Chapter One Hundred and Nineteen – How to Crush a Socialist Revolution: Switzerland 1921.
‘It is not truth that matters, but victory’
Adolf Hiedler,
The Swiss Strike: Lessons and Opportunities, 1922.
‘Is this brutal boot-heel crushing of the Jura to be allowed? Is this what we expect of our new Government of Anarchists and flighty Internationalists?! The dead of Romandy demand justice! Citizens be sure – the former Committee of Public Safety would not have betrayed the socialist cause so basely…’
Editorial in the Blanquist
Attaque! 14th March 1921 slamming the Anarchist-Centrist majority coalition in the new European Congress of the People convened in late January.
In retrospect, despite the sometimes incandescent tone that surrounded it, the so-called Romandy Revolt of early 1921 was really nothing more than a General Strike. Yet the mythos built up around the responses, or lack of responses, to it rapidly made it more of a political issue. Beyond the dramatic effects it had on Swiss Politics for the next half-century to come, the actions of the Perchten movement and the Swiss military became a model for counter-socialism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Adolf Hiedler’s embellished tale of his own role in establishing the Perchten movement and supporting the military propelled him into international limelight. Finally, the political fallout over the inaction of the European Union was to have potent effects on the politics of the new socialist super-state.
Really the “Romandy Revolt” was little more than a boiling over of tensions in the labour market in Romandy that had little to do with European socialist revolution. The collapse of both Germany and Austria had seen Switzerland flooded with almost 72,000 German-speaking refugees, from wealthy businessmen and former royals down to poor peasant families, fleeing from the rise of the Red Republics in their former countries. Likewise the chaos of revolution in those countries had seen the conservative majority in the Swiss Parliament accept the impromptu plebiscites in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg and the German areas of Konstanz and Waldshut to join the Confederation. It was an influx of German-speakers, German money, and German workers desperate for employment, that caused the economy of the French-speaking Romandy regions to stutter and dissatisfaction to grow.
Swiss Soldiers set up a roadblock and machine-gun post in a Bern street, February 1921
The popular manifestations of discontent, of course, were not limited to just Romandy and most big cities in the country experienced some sort of disruption as a transport strike was joined by other industrial workers. For a week, which felt like months in the tense atmosphere of 1921, the Parliament prevaricated. The Liberals, not particularly in favour of strikers, felt this was the opportunity to punish the Government for its unilateral decision to accept these new regions whilst the Government itself was terrified of provoking Paris.
General of the Army Ulrich Wille. His actions during the Strike, and subsequent feting as a National Hero in the right-wing press
would soon go to the elderly officer's head.
On the 13th February, though, public antipathy had risen to such a fever pitch that a minor scuffle at a picket line in Geneva between police and strikers was blown out of all proportion by a military itching to act. General Ulrich Wille, the elderly pot-bellied German-Swiss officer who was high commander of the army and a traditionalist through-and-through, took command instantly. In a move widely welcomed by conservative groups, much of German-speaking Switzerland, and the many “white” refugees in the country, Wille ordered soldiers out in force onto the streets. They did not use violence, unless provoked, but they did display an overwhelming force. A series of strategic arrests were made, especially of key socialist leaders, and some pickets moved or broken up.
It was the upsurge of sudden, anti-socialist, volunteers though that broke the strike properly. Volunteers from across the social spectrum responded to Wille’s nationalist call as galvanised through the Schweizerischer Vaterländischer Verband – a largely German-speaking right wing group. Set up by the radical Doctor and Army Officer Dr Eugen Bircher in 1919 it had been where the young Austrian NCO Adolf Hiedler had found purchase post-war. Unable to return to Austria, Hielder had been sponsored in his immigration application by Bircher, who saw in him a gifted orator and committed anti-socialist. The two helped organise what became known as the
Perchten movement. Named after the followers of the Wild Hunt in Germanic Folklore the
Perchten were, actually, a diverse group ranging from hardened anti-socialists through to well-meaning liberals and many who had never been that interested in politics but were simply keen on a return to order. Staffing trams and trains, running government offices, and patrolling the streets, the
Perchten broke the strike and a collective sigh of relief echoed throughout Swiss society.
Adolf Hiedler, surrounded by fellow SVV members, watches a speech by Wille, March 1921.
Yet the myth-making did not stop at the borders of the Confederation. The backlash in the European Union, where no decision about intervention had been made, drew pronounced criticism from the hardline elements of the political spectrum. The wobbly coalition of Centrists, Anarcho-syndicalists, and so-called Pragmatists had left some deeply uncertain about the direction of the Union at the top. It was a stark contrast to the clear leadership of the wartime Committee. Many Blanquist papers, particularly in France, called on the Montagnard faction and Lagrange especially to step into the breach and do something.