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WW II Revisionists Turn on the Swiss
Mar. 08, 1999
By international syndicated columnist
& broadcaster Eric Margolis
Zurich - People who rewrite history make my blood boil.
One of the most outrageous distortions I've heard lately
comes from American ambulance-chasing lawyers and
politicians who are currently mining and demeaning the
Holocaust for the sake of fat contingency fees or votes.
Greed or anger had led some revisionists, including a
number of Swiss socialists who were anxious to undermine
their nation's capitalist system, to claim Switzerland
was an active ally of Nazi Germany during World War II,
and was not invaded because it sold out to Hitler.
We shouldn't allow grave misdeeds by Swiss banks to
distort historical facts. Swiss banks kept secret
numbered accounts of many Jews who died in the 1940's
Holocaust; they failed to vigorously seek next of kin to
return money. Such behavior was foul and indefensible.
Swiss banks handled gold sales and other financial
transactions for the German government - perfectly legal
acts in keeping with Switzerland's neutrality. Swiss
bankers had no way of knowing that some of the gold came
from concentration camp victims. Banks in France,
Sweden, Spain, Latin America, and the USA, acted
similarly. To keep our sense of proportion, let us
recall US banks and the US government handled funds from
Stalin's USSR, which had murdered four times more
victims than Hitler even before the war began.
To accuse Switzerland of caving in to Hitler, as
revisionists are doing, is a bare-faced lie worthy of
Dr. Goebbels. Having lived many years in Switzerland, I
have a better understanding of what actually happened
there during the war.
Machiavelli said of the Swiss, `they are the most armed,
and the most free.' In the summer of 1940, the German
High Command had at least three active plans for
outflanking France's great chain of forts, the Maginot
Line, by invading Switzerland. A month after the fall of
France, in June, 1940, Hitler's and Mussolini's high
commands prepared plan `von Menges,' under which Germany
would seize the northern two thirds of Switzerland,
while Fascist Italy annexed the portion south of the
Alps.
`I will show those herdsmen and cheese-makers,' Hitler
vowed.
Far from bowing to German threats, as did most other
European nations, Switzerland, which then had under 4
million inhabitants, mobilized 700,000 soldiers- one
citizen in five. On 25 July, 1940, Swiss
commander-in-chief, General Henri Guisan convoked his
senior officers to the Rutli Meadow, where the Swiss
Confederation, the world's oldest democracy, was
proclaimed in 1291.
The officers knelt, and vowed to defend Switzerland at
all costs. Guisan issued his famous order to the army:
fight to your last cartridge, even if you are alone;
then fight with your bayonets. No surrender; die where
you stand!
The `herdsmen' and `cheesmakers' stood ready to
single-handedly battle Germany and Italy with the same,
legendary `furia helvetica' their pike and
halbard-wielding forefathers had shown against earlier
tyrants, like the Austrians at Sempach and Morgarten, or
the Charles the Bold at Nancy.
Switzerland's mighty `national redoubt' composed of
hundereds of small and large mountain forts, anchored on
the strongholds of Sargans, the Gothard Pass, and St.
Maurice in Valais, was readied for action. These were
extremely powerful forts, as I have seen visiting some
major works, such as Festung Gutsch, overlooking the
Gothard Pass, and Sargans. The Swiss Army's troops
prepared to pull back into the high mountains,
sacrificing 75% of their land, their homes, and, most
significantly, their wives and children, who could not
be fed or sheltered in the mountain forts.
Each Alpine valley and every pass would become a
Thermopylae. The vital rail tunnels connecting Germany
and Italy were readied for destruction. The small Swiss
Air Force shot down 11 Luftwaffe aircraft that overflew
Switzerland; hundreds of pro-Nazi Swiss were arrested,
and at least 17 soldiers shot for treason - by their own
comrades.
As author Stephen Halbrook points out in his excellent
work on this subject, `Target Switzerland,' unlike other
European nations, Switzerland was deterred from caving
in to Nazi Germany by its highly decentralized system of
government. The weak-willed federal government in Bern,
which flirted with capitulation, simply could not order
its independent-minded cantons, nor their citizens, to
give up and surrender to the Nazis - as did centralized
governments in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark,
Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. The rifle clubs to which
many Swiss men belonged became centers of patriotism and
national resistance to Nazi threats.
According to the Swiss Constitution, each man must
perform annual military service and bear arms, which he
keeps at home. In Switzerland's direct democracy, the
right and duty to bear arms is equal to and an integral
part of the sacred right to vote. In the dark days from
1940-1945, Switzerland's armed citizen soldiers would
not accept surrender, or any form of subservience, to
Hitler. Though totally surrounded by Nazi Germany and
Fascist Italy, and dependant on them for oil, food, and
raw materials, tiny Switzerland remained defiant. In the
face of Nazi threats, the Swiss took in 37,000 Jewish
refugees - exactly 37,000 more than were accepted at the
time by the US or Canada.
In June, 1940, as France lay dying, Mussolini attacked
southern France with 350,000 men. The small, 35,000-man
French Army of the Alps, Gen. Olry commanding, dug in
behind the forts of southern arm of the Maginot Line,
extending from Switzerland to the Riviera at Cap Martin.
The guns of the forts crushed the Italian offensive. The
German and Italian high commands were appalled at the
deadly effectiveness of the French mountain forts,
concluding they would suffer huge losses attacking the
powerful Swiss fortress system.
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy did not invade
Switzerland because they needed it, as revisionist
critics currently claim, for money-laundering and gold
trading: Germany also conducted such transactions
through Sweden, Turkey, Portugal, Argentina, and even
the USA which, let's recall, was still a neutral when
the Swiss were shooting down Luftwaffe ME-109's over
Basel.
Switzerland remained free because its citizen soldiers
were ready to fight to the last man against Nazi
Germany.
Copyright: Eric Margolis, 1999
