Hitler decides to invade Switzerland

If Hitler invades Switzerland, what would happen?

  • The Swiss would go guerilla warfare. And WIN.

    Votes: 89 47.3%
  • The same thing, except the Swiss lose.

    Votes: 70 37.2%
  • Just an Anschluss would be enough.

    Votes: 14 7.4%
  • Blame Thande for making me make this thread!

    Votes: 15 8.0%

  • Total voters
    188
Maybe movement was the wrong terminus. I meant that nazi-ideas and a feeling of superiority of oneself was inside swiss heads.

How true. After all it were the swiss who came up with the proposal to mark the passport of Jews with a "J".
However despite the fact that they shared some ideas with the nazi they also differed on many others. Things like democracy and freedom of the press for example. When Hitler attacked Belgium and the Netherlands there were protests on the streets demanding, that the goverment should recall the ambassador from Berlin.
And yes the felt themselves suprior, but superior because the were swiss, not because they were German. So their sense of superiority excluded the Germans.

A certaind xenophobia was defnitly a swiss trait of personality! - was....

And how exactly is this going to help an invader?
 

Valdemar II

Banned
I agree. This idea of Swiss resistance has no basis whatsoever. The last time IIRC that the Swiss resisted invasion on this scale would be in the late medieval period. The likely pattern would be similar to France and Norway and just about everywhere else. It was Yugoslavia that was the strongest resister (of the fully-occupied nations) and somehow they never quite get the credit.

I think I'm going to blame one of our favorit prügelknabe for that, Americans love of the second amendment, there's simply to many people who need to believe that with access to small arm in large quentities any small group of people could defeat a much larger proffesionel army.
 
The Swiss are well armed and probably on the whole will not support a German "Anschluss" on a similar approach to Austria. Political pressure against the Swiss for territorial revisions would also not work.

What nations that have fought sucessful resistace campaigns have had is a means to acquire food and other resources to keep the movement alive and a motivation that's worth the price.

Germany, for her part, would probably not use its cruel methods against what it sees as a nordic people--at least, not without heavy provocation. Still, the questions of "where do the weapons come from?" are excellent.

The Swiss Army is unable to survive as a conventional force beyond two months. After that time, Germany will assert control over first the cities and then the roads that lead to those cities. And they may even begin a resettlement program to move Swiss Germans out into formerally Polish territory.

In most occupied nations, you had a strong share of collaborators (although Poland had few) that served as intermediaries. In the case of the Swiss, you do have a Nazi Party on hand that can serve in that role, although its too small to be much more than a opening structure. I think Franz Burri would be the man for the job.

So Franz Burri becomes the new Gauleiter of Switzerland. And the Swiss resistance would fade away if it were clearly obvious that the war can not be won. However, if the third reich were to fall, you'd have a nation that would be seen as an ally in the Cold War instead of a neutral. The Swiss might even recieve territorial compensation.

It really depends on the setup.
 
I read once that Goring once sent some Luftwaffe planes into Switzerland and the annoyed Swiss shot them down.
Actually, the Swiss shot down quite some German planes. During the invasion of France, German aircraft violated Swiss airspace hundreds of times, and quite a few of them were shot down.
Hitler was furious because German equipment (the Swiss were mostly flying BF-109D and E's) was shooting down German planes.

Sometime after the fall of France, Swiss high command ordered that the Swiss airforce was not allowed to shoot down German planes anymore. So the Swiss forced the planes to land at their airfields.
The Germans tried to infiltrate saboteurs to the airfields, but that failed.

Later in the war, allied planes violated Swiss airspace as well. Allied bombers that bombed Italy and were damaged sometimes tried to reach Switzerland to be interned rather than be captured.
However, allied bombings also occured, because Swiss towns were sometimes mistaken for German towns.
Even Basel and Zürich were attacked.

Eventually, the Swiss had to authorize the interception of allied airplanes.
 
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