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Before the outbreak of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler made repeated assurances that Germany would respect Swiss neutrality in the event of a conflict in Europe. [2] In February 1937, he assured the Swiss Federal Councillor Edmund Schulthess that "at all times, whatever happens, we will respect the inviolability and neutrality of Switzerland", reiterating this promise shortly before the ...
Switzerland relied on trade for half of its food and essentially all of its fuel; however, the Swiss controlled vital trans-alpine rail tunnels between Germany and Italy and possessed considerable electrical generating capacity that was relatively safe from air attack. Switzerland's most important exports during the war were precision machine ...
Despite the lack of serious consideration by the German authorities of the joint German-Italian attack plan, codenamed "Operation Tannenbaum", [nhss 16] Klaus Urner and Georges-André Chevallaz cite the existence of authentic German plans for an attack on Switzerland. Klaus Urner cites a German document from August 1940 that outlines the ...
During World War II, the neutral powers took no official side, hoping to avoid attack. However, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland all helped the Allies by supplying "voluntary" brigades [1] to the United Kingdom, [2] while Spain avoided the Allies in favor of the Axis, supplying them with its own voluntary brigade, the Blue Division. Ireland ...
Europe in 1910 with World War I alliances highlighted. Switzerland (yellow) found itself surrounded by members of opposing alliances. During the First World War, Switzerland sustained its policy of neutrality despite sharing land borders with two of the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) and two of the Allied Powers (France and Italy).
The Germans themselves estimated that any attack on Switzerland would likely result in a 4:1 casualty ratio against them. Not that the Swiss went untested: in May 1940, Luftwaffe aircraft flew into Swiss airspace to attack French targets behind the lines and to test the Swiss response.
Swiss police say the 15-year-old suspect in the stabbing of an Orthodox Jewish man in Zurich over the weekend had appeared in a video expressing solidarity with the banned Islamic State group, and ...
Switzerland was adjacent to and at times almost completely surrounded by Axis, or Axis-occupied, countries. On several occasions, Allied bombing raids hit targets in Switzerland resulting in fatalities and property damage. The Swiss government initially intercepted German aircraft in 1940 during the Battle of France but caved to German pressure ...