I’m not saying that they would have beaten a German invasion, I’m saying that their militia would make the invasion/occupation such a headache for German forces as to make it not worth their while.
Where have you heard that one before? A couple times over…
What?
Well, there’s this:
I would imagine that the Nazi response to a nation of Francs-tireurs would indeed be reprisals, particularly brutal even by Nazi standards.
Assuming that the Swiss, who prudently stayed out of both world wars, persisted in resisting despite these (hypothetical) savage reprisals, which seems doubtful, the Nazis would have no recourse but to either leave, as you imply, or somehow systematically eliminate the entire resisting population.
But that would require some sort of vast system for moving millions of people to internment camps for execution – some sort of machinery of genocide. Would the Nazis have had the stomach for something so horrible, much less taken the time and expense of operating one on such a scale while fighting a world war on two fronts?
We’ll never know, will we?
To be blunt:
In The Second World War, the late John Keegan emphasizes how ineffective Resistance movements were. Even the largest of them (Yugoslavian Partisans) did surprisingly little damage to the Wermacht’s war-making. Keegan calculates that on June 5th, 1944, the last day Hitler was the unchallenged master of Europe, his army numbered 300 divisions; of those, fewer than 20 were assigned any anti-partisan work at all, and all of those were sub-standard formations unsuitable for front-line combat. Resistance flickered at the frontiers of Hitler’s empire (where the proximity of Allied armies lent it some strength), but the rest of Europe lay all but inert under the jackboot, to paraphrase Keegan from memory.
Hitler was, IMHO, utterly undeterred by the idea of citizen resistors – certainly less so than he was by his idea of Soviet strength. You are right that he thought little of the Soviets at first, but I’ll bet he thought nothing at all of armed citizenry – and the history of resistance movements shows he would have been right.
I think it’s fantasy to imagine he factored an armed citizenry into his thinking in any serious way.
The mountains would have been a headache and the lack of resources may have made it not worth their while but the militia had absolutely no bearing on Hitler’s decision. A militia, even if every citizen is armed to the teeth, is no match for a professional standing army. It’s like comparing an NBA team to a high school junior varsity.
A reference to your previous post, plus the fact that occupation has been a headache for US in Iraq, US in Afghanistan, USSR in Afghanistan, et al.
How 'bout the US in Japan, Germany, Guam, Panama, DR, PR, most of South America, and having bases in nearly every country in the world?
Never mind… I guess the US really hasn’t been able to occupy foreign countries with any success.
[tastes like sarcasm]
Do you really think the US has invaded all those countries? And one of those is the US, and another was partially a US territory. And despite sharing two letters, USA and USSR were separate places. Sorry if you took a joke as an invitation to discuss US foreign policy.
Also alot of the Jewish gold deposited in secret Swiss bank accounts was deposited by Jews trying to keep it out of Nazi hands. It worked, but their surviving heirs ran into all sorts of problems thanks to not having things like death certificates or writte wills.
Three previous threads that may be of interest:
WWII, like WWI was very profitable for Switzerland. In WWII, the Swiss sold hydroelectric power to Germany, and sold them aluminum (for aircraft). They also laundered money for top Nazis (concealed money and art stolen from rich Jews). In WWI, the Swiss also sold to both sides. As far as I know, the Swiss scrupulously observed neutrality-but that didn’t stop them from making money.
The idea that the Swiss army would have posed a serious problem to the Germans is far-fetched.
However, people spouting about Nazi Gold and flat-out collaboration just need to get back to their History books.
Anyone remembers than Swiss planes downed 10 german planes when Germany attacked France (and crossed Swiss air space)? Sure they then had to back out, but this is not the sign of trust
Or that Hitler said "We’ll come back for the small pigs after [the russian campaign]?
Anyway, the ways Switzerland handled itself (talking about the country, not private banks) is well documented out there for anyone wanting to contribute in a meaningful way.
Start with the official propaganda, the archives of the Swiss radio at http://archives.swissinfo.ch - it is easy to see how centered on itself the country was.