The Shocks of War: Switzerland Between Two World Wars
Retelling of Chapter 7 from A Concise History of Switzerland by Clive H. Church and Randolph C. Head (Cambridge University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-521-14382-0).
In 1914, Switzerland felt pretty good about itself. Democratic, prosperous, neutral. Then two world wars and a depression happened. Everything got tested. Not everything passed the test.
World War I: Neutrality is Hard Work
When WWI broke out, Switzerland mobilized 220,000 men in days. Parliament gave the government full powers and elected a General for the duration. They picked Ulrich Wille, a 66-year-old with Prussian connections. French-speakers were not happy about that choice.
The actual war never reached Swiss territory. The pressure was enormous though. The country split along language lines. German-speakers sympathized with the Central Powers. French and Italian speakers leaned toward the Allies. Some 7,000 Swiss even fought under the French flag. Newspapers on both sides pushed propaganda. Foreign governments funded Swiss media. The split got so bad they had a name for it: the Graben.
The economic situation was worse. Soldiers served an average of 608 days for pocket money. No compensation for families. Prices rose twice as fast as wages. By 1917, around 700,000 out of 4 million people were in distress. Food riots broke out. Meanwhile, some firms were making big profits. Both sides squeezed Switzerland economically. Germany supplied coal, the Allies supplied food. Each side wanted to make sure their goods did not reach the enemy.
The General Strike of 1918
By late 1918, things exploded. Not because of foreign agitators, like the government feared. Falling living standards and government stubbornness did it. Workers were desperate. The Social Democrats and unions formed the Olten Committee and planned a general strike.
In November 1918, troops fired on demonstrators in Zurich. The Olten Committee called a strike. Around 250,000 workers answered. Mostly peaceful. General Wille mobilized 100,000 men from rural and Catholic cantons and occupied Zurich though. The strike leaders backed down.
The strike changed Swiss politics permanently. Proportional representation was introduced. The Radicals lost half their seats. Switzerland moved from majority rule to a pluralist system. The right used the strike as an excuse to keep the left out of power for decades though.
The Depression and the Rise of Fascism
The 1920s brought some recovery, but the 1929 crash hit Switzerland hard. GDP dropped. Unemployment reached 124,000. Watch-making lost a third of its workers. Poverty spread. Female emancipation proposals were rejected across the board.
About forty fascist “Fronts” popped up in the early 1930s. Some homegrown, others funded by Mussolini or Berlin. Anti-democratic, anti-liberal, anti-Semitic. They had a brief moment in 1933 local elections but got crushed in a 1935 national vote. Economic recovery after the franc devaluation in 1936 helped finish them off.
Something more important happened in 1937. Unions and employers signed the Labour Peace, a no-strike, no-lockout agreement. The left realized that the worker-boss divide had helped the Nazis rise in Germany. They did not want that repeated in Switzerland.
Preparing for Round Two
The Swiss developed what they called Geistige Landesverteidigung, spiritual national defence. Basically an identity campaign: we are Swiss, we are different from the Nazis, our Alps are our fortress, our democracy is our strength. Worked surprisingly well for national unity.
On the darker side, Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were not exactly welcomed. The head of the Federal Police, Heinrich Rothmund, accepted a Nazi suggestion to stamp a “J” on Jewish passports so Switzerland could control who got in. That decision would haunt the country’s reputation for decades.
World War II: Surrounded
When WWII started, the Swiss elected Henri Guisan as their General. Better choice than last time. After France fell in 1940, Switzerland was completely surrounded by the Axis. Germany drew up invasion plans (Operation Tannenbaum). The Swiss air force actually fought off Luftwaffe incursions, which annoyed Goering enough to send saboteurs.
Guisan’s response was the Reduit: pull back into the Alps, fortify everything, and make invasion too costly. He gathered his officers at the legendary Rutli meadow and told them the plan. Boosted morale enormously. Eventually 360,000 men were stationed in Alpine fortifications.
Survival had a price though. Switzerland became deeply entangled with the German war economy. By 1943-44, Germany absorbed 50% of Swiss exports. The Swiss National Bank bought 1.7 billion francs worth of gold from Germany, including gold seized from Holocaust victims. Swiss banks dealt with the Reichsbank as late as May 3, 1945. The “boat is full” policy on refugees, as Minister Von Steiger put it, turned away desperate people at the border. Even after news of the Holocaust reached Switzerland, borders were tightened.
After the War: Pride and Isolation
Switzerland lost only 84 citizens in the war. Cost 2.3 billion francs in assets though, and something harder to measure in reputation. The Allies saw Swiss neutrality not as survival strategy but as profiteering. The Americans were particularly angry about Holocaust assets.
After tough negotiations, Switzerland signed the Washington Agreement in 1946, agreeing to liquidate German assets and split proceeds with the Allies. The country stayed out of the UN, NATO, and most international organizations. Deeply defensive about its wartime record.
The Swiss told themselves a story: we held together, we defended our independence, we survived. Outside opinion was far less generous. This gap between self-image and external perception would define Swiss politics for the next half century. They called it the Sonderfall, the special case. Whether that was a good thing depended on who you asked.
This post is part of my series retelling A Concise History of Switzerland by Clive H. Church and Randolph C. Head (Cambridge University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-521-14382-0).