I’m curious and my Google searches didn’t help much.
How much trouble could Switzerland have given Germany if Germany did attack the Swiss during World War II?
Purely defensive, dug in behind the alps, able to mobilize just about every able-bodied man?
More trouble than it was worth, I’m sure.
The worst thing that Switzerland could have done would be to have shut the banks. That’s a pretty potent threat.
Mark Twain observed that there is no virtue weaker than an untested one, & this applies to Switzerland’s defense, as well.
With a few 5th columnists, some paratroops, & the Luftwaffe, it could have been carried off.
I suspect the much-vaunted Swiss are a paper tiger.
The Swiss army in 1940 had infantry (10 divisions, although a couple were only ad hoc formations, plus around 13 separate mountain and light infantry brigades) and a few strongpoints. Most of these only appeared in the run-up to the war (in peacetime there were 3 divisions and around 5 separate brigades). I don’t think they had any tanks.
The Swiss air force had around 88 Bf-109 fighters bought from Germany and around 44 locally-built versions of the French MS-406 (which didn’t stand up well to Messerschmitts in the invasion of France). The few vintage light bombers the Swiss operated wouldn’t have stood a chance. AA batteries were ramped up in 1940 but hadn’t had much attention before then.
I still think that the terrain would’ve been a significant leveller - German tanks would’ve struggled to make an impact, and paratroopers would’ve needed some very accurate drops to avoid getting spread out over inhospitable land and chewed up piecemeal. I think the Germans would’ve resorted to aerial bombing of the soft, gooey centre of Switzerland rather than trying to bite through the shell.
Nowadays the Swiss forces are still formidable on paper, but like most central European militaries untested in a long time. The air force is vaguely modern - 33 F/A-18s and 54 F-5s, the latter due to be replaced by either the Typhoon, Rafale or Gripen. The army has a hefty amount of armoured vehicles, although not quite cutting-edge (224 Leopard 2 MBTs, 580 M113 APCs, 186 IFVs, 457-odd wheeled APCs and 224 SP artillery pieces) and is organised into 8 brigades (2 armoured, 2 infantry, 2 mountain and 2 reserve) each with around 5 combat battalions, plus 4 special forces battalions.
It still would probably be a painful experience finding out how strong they are.
Every Swiss does a stint in the army and may own Army-grade weapons (I think that’s even a requirement ? Not 100% sure there). Given the Iraq post-war, and the Viet-Nam war, and all the other wars where armed civilians have bled regular armies white, why would Switzerland be any different ? The Germans had very experienced mountain troops (trained in the Swiss Alps, too) so taking Switzerland might have been a winnable proposition. Holding it ? Not so much, and not worth the trouble anyway, unless the Reich faced a serious milsch schokolade or clock crisis.
Rubbish.
Most of those civilian forces you mention had years of prior experience in revolution or other forms of political violence.
And the German had little problem with executing hostages, if guerrilla forces gave them trouble.
Where would a Swiss resistance get food? Supplies? Ammunition? No open borders, no port cities.
And then, there is the other factor. Most of the Iraq/Vietnam type resistance forces are locals, fighting a visibly different foe. Different ethnicity, different religion, different language, utterly different culture. Prejudice & xenophobia were recruiting tools.
The physical & religious differences between the Germans & the Swiss were nil. Many Swiss speak German as a native tongue, or as second nature. Strong cultural similarities existed. So there would be less sense that the invader was utterly alien.
Lastly, there would be Swiss, in large numbers, who would prefer order & safety to liberty. There are in every country. Ready recruits for the Reich.
The Swiss would be occupation troops for their own nation.
Bosda, you are talking nonsense.
The Swiss are extremely nationalist, although not xenophobic. They have their own identity and have been very seperate from the surrounding nations for pretty much a millenium. People have tried to attack them. It didn’t work.
Moreover, Switzerland was and is a nation of snipers. Althogh slightly less so now, every able-bodied male is a light sniper soldier, a type of infantryman who produces disproprortionate casualties on the enemy in war. The Germans were facing incredibly lethal threats, because their armies would have been under constant assault. They’d have lost 25-50 thousand a month. And their air power wouldn’t have done much.
And, the German’s biggest strength, in armored formations, was nearly useless in Switzerland. Not only would they be dealing with ice and snow for much for the year, but the uplands render armored vehicles useless in the summertime, too! Germany, at best, could control the lowlands for a while. And this would only be after taking awful casualties to get past the gruesome fortresses the Swiss put atop the only roads in.
Frankly, the entire German military could have done it if they were willing to take massive casualties and ignore everyone else completely, period. And even then, it would have been Russia-vs.-Finland all over again.
Rarely do I make an appeal to authority, but you, Bosda, are completly ignorant of Switzerland if you think they were just going to roll over and die. The Swiss are no joke, bankers or not.
Bosda was right in rejecting Kobal2, but for the wrong reasons. Holding hostile territory is very difficult, yes, but only if you aren’t willing to entirely annihilate the inhabitants. Which is exactly what Germany would have done, as it did in Poland and occupied Russia. Similarly, the US suffered not so much from being “bled white” in Vietnam and in Iraq as from losing political will back home, a particular weakness of democracies. Which Germany wasn’t.
Incidentally, there certainly are religious differences between the Swiss, who are predominantly Calvinist, and the Germans, who are Lutheran and Catholic.
It would have been pretty stupid-Switzerland was a listening post, and a means to communicate with the outside world. Plus, what sense would it make? Adding another millio resentful subjects to the Reich?
But in Poland and Russia they were dealing with Slavs and Jews, inferior races from the Nazi perspective. The same cultural similarities mentioned upthread as making the Swiss cooperate with the Germans would probably make it harder for the Germans to commit to a war of annihilation. (Even in Poland in Russia the Nazis tried to get the local populations on their side).
It seems like a sufficiently sticky business that the Germans wouldn’t try it without a very good reason. The Swiss were willing to deal with the Nazis and the Allies. Given that (to my knowledge) they weren’t a particular thorn in the German’s side (unlike the also neutral pre-1941 US), it wouldn’t make sense to try to conquer them when there were more pressing concerns.
Paging Arnold Winkelried!
I think WWII Germany could’ve conquered Switzerland, for reason already given (I like straight man’s thinking on this).
And I think Das Reich would’ve been out of the conquering business for a while afterwards.
A bunch of interesting points. Especially about the snipers in Switzerland; that is something I knew nothing about. If the battle of Stalingrad showed anything it’s that tons of snipers can do some damage (I’m thinking about Vasily - Vasily Zaitsev (sniper) - Wikipedia).
How much would Switzerland’s banking power hurt Germany if the Swiss decided to steal/destroy/keep Germany from getting their money?
But weren’t the Germans fairly notorious for doing that, to one degree or another, a lot, even when it seemed counterproductive?
If I dug up the old Euro History books I guess I could remember or cobble together a reason for each particular invasion and occupation. And I suppose the German bureaucratic mind might view the administration of each successive occupied country (military, police, supply, paperwork) as, I don’t know, a fun challenge, rather than a logistical nightmare.
Someone more versed than I in the history and strategy may be able to convince me that (invading Russia aside), the German military and political objectives really, really needed Norway to be occupied, or North Africa to be fought over, or that Greece was essential to establishment of the Greater German Reich. But a lot of it seems like biting off more than they could chew out of sheer – what, recklessness? Hubris?
So – I wouldn’t rule out an attack on Switzerland just because it would be an impractical added burden to an overstretched military. I do think the aforementioned ethnic affinities (remember, Hitler had a soft spot even for the English to the degree he convinced himself they were from similar Germanic stock) and the unique role that a neutral, bank-intensive nation could play for both sides made it fairly unlikely.
smiling bandit–do you have any evidence that the Swiss truly have the resolve to fight a modern war?
They missed WW1. That was the war that changed everything.
Their military traditions wouldn’t have counted for squat, as industrialized total war tends to reduce individuals to a cog in the machine.
And being a “nation of snipers” is much less important than being the nation with the very best belt fed light machine gun of WW2, which Germany arguably was.
The Germans would easily occupy the cities. Where could a resistance survive?
And if Hitler conscripted all men of military age in Switzerland, & shipped them to the Russian Front…well, that’s that.
To my knowledge the Germans didn’t seriously consider invading Switzerland so it’s likely that they decided that it would be too painful. There were probably non-military considerations in their conclusion but you probably can’t come up with a better expert opinion than the Wehrmacht itself.
As I recall the Swiss defensive plan was to give up the lowlands with token resistance and fight to the death in the mountains. The terrain would have nullified most of the German advantages.
Switzerland was also ready and willing to carry out a “scorched earth” plan. They had explosives placed in important industries and transportation lines. They would have blown these up rather than let the Germans capture them. Being as the Germans got a lot of value out of neutral Swiss industry and transportation (the majority of transportation between Germany and Italy ran through Switzerland) they were reluctantly willing to allow these to exist under Swiss control rather than not exist under German control.
(Hitler, incidentally, hated the Swiss. He felt they had perverted the German master race into diplomats and bankers when they were supposed to be rulers and warriors. If he could have found an excuse, Hitler was certainly ready to invade.)
I’m having enough trouble climing the Zürichberg (and this is just a little hill) with some wine and chesse when I visit a certain friend of mine. So I would definitively not like to be carrying a machine gun on my back, especially if some sniper can be there at any time and play William Tell with my head !
The Swiss are 46% Catholic, 40% Calvinist/pseudo-Calvinist ( Zwinglian ). It has been thus divided roughly since the time of Calvin and Zwingli themselves and suffered internal wars of religion much as the rest of Europe.
It is interesting to note that Revolutionary France had little problem occupying Switzerland in 1798. But then they took advantage of internal ferment and there was very little hard fighting as some Swiss welcomed/invited the invasion ( and France at that point had had a special and slightly paternal relationship with Switzerland for almost 150 years ). It was a relatively short-lived period, but the French were not expelled by violence ( not directly, anyway ).
Which points out that it can be done under the right circumstances. But the Swiss Nazi party never seems to have been that strong, so it seems doubtful that an invasion would have been a replay of 1798. More likely it would have been another St. Jacob-en-Birs.
But how do those guys hiding out in the mountains get food and ammunition?
The simple solution has already been mentioned. You occupy the lowlands and just ship all military age men in Switzerland to the Russian front. The few diehards hiding out in the mountains you just ignore, and assign the task of hunting them down to the Swiss police.
Sure, there will be resistance. But the Germans didn’t have any trouble with partisans in Western Europe. Once the Swiss government surrenders organized military resistance collapses.