I bet this has already been answered in one way or another, but how exactly does official state neutrality work in practice during a ‘world war’ type event where most, if not all, countries REALLY DO have a stake one way or another (regardless of their official stance)?
The example I’m thinking of is Switzerland in WWII… both allied and axis diplomats etc were allowed in and out of the country, so how did they not just begin beating the crap out of each other each time they ran across each other? It’s not as if Switzerland had a preponderance of force over either the Allies or the Axis, and could therefore threaten action on their own if shenanigans were detected, and its not as if small countries haven’t been invaded to be crossed/used as battlegrounds before.
From another perspective, how could Switzerland, sitting right there in Europe, really go ‘wow, I guess either way would be fine. You guys just duke it out, and we’ll take whatever happens - unified Nazi Europe or divided democratic-esque Europe’. How the heck does that work!?!
I can understand neutrality in smaller-scale conflicts. I don’t really know what Uganda would gain by involving itself in the Falkland Islands War. But doesn’t the escalation of conflict at some point, say when it seriously involves larger countries in 4 out of 7 continents, make ‘official neutrality’ for any country in the world a nonsensical position? Another question - in the modern age, where large militarized countries can begin war operations in any country in the world relatively easily to the past (think ICBMs, heavy airlift, worldwide information/transportation networks, biological warfare etc etc…), does official neutrality have a place in modern global warfare, regardless of its historic use?
BlueLine
I realize that this is sort of half-GQ half-GD, so move if necessary and appropriate
Well, the Swiss perspective was, like you said, “I guess either way would be fine.” Why is that difficult to understand? Even if Germany did take over most of Europe, they weren’t going to take over Switzerland; it’s mostly mountains, doesn’t really have any natural resources, and the people are all armed to the teeth. Besides, the main resource Switzerland does have is as a center for international banking and finance, but it only has that status because it’s peaceful and will do business with anyone. A German invasion would change all that, and the Germans knew that.
So, from the Swiss perspective, who won the war didn’t matter that much. Both sides need bankers.
I’m having trouble buying the idea that Switzerland would be truly indifferent to the outcome. At the very least, wouldn’t they recognize that Germany is expansionist, has a poor record of upholding nonaggression pacts, and would eventually look to those banks as an acquisition? Yes, both sides need bankers, but why wouldn’t Germany want control of those banks? Why wouldn’t Switzerland see/fear that?
One of the dirty little secrets of WWII was that many Nazi ideas (the role of the state, eugenics, etc.) were by no means confined to Germany. They had had wide currency around the world for many years; the Nazis just followed those ideas to their logical conclusions and acted upon them.
There were people who were sympathetic to Germany in various degrees throughout the 30s in nearly every country, including significant numbers in Switzerland.
Since when diplomats of warring countries beat the crap out of each other?
Actually, Switzerland, due to its neutral status, saw a lot of unofficial diplomatic activity between the countries in conflict at least during WWI. I’m not sure it was as intense during WWII.
If shenigans were detected, they would just have asked Germany, the UK, etc… to take them back and these countries would in all likehood, have obliged. What would exactly be the point of making a fuss because Switzerland wants to expell a diplomat who misbehaved? (apart of course, if you’re searching for a pretext to start a war and to say the truth, during WWII, they wouldn’t have waited for a pretext if they have deemed an invasion to be necessary).
There was a German contingency plan to invade Switzerland. But in all likehood, it would have been a difficult and costly invasion, and there wasn’t much of a point in invading it. Switzerland had a well trained army, excellent natural defenses and a lot of defense works.
There was also a Franco-Swiss contingency plan in case Switzerland would be attacked, by the way. It’s not like the Swiss just ignored the situation and didn’t plan for a worst case scenario.
And after France’s defeat, what were the options for Switzerland? Becoming a fascist countries? Declaring war on ennemies that completely surrounded and outnumbered them? None seems very appealing to me.
It works in part, I think, by being an old and strong tradition. Swiss think of themselves as being neutral maybe as strongly as american people think of themselves as being free. They don’t want any of other countries’ crappy and idiotic wars. Also, don’t be neutral once, and next time your neighbors might not be confident in you staying so, which is bad news for you.
Besides, they might have a preference, but given that the choice was between living a peaceful life trading with whoever was willing and able too, and having the crap bombed out of them, picking the first choice makes pragmatical sense.
Switzerland got a bad rap for staying neutral and being greedy during WWII, but on the other hand, democracies didn’t enter the war just out of goodness of heart, but mainly because they felt that in their best interest, they had to. Also, Switzerland could state they served an useful purpose by staying neutral during both world wars, which might be true.
Obviously it wasn’t a nonsentical position, since both Switzerland and Sweden successfully dodged WWII (I’m not mentionning Spain, Portugal, and Ireland because their geographical position and their actual stance during the war make them a very different case).
I’m not sure it makes much of a difference. Lets assume a new Franco-German war starting tommorrow. It seems to me that attacking Switzerland would still makes no sense, ICBM or not and heavy airlift or not. You don’t attack a country without a good reason to do so. Especially if said country shows that it can be somehow useful for both side, as, precisely, a neutral ground.
Of course, in case of global nuclear war or somesuch, Switzerland would get its share of fallouts. But it still beats being directly targeted, or becoming a battleground for the NATO/Warsaw Pact forces where they would experiment their tactical nukes.
I know someone from Sweden who to this day is proud of the fact that Sweden was neutral in WWII.
What surprised me was learning that Ireland was also neutral. I know the Irish have problems with the British, but they still have closer ties to them than any other nation.
And I could be wrong about this, but I recall reading that the tradition of Swiss neutrality was, in part, due to a long history of providing mercenaries. They would supply soldiers to anyone who had the money, so they stayed officially neutral in order to be able to have their people hired by any side.
They certainly saw/feared that. But once again, what choice did they have? Declaring war on Germany and Italy, invading both countries and occupying them?
Sure, at the beginning of the war, Switzerland could have chosen to ally with France/the UK. But there was much to loose (including the general and long-standing recognition of their neutral status) and not much to gain in doing so. It’s not like it would have made a huge difference, anyway. The Swiss army was, and still is massively geared towards defence.
You’ll note that even Belgium, whose everybody (including Belgians) was 99% sure would be attacked stayed neutral until it happened, not allowing in french and british forces. In this case, it might have been a bad idea and not being neutral might have completely changed the outcome of the beginning of the war for the better, for both Belgium and the allies. You’ll note that Belgium renounced to its neutrality after WWII and joined the NATO. At some point, you’ve to admit that your position and geography makes a neutral stance hopeless.
Switzerland did get accidentally bombed by allied air forces a few times, since some of the major German railyards were accross the border from major Swiss railyards (I’ve noticed a tendancy for major border cities to be accross the border from other major border cities). There was one pilot who commented about how curious he was about what the Swiss could have been carrying in their trains so close to the German border that blew up so well (a train carrying gunpowder, as you might guess, blows up far more enthusiastically than a train carrying bars of chocolate or wristwatches). Far as I know, these were all very much accidental bombings, since we’re dealing with cloudy, windy weather, and very very long distances (an error of a half degree in which direction you fly over the course of a hundred miles or so makes a huge difference).
Switzerland (and Sweden) was apparantly also useful in that it provided a safe place for damaged airplanes (mostly Allied bombers, but also German planes to a lesser degree) to land without fear of being put in a POW camp. You’d get interned for violating neutral airspace, and your plane would probably end up in Swiss service if they felt they could use it, but it was probably better than risking getting locked up or shot by the Germans (later in the war, German soldiers had to protect downed allied airmen from angry German civilians). They’d basically keep the Allied guys away from the Axis guys (on occasion they’d pass eachother on opposite sides of the street and wave at eachother), and I’ve read a story where a bunch of Allied airmen were quietly driven to an airfield and loaded onto a US transport plane, while a short distance away, a bunch of German guys were quietly being loaded onto a German transport, and both groups flown home.
Yeah, how neutral a country was seemed to depend on a lot of things. The US, for example, was neutral for a few years, but was obviously neutral in favor of the Allies. I’ve heard arguments that declaring war on the US simply made things easier for the Germans, since our Atlantic Fleet had been engaging German U-Boats as part of their Neutrality Patrols since the Spring of 1941 anyways, and there were American pilots flying in the RAF (one especially notable example is the American Eagles Squadron, which was a squadron entirely made up of American volunteers flying Spitfires).
There’re a lot of complicated matters in these questions, which made the situation extremely difficult for countries like Sweden, Switzerland and most of all Finland. Of course it is pretty “easy” to agree to declare war on Germany if one lives on the other side of the Atlantic ocean and have the greatest industry in the world.
But how can one demand from the small neighbours to the Third Reich to declare war against what seems to be an unbeatable murder machine?
Most Swedes today are far from proud of what Sweden did – and didn’t – do during WWII, but would it be responsable of the leaders to declare war with the greatest army on the continent, when the only difference it would make would be slaughter of its own people?
If it’s a board game will talking about, I will happily point my finger – but if it’s reality in a historical context, I for one won’t be so quick to judge anybody.
By the way, did any country declare war on the Third Reich before it was attacked (Poland, USSR, Belgium, Norway, etc), before an allied became attacked (England, France), or before Germany declared war on them (USA)?
It’s a silly example and largely technical, but Argentina, which declared war on Germany in March 1945, would strictly fullfill these criteria. This is only memorable precisely because it’s a meaningless case: Peron had been sympathetic to the Third Reich and the declaration of war was just them joining in the victory parade at a point when Germany was clearly on its last legs. I doubt their intervention had any practical significance whatsoever.
It wouldn’t surprise me if there were other similar instances of countries abandoning neutrality when there was no danger of this gesture costing them anything.
Sweden’s neutrality allowed the Danish Resistance to smuggle over 7000 Jews into Sweden, which saved them from concentration camps. Raoul Wallenberg also probably couldn’t have done what he did withough Sweden being officially neutral.
Could Sweden have done more than that by coming into the war on the Allied side? It’s certainly possible that the only thing that would have come of that would be Sweden being invaded and occupied, like Denmark and Norway.
Hitler hated Switzerland (he referred to the nation as a pimple on the face of Europe). He apparently took it very personally that a country full of Germans didn’t want to live under his Reich. He definitely planned on “fixing” the Swiss problem at some point by occupying the country, but the right moment never arrived.
The Swiss made sure that they remained ready to offer maximum resistance to any German invasion and they also made sure that the Germans knew it. Switzerland would never have been able to win in the long run against Germany’s vastly greater military power but the occupation of Switzerland would have diverted a significant number of troops from other fronts for months or even years and Germany never had a period when those troops weren’t needed elsewhere.
Switzerland also, because of its geographical position, was a major transportation center between the Axis powers Germany and Italy. The Swiss made sure to set up explosives in all of their roads, bridges, and mountain tunnels so that if Germany invaded they could immediately destroy their entire transportation network. It would have taken the Reich years to rebuild the lost works. And again, the Swiss made sure the Germans knew of their plans.
And finally, let’s face the facts, Switzerland was essentially surrounded by the Axis and there were limits to how much they could defy Germany. The Swiss often times made deals with Germany that helped the German war effort. Overall, the Swiss strategy was to play for time through a mixture of threats and concessions - they knew that Germany would eventually attack them if it were possible but by postponing that attack day-by-day and month-by-month, they hoped to hold it off long enough that an Allied victory would eliminate the danger.
How the heck does that work!?!