Comment by KingOfCoders | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KingOfCoders | Hacker News Reader

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Founded in the idea to make it too expensive for Nazi Germany to invade.

But in the end it was more successful to just trade with Nazi Germany, buy stolen Jewish gold and stolen gold from occupied countries, send back Jews to be killed, deliver raw material for arms and sell weapons to the Nazis to not be invaded.

[Edit] Sorry, thought this was well known.

* NYT / "The (Not So) Neutrals of World War II"

> https://archive.is/kogL7#selection-275.0-275.37

* "For reasons that are still uncertain, Hitler never ordered the invasion. One theory is that a neutral Switzerland would have been useful to hide Nazi gold and to serve as a refuge for war criminals in case of defeat"

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenbaum

* "In 1998, a Swiss commission estimated that the Swiss National Bank held $440 million (equivalent to $8.5 billion in 2024) of Nazi gold, over half of which is believed to have been looted."

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gold

* "Switzerland laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen assets, including gold taken from the central banks of German-occupied Europe"

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_collaboration_with_Na...

* "The Boat Is Full"

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boat_Is_Full

* "Seven studies released on Friday by the Independent Commission of Experts (ICE) show that the lion’s share of Swiss munitions exports went to the Axis powers."

> https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/banking-fintech/swiss-supplied-...

* "The studies found evidence that the Swiss authorities only superficially inspected goods traffic transiting through Switzerland allowing the Nazis to transfer essential products, possibly even war material, from Germany to Italy and north Africa."

> https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/banking-fintech/wartime-probe-r...

The problem with ChatGPT is: People who have only limited amount of knowledge should not use it. Bunkers were built in phases and many during the cold war. Bunkers in houses started in the sixties. So your statement is not true. Because Switzerland was not prepared, they had to resort to other means.

> Switzerland’s policy to provide shelter to every single resident in the event of a crisis was first enshrined into law in 1963.

Your rant has nothing to do with the article.

From the article,

"That DNA is inherited directly from World War II, when bunkers were already an established part of Swiss military strategy. In the early ‘40s, when neutral Switzerland was entirely surrounded by Axis powers, the army famously stocked the Swiss Réduit (“National Redoubt”), a series of military fortifications in the central Alps dating to the 1880s, with supplies and ammunition to prepare for a potential Nazi invasion."

From my post,

"Founded in the idea to make it too expensive for Nazi Germany to invade."

This is the definitive history, as researched by an independent commission in Switzerland:

https://www.uek.ch/en/index.htm

Making accusations and finding biased sources is easy. Living with a bully next door is not.

Switzerland went above and beyond "accomodating a bully next door": they enabled its rearmament of Germany post-WW1, circumventing the Versailles Treaty; and they sheltered the Nazi networks (e.g. François Genoud) and money post-WW2, helping the neo-nazi rise in Europe and the juntas in South America - again, Germany wasn't in a position to bully the Swiss. Switzerland and the Swiss banks made absolutely no effort to come clean after 1945 until they were forced by international pressure 50 years (!) later.

And until 1997 and a famous documentary, L'Honneur perdu de la Suisse - which was censored until 2006 - the Swiss had absolutely no memory of their real role during WWII.

And see how they treated Paul Gruninger after the war: https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/12882741-paul-gruninger-trait...

"Making accusations and finding biased sources is easy"

The report says exactly what I'm saying,

> "send back Jews to be killed"

From the report: "The measures agreed in August 1938 to turn back unwanted immigrants were implemented ruthlessly; [..] It even happened that border guards struck refugees with the butts of their rifles to bar them from crossing the border"

> "sell weapons to the Nazis"

From the report: By far the most arms were sold to Germany and Italy, e.g. page 200

> "buy stolen Jewish gold and stolen gold from occupied countries"

From the report: "During the Second World War, Switzerland was the most important market for gold from the territories controlled by the Third Reich. Almost four-fifths of the Reichsbank’s gold shipments abroad were arranged via Switzerland."

So basically Dwarves who were digging for mithril and other minerals and awakened Balrog. Im curious is there a map that maps Europe on to Middle-earth and what would the Baltic states be :)

Switzerland is more well known for their Gnomes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_of_Zurich

I think Tokien seriously took inspiration from various European peoples to create the Middle-Earth races.

He did visit spent a summer as a young adult hiking near Lauterbrunnen, which he modeled Rivendell and the Misty Mountains after.

I recently spent a few days hiking near Lauterbrunnen. It was as close to “magic” as I have ever felt

I keep hearing a lot of new Zealand is that way, too

Why the need to attack and lie? That's a poor behavior and a typical propaganda I've often seen from webs around topics like nanochips in vaccines or pro-putin ones (or simply joint work of gru and fsb massive electronic propaganda departments).

Not going to address all that bullshit since that would be a long post, just a random one - Hitler had very detailed plans on invasion of Switzerland and treating it similarly to Austria, simply deprioritized it. Just look at the map, everything around was firmly in Axis, they were not going anywhere, he could just starve them.

The cost of invasion for him would be massive for next to 0 gains - tons of hard-to-conquer mountains, fiercely defensive population that hates to be subjugated, and as Machiavelli said 'most free and most armed nation in the world".

They were not saint, simply neutral, it doesn't seem you understand the concept quite a bit.

Also heard about how they were accepting refugees and jews to the point of clearly facing famine (since they had nowhere to go), then famous 'Das Boot ist voll' happened, and they kept bringing them in regardless? Show me any nation in modern history when facing such existential threat with no hope that would behave so morally. Good contrast ie with current US admin treatment of almost all foreigners. Also helped secretly allies ie set up and access command post in Campione d'Italia - technically an Italian territory but surrounded by Switzerland. And so on...

If you perceive a statement of verifiable fact as an attack, it's about you not about the fact.

"lie"

Where?

"bullshit"

Not an argument.

"Hitler had very detailed plans on invasion of Switzerland"

Yes - see the links of my post. But he didn't. And it was not my argument.

"Show me any nation in modern history"

Whataboutism is still not an argument.

Your parent comment was flagged as not worthy of this forum (not by me), enough said about quality of your 'facts' :)

It just means, 2 or more people flagged it. No absolute truth about quality involved.

I would say, some facts were presented, but in a flame war inducing style. So flagging was likely warranted by normal expectations.

Happy now? I guess when you can't win an argument you shut it down. Love it though <3 fits the topic! Switzerland shut down the discussion for 50 years, living off stolen gold and Jewish bank accounts.

More lies, I wonder where that fierce hate comes from, have you ever wondered about that?

If you would come up with facts in a reasonable way we can discuss them one by one, but you seem to lack that skill. There is some truth to them, and some are twisted half truths ignoring other facts, and rest are outright lies. Maybe next time.

Just one thing - Switzerland never shut any discussion, again a lie, its more free country than most western ones. Half the articles you posted are from Swiss webs, and if you ever followed their media, this is discussed consistently.

I don't hate Switzerland, I love Switzerland. I got my first video games there. I love the food. I love the language. I love Jassen.

"If you would come up with facts"

I gave several sources, I read the official Swiss report and quoted from it to support my statements. Contrary to that, you have stated "lie" a dozen times without any fact or source or any detail.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'in the end it was more successful'

All these polices operate together its not like the first did one, then the other. Depending on the situation the adjusted policy many times. And they also had many polices that you didn't mention, like an active air war and air defense against Germany (and the allies at time). I don't know what you are basing the claim on that one was more successful then the others.

Also, why are you using a fictional movie as source for anything? I do not think people were actually kicked out, only denied entry. At least I have not read about that, anybody can provide a source for that?

Here some information about the denial of asylum:

"According to the Bergier Commission final report, during the Second World War, Switzerland granted asylum to 25,000 Jews while denying around 20,000 refugees (of which a significant portion were estimated to be Jewish) admission to the country in total.[42] However, Serge Klarsfeld, the French-Jewish historian, activist and Nazi Hunter stated in 2013 that the Swiss authorities rejected fewer WWII Jewish refugees than believed. Based on his own research, Klarsfeld claimed that the number of entry denials was closer to 3000."

> The report on arms revealed that from 1940 to 1944, 84 per cent of Swiss munitions’ exports went to Axis countries.

Of course more trade goes to Axis in this period, as Switzerland was surrounded by the Axis on literally all side.

And Switzerland was in desperate need for food and coal. It would have been literally insane not to sell things like munitions to Germany in that situation.

It doesn't excuse their treatment of "Righteous Among the Nations" like Paul Gruninger.

https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/12882741-paul-gruninger-trait...

I'm not excusing anything, rather trying to present a coherent picture, rather then presenting a view that seems to focus on making Switzerland look as possible.

Treatment of Paul Gruninger wasn't good, nobody is questioning that. But he was just fired, not shot or imprisoned. A reasonable punishment for what he did. And the people he let in were not evicted.

And that despite rejecting some, many Jews were accept into Switzerland and survived the war that somehow isn't talked about much. And of course the Swiss Jews survived the war unlike most other places in Europe.

Somehow Switzerland is made out to be a villain when in reality they did a lot and resisted more then many other states would have in the situation. Switzerland didn't do as much as they could have, but that's true for pretty much every nation. Given of how terrible and hopeless the Swiss situation seemed, I think overall their conduct in WW2 was pretty reasonable.

Literally every nation that traded with Germany, received gold stolen from Jews, Austria and Czechia. That includes the US and everybody else. But Switzerland is somehow uniquely singled out and is talked about in this context far more then anybody else.

>And Switzerland was in desperate need for food and coal.

Switzerland went through WWII without suffering much - and never came clean after WWII until the 1990s, remaining a rear base of nazi and neo-nazi networks during the second half of the XXth century.

Why are you moving the goal posts? That doesn't really have anything to do with the original post or argument. Is the goal of your post to just come up with as much negative stuff about Switzerland as you can manage?

Also its a waste oversimplification to claim 'never came clean until 1990'. That is only in regard to one specific issue and discussion and managing of that issue had been ongoing for a long time.

> remaining a rear base of nazi and neo-nazi networks during the second half of the XXth century.

And it was a base for anti-nazi networks threw-out the war as well.

And politically Switzerland was never close to being extreme right wing or joining the nazis. Switzerland is a free country that is open to lots of foreigners and international organization of all kinds. Including spy agencies from every country under the sun.

What official government policy support nazi networks? What exactly do you want Switzerland to do?

>Also its a waste oversimplification to claim 'never came clean until 1990'.

Excuse me, but I was there in the 1990s when the documentary "L'Honneur perdu de la Suisse" was aired and the during the debate around the Nazi bank account and the stolen Jewish goods or abandonned Jewish bank accounts.

The Swiss authorities, both private (banks) and public, resisted any inquiry until they were forced to, mostly by American Authorities who threatened to ban Swiss banks from operating in the USA.

The documentary cited above led to trials against the documentary makers and the television network, and a ban on any diffusion until the European court of Justice ruled in their favor after ten years of legal strife.

Your reaction shows that most Swiss refuse to engage with what was clear war profiteering and collaboration *before, during and after WWII" with the Nazis and their successors. Even official accounts nowadays admit this: https://www.ekr.admin.ch/publikationen/d710.html

>What official government policy support nazi networks?

Blocking Jews from seeking refuge and sending them back to Germany; not because of fear of German retaliation, but fear of "Verjudung" - "jewification".

>What exactly do you want Switzerland to do? During the war, After the war, admit it, instead of refusing any attempt to right wrongs or even threatening with lawsuits anyone who talks about it.

https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/12882741-paul-gruninger-trait...

With such large accusations I was honestly expecting sources.

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweiz_im_Zweiten_Weltkrieg In German.

As someone from the region: I also have read this a few times in different sources over my life, with no controversy about it at all. This is pretty much how it is written in the history books and it also makes sense.

Thank you for the link. I'm learning.

Can you use Google or LLM chatbots? Because it's all public information everyone can find.

I get that you want sources, but this is a veeeeery known fact, at least for europeans, I guess. That's one of the first things which gets mentioned about Switzerland if you ask others to describe it.

It's like asking for sources when someone talks about the US having been to war with [INSERT RANDOM COUNTRY].

I’m as much a fan of thoughtless AI forwarding as the next HNer, but this seems like a fair situation for it:

https://chatgpt.com/share/68199e8e-5ad4-8012-8026-09fa353b60...

Chat gpt is known to make up citations and quotes. You shouldn't reference it unless you've checked every one for accuracy.

o3 is known to use web search to reference documents directly and be perhaps a bit overly diligent when it comes to double checking itself. Of course it can still make mistakes, but for something like this that’s a lot less likely than with 4o. Besides, I didn’t reference it, I just shared the results of a query as a third party to the thread (who decided to take as much time checking the claims as the two comments above me). Although it seems that the info is all coming from Wikipedia anyway so I might as well have shared that.

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