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Swiss American Historical Society Review

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Keywords

Switzerland, Swiss-American, Nazis, Third Reich

Abstract

For hundreds of years Switzerland has been recognized as a nation committed to not being involved in military conflicts. However, in WWII it was confronted by the most serious and credible threat to its neutrality since the inception of the policy. To begin with, Switzerland's wartime population of 4,200,000 was outnumbered nearly eighteen to one by its most lethal contiguous neighbor, Germany. When Austria and Italy were thrown in, the ratio jumped to thirty to one. In addition, the Axis powers of Italy and Germany shared over seventy percent of Switzerland's border. And although her industrial production was of the highest quality, it was limited in both breadth and quantity. This made Switzerland trade-dependent, even in the area of war material. Because she was also landlocked, Germany was, per force, one of her most important trading partners. Certainly, the odds in 1939 that Switzerland would remain free were very much against her. What made them even worse was the fact that the native language of over sixty percent of the Swiss population was German, and Hitler had made it well known that one of his prime objectives was the uniting of all German speaking peoples. Yet, somehow, despite all of the odds against it, Switzerland managed what other countries of Europe were unable to do - remain free. Analyzing how the Swiss accomplished this was the objective Stephen Halbrook set for himself in The Swiss and the Nazis: How the Alpine Republic Survived in the Shadow of the Third Reich, his second book on the subject and the sequel to Target Switzerland.

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