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55 of 58 people found the following review helpful.
Superbly documented and beautifully written
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A more or less dissimilar version of this review appeared in "The American Enterprise" magazine.
Review by: Dave Kopel
If all you know is what you read in the papers, then you will have to think that Switzerland is one of the most unworthy countries in the world. Switzerland, rather than joining the Allied cause, stayed neutral World War II. After the war, Swiss banks helped themselves to the deposits of holocaust victims, rather than giving the deposits to the victims' heirs. Case closed?
Not at all, historian Stephen Halbrook shows in his new book Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality In World War II. Wrongful as was the bankers' post-war behavior, the conduct of the Swiss people for the duration of the war was morally exemplary-superior, without doubt to the conduct of most of the rest of Europe. As Winston Churchill recalled, "of all the neutrals Switzerland has the biggest right distinction... She has been a Democratic State, standing for freedom in self-defense amidst her mountains, and in thought, in spite of race, largely on our side."
Except for Britain, France, and Canada, nearly all of the Allied nations for the duration of World War II joined the war only because the Axis declared war on them, Halbrook reminds us. Even after Pearl Harbor, the United States remained neutral in the European war, until Hitler declared war on United States a few days later.
Nazi maps showed that the Third Reich would at long last include Switzerland, just as it would include all portions of Europe with German-speaking people. While the majority of Switzerland's population is German-speaking (the rest being French, Italian, or Romansh) the nation was almost unanimous in hoping and praying for the defeat of Germany. Infuriated by the lack of ethnic solidarity, and by the strongly anti-Nazi stance of Switzerland's free press, Hitler envisioned that Switzerland would be "liquidated" and that he would be known as "the butcher of the Swiss."
As Halbrook details, in each stage of the war, the Axis had powerful military reasons to invade Switzerland. Before the fall of France, the non-alpine part of Switzerland offered at inviting path to sweep into France and stay clear from the Maginot Line. After France fell and Italy entered the war, Switzerland offered the only commodious transport of military men and furnishes among Italy and Germany. After the Allied landing in Italy, Germany's need to swiftly deploy troops into Italy became even more urgent. As the war came to conclusion in 1944-45, the Nazi leadership laid plans to make a stand in the Alps, but Switzerland stood right in the middle.
By the summer of 1940, there was only one country on Germany's borders whose free press and rights of assemblage permitted the Third Reich to be publicly and lawfully denounced as the evil empire that he was. In each country on Germany's borders--except Switzerland--Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and other targets of Hitler's hate were sent to extermination camps. But there was no Holocaust on Swiss soil. Switzerland protected her own Jews, and sheltered galore more refugees of all religious backgrounds. Had America sheltered refugees at the same per capita rate as Switzerland, the United States would have taken in over three million refugees. Instead America accepted scarcely any.
In all the countries that Hitler conquered, the economy was plundered for use in the Nazi war machine. As a neutral, Switzerland did trade with Germany and Italy, and with the Allies. (For the Allied trade, the Swiss smuggled out precision ball bearings and other military instrumentation cloaked in buyer merchandise like watches.) But different from in the countries which Hitler conquered, the only merchandise that Hitler could get from Switzerland were what he could buy at full price.
Target Switzerland includes the maps of the evolving Germans invasion plans for "Case Switzerland." Yet though the Germans various times massed troops on the Swiss border for an invasion, the invasion never went forward. With so a good deal of reasons to invade Switzerland, why did the Nazis desist?
The Nazis could have in the long run have conquered Switzerland, but at a fearful price. The Wehrmacht expected 200,000 German casualties; it would have taken a very long time to remove the Swiss military from the Alpine "Reduit" to which they planned to make a stand. And by the time the Swiss were defeated, each bridge and train track and everything else of value to the conquerors would have been destroyed.
The reason that Switzerland was too difficult to invade-in contrast to all the other nations which Hitler conquered in a matter of weeks-was the Swiss militia system. Unlike all the other nations of Europe, which relied on a standing army, Switzerland was (and still is) defended by a universal militia. Every man was trained in war, had his rifle at home, was encouraged to exercise frequently, and could be mobilized almost instantly. The Swiss militiaman was under orders to fight to the last bullet, and after that, with his bayonet, and after that, with his bare hands. Rather than having to defeat an army, Hitler would have had to defeat a whole people.
Conversely, the Swiss citizen militia, with it is broad network of fortifications, had no offensive capability. The Swiss militia was not going to sweep into Berlin; progressed Swiss-bashers who condemn the nation for not announce publicly or officially war fail to grasp that by keeping the Axis out of Switzerland, the Swiss were already doing everything they could for the Allied cause.
From the Anschluss of Austria to the Fall of France, Hitler swallowed nation after nation where cowardly ruling elites surrendered the country to the Nazis-either before the shooting began, or a few weeks afterward. But such a surrender would have been inconceivable in Switzerland, explains Halbrook. The Swiss governmental system was decentralized, with the distinguished 26 cantons, not the federal government, having the authority. The federal government did notify the Swiss persons that in case of a German invasion, any assert that there had been a Swiss surrender will have to be disregarded as Nazi propaganda. And because the military power was in the hands of each Swiss man, the federal government would have been unable to surrender had it ever wanted to. Nothing could stop the Swiss militiamen from fighting to the very end.
America's Founders admired Switzerland as a "Sister Republic" amid the despotisms of Europe. The American Founders-like the Swiss-understood the moral significances of a universal militia system: a humans who are trained to self-reliance and obligation will defend their freedom to the utmost. But a humans who rely on a professional standing army may not have the nerve to protest tyranny.
When, as William Shirer wrote from Berlin, the lamps of freedom were going out all over Europe, they burned more glorious than ever in Switzerland, as the Swiss humans maintained their democracy, their right to assemble, and their freedom of religion. And the Swiss persons saved thousands and thousands of refugees from the gas chambers. A well-regulated militia actually was necessary to the security of a free state.
Winston Churchill and Adolph Hitler both understood how much Switzerland damaged the Axis cause-on both a military and a moral plane. Stephen Halbrook's magnificent book-the primary in English to tell Switzerland's history for the duration of the war-is the story of how a small, detached nation, faced with mighty foes and gigantic dangers, may demonstrate true greatness.
32 of 33 humans found the following review helpful.
A spirited defense of a nation and it is traditions
By Andrew S. Rogers
At one point in his narrative, Stephen Halbrook quotes Philipp Etter, a Swiss federal counselor from the 1930s through the 50s. In 1937, Etter wrote, 'The armed defense of the country is a crucial and substantial task of the state. The mental defense of the country falls mainly not on the state but on the person, the citizen. No government and no battalions are competent to protect right and freedom where the citizen himself is not capable of stepping to the front door and seeing what is outside.' No one intimate with Halbrook's other works will have to be astonished that this seems to be one of the key lessons Halbrook wants us to learn from his history of Switzerland in World War II.
Halbrook makes it clear that Switzerland walked a tightrope for the duration of the War. Fierce and well trained as the Swiss citizen-army was, it was not eager to tangle with Hitler's Wehrmacht. Though unquestionably sympathetic to the allies, the Swiss were determined to maintain their neutrality. If that meant making a lot of economic concessions to Germany in order to keep the Nazis from overrunning the country, the Swiss were willing, reluctantly, to do that. It's requiring little effort to second-guess that decision from half a century's distance than it will have to have been at the time, when national-socialist armies eclipsed the continent and liberation was still a distant dream.
As other reviewers have noted, Halbrook is without doubt or question sympathetic, not only to the Swiss nation generally, but distinctively to it is armed-citizenry approach to national defense. With Switzerland being so primarily maligned in recent years, it's not surprising that voices have been raised in it is defense as well. While not perchance perfect, 'Target Switzerland' is a arousing and attention holding and enlightening comprehensible statement of the dilemma in which Switzerland found itself in the 1930s and 40s, and why and how that nation chose to do the things it did.
28 of 30 humans found the following review helpful.
An excellent, well researched, and engrossing read
By Glenn H. Reynolds
When I saw the ads for this book, I was skeptical. The timing seemed too good, with a book that reflects well on the Swiss coming out just as Swiss Banks were getting a lot of bad publicity. But having read it, I've changed my tune. Halbrook doesn't waste time defending Swiss banks (who at any rate may have been no worse than Chase Manhattan -- read Charles Higham's "Trading with the Enemy" for the disgusting story of American business' collaboration with the Nazis), but rather tells the story of the Swiss persons and the Swiss Army. Those two entities are more or less the same thing, which in portion explains how the Swiss mobilized one-fifth of their population (and armed most of the rest) to deter a Nazi invasion. The most persuasive share of the book comprises of quotations from fulminating Nazis -- Hitler, Goering, Himmler, etc. -- when it comes to those damned Swiss and their incomprehensible willingness to die fighting rather than surrender to the Reich. Halbrook likewise notes how the Swiss traditions of armed citizenry, federalism, and democracy made the kind of surrender-by-elites that took place in Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, etc. totally unlikely and finelooking much unthinkable in Switzerland. If the rest of Europe had done as the Swiss, Hitler would never have made it out of Germany. Even even though I knew the ending (naturally) the book held me turning pages until the end. I highly commend it.
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