The tiny mountainous country of Switzerland has been in a state of “perpetual neutrality”
since the major European powers of the time declared it as such during the Congress of
Vienna after the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815.
Why did they do this?
The French conquered Switzerland in 1798, establishing the Helvetic Republic in attempt
to make Switzerland something of a strategically positioned French satellite state.
Not long after, Austrian and Russian forces invaded the country in their war against France.
The Swiss, rather than fighting alongside their French overlords, largely refused.
This ultimately led to the Act of Mediation, giving the Swiss back much of their former
independence.
Twelve years later, they got the rest thanks to the aforementioned Congress of Vienna in
which their neutrality in the wars of their neighbors was officially recognised.
Beyond the Swiss themselves having long tried to stay out of the conflicts of Europe (since
the early 16th century after a devastating loss at the Battle of Marignano), part of
the reason Switzerland was granted neutrality in perpetuity in 1815 is because the European
powers of the time deemed that the country was ideally located to function as a “a
valuable buffer zone between France and Austria”.
Thus, granting their neutrality in wars, so long as they continued to stay out of them,
would “contribute to stability in the region”.
Since that time, with a few minor exceptions, Switzerland has steadfastly refused to compromise
its neutrality for any reason, though on the war-front they did suffer an exceptionally
brief civil war in the mid-19th century resulting in only a handful of casualties.
While minor in its scale, this civil war drastically changed the political landscape of the Swiss
government, including the establishment of a constitution partially borrowing from the
then less than a century old United States constitution.
In any event, as for those aforementioned “minor exceptions”, Switzerland has occasionally
taken part in some global peacekeeping missions and prior to 1860 Swiss troops did sometimes
take part in various skirmishes, despite their neutrality.
In more modern times, Switzerland needed to defend its borders from both Allied and Axis
(see: How Did the Axis and Allies Get Their Names) air incursions during WW2.
For instance, they shot down nearly a dozen German planes in the spring of 1940 alone,
as well as shot down some American bombers and forced down countless others on both sides.
This included grounding and detaining the crews of over a hundred Allied bombers that
tried to fly over the country.
When Hitler tried to counter Swiss measures at keeping the Luftwaffe from their skies
by sending a sabotage team to destroy Swiss airfields, the Swiss successfully captured
the saboteurs before they could carry out any bombings.
You might think it a bit silly for the Swiss to risk war with both sides by shooting or
forcing down foreign aircraft from their skies, but on several occasions Allied bombers accidentally
attacked Swiss cities, mistaking them for German ones.
For instance, on April 1, 1944, American bombers, thinking they were bombing Ludwigshafen am
Rhein, bombed Schaffhausen, killing 40 Swiss citizens and destroying over fifty buildings.
This was not an isolated incident.
So how exactly did Switzerland, surrounded on all sides by Axis (or Central in WW1) and
Allied powers during the wars to end all wars, manage to keep enemy troops at bay without
much in the way of any fighting?
Officially Switzerland maintains a policy of “Aggressive Neutrality” meaning that
although it actively avoids taking part in conflicts, as evidenced by their air-force
activities during WW2, it will defend its own interests with vigour.
How vigorous?
To ensure other countries respect its neutral stance, Switzerland has long put itself into
a terrifyingly over prepared position to fight, and made sure every country around them was,
and is, well aware of this fact.
As for specifics, to begin with, a common misconception about Switzerland is that because
it doesn’t actively take part in global military conflicts, that it doesn’t have
a strong or well prepared military.
In reality the Swiss military is a highly trained and competent fighting force, and
due to the country’s policy of compulsory conscription of males (today women may volunteer
for any position in the military, but are not required to serve) is surprisingly large
for a country of only around eight million people.
In fact, approximately two-thirds of all males are ultimately deemed mentally and physically
fit enough to serve in the Swiss military, meaning a huge percentage of their population
is ultimately military trained.
(Those who are not, and aren’t exempt because of a disability, are required to pay additional
taxes until they are 30 to make up for not serving.)
As for what fighting force is actively maintained, the Swiss military today is only around 140,000
men strong and just this year it has been voted to reduce that to 100,000.
This is a major downsize from just two decades ago when it was estimated the Swiss military
had some 750,000 soldiers.
For reference, this latter total is about half the size of the United States military
today, despite Switzerland having only about eight million people vs. the United States’
three hundred million.
In addition to this, Switzerland has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the
world and many Swiss people are highly competent in handling said firearms due to both compulsory
military service and a strong culture of recreational shooting (half a million Swiss children are
said to be part of a gun club of some kind).
This said, in recent years the rate of gun ownership has declined somewhat after a series
of gun related incidents, such as one where a man shot his estranged wife with his old
military issued rifle.
Prior to the shooting, military conscripts would take their rifle home with them after
their service ended and were expected to keep it ready for use in defending the country
should the need arise.
After these incidents, the military curbed this and implemented a new policy stating
that any conscript wishing to keep their gun after service must buy it and apply for a
permit.
As part of this new policy, the Swiss military also no longer provides ammunition with the
guns, instead keeping it in secure locations that citizens must get to in the event of
an emergency.
Speaking of emergencies, generally speaking, Switzerland is prepared for near any global
catastrophe from nuclear fallout to a surprise invasion from an enemy force thanks to a defensive
plan it has been implementing since 1880, but which was doubled-down upon during WW2
and later during the Cold War.
Dubbed the Swiss National Redoubt, in a nutshell Switzerland has taken advantage of it unique
natural geography, which includes mountains that surround it on nearly all sides, to build
countless bunkers, fortifications and warehouses across the country that can be accessed at
a moment’s notice.
The full scale of the fortifications is a closely guarded secret, but some of them are
kept in plain view as part of a comprehensive campaign of deterrence.
Initially the National Redoubt consisted of tunnels bored into the many mountains of Switzerland
in key strategic positions for retreating troops and citizens to take shelter in, but
over the years these have evolved to encompass a host of ingenious defensive and offensive
structures.
Along with tunnels and bunkers (which are fully stocked and contain everything from
bakeries and hospitals to dormitories), the mountains of Switzerland also hide countless
tanks, aircraft, and hidden artillery guns (some of which are pointed directly at Switzerland’s
own roads to destroy them in the event of invasion).
Oddly for a landlocked country, Switzerland does maintain an active navy of sorts, though
they don’t store any boats in its mountains as far as we could find.
The naval branch of the Swiss forces’ primary role is in patrolling the country’s lakes
on the border and providing aid in search and rescue operations.
As for more specifically how they kept themselves out of the world wars, during WW1, the Swiss
military, under freshly appointed General Ulrich Wille, mobilised well over 200,000
Swiss soldiers and deployed them across its major entry points to deter any outside forces
from considering waging war on the country.
After it became apparent that Switzerland’s neutrality would be recognised by all powers
in the first Great War, the vast majority of the Swiss troops were sent home.
(In fact, in the final year of the war, the Swiss military had shrunk its numbers to just
12,000.)
Nothing further was required to keep the Swiss out of WW1.
WW2 was a different beast altogether with Switzerland not banking on Hitler respecting
their long-held neutral stance in European conflicts.
Thus, newly appointed Swiss General Henri Guisan was given the unenviable task of trying
to figure out a way to defend the small country from their neighbors, Hitler and his allies,
despite that said powers drastically outmatched the Swiss army in a variety of ways.
Towards this end, leading up to the war, the Swiss withdrew from the League of Nations
to help ensure their neutrality, began to re-build their military (bringing the number
up to 430,000 combat troops within three days of the start of the war), and strongly encouraged
its citizens to keep at minimum two months’ worth of supplies on hand at any given time.
On top of that, they also began secret negotiations with France to join forces against Germany,
should Germany attack Switzerland (a risky move that was discovered by the Germans after
France fell to them).
But even with all that, knowing the Swiss couldn’t win if Hitler really wanted to
invade, Guisan and co.
made the decision to drastically ramp up their WW1 era strategy of making invading Switzerland
as unsavory an option as possible.
Guisan noted that by utilizing Switzerland’s harsh terrain, a comparatively small amount
of Swiss soldiers in a secure defensive position could fight off a massive fighting force if
the need ever arose.
So the plan was essentially to perpetually defend and retreat to some fortified position
over and over again, ultimately conceding the less defensible populated areas of the
country once the government and citizens had managed a retreat into secret fortified positions
in the Alps.
They’d then use the Alps as a base from which to both launch guerrilla attacks to
make life miserable for any successful invasion force and to use highly defensible positions
there to keep crucial supply lines from the invaders.
More controversially, Switzerland continued to trade with Nazi Germany during the war
in order to further de-incentivise Hitler from invading.
(There is some speculation that some of the Allies’ “accidental” attacks on Switzerland
were really not accidents at all, given that some of the buildings that were blown up were
factories supplying the Axis powers.)
The multi-pronged plan worked and, while Hitler did have a detailed plan in place to invade
Switzerland eventually, the cost of doing so was always too high given the Axis power’s
troubles both on the Eastern and Western fronts.
Thus, Switzerland was largely ignored by both Allies and the Axis throughout WW2, despite
its amazingly well placed location right next to Germany, Italy, France, and Austria.
Switzerland stepped up their level of defence during the Cold War, again mostly out of a
desire to deter any potential invaders.
This time, however, the focus was on “aggressively” defending Switzerland’s borders instead
of defending them only long enough to cover a retreat into the well fortified mountains.
Towards this end, Switzerland’s roads, bridges and train lines were rigged with explosives
that could be detonated at any time.
In many cases, the engineers who designed the bridges were required to come up with
the most efficient way, using explosives, to ensure the complete destruction of those
same bridges.
Once the destruction plan was developed, hidden explosives were installed at the appropriate
locations in the bridges.
On top of that, the military also lined hundreds of mountains flanking major roads with explosives
to create artificial rockslides.
All total, over three thousand points of demolition are publicly known to have been implemented
throughout the small country.
With ground attacks covered, the Swiss looked to the skies.
Unfortunately for them, attack by air is much harder to defend against for a country so
small that enemy air forces could penetrate anywhere within its borders before an adequate
defence could be mustered to defend its cities.
To protect against this, the Swiss government constructed thousands of bomb shelters in
homes, towns and cities to such a degree that it’s estimated that anywhere between 80
to 120 percent of the country’s population could hide in them for extended periods.
Many of these shelters also included small hospitals and the necessary equipment to set
up independent command centers.
In fact, homes built after WW2 were often made with over 40 cm (16 in.)
thick concrete ceilings to help them survive aerial bombings.
If your home didn’t accommodate such a shelter, you had to pay a tax to support places that
did.
It’s also rumoured that much of Switzerland’s gold supply as well as vast supplies of food
stores have been similarly squirreled away somewhere in the Alps, which comprise just
over half of the country’s total land area.
As a further example of how ridiculously well prepared the Swiss are for any and all threats,
there are things like hidden hydroelectric dams built inside of unmarked mountains so
that in the event of mass bombings, they’ll still have electricity from these secret facilities.
And, remember, these are the things the Swiss government has let us know about.
It is thought that there are probably more fortifications and hidden goodies scattered
about the country’s landscape.
Since the end of the Cold War (see How Did the Cold War Start and End), similar to how
the Swiss government has been slowly disarming its population and reducing its standing army,
decommissioning some of these fortifications has begun in order to reduce government spending.
The Swiss government is somewhat coy about the extent of this disarming, but it has been
reported that many of the more extreme defences, such as the explosives that used to be hidden
inside the country’s bridges and along its road and railways, have been removed.
As for the bunkers, unfortunately, simply abandoning many of these facilities is not
an option, and it’s fairly expensive to decommission them.
As such, as the head of security policy for the federal Department of Defense, Christian
Catrina, said “…in most cases we’d be glad if someone would take them off our hands
for no price”.
In some cases, this has resulted in companies using the ridiculously well protected and
secure mountain facilities as data repositories and server farms.
In one such converted bunker, the servers inside are even completely protected from
outside electromagnetic impulses that result from nuclear explosions.
In another, detailed instructions on how to build devices for reading all known data storage
formats, even older formats like floppy disks, are kept, so that if that knowledge is otherwise
lost, future generations can still decode our data storage devices to access the data
within correctly.
Essentially, the researchers involved in this particular project have attempted to create
a “Rosetta Stone” of data formats and are using a ridiculously secure Swiss bunker
as the storage point for that knowledge.
As a result of military downsizing, the fate of the rest of the fortifications is unclear
and there are calls to decommission all of them, despite the estimated billion dollar
price tag to do so.
There is even a growing minority of the Swiss population who would like to see the entire
military disbanded, including ceasing mandatory conscription.
But for now, at least, any country that wishes to ignore Switzerland’s long-held neutrality
in military conflicts will find the tiny country an exceptionally difficult one to conquer
and occupy.
And presumably if war ever again threatens Swiss’ borders, regardless of how small
they make their military today, they’ll likely keep themselves in a position to rapidly
ramp back up their defences
as they did for WW1 and WW2.