A German Conquest of Switzerland in WWII Was Quite Feasible
A common myth about Switzerland in WWII is that the Nazis feared a massive guerrilla war up in the Alps if they invaded. However, there is little reason to assume that such a war would have been waged. Bad as Nazi rule was in Western Europe, the Germans did not treat Western European – unless they were Jews – as atrociously as they did the Eastern European Slavs. Western Europeans thus never felt that their backs were to the wall and that they had nothing to lose. Not to the same extent as did, say, the Soviets or Yugoslavs, who responded with a fierce and widespread partisan resistance that had no equivalent in Western Europe. Despite Hitler’s dislike of the Swiss, he and the Nazis nonetheless saw them as Germans, to be incorporated into the Reich as fellow citizens.
The Swiss were thus unlikely to have been treated with the wanton cruelty that triggered widespread resistance in the East. Instead, the Nazis would probably have treated them better than they did other Western Europeans: they were ethnic Germans, after all. Fortunately, the order to execute Operation Tannenbaum was never given. While it would have emotionally gratified Hitler to invade, there was no need to do so. The Swiss had no aggressive designs, and surrounded on all sides by Axis territory, there was no security threat of occupation by the Allies to use it as a base for attacking Germany. Switzerland had no resources that were not readily available to the Germans via trade. Also, Swiss banks, combined with Swiss neutrality, made the country a convenient center for currency exchange and other international financial transactions that were useful to the Germans.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
Alston, David – Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean (2021)
Automatic Ballpoint – Operation Tannenbaum
Cannato, Vincent J. – American Passage: The History of Ellis Island (2009)
Clark, Alan – Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-1945 (1985)
Cracked – 11 Myths We Were Taught About the United States
Devine, Tom M. – Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection (2015)
Dunninger, Joseph – Inside the Medium’s Cabinet (1935)
Furlong, William Rea – So Proudly We Hail: The History of the United States Flag (1981)
Guardian, The, December 11th, 2003 – Keely’s Trickster Engine
Guardian, The, October 20th, 2013 – The Psychology of Spiritualism: Science and Seances
Hayes, Joseph, Atlas Obscura – The Victorian Belief That a Train Ride Could Cause Instant Insanity
History Collection – 16 Truths About the Rise of the Religious Right in America
History Network – Did Betsy Ross Really Make the First American Flag?
JSTOR Daily – Pssst, Crop Circles Were a Hoax
Lock Haven University – The Keely Motor Hoax
Mann, Walter – The Follies and Frauds of Spiritualism (1919)
Murphy, David E. – What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa (2005)
Museum of Hoaxes – Keely Motor Company
New York Public Library – Why Your Family Name Was Not Changed at Ellis Island (and One that Was)
New York Times, March 17th, 2017 – Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not Slaves, Too
Roberts, Walter R. – Tito, Mihailovic, and the Allies 1941-1945 (1987)
Sceptical Scot – The Myth of Scottish Slaves
Smithsonian Magazine, December 15th, 2009 – Crop Circles: The Art of the Hoax
Smithsonian Magazine, November 22nd, 2011 – The True Story Behind Plymouth Rock
Southern Poverty Law Center – How the Myth of Irish Slaves Became a Favorite Meme of Racists Online
Urner, Klaus – Let’s Swallow Switzerland: Hitler’s Plans Against the Swiss Confederation
