A Swiss squadron of pursuit planes engaged the Luftwaffe, and a Swiss Me-109 from Olten shot down a German Heinkel-111 twin-engine bomber that had flown near Solothurn in the region of Brugg in northeastern Switzerland.63 This was the first of several instances in which the Swiss used aircraft purchased from Germany to shoot down Luftwaffe planes.
A German aircraft believed to be equipped with cameras flew low over the St. Gallen region in eastern Switzerland, the location of new forts on the “Winkelried Line” (named for the hero of the medieval Battle of Sempach) and was driven off by Swiss fighter fire.64 The Swiss already had 300,000 soldiers in the Winkelried Line facing Germany, and large forces of crack frontier troops rushed to reinforce them. A general mobilization, beginning at dawn the next day (the 11th), was ordered. The communiqué stated that the army was ready “for any eventuality . . . to face any menace from whatever side it may come.”65 It would take the Swiss only one day to mobilize and one more day to get into position.66
“The Swiss were calling up every available male,” wrote William Shirer. “When will it be Switzerland’s turn?”67 The question became when, not whether, the Wehrmacht would attack the Alpine republic.
Before and during the Wehrmacht attack on Belgium, the Netherlands and France on May 10, deception maneuvers created the impression that German forces in the Black Forest would also execute an “Operation South” by striking into Switzerland to bypass the Maginot Line. The ploy operated like a gigantic movie set: during the day, German troops would march toward the Swiss border; at night, they would move back. The next day, the same troops would march toward Switzerland again, giving the impression, day after day, that a gigantic army was moving south. French General Maurice Gamelin thought 30 elite units would encircle his right wing, when in reality there were only 13 German units in the area, mostly reserves. Thus 19 French divisions were uselessly diverted to the south while the Germans attacked in the north.68
A personal account of these events was related to the author by Ernst Leisi, who had been a young rifleman in Company I, 74th Battalion, stationed with frontier troops near Lake Constance. Of the 200 men in his company, Leisi believed there was not a single man with Nazi sympathies. One day a soldier came looking pale holding a telegram. German landing craft were preparing on the other side of Lake Constance, and troops were moving toward Switzerland. Parachutists were expected. German troops would march with great noise south, and would then return north at night. This ruse lasted eight days and fooled both the French and the Swiss. The Germans were so meticulous that they would attack on the hour—or at least so the Swiss thought. According to Leisi, the Swiss troops were full of anxiety every time the hour struck.69
On May 13, news sources reported that the Swiss were keeping a steady armed watch against any move by the Germans, who had heavy concentrations in the southern part of the Black Forest.70 The Swiss suspected that the German intention was to strike between Basel and Lake Constance toward the Rhône Valley of France, and that such a move might bring Italy into the war.71 Swiss fighters patrolled the frontier skies with orders to shoot down any belligerents who ignored a first warning.72
By now, some 700,000 soldiers between the ages of 20 and 60— nearly 20% of the Swiss population—were mobilized. Boy scouts and aged women were posted in rear areas for support duties.73 Hundreds of families were fleeing from Basel, which was within rifle shot of both the German Westwall and the French Maginot forts.74
The same day, it was reported that Mussolini was planning to invade Ticino, Switzerland’s Italian-speaking canton on the southern slopes of the Alps.75 Italian troops were massed at the border. If the assault had taken place, the Swiss planned to retire to the main Alpine passes, from where they could resist indefinitely against large forces with machine guns and mountain artillery.76 The Swiss were concerned that in case of an Italian attack, Germany would seize the Basel area, creating a diversion at the southern end of the Maginot Line. Even while battling Belgium and Holland, the Germans had sufficient troops to thrust through Switzerland between the Jura and the Alps, all the way to Lake Geneva.77 Assuming the Wehrmacht was able to overcome initial Swiss resistance, Germany would then occupy the passes through the Jura into France while the Italian army pursued its own objectives in the south. With Hitler being the primary threat, the argument ran, the Allies would not add to their troubles by declaring war on Italy.78
On May 13, the same day these reports appeared, and as German panzers and paratroopers battled in Holland, Hitler issued a secret directive that noted “the power of resistance of the Dutch Army has proven to be stronger than was anticipated.” Savage bombing strikes were ordered, leading to the destruction of the center of Rotterdam with heavy civilian casualties. The city surrendered, soon to be followed by the entire Dutch Army. The Queen and the government escaped to London. On May 14, just five days after the German attack, Dutch Commander-in-Chief H.G. Winkelmann ordered the troops to surrender their arms. He signed the capitulation the next day.79
Also on that day, the real German plan was revealed. Despite the feints to the south, and the heavy engagements to the north, the main offensive strength of the Wehrmacht—seven panzer divisions under Guderian, Reinhardt and Rommel—had been cutting through Belgian and French frontier units in the Ardennes Forest to emerge at the Meuse River near Sedan in France. The Germans forced a crossing, and the panzers began their drive toward the English Channel. The French had no strategic reserve.80
With the battle for France approaching its climax, the Swiss government ordered that armed local units, composed of men not liable for military service, make themselves ready to protect rear areas in case of paratrooper assaults or German breakthroughs.81 Wehrmacht artillery and motorized units, meanwhile, were being massed across from Schaffhausen on the Rhine and by sundown appeared ready to attack Switzerland. The Swiss Army worked feverishly on the Winkelried Line fortifications. The front page of the New York Times announced: “Thousands of women, boys and aged men volunteered for ‘home-guard’ duty and received rifles and forty cartridges each.”82 The Swiss regular army was estimated to include 600,000 men and the home guards 200,000.83 That evening, fear of invasion swept the country. Many were leaving Zurich; even the American Consul fled Basel.84
With hindsight, we see that France was defeated and Britain expelled from the continent as the result of one massive operation, culminating in the panzer dash to the Channel. However, at that time it was inconceivable that the war would not involve other thrusts, fronts or flanking campaigns. The Seventh German Army was headquartered in Freiburg, just thirty miles from the Swiss border and stood in readiness.85 German divisions were massed at the Rhine, and the attack on Switzerland was expected early on May 15.86
On that May 15, when the German armor went over the Meuse and routed the French at Sedan, General Guisan issued yet another remarkable command to the army. The latest war news demonstrated, he declared, that had the soldiers (he meant the French) resolved to hold fast, they could have stopped hostile advances. Instead, defections allowed the enemy to penetrate through gaps, which quickly widened. Guisan thus recalled the high duty of the individual soldier to resist at his position. The General continued:
Everywhere, where the order is to hold, it is the duty of conscience of each fighter, even if he depends on himself alone, to fight at his assigned position. The riflemen, if overtaken or surrounded, fight in their position until no more ammunition exists. Then cold steel is next. . . . The machine-gunners, the cannoneers of heavy weapons, the artillerymen, if in the bunker or on the field, do not abandon or destroy their weapons, or allow the enemy to seize them. Then the crews fight further like riflemen. As long as a man has another cartridge or hand weapons to use, he does not yield.87
Guisan’s order to the army was published in the press and restored confidence to the civilian population—much of which was understandably close to panic—that Swiss resistance to German attack would be total.88 It informed the Swiss officers and sol
diers that no one was authorized to surrender. Most emphatically, it was a stern warning to the Wehrmacht that, unlike its other enemies, the Swiss would die fighting, even if only with the bayonet.
A similar order had been issued on October 4, 1939.89 The Swiss military histories treat these orders as nothing unusual. So did Swiss soldiers who commented on the orders in interviews a half-century after the war.
Hans Senn, a lieutenant in the frontier troops who would become a lieutenant general in the postwar years, commanded a strongpoint behind the Rhine. He and his men had only rifles and machine guns but no defense against panzers. He stated that the soldiers were prepared to follow the order and sacrifice themselves. Senn commented that the individual soldier was skilled but that unit coordination was inferior—a situation which improved as the war continued.90
Ernst Leisi, whose unit was stationed at the border, recalls that Swiss soldiers thought they would be dead in a day or maybe a week. No one thought of retreat; even if they were surrounded, surrender was out of the question. Everyone had taken the oath at the mobilization site to sacrifice his life for the country. The no-surrender order expressed exactly what the soldiers felt.91
Frontier troops had so much ammunition available that they would have been killed before exhausting their cartridges and resorting to the blade. Later in the war, even after the troops in the Swiss Plateau were moved to the mountains, leaving only the border troops to face the Wehrmacht, the order remained the same: Keep fighting, no retreat, no surrender.92
On the same day as these events, May 15, the Swiss Army Command declared that full mobilization had been achieved in record time and that all units were in place, thereby assuring the protection of Swiss neutrality and independence. It was reported that the populace expressed disappointment about the Netherlands’ surrender but retained confidence in an Allied victory.93 An expected raid by saboteurs on General Guisan’s headquarters did not materialize.94
The Luftwaffe continued its violations of Swiss air space, and on May 16 a German bomber near Winterthur was downed by a Swiss fighter.95 Two German bombers found flying south of Schaffhausen were chased away by other fighters.96
Because of invasion threats, the League of Nations closed its Geneva offices on the evening of May 16. It planned a move to the city of Vichy, France.97
“I believe Hitler will bomb Geneva to destruction just out of personal hate for the League and what Geneva stands for,” wrote William Shirer from Berlin that day. “Today there are reports of more German activity along the Swiss border. The Nazis may break into Switzerland any moment now.” Shirer was worried about his wife Tess and their baby, who were living in Geneva, from which the women and children attached to the American consulate were departing. “The American government has advised Americans in Switzerland to leave immediately for Bordeaux, where they’ll be picked up by American ships.”98
On May 19, the Germans moved their armored cars and light tanks away from the Swiss border. This may have been a ruse to trick the French into sending their mountain forces to the battle then taking place in the north, and the withdrawal may have been only a short distance. The Swiss remained fully mobilized and continued anti–fifth column activity.99
By May 24, the Allied armies in France and Belgium had been cut in two. Counterattacks against the German “panzer corridor” from the south by General Charles de Gaulle had been repulsed, and Rommel had parried a larger attempt by the British from the north. The British had decided that their only hope was to evacuate their army from the continent. On May 25, King Leopold III of Belgium rejected the demands of his cabinet that he go into exile and continue the struggle as commander-in-chief. He refused, saying all was lost. On the 27th, the King sought a truce with the Germans, who replied that the Führer insisted that weapons be laid down unconditionally. Leopold accepted those terms an hour later.
The King’s surrender allowed the Germans to pour through Belgium and deploy overwhelming strength against the French and British who were falling back to their last remaining Channel port, Dunkirk. The Allies were shocked. Winston Churchill would remark that Leopold made the decision “without prior consultation, with the least possible notice, without the advice of his ministers and upon his own personal act.”100 The King did not have the constitutional authority to surrender unilaterally, but did so anyway. The Belgian Army had fought heroically.101
Hitler was able to conquer much of Europe by bluffing the central authority of various countries into capitulation. In some cases, after a few meetings and threats, Hitler’s henchmen convinced the political leaders of a nation to surrender and to direct their armed forces not to resist. In other cases, the surrender would come after a brief fight, for which the armies were unprepared. There was no need to order the people not to resist, because they were, by and large, unarmed.
By contrast, Switzerland had a weak central government; as a direct democracy, power was decentralized. The first unit of authority was the individual and the family. Then came the village or city, then the canton, and finally the Federal Parliament. Power was exercised from the bottom up, not the top down.
The creation of the Ortswehren, or local defense units, exemplified the Swiss policy of total resistance by the entire population. By the end of 1939, the Swiss Army command had been studying how the strength of the people could be used for the national defense. The Wehrmacht operations against Denmark and Norway in April 1940 gave the army command insights into Germany’s new techniques of warfare. The command wished to avoid the potential degeneration of a “total popular resistance” into an “unorganized popular uprising.” That would have given the aggressor the occasion to treat each resistance fighter as an outlaw sniper, meaning that, if captured, he would not be protected by the international rules governing warfare and could be shot on the spot.102
At a Swiss Army conference on April 29, Chief of the General Staff Jakob Huber expressed the need to have volunteer Ortswehren to reinforce the troops and to combat saboteurs and paratroopers, declaring that “only a total defense can oppose total war.” General Guisan noted that the Munitions Administration had a surplus of 70,000 old rifles with ammunition that could be put at the disposal of the Ortswehren.103
On May 4, the General applied to the Federal Council for immediate formal recognition of these armed reinforcements, whose tasks would be “prevention of sabotage, immediate combat against any foreign invader, maintenance of silence, and security in the community.” The Federal Council gave its authorization three days later.104 The Ortswehren were instituted none too soon, for the Germans launched their Western offensive on May 10, at which time the Swiss also expected to be attacked.
The Ortswehren not only filled actual military needs, but also satisfied the desire of a growing number of Swiss to make a personal contribution to the defense of the country. These local units, helping to unify the country militarily and politically, were an immediate success, and volunteers were plentiful. They consisted primarily of former soldiers no longer liable for service, the Jungschützen (young shooters), those who were not capable of military service but who were capable marksmen, those with emergency service duties, and others who had been exempt from the military, as well as suitable women who were in the medical service and fire brigades.105 The recruits were so numerous that arms and equipment were insufficient.106
Later, the Federal Council promulgated the administrative aspects of the Ortswehren. As members of the army, they were sworn in and instructed in military law. Those without an old military uniform wore civilian clothing. To protect against treatment as guerrillas, those without uniforms received the Swiss armband. It was decreed that the Ortswehr soldiers would arm themselves either with their own rifles or carbines or, if available from army reserve stocks, the Model 1889 long rifle would be handed over.107
On May 28, German Minister Köcher complained to Berlin that the Swiss military was disbursing munitions and organizing local groups to wage partisan war if invaded. Guisan was again
sending a strong message to the Nazis.108 On the same day, another message was also being sent: The military penal code was amended to provide for the death penalty for betrayal of military secrets and for treason. It was applicable to soldiers and civilians alike.109
Eventually the Ortswehren came to number 200,000 and would have provided armed civilian resistance in every locality of Switzerland, no matter how remote. The historical significance of the Ortswehren was that they demonstrated the fundamental national attitude to resist an invasion by the Nazi dictatorship at all costs.110
As a neutral, Switzerland was entitled by international law to trade with any belligerent. The international treaty of October 13, 1909, had required the Swiss to allow transportation of commodities other than arms between Germany and Italy on the Simplon and St. Gotthard railroads.111 This traffic was absolutely vital to Switzerland’s economy. The Allies protested, but isolated Switzerland had no choice. However, the Swiss made clear to the Germans that any invasion would result in the demolition of the Simplon and St. Gotthard tunnels and railways. Unlike the Swedes, the Swiss disallowed the passage of German troops across their territory. Swiss customs guards and American spies effectively enforced this prohibition.112
On April 25, 1940, the Allies and the neutrals signed the War Trade Agreement. The Allies guaranteed the transit of Swiss imports across their territories and the seas. The Swiss agreed to limit export of certain items to Germany to agreed quantities.113
On May 27, trade negotiations began in Berlin. The Germans strongly protested Swiss exports of war materials to France and England, and sought the abrogation of the Swiss-Allied War Trade Agreement.114 Germany attempted to enforce its will on June 18 by prohibiting all coal exports to Switzerland, partly in retaliation for the Swiss shooting down of Luftwaffe aircraft.115 With their economy heavily dependent on the import of coal, now only available from Germany, the Swiss were pressured into making concessions to the Germans such as increased deliveries of arms, aluminum, and dairy products. However, they upheld their right as a neutral to export arms to the Allies and refused to abrogate the War Trade Agreement.116 The Germans even agreed with the compensation deals under which the Swiss could import German parts, manufacture them into machine tools and other items necessary for war, and export them to the Allies.117
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