Switzerland’s astonishingly polite armed conflict of 1847 (2019)
militaryhistorynow.com
militaryhistorynow.com
For example:
> On 26 August 1976, just before midnight, 75 members of the Swiss Army and a number of packhorses mistakenly took a wrong turn and ended up 500 metres into Liechtenstein at Iradug, in Balzers. The Liechtensteiners reportedly offered drinks to the Swiss soldiers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein%E2%80%93Switzerl...
That was my company :)
BTW: I think a year or two later the same happened but with France (was a bit a bigger "outcry")
EDIT: The wikipedia story is not the full one, two pretty nice police guy's stopped us and told us where the swiss border is.
Btw. in many ways the US was a model for the new Swiss Republic as the Swiss must have felt very close to the American independence movement, having had a similar history dealing with foreign powers. It's kind of a shame that this closeness faded in the 20th century, but in its basic political setup Switzerland still is a mini-US in Europe, just with the major addition of direct democracy - something in turn that I'd hope the US could adopt in order to bring new life into its political system.
The swiss were known for being good mercenaries and for living in such rugged terrain that few nations dared to take them over.
Unlike the US, the Swiss have universal healthcare, free education and a banking secrecy law.
Politically, unlike the US, the Swiss have a council of 5 elders instead of a president. They also have direct voting rights so the citizens can influence the decisions their country makes. for example: to buy or not to buy fighter jets.
socially, the Swiss are much different from the US, giving women a right to vote in 1978. Also having mandatory military service and strong workers protection rights.
In which way is Switzerland mini-US?
The Swiss model of mandatory private insurance was used as the basis for RomneyCare and then ObamaCare. However, the Swiss model disallows group plans so everyone is on an equal footing, something the USA didn’t dare to do leading to continued healthcare inequality.
As an American who had lived in Lausanne for 2 years, I would not call CH a mini-US, that seems wrong.
That's what I meant with 'mini-US' - culturally it's certainly not super close, but I'd also say it's a bit closer to the US than other Western European countries, with the economy being a fair bit more 'liberal' (in the classic sense, i.e. more freedom to businesses with lower taxes and weaker worker protections), but it's somewhere in the middle between Germany and the US in those regards.
[1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/directdemocracy/swiss-us-democr...
On the German side, there is a high sense of Community-First, where your neighbor will tell on you if you don't live according to regulations. This is opposite to individual-first mentality of the US where you won't tell on your neighbor for shooting fireworks in the back yard, in hopes that they don't call in on you for a noise violation later (for example). I imagine this mentality difference is the reason why direct democracy would not work in the US since everyone would pull the blanket to their end.
In terms of EU countries most similar to US, Ireland is most similar in terms of liberal economic policy while Germany is most similar in terms of culture imo.
While this is true, in the difference in size between a Kanton and a State is so gigantic that its actually a qualitatively different.
If the US would change school systems as granularity as we do, they would have like 100s of different system just in one state.
The rights in the US a state has, in Switzerland a few 100k people have.
The same Swiss that banned their citizens from joining mercenary armies after two predominantly Swiss mercenary armies slaughtered each other.
- Harry Lime, The Third Man
as if production is the coveted metric
The Battle of Solferino (part of the Second War of Italian Independence, in which an alliance of France and Sardinia defeated Austria) took place 12 years after the Sonderbund War, in 1859. As far as I know Dunant had taken no part in the Sonderbund War- he was a student in Geneva at the time- and neither had anyone else on the committee apart from Dufour. In fact, two of them had been outside Switzerland at the time.
Switzerland really only emerged in the mid to late 19th century. However the intellectual and scientific output since then on a per population bases can match the Italy.
The Swiss discovered graph theory, the Ice Age, the Law of Large Numbers and actually most of pre-Laplacian probability theory, cavitation, DNA, topology, ozone, the modern mathematical concept of "function", metal ion complexation by ligands, the endothelium, e, stevia and several thousand other plant and arthropod species, arguably logarithms, the molecular structure of cocaine, the nuclei of comets, classical beam theory and in particular the critical load of buckling beams, nitrocellulose (aka smokeless powder and celluloid), the laws of hydrodynamics, the origin of beeswax, convergent evolution (de Candolle), the composition of alcohol, the hyperbolic functions, dolomite, the Balmer formula for the spectrum of hydrogen, the atmospheric origin of plant carbon content, light-entrained circadian rhythms, the irrationality of π, the Lambert law for diffuse illumination, and the contagious nature of syphilis.
They also did an enormous amount of careful work in the 17th through 19th centuries on cataloging and systematizing fossils, stratigraphy, geography, plant taxonomy, fossil animal taxonomy, etc., that underpins our modern understanding of the history of Earth and life. That work isn't so easily summarized in a list of discoveries, because it wasn't the discovery of one single species or mineral that led to the insights, but the accumulated weight of many thousands.
They also invented Calvinism (to which Congregationalism, Puritanism, and Presbyterianism belong), invar, the Argand lamp (the main light source other than the fireplace in most European and American homes during the 19th century), Saussurian semiotics, most of current mathematical notation, jewel bearings, arguably Wagner's Ring cycle of operas, the transverse Mercator projection and actually most modern map projections, caissons, the cross-beat escapement, absinthe, solar ovens (Horace de Saussure), passivation of iron by pickling, the remontoire, the fuel cell, the rack-and-pinion railway, the internal-combustion-powered automobile (the de Rivaz engine, running on hydrogen, in 01808), the full metal jacket bullet, the first practical hygrometer, Rousseau's political philosophy, forensic facial reconstruction, the high-explosive artillery shell, the roller chain, malleable cast iron [edit: maybe not], the microtome, the tourbillon escapement, milk chocolate, and scientific medicine (post-Galenic, cleaning wounds and using drugs with knowledge of their lethal doses).
And Jaquet-Droz's automaton called The Writer is perhaps the most astounding Swiss invention of all: an android containing a programmable pen plotter using a vector font, completed by 01774, 248 years ago.
Maybe we should give them some credit for inventing modern democracy, too.
Suck it, Leonardo.
Less well known is that he was also the first to synthesize psilocybin.
I guess it's because dates aren't numbers any more, but names. It would be like adding an "O" in front of every name, like "Ojohn", "Omary".
The powerful effect of such small things can be very thought-provoking.
Interestingly, it's true for me too, even though I've been trying this Long Now date format experiment for a year or so now. I just had to stop myself from writing the Intel 8080 as "08080", suggesting that I'm mentally parsing these dates as "0 1774" and the like.
> The Long Now Foundation uses five-digit dates to guard against the deca-millennium bug (the “Y10K” problem) which will come into effect in about 8,000 years. As you may have noticed any reference we make to a year begins with a zero: 01977, 03012, 02000, 00521, 01215, etc.
— https://longnow.org/ideas/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-di...
It lasted two days but the strike leaders capitulated after being threatened by the Swiss military. It could have ended rather brutally.
After the strike there was a phase of reforms for workers and democratic rights. It was understood that there had to be good faith negotiation with unions from there on.
And yes, Im speaking mostly for Zurich City as part of Switzerland, not Switzerland as a whole.
Both countries agreed on a process in 2005 to resolve the issue.
AFAICT, nothing has really changed since then.
Another example that might interest you:
- shooting dead American soldiers they found inside Switzerland who had escaped from German POW camps
- abusing banking privacy laws to seize bank accounts from murdered Jews (who had been using Swiss banks for a number of years because they saw the writing on the wall), refusing to grant access to surviving relatives
- happily accepting Nazi gold, knowing much of which was melted down jewelry and dental fillings collected from the ashes of human incinerators.
Post WW2, Switzerland was required to return twelve percent of the gold they accepted from the Nazis.
first of all, given how much Sweden helped the nazis, including literally transporting nazi troops to invade neighboring countries, and providing resources etc, they can hardly be called neutral,
second, in a conflict of *literal nazis* vs everyone else, being neutral is nothing to be proud of - any sane person can see that
but Sweden's education system very successfully brainwashes the population into eating that nonsense up, hook line and sinker
The Sweds had the Germans very close on one side and practically no other trading partner to sell to. Iron ore was vital to the Germans and there is no question they would have gone to war to get it, Germany controlled all export routes.
At the same time you have the Soviets, who are now often seen as the second biggest evil, but this was not at all clear back then. Lets remember that the Soviets had just conducted the Katyn massacre for example. The Soviets had invaded Finland and all the Baltic states. And their treatment of those places was far harsher then the Nazis were in Norway. 10000s of people from the Baltic states were transported to the Gulags at that time and most were never seen again.
So Sweden was stuck between a aggressive Germany and an aggressive Soviet Union with no way for the allies the help them in any meaningful way.
Germany very much had the capability of invading Sweden, specially once they controlled Norway. Just as the Swiss had no question that if Germany wanted to they could invade and take most of Switzerland.
Not being in that positions its easy for us now to be morally outraged. However, at the time a wrong choice could lead things mass starvation, air attacks against civilian population, mass rape and many other things.
> second, in a conflict of literal nazis vs everyone else
You should go back and actually look at WW2. It was not Nazis vs everybody else. In fact, because of Soviet actions in Finland, Baltic, Romania and so on, it was actually the case that many countries looked to Germany to protect them from the Soviets.
Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia were allies of Germany.
And Italy of course but for other reasons.
> they can hardly be called neutral,
Diplomatic neutrality does not mean you treat everybody equally.
I don't know about Sweden as much. But Switzerland changed is policies quite a bit once the allies had freed France and a Nazi invasion was no longer as acute a possibility.
But that's not how this is depicted or thought of in Sweden.
In Sweden's blinkered, self glorifying version, Sweden really were neutral (in the intuitive, common sense understanding of the term), when in reality they aided the nazis a lot
and they were neutral because neutrality is the correct lofty moral ideal which only the few and enlightened nations like Sweden and Switzerland understand and commit to, when in reality, they were "neutral" only because they didn't even care to entertain the thought of putting up a fight.
Last but not least, I for one doubt the popular notion that Sweden had no option but to appease the nazis - this is always just taken for granted with zero real thought or justification. (which again says a lot about how effective Sweden have been at controlling the narrative in their favor)
For the nazis, gaining the degree of control of Sweden they needed would have been a very formidable challenge - it's a huge country with diverse terrain, and ww2 was well before the current modern highway network. Sweden could have easily destroyed the nazi troops they transported by rail, or the rail itself so it couldn't be used to transport troops or resources, period.
Granted, at the end of the day this is all speculation and people will never agree on everything, I'm just saying, I think their version of events is very dishonest and people let them off the hook far too easy.
It's argued the british walk-out from Norway precipitated some of what happened in Finland and Sweden.
A functional defence of Norway surely would have been as viable as Sweden or Finland? (the Finns completely hammered the Russians. Ultimately to their geopolitical cost by 1945 but at the time, they were doing ok. I hate to imagine what a finnish attack on Leningrad (they stood back) would have done)
Norway is really mostly tiny towns dotted along a coast of impassable mountains. So taking control of the whole country isn't really required, but any transport has to happen by sea. (and the British successfully attacked nazi ships in the North Sea)
...which is why the nazis desperately needed Sweden and it's rail to transport troops and resources. But that rail is laid out over the full length of Sweden, a vast, vast area, that the nazis could never hope to meaningfully and safely control. The rail would have been easy to attack or disrupt even without a huge army of conventional troops and the Swedes could have done that, but they didn't.
/The Expert - I'll have you know I was a four star general during WW2 (or at least I used to play Hidden and Dangerous and Close Combat 2 on PC), AMA
:P
USSR and Germany forced these pass-through agreements after Winter War. USSR was in pact with Germany, and both acquired permission to transit troops to their bases, Soviets to Hanko (Hangö) that it took in Winter War, and Germany to northern Norway which it took in April-June 1940. Sweden was surrounded from three sides by Germany, and in the fourth side was Finland badly weakened by Soviets attacking, with increasing Soviet pressure also after Winter War.
I think you're being unfairly downvoted here, because the essential context is the collective amnesia that's a crucial part of a Swede's cultural identity.
It's not in any way limited to just this one historical event, but spreads to all sorts of erasures, such as the very recent forced sterilization program and the strong belief in eugenics in the last century - which in itself was a close spiritual tie to the Nazis.
People here in Sweden are extremely selective in their memories - but I've found they can reach way back in the histories of other cultures whenever they want to find faults.
These matters are definitely not widely discussed in "mainstream media" - I'd be interested in some citations if you think I'm wrong. I'd say they are known and discussed in certain circles, but they're definitely not taught in the school curriculum, in spite of being a large and intrinsic part of recent Swedish history.
For instance, the country's largest home-rental organization (HSB) was reporting 'misbehaving' occupants of their apartments as candidates for sterilization long into the second half of the twentieth century.
So sterilization was hardly a fringe issue, and yet I would be very surprised if Swedes under 20 have even heard of it.
In the section about Sweden during the Second World War, there is a prominent section about Swedish "eftergiftspolitik" [1]. The second paragraph in the WWII article is about how Sweden sold iron ore to the Germans and how important that was to the Wehrmacht. So Swedens "neutralitetspolitik" is also prominently discussed in Swedish schools.
Here is an overview of the large debate about tvångssteriliseringarna mostly in DN (Swedens largest newspaper) in 1997 and later [2].
Here is a documentary from Sveriges Radio from 2006 [3] about the forced sterilisations.
It didn't take many minutes to find any of these sources.
[0] https://www.so-rummet.se/fakta-artiklar/steriliseringspoliti...
[1] https://www.so-rummet.se/kategorier/historia/det-korta-1900-...
[2] https://www.levandehistoria.se/sites/default/files/wysiwyg_m...
Could Sweden have joined the allies and fought against Finland though? Many Swedes even volunteered to help the Finns fight the Soviets, so don't be so cocksure that we would have joined the right side if we would have joined.
At the end of the day they might have made the right choice. Who knows what would have happened if the allies went to war with the USSR, their alliance to Germany might have lasted much longer.
He knew very well that France/Britain were seriously considering action, not just in Finland. A far larger danger would have been a massive attack by the RAF on Baku targeting the oil fields.
The reason the Winter war ended with such comparatively good terms is that Stalin had to end it or risk escalation.
Yes, but for the Iron Ore supply they would have done it.
And that would have entailed very, very harsh reprisals against the population population if they engage in gorilla warfare. Bombing of the major cities and so on.
Of course you always have to option. And Sweden would certainty have been far harder to take then Norway as Sweden was far more ready for war then Norway.
A Sweden hell-bent on fighting the Nazis would have probably lead to an far earlier defeat of the Nazis.
The problem is, they would not get support from anywhere because of the geographical situation.
That is why I stress that the Norway situation was so critical. With Norway in Allied hands Sweden would have acted very differently.
Even more so, it was all decided in September 1939. If the French went out and attacked Germans like they promised they would, Stalin would never join the war (he waited for full 17 days before moving into Poland, to make sure the Allies will be the cowards he and Hitler predicted they were), and Germans would be tied with fighting on two fronts. Hitler was actually super-nervous about the attack on Poland - he bet it all on has a hunch the French and British won't do anything about it, which was a massive risk for him.
And if you are gone put up a fight for Eastern Europe, then why do it for Poland, it would have been 100x smarter to it over Czechoslovakia. Germany was in a terrible supply situation at that point.
The Allies had no way to help Poland other then an attack the other side. Unlike Norway where the Allies were perfectly positioned to provide help.
So my opinion is that you either fight over Czechoslovakia or you leave Eastern Europe and focus on keeping Germany out of the North and try to keep Italy from joining them.
The 'alliance' between Germany and the Soviets wouldn't hold very long. In that time you can build up your forces. Eventually Germany would probably force the situation with the Soviets and then the Allies are in control of the global supply routes and can basically decide who wins.
Basically its 3 groups, France/Britain, Germany, Soviet. The one best positioned is the one that stays out of the war when the other two go to the war. The one that stays out can build up its army and industry while the others destroy each other. You end up the winner by default.
The Soviets were that in 1940, but surprisingly for them France collapsed quickly and the German could turn around and attack them. Soviet strategy since 2022 was basically to keep Germany out of the 'capitalist' alliance, only for them to supply Germany with the vary resources they used to build an army to attack them.
World War 2 has so many strange turns.
The Finns were German allies throughout. The pre-war Germans were supplied by Nordic steel while during the war they were supplied by French wheat.
The British/Russians were supplied by US tech, food, and arms
No they were not as Germany had very much agree not to get involved as the Soviets beat up the Finns. Despite popular opinion on Germany very much wanting to do so.
> Perhaps to make WW2 less strange, think of alliances as British/Russian group
Yeah but the Brits were about to launch an attack on Russia in late 1939. In total all the events between 1936 and 1947 are quite the diplomatic clusterfuck.
It took until 2018 for the swastika to be removed from the Finnish air force logo.
As for the British invading USSR, this could not be a serious consideration since the British military strength is mostly navy and air force but no ground troops.
There were German-minded Finns, also in government (eg interior minister 1941-1943 Horelli) but president from 1940, Ryti, was an Anglophile, and Mannerheim was cosmopolitan, a veteran officer of the Tsar's army, and had long considered St. Petersburg his home city. He had a hard time not showing how he disliked Hitler. Diplomacy with co-belligerents - and opponents - is then another matter.
And the swastika was, of course, the Finnish Air Force logo already in 1918 when Hitler was still in trenches on the Western front and no one knew anything of Nazis.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_and_Mannerheim_recordin... Hitler and Mannerheim were very close.
[2] The Finns even had their own SS group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics_in_Finland#...
[3] The Finns operated concentration camps both before WW2 and during: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Karelian_concentration_ca...
I won't run after the otehr moving goalposts.
Finland has to take friends where they could find them. They used Germany to get back their land but only supported them as far as they needed to. The Fins could have done way more, and Germany was constantly pissed that they couldn't convince them to do more.
Mannerheim dealt with Hitler as a statement mostly. The recording doesn't prove they were friends. Its a discussion about military that does not sound that different from many other such meeting between Stalin and Allied officials.
I suspect you are trolling.
[0] https://www.so-rummet.se/kategorier/historia/det-korta-1900-...
You forgot Soviet invasion of Poland and shipping of roughly half a million of Polish citizens to Gulags. In the 18 months between the attack and the subsequent "amnesty" in 1941 (Stalin joining the Allies after being attacked by Hitler), already 50k of them were dead from cold, hunger, tortures and executions.
I don't know how much the Swedes knew at that point though... However, given that they were a modern state, they must have had some intelligence agency, and the Germans weren't really working that hard to cover up their crimes either.
> Sweden
So you're saying they should only be neutral towards one side?
But you still need to explicitly allow a third party access to your account in case something bad happens to you.
Not exactly sure about #1 but Americans haven't been all welcome after they bombed down so many cultural heritages including civils in surrounding countries. It's that small part the winner decided to net get into history.
Prisoners of war were treated really bad in Switzerland. Wikipedia has detailed article about the Wauwilermoss internment camp [1] and links to additional literature. There was a SRF Dok report on this but sadly it's no longer available.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wauwilermoos_internment_camp
As for "worse than a German POW camp", as claimed by some US sources in the wikipedia article... nope. Even disregarding the stark discrepancy between the treatment of western allied soldiers and Russian POWs in German camps (of the latter, more than half died in the camps, many murdered outright), treatment of Western POWs was not all that great. As disgraceful as the conditions at Wauwilermoos for escapees from other POW camps were, this is what could have faced them in a German camp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_Luft_III_murders
KennyBlanken doesn't understand a thing about swiss banking secrecy rights. They were invented much earlier than world wars, aimed to provide swiss citizens privacy that was unmatched anywhere else in the world. That situation evolved and those accounts were used by nazis and jews in a way that wasn't expected (tons of money but often nobody to claim them) doesn't remove the fact tons of people wanting privacy are using similar approach these days all around the world.
Third point is a blatant lie too - when gold was purchased nobody knew about concentration camps which were at its height at last years of the war. The concept of being neutral is so foreign to people who are on the other side they apparently can't comprehend that neutral country is doing business with both sides.
Point 1 - do you have some reference? There were US military personnel interned ie when their bombers which presumably by mistake (but not always) killed scores of swiss civilians in border cities by bombing, and then crashed in Swiss territory. Neutral behavior at its best.
There is not a single country that did only moral things during WWII, everybody fucked up one way or the other. They accepted tons of jews fleeing nazis even after it was clear that country completely surrounded by nazis can't feed itself. At one point they stopped but canton Geneva continued regardless of federal decision. That's what I call humanity.
They helped allies in Italy by giving them full access to piece of italian land called Campione d'Italia in canton Ticino in south, which is completely surrounded by Swiss territory. Allies, mainly US waged quite a few secret operations from there. I agree not very neutral behavior in this case.
Hitler had plan for invading Switzerland after they conquer east, but was very much aware that every adult male had military training up to date and his service rifle at home. They expected strong resistance since Swiss fiercely guarded their sovereignty, combined with uneasy terrain in southern/western parts even mighty Wehrmacht went rather to more predictable fights.
My point was that the sentiment wasn't just positive for America, something many Americans seem to ignore.
Ps: thanks for the indept details!
Do you have a source? I can't find anything about that on the Internet.
Paints a more neutral picture. They shot both nazis and alies, and had to occasionally fight to keep out of the conflict
For example:
> Nazi Germany repeatedly violated Swiss airspace. During the Battle of France, German aircraft violated Swiss airspace at least 197 times.[17] In several air incidents, the Swiss shot down 11 Luftwaffe aircraft between 10 May 1940 and 17 June 1940, while suffering the loss of three of their own aircraft.[17] Germany protested diplomatically on 5 June 1940 and with a second note on 19 June 1940 which contained explicit threats. Hitler was especially furious when he saw that German equipment was used to shoot down German pilots. He said they would respond "in another manner".[17] On 20 June 1940, the Swiss air force was ordered to stop intercepting planes violating Swiss airspace. Swiss fighters began instead to force intruding aircraft to land at Swiss airfields. Anti-aircraft units still operated. Later, Hitler and Hermann Göring sent saboteurs to destroy Swiss airfields but they were captured by Swiss troops before they could cause any damage.[18] Skirmishes between German and Swiss troops took place on the northern border of Switzerland throughout the war.