Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Swiss People Are Armed

All these years, and he still doesn't recognize their power.

I wonder what would have happened if Germany had carried out a hostile invasion of Switzerland?

I don't mean whether the Swiss would have put up and effective resistance or not, but the wider implications on the war? Given that Switzerland was the worlds banks, would it have brought in more countries trying to get their money back? Or just the opposite?

I've never heard a compelling reason why German would have had anything to gain by invading Switzerland during the war. They were getting along pretty well, doing good business.

Now, after the war, assuming a German victory, with a couple of decades of peace behind them, and the Germans virtually surrounding them, the Swiss might have had good reason to be concerned about "friendly" takeovers of their banking industry.

Pete: There's lots of literature out there on the subject. Hitler hated the Swiss but in a rare moment of lucidity, realized there was nothing to gain by an invasion. The Swiss were taking care of them under the table and the Germans took care of them by placing billions in currency, gold etc in their banks. It was a great conduit for espionage dispersion into other countries (so was Sweden) etc. But to the OP, had the Germans wanted, they could have crushed the Swiss.

Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to do a study on invading Switzerland. The Wehrmacht said they could do it but there would not be much of an army left. So Hitler ordered the SS to do a study and they said pretty much the same thing. Now why Hitler listen to the Wehrmacht and SS on this when he rarely listen to anyone is anybody's guess. Perhaps he got the word for the international banking cartel who knows. One things for certain Switzerland is a very small mountainous country and small mountainous countries are a tough nut to crack even with today's technology. Switzerland is about half the size of Ireland or a little bigger than Vermont. The Nazis could have and would have taken the other plains of Switzerland fairly easy but the mountains would have been a whole different kettle of fish.

Dude, your FOS (then again that's SOP). Operation Tannenbaum originally had 21 Divisions as a requirement but it was later revised to ten or eleven.

Back in the '80's a gent I knew was in Switzerland during national qualifications, which is a nationwide event on the scope of the Super Bowl. He attended at one of the local ranges and he said there were old guys there hitting man sized targets at 1,200 meters with open sighted K31's. He said guys with StGw 57's with match sights were scoring bullseyes at 1,000 meters on a fairly regular basis. (IIRC the bull at 1,000 meters is a 1 meter circle).

He came back saying there's a damn good reason no one wants to invade them. Every damn one of them is a high power match rifle shooter; you just don't want to go there.

Don't forget Spain...lots of espionage operated out of Spain. Spain provided friendly ports for the Germans. And from Spain the Nazi's sent spies first to South America (Argentina and Brazil), then on up the continent. Germans had a lot more allies than we were taught in school. Just very few were "official" above board allies, remaining "technically neutral".

DITTOS to that Kevin.

Real good against a combined arms Blitzkreig. BFD, they would have been toast with impressive target scores..

Agreed. No matter how good your riflemen are, even if they're the best in the world; they will fall against a combined arms attack. Remember, Artillery has accounted for the highest battlefield casualties for at least the past 300 years.

They have the ability to be very effective insurgents, that's pretty much it. The insurgency could have been REALLY ugly for the Germans; but we'll never know.

Regular army and combined arms pretty much always wins though.

Still, If I were the Germans; I just wouln't go there. They had very little to gain that they weren't already getting, and it would have been a big sap on resources. On the other side, it would have been the height of their looting; the Swiss have a lot of nice stuff and huge collections of art. It's for the looting that I'm positive that after the war the Germans would have done it. They were just greedy on top of being evil.

If you read my posts, they didn't need to and Germans stashed a lot of their loot in there to begin with. The Greeks and Yugos (and by that I included all the ethnic groups populating what we used to call Yugoslavia) were all tough fighters, mountains etc and yes the Germans had a time with the insurgents, but when the Whermacht rolled, it was over fast. Incidentally, you DO know Germans make up the largest portion of the American population don't you? Ubermenschen!

It's useless Jorge. We've been down this road before and some are convinced Switzerland is da schit when it comes to all things military.

According to these knuckleheads, the Germans pissed their pants at the mere mention of the mighty Swiss.

Had Germany attacked, they would have taken the country, there is no debating that.

The only thing that saved the Swiss was their banking system, which Germany made good use of and the fact they were not a viable threat to the fatherland.

But some swiss dude hitting the 10 ring on a target proves that they could have been victorious in a war with Germany during WWII.

laffin

The little guy needn't be able to win. He only needs to raise the cost above the benefit.

Yep.

You guys have obviously never studied the geography of Switzerland. The Swiss were willing to surrender the plains of Switzerland to the Germans and turn the mountains into a fortress. Once in the mountains the planes, tanks, and artillery would have been worthless and the fight would have turned into a slug fest between mountain infantry in which case the Swiss would have had the edge.

There's a reason smart countries never get into a slug fest with well armed small mountain countries.

Nobody ever said that. What has been said is like with Russia the Germans would have met their Waterloo even if the Germans had won a war with Switzerland the Germans would ultimately lost in the long run.

That right there says it all. Every book on the subject says the something the Swiss could not win the war against Germany but the cost to Germany would have been so high the benefit would not have been worth the cost.

I didn't know that...but I'm at least 1/2 Kraut...my maternal family name is Gonnerman.

No it doesn't...Politicians will often overlook such things. Case in point, Germany invading Russia; DUMB!! (now this is from memory, so sue me if I'm not 100%)...Hitler invaded with something like 86 divisions, expecting to face around 160 Russian divisions. About 3.5 weeks into the campaign, Von Manstein wrote to high command and stated that he had identified 320 divisions already. Hitler was impatient, impertinent, ignorant, and arrogant; just what you want in an enemy leader.

I will say many of his political moves leading up to the war were quite brilliant (in an evil sort of way). He did have his finger on the pulse of Europe politically. But militarily he was a rank amateur at best. Germany could have won WW II sooo easy. Don't invade Russia, DO invade the UK and Germany wins.