Banks of Rebellion (Switzerland 1912)
If one asked to an inhabitant of Western or Central Europe where the Swiss Army had fought during the Great War, the most likely answer one would receive was the Liechtenstein front...or the Liechtenstein-Bavarian front, as the fighting alas wasn’t limited to this small principality which had somehow in this century of great nations and empires managed to retain its independence.
This wasn’t wrong. Over ninety percent of Switzerland indeed went to Liechtenstein and their northern frontier to, as an English politician famously said, “keep the flame of Bavarian resistance alive”. The Swiss Army paid a heavy price in blood and funds in this world war. The mobilisation of every part of an economy to fight in the trenches and fortified positions was without doubt favouring countries with large population, and they didn’t include in their ranks Switzerland.
The effect was somewhat limited demographically as the nation received plenty of German and Italian refugees during and after the conflict.
But as 1912 began, the Swiss Republic could not be considered an economic giant...or a giant in any domain save chocolate, watchmaking and banking. The 1912 population was barely reaching 3.1 million, and while some of its most prestigious firms were making their French rivals enrage behind the scenes, Switzerland was rarely seen as a model to emulate politically.
The Hunziker government who had led the Republic during the last two years of the Great War didn’t survive the peace treaty signed at London in 1902. Its successor, the Meyer government, managed to hold on until 1904 before being ejected from power. Right and left parties were unable to chart a correct course, and the parliamentary system was more and more weighing towards not tolerating ‘strong men’ leading the country. The result was a series of short-term policies which didn’t improve the economic situation. Moreover, tensions between German-speaking and Italian-speaking communities were high. Switzerland had by conviction, pragmatism and foreign aggression on its neighbour chosen to side with the Entente, and had pursued this path on the late part of the 1900s. But for every family which thought the correct choice had been made, there was another who believed the Congress of London had been unfair in the divide of the spoils. France had annexed Southern Italy when Swiss claims had existed long before a Bourbon was proclaimed King of France. Others politely argued France had erased massive debts accumulated by the Ruegg and Hunziker governments, and that Switzerland had certainly not participated in the defeat of Venice.
The enthusiasm in the political debates turned many times particularly violent, and people were very glad the Collectivists were gone, for these troublemakers would no doubt have tried to throw more gunpowder on the flames.
But the deflagration did not come where everyone was watching. Unknown to the majority of the public, the Bern Credit Bank, one of the most powerful Swiss banking establishments, had made...really unwise investments, in part based on the certainty the gold standard would continue to exist until the end of this century and in part that certain debts before the Great War would be honoured. For if the banking system had rapidly chosen to declare for the Entente, the heads of the Bern Credit Bank had far more ambiguous courses and loaned money to many industrial actors which would become sadly infamous during the Great War. And these actors had more Polish and Saxon accents than French, it had to be said.
That the Bern Credit Bank and several of the other banks having participated in the affair managed to keep the secret out of sight for so long spoke well of their professionalism, if not of their sense of morals and patriotism.
But the unpaid debts were still a ticking bomb, invisible but always present. The French Empress and Paris had reimbursed the Swiss government for its Great War expenses, but nowhere had it been question of Union investments, and as everyone knew, the Saxon Empire, the Polish Kingdom and their allies had either been destroyed, or declared bankruptcy a decade ago. The mountains of papers the guilty bankers had kept in their vaults were worth a rope for treason if they were caught.
On April 1912 someone talked. It was difficult to place a name on the exact identity of the man who had revealed the dirty big secret, for before the next day was over three of the most important men of the Bern Credit Bank took their own lives and five others suffered the ire of their neighbours in a very violent manner.
The Bern Credit Bank didn’t survive the week, as thousands of Swiss citizens swarmed to recover what money they could as the scale of the illegal activities was progressively revealed in the daily newspapers and on the radio.
Since many financial establishments had been closely tied together, the fall of one component brought the collapse of others. By the end of April, the desperate efforts of the right-centre government had allowed them to save two banks, and it was not enough to provide a complete financial collapse of the Swiss banking system.
And now a lot of people were furious, including but not limited to many wealthy French, Austrian, Westphalian, English, and Spanish businessmen and bankers.
Before they could do more than exchange the very cold diplomatic courtesies, the barricades returned to Bern. The Collectivists were extinct, but the Anarchist Revolutionary Committee was extremely interested in continuing the job where their comrades-in-revolution had left it...