# What would have happened to Switzerland if Germany had won WWII? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 26, 2015, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-happened-to-switzerland-if-germany-had-won-wwii/723530 "2015-06-26T13:51:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2015, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-happened-to-switzerland-if-germany-had-won-wwii/723530/41 "2015-06-28T05:58:55Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Plus it’s **die** Schweiz, not der. But “der Schweiz” is also correct in German: it means “of Switzerland”, so is more-or-less correct in the context of “the citizens of der Schweiz”, given the mingling there of English and German. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2015, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-happened-to-switzerland-if-germany-had-won-wwii/723530/42 "2015-06-28T13:26:43Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > Was he certain, though? Apparently so. He was using paraffin as a moderator, and vying with the luftwaffe for radium. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2015, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-happened-to-switzerland-if-germany-had-won-wwii/723530/43 "2015-06-28T13:48:59Z")
A victrious Nazi Germany need not have invaded Switzerland. The destruction of a few key railway tunnels and a focused policy of starving Switzerland of any imported goods woul have readjusted the Swiss attitude fairly quickly and with few German casualties. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2015, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-happened-to-switzerland-if-germany-had-won-wwii/723530/44 "2015-06-28T14:08:53Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The Nazis did have a nuclear weapons program but it was operating at a pretty leisurely pace. The scientists in charge of it was mostly theoreticians rather than experimenters and most of the top-rated engineers were assigned to other development programs. The German scientists figured that it would take at least ten years for their program to produce a working bomb - by which time everyone in Germany expected they would have already won the war. > > The Germans also had a touch of arrogance. They assumed if it would take them a decade to build a bomb then it would take anyone else even longer. That’s why they were astonished in 1945 when they were told that the United States had just used a bomb against Japan. They had been taken in custody by the Americans at the end of the war and they felt could make a deal because they assumed the Americans wanted their knowledge. So it was a shock to realize they had been literally years behind the Americans. The Germans got nowhere-they never had a sustained chain reaction-so they could never make plutonium. Their “reactor” was a laugh (blocks of uranium strung on chains, lowered into a vat of heavy water). Had it gone critical, it would have killed everybody in the building. They were never even close to a bomb. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2015, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-happened-to-switzerland-if-germany-had-won-wwii/723530/45 "2015-06-29T00:50:28Z")
The top Nazi leaders didn’t really want to conquer Switzerland – they all had their secret numbered bank accounts there, and didn’t want the German Tax people looking into that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-have-happened-to-switzerland-if-germany-had-won-wwii/723530.md?page=2)