What should we think of Switzerland during ww2?

Sweden despite being officially neutral did supply the Germans with iron ore. I would think that they probably supplied the Allies with some materials as well.

 

Selling materials and goods is allowed. Providing banking services is also allowed.

Allowing foreign troops to transit your country is not the act of a neutral country.

 

...nor is handing back errant Luftwaffe nightfighters and their latest aircraft stuffed with technology while interning Allied aviators

 

When the King of Norway was woken up and told that they had been invaded, he is purported to have asked, "By who?"

 

I recall reading the British Fleet turned towards out of the Norwegian coast but if they had been following the route ahead they would have met the German invasion party in an hour or two...What a massacre that would have been...

 

We in the West can not be too righteous with Sweden. As I recall more than one UK warship entered US naval yards for repair and US Atlantic naval forces routinely exchanged intell before Pearl Harbor.

 

Sweden has several authors who blame Finland for being in co-operation with Germany during WW2. That has astounded me because Sweden sold several fast boats to Germany, iron ore, other goodies, and also ball bearings in great numbers. Just look into the mirror...

 

There is money to be made in war, neutral or not.

 

Such as....the very same iron ore from the Gallivare field!

Before the invasion of Norway the Germans and the British were were getting Swedish iron ore from the same port...Narvik...that came over the same single-track railway from the Swedish border.

One of the major factors pushing Churchill into mining the Leads on the 8th of April was that the Germans had an agent in a shipping company in Narvik, and he was feeding information on british shipping to the Kiegsmarine. Through February and March there had been a sudden spate of torpedoing of British ore carriers leaving Narvik - by uboats sitting just outside the Norwegian Three Mile Limit waiting for them.

It was quite a major blow for British industry when we "lost" Norway.The British iron and steel industry was at that point clustered on the East coast to make use of the Swedish ore that had flowed freely for decades...as "domestic" british ore wasn't as good quality. Too much phosphorous. Loosing access to Swedish ore mean that we had to build "sintering beds" at all the East Coast ironworks to pre-roast British ore; British industry had to absorb both the majoe but one-off cost of construction...AND all the extra energy and labour costs of pre-roasting the ore before smelting.


AFTER we lost Norway...as I described above, trade with Sweden became very problematic. A lot could be done on paper and by electronic communications of the period - arranging production and development licences with Bofors etc...but another area where we were deficient was in the manufacture of very small ballbearings for aircraft instruments, magnetos etc. SKF in Sweden were (and arguably still are!) the world leaders...and were selling to BOTH sides! But while for the Germans it meant a quick boat trip across the Skaggerak...for the British it meant the beginnings of the legendary "Ball Bearing Run" - a ferry service run by BOAC-badged aircraft which continued throughout the war, and when possible by MTB in and out of areas of the North Sea technically controlled by the Germans!

The Germans however....while they were able to...got a lot MORE from the Swedes; as well as iron ore and ball bearings....pig iron ingots, other metals in ingot, whole vehicles and large numbers of assemblies form Landsverk etc.

 

Yeah...the idea that Swiss Banks are/were unethical is somewhat laughable.
All banks make bad money...not to mention giant corporations. By all rights, 3% should be the cap on war profiteering.....but their lawyers and lobbyists.....err, I mean Congressional Advisers, squelch/pollute/rewrite any such law(s) or motion.
HSBC Pleaded Guilty to laundering 850 Million dollars of drug money.....NOBODY went to jail.
A 20 year old kid selling dime-bags in Brooklyn single-handedly did more jail time than the whole of the executive officers at "the banks".
As others have mentioned.....The Swiss watch was a gateway of communication between all sides.....overt and covert.
THAT would be a great movie.....the war that was fought in Switzerland.

 

Agreed...But a 20 year old kid does not have the wherewithal to pay 1.9 billion USD in fines and forfeitures.

 

The kid certainly does not have the money.
The banks do.
Once again proving that.........

 

Switzerland wasn't a coward, it was the bank of Europe. It kept money for both sides.
Everyone's money was in the Swiss banks, that's why it was "neutral". It's obvious

 

Emma, if the Nazis could cheaply have gotten at Switerland's money....they would have And hang the role it played for them as a gateway to the world. That was the whole point of Dissuasion...convince the Nazis that reaching out and taking Switzerland and what was in it would gain them nothing except a burnt-out cinder. Seizure of national exchequers, gold stocks etc. being a major earner for the Nazis both before and during the war

I'm not sure the British and the rest of the Allies - and the U.S. once they entered the war....could actually use Switzerland's financial services; the closure of the diplomatic "hole" out via Vichy France that the Germans forced the Swiss to close in late '40 to the Bitish and the other exile governments in London may have prevented that. I'm not sure that anyone in the Allied camp would have had monies to bank in Switzerland - they were busy spending it like water on the war, not depositing it with the gnomes of Zurich!

 

Why would the Germans attack Switzerland ? 1. It´s people were "relatives" of Germans 2. The terrain there makes an attack a nightmare 3. What is their so valueable (except the gold in the safes of swiss banks) to make this country a target?

Also it is on both sides interest that neutral countries remain, so can have "diplomatic relations" with the enemy (eg. Sweden was used for that too).

 

Switzerland profited by financing the Third Reich. It was also a haven for money stolen from the Jewish peoples. Is that honorable? Neutral? To me, that is being an ally to the Third Reich. Some countries succeeded in side-stepping their role in the war and Switzerland is near the top of that list.

 

The countries in war also need neutral countries to have things they could not have like some minerals to produce steel and other goods that require stuff that the country itself cannot produce or don´t have. Also they can do war material that is sold to the war going countries, as Switzerland and Sweden did. I am amazed that they are like rabbits caught in the car´s lights after the war: "What us?"

 

1/ only a percentage of its people were "german", about 40% or so. And the VAST majority of those thought of themselves as "Swiss" first. The few pro-German and pro-Nazi "popular movements" that sparang up during the war were not very....populous Thje Swiss are also remarkably bloody-minded when it comes to preserving their VERY hard-won independence.

2/ Actually It's the "Bernese Oberland", the bit that the Swiss were to retreat into, that made attack a nightmare. Between it and the German border lies all Switzerland's flatlands, which were very vulnerable to invasion. The Swiss reckoned an absolute maximum of between ten days to three weeks for the Germans to take it.

3/ What makes Switzerland so valuable...? Three VERY major national arms manufacturers that were already supplying arms to the Germans - four if you count Solothurn A whole range pof specialist industries, including of course opticals I.E. gunsights, bombsights...
And a HUGE amount of agricultural product annually. The average Swiss didn't see meat for nearly four years during the war....and if it wasn't for the fact that the Swiss government made a point of stockpiling potatoes anbd wheat for 18 months before the war, they wouldn't have made it through. Switzerland per capita of the populations exported more foodstuffs to Germany than the Danes or the Dutch or the French!

And finally - of course - control of the Alpine rail tunnels The Swiss, as well as preparing the demolition of EVERYTHINMG outside the Bernese Oberland....mined the tunnels for demolition. Dropping these would have basically separated Italy from Germany for bulk transit. The defence of Italy....and before that, the conduct of the North African campaign - would have come to a screeching halt.

 

They played both sides of the fence, that is obvious. Letting Allen Dulles and Allied Intelligence operate while conducting commerce with the Germans. I watched a History Exposed episode where it stated Hitler had a planned invasion of Switzerland in mind but cancelled it due to the terrain and the fact that Switzerland had a battle plan in place to fend off an attack.

 

"Playing both sides of the fence" is a good definition of neutrality