What should we think of Switzerland during ww2?

It is indeed correct.

 

Did that bother/worry/concern The Ally's.?
Was there ever any action taken against that.....politically or militarily.
Thank You

 

There wasn't exactly much they COULD do.

Militarily...how do you destroy a tunnel that runs through hundreds of feet of Alpine granite? Why should you do anything - as it would drive Switzerland firmly into the Axis camp?

Politically...Switzerland was equally insulated from any real political pressure the Allies could bring to bear. What could they sanction, what could they threaten to cut off?

 

Despite it just being military trains (this is just what i think) but that almost seems as a slight infringement of their neutrality. I know that they might not have been able to do too much but, it still one's neutrality must always be respected.

 

Some things seem to be worth more checking into.... This made me pretty sad at the time

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/12/news/12iht-incest.2.t.html

A judge in Colorado has dismissed charges against an 11-year-old Swiss boy accused of molesting his sister, ending a dispute over differences in the way the United States and Switzerland handle possible juvenile offenders.
The judge freed the boy, Raoul Wuethrich, on Wednesday, on grounds that his right to a speedy trial had been violated. He was free to join his parents, who fled to Switzerland when he was arrested in August.
The case unleashed a furor in Switzerland, with news media assailing Colorado authorities for having arrested the boy at night and taken him away in handcuffs, for keeping him in detention for six weeks, and for putting ankle chains on him at his first court hearing.
The Swiss Foreign Ministry took up the case, issuing an unusual comparison of Swiss and U.S. treatment of juveniles, and translating it into English. "An 11-year-old is too young to be judged in a criminal court," said Yasmine Chatila, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, summing up the Swiss view.
Raoul was charged with aggravated incest and sexual assault on a child. He pleaded not guilty on Monday to the charges, which could have meant two years in juvenile detention if there had been a conviction.
A neighbor in the Denver suburb of Evergreen, Colorado, where Raoul and his parents lived, said she saw the boy touching his sister inappropriately in their yard last May. The parents have denied the charges, maintaining Raoul was only helping his half-sister pull down her underwear to urinate.

Rene Hanselmann, editor of Blick, stressed different Swiss and American views. "For us, this was not a crime," he said. "We call this playing doctor. It's harmless."

"It's a totally different criminal culture," said one American official. "We have a violent crime every 19 seconds, and 45 percent of it, according to FBI statistics, is committed by those under 25. While putting handcuffs and leg irons on an 11-year-old is extreme, you have to look at the entire system — the 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds committing gang murders, for example."

 

That was the problem with Switzerland's position vs. its Neutrality - it had no way of enforcing its Neutrality on the ground....it was entirely surrounded. And came under undue German pressure at times to do various things. The Swiss way was to do them....but each time reinforce what it would cost the Germans if they tried to take Switzerland and do it for themselves. The railway tunnels were, for example, along with everything else in Switzerland, effectively mined for destruction along their full length

In a way, it was to an extent making the Germans reliant on the Swiss....and their Neutrality. if the Germans had invaded, it would all have been lost. Not just hard fought for - that was a given - but the Germans would take nothing but a cinder. Everything of value they got from/by/of/via the Swiss would vanish. Permanently.

 

I agree it is a fact it is simply irrelevant to the point under discussion.
It's also off topic as indeed your original opinion was.

 

I am not sure I follow this.
If the Germans occupied Switzerland, the Swiss would blow stuff up and fight back. But if the Germans applied undue pressure, The Swiss would give them whatever they wanted.
How were the Germans reliant on the Swiss if they gave them what they wanted anyway.?
What did the Swiss get out of all that.?
Thanks

 

"Putting pressure" is not considered an act of war. Not sure about right of transit, the very detailed and specific clauses about transit in the Dardanelles make think the prohibition is more about "conducting miltary operation" from a neutral state than simply transit, "sealed trains" somehow rings a bell in this context, does anyone have the exact wording of the treaties ?. IIRC Bulgaria never joined the war against the USSR, would that make German or Italian troops using it's rail network to reach the Eastern Front a "casus belli", and "soviet" ships fringing military goods to Vladivostock did cross Japanese controlled waters.

The Swiss did not give the Germans "everything they asked for", and neither did the Swedes. They were playing a balancing act, give too little and Hitler may decide to take.

 

If the Germans applied pressure short of actually invading, the Swiss gave them what they asked for. To the Swiss it was ALL about preserving the territorial integrity of Switzerland, you have no idea how bolshy they are as a nation LOL. This is a nation that, at its worst point in the 1500s, had been forced down as far as two castles on top of where one of the self-same railway tunnels would later be tunnelled!

By giving the Germans what they wanted....and the Germans didn't just "want" it, they were asking because they NEEDED it...the Swiss were loading one end of the "Disuassion" balance - the more that the Nazis got out of Switzerland, the more they would loose if they invaded. And that's what the Swiss got out of it - not being invaded.

No....it's hard to find any decent history on all this outside of Switzerland itself, but the whole point of "Disuassion" as a formal government policy - which it was in Switzerland - was give the Germans what they asked for - well, paid for at least, at no matter what discounted prices....but at the same time make it clear that simply taking it would make it all go away.

Not just in the short or medium term - but forever. The Swiss were intent on destorying absolutely everything. They had prepared a scorched earth policy that made anything the Soviets ever did look amateurish in comparison.