WWI Question: What happened at the Swiss border?

Expat

Sorry, this is more of an actual question than an alternate history question. I've always wondered what happened to the fronts in World War I at the Swiss border. Did they just...stop?

There must have been a fair amount of poorly-aimed artillery landing in Switzerland, or at least planes crashing there. Did anyone ever mistakenly charge into the wrong country? How did the Swiss man the border, and how did they respond to any misdirected aggression?

Or was there just an aggreement on both sides that no aggressive action would be taken within a certain distance from Switzerland? Has anything been written on this situation, or even better, any pictures of what happened when the trench lines approached the Cantons?

This has long puzzled me...
 

Mikestone8

Expat said:
Sorry, this is more of an actual question than an alternate history question. I've always wondered what happened to the fronts in World War I at the Swiss border. Did they just...stop?

There must have been a fair amount of poorly-aimed artillery landing in Switzerland, or at least planes crashing there. Did anyone ever mistakenly charge into the wrong country? How did the Swiss man the border, and how did they respond to any misdirected aggression?

Or was there just an aggreement on both sides that no aggressive action would be taken within a certain distance from Switzerland? Has anything been written on this situation, or even better, any pictures of what happened when the trench lines approached the Cantons?

This has long puzzled me...
Click to expand...


I don't know of any agreement, but except for a brief period at the very beginning, there wasn't much fighting in the Alsace sector of the front. After August 1914 the main theatres of war were further north, and it became a "quiet sector".

Nonetheless, Switzerland kept her army wholly or partially mobilised right through WW1. This caused a few problems as Swiss soldiers were poorly paid, and many went home to find they couldn't get their old jobs back. In some ways, the Swiss shared much of the inconvenience of being at war, though without the bloodshed.
 

Douglas

I'm not sure about the specifics, but the point where the trenches hit Switzerland wasn't a good place to launch any kind of offensive. I'm not aware of any significant offensive effort made along the whole line in Lorraine and Alsace from the end of 1914 until the war's end, though the French planned an offensive into Alsace in 1918 that was preempted by Michael.
 

Amerigo Vespucci

Damn good question, Expat. I remember a line from a grade school textbook that said the trenches stretched from the Swiss border to the English Channel, but I never thought about what it'd be like at the border.
 

mailinutile2

Since there was a hell of a lot of propaganda smuggling in both directions from the swiss frontier, I expect a "truce zone", but I do not have any data here.
It would be interesting to know what happened just after Belgium
 

Mikestone8

mailinutile2 said:
Since there was a hell of a lot of propaganda smuggling in both directions from the swiss frontier, I expect a "truce zone", but I do not have any data here.
It would be interesting to know what happened just after Belgium
Click to expand...

The Swiss mobilisation was ordered immediately, and was pretty much complete by the time Liege fell. At max I think they had about 200,000 men assembled in the Jura region, in case the fighting in Upper Alsace spilled over the border.

After Alsace went quiet, most of the men were demobilised, but numbers rose again to about 100,000 at the beginning of 1918, before again being reduced as it became clear that Switzerland wouldn't be in the line of fire.
 

mailinutile2

Mikestone8 said:
The Swiss mobilisation was ordered immediately, and was pretty much complete by the time Liege fell. At max I think they had about 200,000 men assembled in the Jura region, in case the fighting in Upper Alsace spilled over the border.

After Alsace went quiet, most of the men were demobilised, but numbers rose again to about 100,000 at the beginning of 1918, before again being reduced as it became clear that Switzerland wouldn't be in the line of fire.
Click to expand...

:D What an occasion the Austrians missed! :D
 

HJ Tulp

Donor
On the other end, what happened at the coast? At some point it must have been hard to dig trenches?
 

Mikestone8

HJ Tulp said:
On the other end, what happened at the coast? At some point it must have been hard to dig trenches?
Click to expand...

I think some of the coastal area was flooded anyway where the Belgians had cut dykes.

Aside from that, they laid barbed wire and mines up to the beach and some way out into the sea, thus adding further obstacles to an area already considerably muddier than even the generality of Flanders.
 
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Thande

Thande

Donor
Makes you wonder what the whole Western Front trench system would have looked like from Earth orbit...
 

Bill Cameron

Banned
Gents,

From what I understand, as the continuous trench line system approached either "end", the trenches belonging to each side first increased their distance from each other, refusing that flank as it were, and then slowly petered out into a series of fortifications. The areas between the fortifications were then heavily, if somewhat cautiously, patrolled.

Mines, wire, and other obstacles were run right up to the border and into the surf, but the only continuously manned positions were the fortifications I mentioned earlier.

I think if you can visualize a region a few kilometers "deep" at the coast and Swiss border which resembled the "No Man's Land" between the trenches in other sectors you'll have a good idea of what the situation was like.


Bill
 

mailinutile2

is anybody else haunted by the crazy vision of plan Schlieffen mkII as "a long walk just beyond the shore, with water at knee-level?"

smk2.jpg
 

altamiro

There is actually a part of the trench system and order fortifications still left - at the Stilfserjoch/Stelvio pass, a 2700 m high pass road in the Alps, which marked the border between Italy and A-H, while just a few meters upslope from the pass the Swiss territory began. The Swiss had their own border fortifications with light weapons, but had a clearly commanding position (the opposite side of the pass is pretty completely glaciated). Every time a shell impacted in the Swiss territory it was documented, the damage assessed and billed to the embassy of A-H or Italy.

http://www.gomagoi.it/festung_dateien/ortlerfront.html

The Alpine front is a quite insane chapter of WW1 anyway - on both sides, 5 times more soldiers died of freezing, storms, avalanches and sheer exhaustion than from shells or bullets.
 
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