Nazi Invasion of Switzerland

Kongzilla

Banned
And why would the Germans even bother invading, they control all routes out of the country. If they really wanted to take over the Swiss, couldn't they just starve them out.
 
do we really expect people to hold out in the mountains when the germans have all the cities with their women and children
Would Nazis start to execute children and women to get army to surrender? Still it is West, not Eastern Europe. But I see your point, basically huge part of army will probably capitulate with small groups fighting on. Or, they will hide the weapons, go home and when situation allows (Allies in France) we can expect huge Uprising.
 

Ancientone

Banned
Operation Tannenbaum and counterfactual here
situation-26-6-1940.jpg

http://automaticballpoint.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/situation-26-6-1940.jpg
 
Does anybody have any accurate information on how the Swiss got their hands on fuel and other essential supplies during WWII?

I presume, that in the early years of the war it was easy to import oil via Italian harbors in neutral-states tankers & merchants (for example Brazilian flagged ships). They probably imported oil and other supplies from the Axis. But happened during the later stages of the war, when the Axis was being cut off from vital supplies (for example after the Germans lost the Romanian oil fields)?

I guess food probably wasn't an issue; there was enough food in the Axis nations to import from and the Swiss could trade their industrial products for it.
 
Would Nazis start to execute children and women to get army to surrender? Still it is West, not Eastern Europe. But I see your point, basically huge part of army will probably capitulate with small groups fighting on. Or, they will hide the weapons, go home and when situation allows (Allies in France) we can expect huge Uprising.

yes the nazis's would make reprisals on the civi population if they felt it benefitted them

and yes the army would capitulate if the germans control the lowlands and have the capability to starve them into submission
 

Ancientone

Banned
Although Swiss Industry supplied the German war effort and the country supplied a secure rail link between Germany and Italy, the Allies left Switzerland untouched, even in late 1944 for the same reason that Germany and Italy did not invade in 1940.
Switzerland was where everyone did business.
Although Germany operated under a number of political trade sanctions from 1938 onwards, business carried on as usual with many countries. The USA happily did business with the Reich openly until December 1941 and even afterwards through front companies as did many other countries. Before January and May 1940 most front companies were based in Denmark and Holland respectively before consolidating in Switzerland.
The German Mark was not a convertible currency during the National Socialist period and pre-war trade was conducted via barter or the use of gold or hard currency earned through exports. Barter deals were “monetised” in Switzerland After WW2 started the only hard currencies generally acceptable were the Pound Sterling, the French Franc, the US and Canadian Dollar and the Swiss Franc and after the fall of France the French Franc became worthless and the USA refused to accept Sterling—demanding that Britain pay for all supplies in gold bullion, US dollars or Swiss Francs.
The world of finance, as we have all re-discovered since 2008, has absolutely no morals whatsoever and despite the war, business continued. British, German, French, American, Swiss and other bankers would sit down every month in Geneva throughout WW2 and discuss pre-war debts, transactions and their settlement. Significantly “enemy assets” that had been seized or frozen in warring countries, still earned dividends or interest and these were accounted for and credited ( although not paid over) under the supervision of Swiss banks. (General Motors earned a fortune on paper from Opel tank production and WW2 was very profitable for Coca Cola). If German companies wanted to buy, say, Wolfram, from Portugal or canned fish from Turkey they paid in hard currency (or stolen gold) via Swiss banks. Sterling that came into the hands of German banks or US Dollars after December 1941 could hardly be credited in London or New York, so they were naturally exchanged for Swiss Francs in Zurich.
Switzerland was of more use to everyone as a compliant neutral whatever way the wind blew.
 
yes the nazis's would make reprisals on the civi population if they felt it benefitted them

and yes the army would capitulate if the germans control the lowlands and have the capability to starve them into submission
Well, look into Uprising in Slovakia 1944, and that's Eastern Europe. There were repressions, but not on scale you are predicting. Low lands were quickly captured by Germans in early phase but then took another 2 months to make Slovak army to capitulate. Slovaks didn't had modern weapons and ammunition stored in mountains. Basically Uprising has to be defeated and even after that parts of Slovak army retreated to the mountains and continue in some sort of limited Resistance. Something like that could happen easily in Switzerland. Army will resist for some time, afterwards Swiss command will give order for parts of the army to surrender and keep some parts in the mountains to continue resistance.

As to the food and supplies. Depends how much they got stored in mountains. But it population will still support small Swiss army bands. Yes, there will be repression, burned villages etc.but Germans will be not able to stop the support totally.
 
That was to blame on way they drop there forces: First paratroopers on parachute, Then the weapons in a SEPARATE container on parachute. on ground they had to search the container...
in some cases the locals found the Container first and shoot the Germans paratroopers with own weapons ! :rolleyes:
after Crete debacle, Goering demaned new weapon, it became the legendary FG-42.
The Allies didnt have a much better record with division level airdrops either, and they (well, the western allies at least) didnt have the excuse of faulty parachute design. We all know about how Market Garden played out. The American drop at Normandy, while it didnt result in everyone getting killed, were not exactly a success either.

The Soviet drop operations on the other hand did result in most of them dying and failed to succeed in their mission objectives.

For all the flaws of the fallschirmjager, they could at least claim that at the end of the day Crete was theirs.

If your going to drop a whole divisions worth of troops out of airplanes, your going to run into a lot more problems than just equipment issues.

Would Nazis start to execute children and women to get army to surrender? Still it is West, not Eastern Europe. But I see your point, basically huge part of army will probably capitulate with small groups fighting on. Or, they will hide the weapons, go home and when situation allows (Allies in France) we can expect huge Uprising.
Well there is a limit to how many Swiss civilians they could execute with rifles and bullets alone. Would still probably be pretty demoralizing for the Swiss though.
 
The reason why the Germans never thought of invading Switzerland was the fact the Swiss Army was VERY well-trained and maintained an extremely formidable series of mountainside defensive positions. The result would be the German Army being quickly bogged down trying to overcome those mountain fortifications--the Germans may win, but it would be a Pyrrhic victory with massive casualties. It would be the Battle of Bunker Hill all over again, but on a much larger scale.
 
Dude they over ran Greece and Yugoslavia backed by 50k experienced motorized troops in a few weeks and somehow the completely surrounded with no outside air or ground support Swiss (loaded with 5th columnists by the way) are going to be more than a tactical speed bump to the dozens of in tact German divisions in 1940 supported by 1000s of tactical aircraft
 
But if the Germans really wanted to, they could occupy the country. The Swiss Army will simply blow the bridges and roads and retreat to the mountain strongholds they have that are stocked with several years' worth of ammunition and provisions. German air forces would definitely take a beating during the initial invasion, and there'd be constant attrition facing the Wehrmacht in any occupation scenario.

More of a problem to the Germans would be the demolition of the Swiss hydroelectric stations. Those connected to and contributed to the Italian electric grids as well, so loss of the Swiss electric power source has unpleasant consequences for the Itlaians.

I have only vague and contradictory info on how much electricity the Swiss exported, or which the Germans depended on. Anywhere from 10% to 30% of Germanys electrical power is credited to Swiss generators in that era. A 20%, 15%, or even 10% reduction is going to be trouble for Germany. I'd expect securing the Swiss electrical generators and other key points would be a important objective of the German Brandenbergers and similar special ops units.

A second problem is the Bank of International Settlements. Established in the 1920s this was a system for efficiently transfering gold bullion between different nations accounts. Rather than frequently ship small quantities between nations to balance daily or weekly transactions gold bullion deposited in the BIS vaults was transfered on paper between accounts. Refering to this earlier excellent post:
....
Although Germany operated under a number of political trade sanctions from 1938 onwards, business carried on as usual with many countries. The USA happily did business with the Reich openly until December 1941 and even afterwards through front companies as did many other countries. Before January and May 1940 most front companies were based in Denmark and Holland respectively before consolidating in Switzerland.
The German Mark was not a convertible currency during the National Socialist period and pre-war trade was conducted via barter or the use of gold or hard currency earned through exports. Barter deals were “monetised” in Switzerland After WW2 started ...

If Germany invades Switzerland the Swiss have the option of destroying the records at BIS, and tossing the gold into the lake or down a mineshaft. Up through December 1941 Germany was still able to obtain critical resources through nuetrals like Turkey, Spain, Vichy France, Sweden... Were the BIS records trashed it would be the modern day equivalent of hacking Hitlers credit card account. Actually the Swiss would be crashing everyone elses account as well. While the Brits & US would shrug this off most lesser nations, like the Spanish & Turkish, or South American nuetrals Germany depended on in 1940-1942 would be incovienced.
 
So would some sort of a Second World War version of the Economic Crisis occur in this case if the Swiss dump their financial goods literally down the drain?
 
Does anybody have any accurate information on how the Swiss got their hands on fuel and other essential supplies during WWII?

The "Lausanne Gap". When the dust settled & the armistice with France signed there remained a single railroad connection between Vichy France and Switzerland. Until November 1942 this remained a anoying weakness in Germanys ability to control imports into Switzerland. What the Germans or Italians would not allow though their territory the French turned a blind eye to whenever they could.

I guess food probably wasn't an issue; there was enough food in the Axis nations to import from and the Swiss could trade their industrial products for it.

Actually Europe suffered from general & increasing food shortages from 1940. Even after defeating France Germany continued with large scale rationing as grain imports from the Americas & Australia were shut off.
 
So would some sort of a Second World War version of the Economic Crisis occur in this case if the Swiss dump their financial goods literally down the drain?

WWII was a global economic crisis. That was underway even before the shooting started in Europe in September 1939. From 1934 the nazi government had created a German banking system based on creative accounting and fraud. They kept it going by robbing the bank accounts of the German Jews, then by taking over Austria and robbing its treasury, which it did again with the Cezchs in March 1939. Japans war with China disrupted trade there, and drained Japans treasury/commercial banks.

From September 1939 the Allied Blockade of Europe and a campaign of economic war against the Axis turned the global trade system first into chaos, then required the imposition of a controled command economy across most industrialized nations, including the US and Britain. The international banking system became a sort of Ptomkin villiage with the offices manned and the ledgers kept, but with little relevance as half the worlds industrial plant was destroyed, fewer and fewer goods were 'traded' and millions starved or died each year.

That food rationing was essential in Europe into 1947 and the currency of most nations nearly useless when the shooting stopped in 1945 shows just how deeply the global economy had crumbled.


... if the Swiss dump their financial goods literally down the drain?

Were that to occur from some sort of German invasion in 1940-41 it would leave Germany with even greater difficulties in paying for Spanish Tungsten, Finnish Nickle, Algerian oranges, oil smuggled from the US, Argentinian leather, Brazilian rubber, ect... ect.., Germany already had to pay inflated prices for those imports. Were the international banking system further dismantled crude bartering would increase. Germany had suprisingly little to actually offer. Machine tools were badly needed in Germany to expand weapons and vehicle production. Krupp locomotives were difficult to export, and cargo or passenger aircraft exports were not a option....
 
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IIRC Schellenberg very strongly advised the Fuhrer not to do this for the reasons most people have raised. IMHO you'd need to kill him first, perhaps have him assassinated a la Heydrich

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
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