Anyone visiting the Berner Oberland
passes through the grand old resort town of Interlaken.
The region's busy transportation hub,
it's most useful as a springboard for alpine thrills.
Interlaken's classic old-world hotels
remind visitors of its glory days.
In the late 1800s,
when the painters and poets of the Romantic Age
popularized the wonders of these mountains,
the Alps become a major stop
for the wealthy on their grand tour of Europe.
Interlaken became one of the original alpine resorts
and gracious hotels with ballrooms like this
lined its main street.
Interlaken's glory days are long gone,
its elegant old hotels eclipsed by new,
more jet-setty resorts.
Today, its streets are filled with shopping temptations.
Monitors show live pictures
of the visibility at famous peaks.
If the TV screen shows the summit is socked in,
you can choose from some interesting lowland options.
In the 20th century,
Switzerland, famous for its neutrality,
became an alpine fortress,
honeycombed with underground military installations.
Behind this door hides an army hospital
with several thousand beds.
Anticipating an invasion, Switzerland had airstrips
buried in the mountainsides
and pop-up tank barriers embedded in the freeways.
Every strategic bridge and tunnel,
designed with explosives built in,
could be destroyed with a moment's notice.
My friend, Fritz Hutmacher,
who just finished 20 years in the army reserve,
is giving away a few Swiss military secrets.
Rick: So Switzerland is famous for being neutral.
Fritz: Yes.
But over the last 70 years,
the Alps got turned into a huge fortress.
Now we have over 15,000 buildings,
like the ones around us, with hidden guns,
and even the neighbors, they were not aware what's in,
they were so secret.
15,000 underground installations?
Yes.
This barn looks like many others in Switzerland,
but it hides a secret.
Let's have a look inside.
[ Hinges creaking ]
Wow. Look at this thing.
What was this for? Why did they have this here?
It was for World War II.
It protected the fortress, the Alps.
And was it used later than World War II?
Yes, it got updated over the last decades
and has new technology and...
Rick: So actually this gun works?
This gun works.
Now children could have grown up right outside these doors
not knowing there was a gun sitting here?
Not only children, generations were not aware
what was actually inside these buildings.
And this is not wood!
It looks like wood.
Fritz: No, that's solid concrete.
In this town, four innocent-looking hay barns
conceal a network of tunnels
connecting several of these big guns.
With the end of the Cold War,
many of these once top-secret sites
are now open to the public as museums.
This is the gun we just saw.
Guten tag.
[ Speaking German ]
Rick: So, Fritz, from headquarters
they would tell them what coordinates to set.
Fritz: Yes, certain coordinates would get into that calculator
and the gun gets adjusted.
Rick: Okay.
A quick demonstration shows how the gun was prepped and loaded.
This is not just a museum piece.
It feels like it could still work.
Yah, if we had a live round, we could still fire it today.
And these wooden houses
look cheery and vulnerable from the outside,
but like nearly all modern Swiss houses,
Fritz's family home
sits upon a no-nonsense concrete bomb shelter.
This is the door to our bomb shelter.
Man.
So, how much must this weigh?
Couple of thousand pounds, concrete and steel.
If you have a nuclear attack...
You run in.
...you all run in here.
Swiss men are required to spend time in the military,
including about 20 years in the reserve,
and like minutemen awaiting an invasion,
they have their guns, gas masks and ammo ready and waiting.