Swiss and the Nazis

by Stephen Halbrook

  The Swiss Federal Council was roundly accused by the Nazis of tolerating Swiss press attacks against “decent German comrades.” One Nazi publication claimed that the attacks began in 1933, when “the Jew Moses Silberoth from Galicia instigated the lying attacks in the Marxist press in Davos.”

  The Nazis found it an opportune event to argue that Jews are dangerous and must be disarmed. An example is the book by Diewerge Wolfgang entitled Ein Jude hat geschossen… Augenzeugenbericht vom Mordprozess David Frankfurter (“A Jew Has Shot… eyewitness report of the Murder Trial of David Frankfurter”).5

  The Swiss media, on the other hand, sought mild treatment of Frankfurter by the court, spreading the prevailing opinion of Swiss Jews that the murder was an understandable reaction to anti-Semitism in Germany. Swiss newspapers, without regard to political alignment, still condemned the assassination. They were united in the conclusion that the consequences would adversely affect the Jews. Even so, they attributed responsibility for Gustloff’s murder not so much to Frankfurter, but to the rulers of the Third Reich and to National Socialist ideology.

  The court itself admitted into evidence documents demonstrating the Nazi persecution of Jews. In light of the trial, the criminal character of Nazism could not be ignored. The episode confirmed the Nazi threat to the Swiss and reinforced the necessity of armed resistance against National Socialism.

  In the end, the judges found that Frankfurter was ill and, because of his weak nervous system, not fully responsible for his act. Frankfurter was then sentenced to 18 years. Although some Swiss cantons still had the death penalty, in Graubünden the maximum penalty was 20 years of incarceration. Most Swiss were satisfied with Frankfurter’s punishment, though some on the left said it was too harsh.

  Frankfurter’s assassination of Gustloff exacerbated Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitic policies. When a young Polish-German Jew named Herschel Grynszpan shot a staff member of the German embassy in Paris in 1938, he was dubbed “a second Frankfurter,” and his act was the excuse to instigate the infamous Kristallnacht, a general pogrom against Germany’s Jews.

  Over the following years, Frankfurter’s attorneys and the Swiss press sought his release from prison. On June 1, 1945, Frankfurter was released early and emigrated to Israel, where he worked in the Ministry of Security and Defense. A film about Frankfurter and Gustloff entitled “David and Goliath” appeared in 1969. Frankfurter died in 1982.

  In 2000, when this author visited Davos, there was a discussion brewing about whether to erect a monument to Frankfurter, whose deed is still viewed by many as a heroic act.6

  Less than five years after the 1936 assassination of Wilhelm Gustloff, another watershed event occurred in Graubünden, the mountainous canton which encompasses Davos. The canton’s seat of government is in Chur. It was there that on November 18, 1940, Dr. Gaudenz Canova, president of the cantonal legislature, opened the session with a remarkable speech to the deputies.

  Canova was the same political leader who in 1935 had called for Gustloff’s deportation and the dissolution of his local Nazi party before the Swiss national parliament.

  Now, he would speak again before his countrymen, but his characteristic fire-and-brimstone style was never before so well received. Indeed, his speech would have a galvanizing effect in the canton and throughout Switz er land. Newspapers refrained from publishing the speech because it was considered inflammatory and might contribute to provoking a Nazi attack.

  While widely known, Canova’s speech would not be published in the press until decades after the war.7 The speech was a formidable indictment of Nazi aggression and its insidious techniques of subversion and conquest. While not naming names, the words of this indictment also included the Soviet Union, with its grisly record of intentional famine, purges, and attacks on Finland and Poland. The following are excerpts from that groundbreaking speech:8

  “For the third time, you have appeared here in session since the day in which the furies of the most terrible war that the world has ever experienced were unleashed against mankind. It was launched by those whose highest law is their own self-interest, who have elevated power to the highest right, who thoughtlessly lie, slander, murder, and use the most brutal violence to reinforce their power. On their command, their troops attacked peaceful people, murdering, stealing and burning, and threw them into unspeakable sorrow and misery, into abysmal mental and material need. What were yesterday peaceful, happy countries are today gruesome places of devastation, and their inhabitants have fallen into a sea of blood and tears.

  “Our country yet persists in the highest danger, and the heaviest fears about our freedom and independence weigh on our people and authorities. Yet we remain saved from the worst. Our soldiers have not undergone the ordeal by fire, and our wives and children have not had to flee as white as ghosts into the air-raid shelters. Our civilian population has not been torn into hundreds and thousands of shreds or beaten into cripples. We also suffer no serious lack of essentials. We are yet privileged by fate….

  “A tremendous danger stands before us: The danger of the Fifth Column. By that, I mean not only the traitors, spies and saboteurs…. But the real danger is that of self disownment, the danger of accepting our fate (Anpassung), letting ourselves be forced into line (Gleichschaltung), and accepting annexation (Anschlussbereitschaft)—it is the danger of mental treason and defeatism.”

  Here, much is lost in translation. The terms “Anpassung,” “Gleich schaltung” and “Anschlussbereitschaf” were key Nazi code words that were applied to countries marked for attack and obliteration. While the Nazi threat was the greatest—with the fall of France, they were poised to attack Switzerland from several directions—Canova’s following words also applied to Fascist Italy and Soviet Russia:

  “We also reject dictatorship in every form and defiantly declare ourselves for democracy. We hate every tyranny, with whatever cover it disguises itself.

  “We surely understand military neutrality and are willing to adhere to it. But we know no neutrality of the spirit or of basic convictions. We know to distinguish between good and evil, and our sense leans toward the good. We can distinguish between right and injustice, between freedom and slavery, between humanity and brutal power, between culture and barbarity.

  “Above all, we want to accept deprivations of every kind that the economic and military defense of our nation requires, with silence and without complaints and moaning. Perhaps very bad days are in store for us. Whatever may come, however, we desire to await the future with courage and confidence. Our soldiers have done their duty at the border and are resolved to do it further—even if it means sacrificing their lives. Throughout the country we gratefully thank them and remember the manly words of Winkelried: ‘Brothers, provide for my wife and children.’”

  Again, this last sentence loses something in the translation. When spoken in German, “Eidgenossen, sorget für meine Frau und meine Kinder” recalls a moving episode in Swiss military history. A Swiss military communication had recently reminded the soldiers of the battle of Sempach in 1386, where 1,400 Swiss peasants defeated 6,000 of the far better equipped knights of Austrian Duke Leopold III.9 With both armies pushing each other without an opening, Arnold Winkelried drew an armful of enemy pikes into his torso, allowing his comrades to break through the enemy lines and decimate the invaders. In the moment before Winkelried sacrificed his life for the good of his country, he asked that his brothers-in-arms “provide for my wife and children.” Canova’s mention of this moving event tapped into powerful feelings of Swiss pride and evoked strong historical memory.

  Canova’s robust speech brought forth prolonged applause. Although newspapers did not publish it pursuant to the rules of self-censorship set by Federal authorities, his courageous words were widely circulated and inspired the populace. The nominal censorship allowed the delegates to hear the anti-Nazi message and to communicate it to their constituents, while at the same time preventing the open publication that might provoke a German atta
ck.

  The Swiss government was afraid to allow the speech to be circulated in public. This strange but understandable mix of anti-Nazism and fear reveals a paradigm that prevailed throughout much of life in Switzerland during World War II.

  Today, Davos is best known as the site of a prestigious annual conference of international leaders. Each year, thousands of politicians, business leaders, economists and multinational agency officials descend upon this peaceful ski resort to participate in the World economic Forum. Before and during World War II, however, Davos was a hotbed of Swiss-German tension. With its hotels and sanitaria filled with well-connected Germans, it was a potential flashpoint for violence and intrigue.

  Davos was the center of Nazi fifth column activity in Switzerland and thus a focus of Swiss intelligence operations. It is no surprise that Gustloff was assassinated there. Or that Canova gave his speech in Chur, the capital of the same canton.

  Toward the end of the war, American bombers damaged in raids on Germany, some pursued by Luftwaffe fighters, appeared frequently in the skies over Davos. American airmen, particularly officers, who managed to land or to crash without being killed in neutral Switzerland were interned in camps around the town.

  Dr. Paul Müller, who was mentioned earlier, knows the interesting story of how Davos became so popular for Jews and Germans seeking a place to convalesce.10

  “In 1848, a student who had joined the revolution in Germany fled here and finished his studies. He became a doctor and noticed that tuberculosis was very rare in Davos. That is the origin of Davos as a curing place. There was also a Jewish sanitarium here, and Swiss Jews lived here.”

  Müller remembers what it was like living in Davos as the Nazi influence began to creep in.

  “I went to school in Davos in 1921–29, then to the Cantonal College in Chur for two years. The German school in Davos was originally built for German children with tuberculosis. Everyone here went to the German school because our parents thought it had better standards. It had between one and two hundred pupils, 80 percent of whom were German. None of my friends had any sympathy for Hitler. We were strictly anti-Nazi. My friends were all from higher-class families. I knew only one person who was a Nazi Party member.

  “The German doctors here did not like Nazism. Others did. My father had a dental office and my mother worked as his receptionist. Mrs. Friese, the wife of the German sanitarium manager, said she would like to have a child by Adolf Hitler. Mother was horrified.

  “Some friends had problems with the Germans here. There was a feeling of unease, but not much open trouble. I didn’t like the Germans—no one in Switzerland did. There were very few sympathizers.”

  By 1940, most Swiss expected a Nazi invasion. It was just a question of when. With its large German population, Davos swirled with rumors. Swiss living in Davos in 1940 must have anticipated Wehrmacht paratroopers raining from the sky, as they had done in Holland and France. (The surrounding mountains made a Panzer attack out of the question.)

  “In May 1940, I was in the Army in the Medical Corps. My wife and I thought, ‘It will soon be our turn.’ Locally, we discussed resistance. The Nazis had a blacklist of Swiss and vice versa. Rumors flew around. Shooting ranges were always open for practice. Ammunition was limited, but there was enough. We had rifles, and I also had a Luger pistol. Father was in the Local Defense (Ortswehr). Swiss people openly discussed the German threat, although not with Germans. We were well prepared.”

  Indeed, they were. Today one of the world’s leading ski resorts, the Davos area would have been treacherous for any enemy, particularly during the winter when heavy snow made avalanches an ever-present threat.

  Prof. Marcel de Quervain, who was born in 1915, came to Davos in 1942 as a member of the Swiss Federal Commission for Avalanche research. While the use of avalanches as a weapon to bury large numbers of enemy troops may have been problematic in practice, the Swiss intently studied avalanche control.

  De Quervain was a first lieutenant and later a captain in the military’s mobile transmission troops—who operated radio, telephone, and teletype—and he well recalls what it was like in Davos preparing for war. His accounts of life in the mountains and, particularly, avalanche control are fascinating.

  “In the army, I knew only one soldier who was in favor of the Nazis. All the rest were either pro-Allies or neutral. I was on the staff of a division in 1940. We were really afraid the Germans would come in the spring and summer of 1940 and in 1943 when the Germans were in Italy. The feeling was that our country wouldn’t surrender. Those were hard times. In the army we got 1 franc per day, and it was eventually increased to 1.5 or 2 francs per day.11

  “In Davos, I worked at the station on Weissfluhjoch, which has an elevation of 2,700 meters (8,800 feet). The cable car went up and down once per day. In the lab and outside, we studied the physical relations of snow and ice, along with methods of preventing avalanches. The knowledge of how to release avalanches was well developed long before the war and could be applied for military uses. At times, avalanches were created to make the countryside accessible.

  “Planting dynamite was the cheapest method of releasing avalanches. Mortars could also be used, but each shell cost 100 Swiss francs and 10 shells were needed, so it would cost 1,000 Swiss francs to start an avalanche with mortars. One can also bomb from the air if the weather is not too bad. The most primitive method is to send people into the starting zone to release the avalanche under their feet. But it is hard to get to starting areas, and the avalanche could take you with it! You just find the right spot and start jumping. An avalanche might start.

  “In World War I, avalanches killed 10,000 soldiers in the Austrian-Italian campaign. They began preventative avalanche shooting and releasing avalanches on the enemy’s side. It was not too successful.

  “The avalanche service in the Swiss army functioned to warn and to engage in preventative avalanche shooting. Near the end of the war it became a full avalanche service company. It remains so today.”

  Dr. Christian Schmid, who was born in 1923, also resided in Davos during the pre-war and war years. He too recalls a life in Davos marked by strong sentiments of anti-Nazism and preparation for war. Although he was not in the mountains planning avalanches, the picture he paints is remarkably similar to that of de Quervain and Müller.

  “Individuals said anything they wanted against Germany. Organizations had to be more careful. When a local college announced a benefit concert for refugees, the Chur newspaper didn’t report it until two days later. Apparently, officers had phoned the newspaper editor and ordered it not to publicize the event. The Swiss military was afraid that Germany would think Switzerland was being too nice to its refugees.12

  “We used normal radio to communicate. After 1938 or’39, we also had telephone radio, which was required in the mountains. There were clear programs on four or five stations of Swiss radio and some German and English news. BBC had a German-language broadcast. If the English said something against Germany, the censor would turn off the program for about 30 seconds. This was in the period 1940–42. Afterwards, the censors stopped doing it.

  “My relatives who were soldiers said that if the Germans came we would form guerrilla bands in specified places in the Alps. I joined the army in 1943. The food was bad. An officer once asked whether anyone had a complaint. I responded: ‘I’m hungry. There is not enough food.’ The officer replied: ‘You’re right. I’m hungry too!’ We had only potatoes… and cheese once a week. All servicemen slept on straw, which was dusty. But the generation of men in the active service endured.”

  With the German blitzkrieg of 1940, Swiss Jews in particular sensed the danger. Müller remembers:

  “We had neighbors, Swiss Jews, who contemplated fleeing. They were members of the same family as Captain Dreyfus, the French officer falsely accused of spying for Germany at the turn of the century. The Dreyfus family of Basel had purchased a Jewish sanatorium in Davos. Two other sanitaria were also used by Jews. They
were treated by Swiss, not German, doctors.”

  Before long, however, many Jews were fleeing to Switzerland, as opposed to away from it, to escape the persecution in the rest of Europe which culminated in the Holocaust.

  “I often met refugees who came as patients before the war,” says Müller. Additionally, “thousands of Jewish refugees were brought over as patients between 1945 and the end of the 1950s. The Americans brought concentration camp victims here.”

  By 1943, Davos and the surrounding area had also become a “convalescing place” for a different type of guest. Because it was a convenient route for American bombers flying from and to bases in Italy to targets in southern Germany, this path through the Canton of Graubünden saw more than its share of distressed American aircraft.

  “We heard bombers frequently,” Müller remarks. “Once I saw about five American bombers being pursued by German fighters—at least three Luftwaffe pursuit planes for each bomber. The Germans always came from behind, below, or above, never from the front. The bombers, with crews of eight to 10 airmen, flew slowly and the faster German fighters swarmed them like mosquitoes.

  “I had a lot of contact with the American fliers because my commander knew I spoke English well. They even came to Father’s dental office to chat with my American wife. The American officers, who stayed in the Palace Hotel, came from either downed aircraft or over the frontier. The people here liked them. The Americans were also free to travel. It was easy to escape, although it was rumored that one was caught by the Germans. Those who did escape successfully would have to sneak through occupied France. They all left in 1945 anyway.”

  Müller rattles off names of his old American friends, with whom he has had reunions. One acquaintance was Dan Boone, whose B-17 landed in Dübendorf in 1943 and who, in recent years, helped sponsor a monument to the American fliers in Kurpark—a peaceful park area that is, ironically, not far from Gustloff’s apartment.