The Sonderfall Years: Switzerland's Special Path (1950-1990)
After the war, Switzerland had a bit of a reputation problem. Did not last though. Within a few years, the economy was booming so hard that everyone forgot the awkward questions about wartime neutrality. The Swiss started telling themselves a new story: we are special. Different. Better. They called it the Sonderfall Schweiz. The Swiss special case.
This chapter covers how that identity was built, tested, and cracked.
The economic miracle
Swiss factories were untouched by war. Their workforce was educated and ready. When Europe needed goods for rebuilding, Switzerland delivered. Production tripled between 1960 and 1974. GDP growth hit 12 percent in some years. By 1970, this tiny country with 0.15 percent of the world’s population handled 2 percent of global trade.
Wages rose 250 percent in thirty years. Unemployment basically vanished. Migros grew from a grocery chain into a lifestyle brand covering banking, education, leisure. Everything except alcohol, for some reason.
Coming from Eastern Europe, I find this part striking. The prosperity was real and widely shared. Income inequality actually decreased. The top earners’ share fell while lower earners gained.
The political consensus machine
With everyone getting richer, politics got boring. Turnout dropped. The parties moved to the center. In 1959, they created the “Magic Formula” for the Federal Council: two Radicals, two Catholics, two Socialists, one from the Peasant Party. This formula stayed stable for decades.
The system worked through consultation and compromise. Efficient. Predictable. The Swiss were proud of it.
Women’s suffrage in 1971. Yes, 1971.
The part that always gets people. Switzerland, this prosperous, educated, democratic country, did not let women vote until 1971. A national vote in 1959 got crushed. A few French-speaking cantons gave women the vote in the late 1950s, but nationally? No chance.
What changed? The 1968 generation helped. The old argument that political rights were tied to military service started losing power. Switzerland also wanted to sign the European Convention on Human Rights but would have needed to opt out of parts of it because women could not vote. That looked bad.
So in 1971, a new vote passed with a big majority. Eleven women entered Parliament that autumn. By 1981, gender equality was in the Constitution. Fast progress after a very late start.
Cold War games behind the curtain
Officially, Switzerland was neutral. In practice, firmly on the Western side. The government purged leftists from the civil service. They welcomed 10,000 Hungarian refugees in 1956. Behind the scenes, they set up Project 26, a secret guerrilla network linked to NATO’s Gladio program. The plan was to hold off a Soviet invasion for fifteen days until NATO could help.
They even considered nuclear weapons. That idea was dropped, but every new house had to include a nuclear shelter. Most people used them to store wine.
Switzerland joined EFTA in 1960 but stayed away from the European Economic Community. In 1972, they signed free trade agreements with Brussels. Market access without membership obligations. The Swiss loved it.
The Jura question and anti-foreigner movements
Not everything was smooth. The Bernese Jura, a French-speaking region inside a German-speaking canton, wanted out. Separatist campaign, minor violence, dynamited railway lines. After years of referenda, the Jura became Switzerland’s twenty-third canton in 1978-79. The Swiss called it another Sonderfall success.
Foreign workers (over a million by 1970, 17 percent of the population) triggered a strong backlash meanwhile. The Swiss did not even use the polite German term Gastarbeiter. They called them Fremdarbeiter, foreign workers. Politician James Schwarzenbach proposed kicking out 400,000 foreigners. His initiative lost in 1970, but only 54 to 46. Uncomfortably close.
Recession, environment, and cracks in the story
The 1970s oil crisis hit Switzerland too. Growth stopped. Jobs were lost. The trick: about 175,000 foreign workers simply had their contracts not renewed and went home. They were not entitled to Swiss unemployment benefits. So official unemployment stayed remarkably low. The Sonderfall seemed intact.
Environmental concerns grew through the 1980s. Swiss forests were reportedly dying. In 1986, a fire at the Sandoz chemical plant near Basel dumped tons of toxic chemicals into the Rhine. The slow response shocked people. Switzerland had elected Europe’s first Green MP back in 1979, and the environmental movement kept gaining strength.
The Sonderfall starts to crack
By the late 1980s, cracks were showing. In 1986, the Swiss voted 76 to 24 percent against joining the UN. Christoph Blocher and his AUNS organization campaigned against any international entanglement. The country was splitting between inward-looking traditionalists and outward-looking progressives.
Then came real scandal. Federal Councillor Elizabeth Kopp, the first woman in that role, resigned in 1988 after tipping off her husband about a money laundering investigation. The fallout was worse than the crime: investigators discovered the government kept 900,000 secret surveillance files on citizens. The “affair of the fiches” blew up trust in the system.
A group called “Switzerland without an Army” launched an initiative to abolish military service. Did not pass, but it got serious attention. Things had changed.
The bottom line
The Sonderfall was a powerful story. Prosperity, democracy, neutrality, harmony. For a while it was largely true. By 1990, the cracks were real. The Swiss had not solved all their problems. They had just been rich enough to paper over them for a while.
What strikes me most is the women’s suffrage thing. You build this whole identity around being the most democratic country in the world, and half your population cannot vote until 1971. Not a special case. A blind spot the size of the Matterhorn.
This post is part of a 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. Chapter 8 covers the Sonderfall years from 1950 to 1990.