Alex Richards
Donor
At the end of WWI, there was a poll held in Voralberg that indicated the majority of the population would have liked to join Switzerland. What would have been the effects of this going ahead?
The consequences would be Switzerlandhaving a slightly larger Catholic Plurality ans lightly larger German majority.
Indeed the problem would be more on the Swiss side than on the Voralberger side. The Swiss Germans don't like the fact that Voralberg was Catholic, while the Swiss French and Italians don't like the fact that Voralgerg was German.
It was an issue, but I'm not too sure what other problems were there in the background.I'm not so sure the Swiss Germans would have an issue with it consider that not only are they split between Protestants and Catholics themselves, but Voralberg itself would have a Protestant minority.
It was an issue, but I'm not too sure what other problems were there in the background.
Also, the I don't have specific numbers, but protestants in Vorarlberg would be less than 5% of the population.
Hitler tries to "regain" that province for the Reich?
Unlikely. Hitler wrote off the South Tyrol - not something very many on the nationalist right would have done - and I don't see why he wouldn't have done the same with another piece of even smaller former Austrian territory. Hitler's real interest was in the east, not the more traditional German western/southern border revisionism.
But the South Tyrol was part of an ally, not part of a neutral state that Hitler saw as offensive and disgusting by the very fact of its existence.
I think it would be easy for an incident such as this to prompt Hitler into invading Switzerland. He had a track record of underestimating his opponents and might assume it would be as much of a pushover as Denmark or the Low Countries.
But the South Tyrol was part of an ally, not part of a neutral state that Hitler saw as offensive and disgusting by the very fact of its existence.
I think you're suffering from distortion of perspective here. The Voralberg is a pretty tiny territory. Twenty years later, I doubt anybody is going to even much remember it going to Switzerland, much less care.
Hitler didn't need causus bellis - if he wanted to conquer a place, he did it. If he was as interested in dismembering Switzerland as you suggest, he would have done it IOTL.
You might be right about the relative unimportance of the Voralberg, but he did come very close to ordering the invasion, and even a small provocation such as this might have pushed him over the edge.
Which is very, very thin gruel considering how this is potentially being coloured by the whole 'post-war German generals inflating Hitler's instability and military incompetence' tendency. Without more background, this looks to me like standard military planning being inflated by excitable wikipedia editors.Franz Halder, the head of OKH, recalled: "I was constantly hearing of outbursts of Hitler’s fury against Switzerland, which, given his mentality, might have led at any minute to military activities for the army."