole country bristled with armaments, fortifications, and barbed wire.
The Führer himself was well aware of how the Swiss used the derogatory term “Schwaben.” At their June 2, 1941, conference in the Brenner Pass, Hitler and Mussolini discussed carving up Switzerland. “The Führer characterized Switzerland as the most despicable, wretched people and national entity. The Swiss were the mortal enemies of the new Germany, but… Die Schwaben am Ende den Krieg doch noch gewinnen würden” [the Swabians would win the war].”34 Then, if not before, the “Schwaben” would pay the Swiss back in kind.
The thousand-year Reich, of course, lasted only a dozen years. The contempt for this Reich and its Führer is expressed in the following joke which the Durrers remember being told in Switzerland:
Swiss and the Nazis Page 20