The Nazi Plan to Invade Switzerland
Operation Tannenbaum focused on the early conquest of the more important parts of Switzerland. Once that was done, follow up attacks were to be made against Swiss army remnants in the “National Redoubt” – a fortified zone in Switzerland’s mountainous south. Much has been made of Switzerland’s mountainous terrain as a defensive feature, to the point that a myth grew that the Swiss are practically invulnerable to attack. This, despite the numerous invaders who had conquered Switzerland, from the Romans to the Habsburgs to multiple French, Austrian, and even Russian armies that crisscrossed Switzerland during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Against a potential German invasion in WWII, the Swiss army planned to take advantage of topography and retreat into the country’s mountainous parts.
Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of the Swiss did not live high up in the mountains. They dwelt instead in the lower parts of the country, in valleys and foothills that were readily accessible to German invaders. Cutoff up in the mountains, one can only guess how long the Swiss forces in the National Redoubt might have been able to offer sustained resistance. Partisan and guerrilla warfare would have been an option. However, that would have required the Swiss to be markedly different from other Western Europeans whose countries had been occupied by the Nazis. They exhibited little willingness to risk the massive reprisals and atrocities Hitler’s Germans were ready to inflict on restive subjects.
