Between the Alps and a Hard Place (9 page)

The logic of Swiss military decision-making after France's defeat flowed from this question: Should the country use armed force to maintain its independence? On June 26, 1940, the day after the French Armistice went into effect, Marcel Pilet Golaz, federal councilor of the Political Department (foreign minister), who was acting as president on rotation, made a radio address to the nation that, though it did not say anything terribly explicit, sounded to many like a declaration that Switzerland would henceforth be a German satellite. The following chapter will describe the political struggle for the country's soul, and Pilet Golaz's part in it. But here the focus is on what the speech meant to the army. Some of the soldiers agreed that the war was over and that they were now truly useless. Others, including nearly all officers, yearned to maintain independence and sought a way to bolster the army's credibility through some kind of national redoubt. The High Command (General Staff, along with the four commanders of corps) met on June 22 and again on July 6 to draw up plans that would make some sense for the encircled nation. Even though there were violent disagreements on what, precisely, the new plan would be, everyone recognized that any plan that was reasonable militarily would involve saving the army at the expense of the country—indeed, destroying
the country in order to save it—and that it would not be easy to implement.

General Guisan did not at first support the most radical plans. But the day after Pilet's unfortunate speech, he laid the political basis for any such plan by formally asking the Federal Council if his mission was still to defend the country's independence. An answer of “no” would have meant his resignation and a firestorm of protest across the nation. When the council gave its
pro forma
affirmation, Guisan delivered a set of military prescriptions. These amounted to taking the country's military policy back to very painful basics. By July 12 Guisan had issued the following order:

In other words, having given up the notion that they could defend Switzerland, the military leaders now focused strictly on deterring attack. To demonstrate their commitment to fight without hope of victory, they had to prepare to do a lot of things—abandon and destroy infrastructure—that they, never mind the politicians, had no heart to do.
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In the deliberations about deterrence, an aide to General Guisan brought up Pericles' speech to the Athenians when Sparta was first about to invade Athenian territory at the outset of the Peloponnesian
War. Pericles had said that if he could, he would have Athenians themselves destroy the houses and orchards that lay outside the walls, to show the Spartans that Athens cared less for those things than for its ultimate objectives.
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Acceptance of that logic led to ever more radical versions of the redoubt plan.

While military officers quickly agreed that they ought to sell their own skins, they were not at all agreed about how much of society's skin they ought to be putting on the block. To build and stock this “National Redoubt” would cost a great deal. But the population living outside of it would not be allowed in. Worse yet, the army would turn the routes leading from the borders to the redoubt into traps for the enemy. This would ensure fighting throughout the country. Old men and boys in the civilian population would fight, and draw horrid reprisals. The army, moreover, would mine roads and bridges, even factories, just like the Alpine tunnels. Blowing up everything outside the redoubt that might be of value to the Nazis would leave the civilian population destitute.

Guisan, backed by Francophone upholders of the Swiss militia tradition, objected that he had come into the army to protect the country, not to wreck it. Corps Commander Fritz Prisi talked of the army's duty to die trying to do the impossible job of protecting the population, and thereby inspire future generations. Prisi and his supporters agreed to deploy many troops in the redoubt and to fortify it, but argued that the army should put its main effort into a gallant stand, if not at the borders then on the Linth-Zurich fallback position. Those who escaped destruction could then fall back into the redoubt.

On the other side were the German-speaking professional officers, led by Ulrich Wille and former Chief of the General Staff Jakob Labhart, who argued that any lives lost outside the redoubt would simply be wasted. Death would be more quick
than gallant! Why fight, or threaten to fight, in any but the most advantageous circumstances for themselves? Why make the redoubt a refuge for stragglers rather than a potent military asset? Wille in particular wanted to achieve the maximum deterrent effect by putting the country's entire stock of arms and unit headquarters into the redoubt while at the same time demobilizing the army to peacetime levels, to give Germany maximum incentive to have peaceful economic relations.

The middle ground, advocated by Guisan's chief of staff, the professional artilleryman Jakob Huber, stressed practical considerations. Of course the redoubt had to be more than a refuge for stragglers; it should be made potent. But since the Swiss army could not possibly stay mobilized for long periods of time, and therefore would need time to remobilize in case of attack, the country could not simply leave its borders undefended. Some troops had to sacrifice themselves to buy time for men to leave civilian life and flow into the redoubt. Moreover, since the Linth-Zurich system of fortifications already existed, why not make use of it to slow down and inflict harm on the enemy? By the same token, why not set up mini-fortresses along the main roads, to make every bend in the road, every bridge and overpass a source of casualties for the invader? Let the invader arrive at the gates of the redoubt already bloodied. Besides, it would take months to dig and pour and stock the redoubt. In the meantime, the Swiss had better make good use of current positions.

The professionals, however, objected that now was the time of greatest danger, when the Germans most needed to be confronted by evidence of Swiss determination.

In a nutshell, on July 10 Guisan chose a version of the middle position. Two-thirds of the army were released from active duty. Order #12 of July 12 wholly reorganized the army deployment.
The new scheme used the term “redoubt” only indirectly; instead the order referred to “echeloning in depth”—the border brigades would slow the invader and die at their posts. Four divisions (reduced to three in the fall) plus three light brigades would then engage the attacker on or near the lines established between September 1939 and June 1940. Finally, they would fall back into an “Alpine position or national redoubt.” There they would join five divisions (six in the fall). The troops in the redoubt would have “provisions for maximum endurance” and would hold to the end “without thought of retreat.”
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(Guisan might have added, without
possibility
of retreat, either.) The redeployment would be completed by August, but construction and supply would take much longer.

The plan did not rouse significant civilian opposition even though it stated explicitly that the civilian population would not be allowed to flow into the redoubt. The Federal Council accepted the project largely because the head of the Military Department, Rudolf Minger, proposed it as his own, and other members of the council were unwilling to oppose a senior colleague. But there is evidence that the government might have accepted an even more radical version, since Pilet Golaz had agreed with Wille that even more troops should be dedicated to the redoubt. True, throughout the war, opinion surveys showed that many people did not understand that the redoubt meant they would be abandoned to occupation. But in the critical summer of 1940 the hazy idea of the redoubt gave hope to a desperate nation. At any rate, the Swiss population rallied to the recruitment of old men and boys to fight as “local guards,” each with a rifle, an armband and a mere forty-eight rounds of ammunition. More significantly, the country did not balk when, on May 24, 1941, General Guisan issued Order #13, pulling all but the border
troops into the redoubt. On the other side of the ledger, although the army did a lot of mining of civilian infrastructure, the scorched-earth policy did not become official until 1943.

It is important to note here that, as the Germanophile professionals had argued, Switzerland most needed its national redoubt in the summer of 1940, just when it was least possible to make it effective. By late 1943, when the Swiss army had fully built the redoubt, the country's military situation had improved to the point that it became prudent to move troops closer to the borders again.

The back-to-basics logic of defending the Alpine redoubt led to a wholesale rebuilding of the army.

To begin with, it required a radical change in the army's plans for employing aircraft. At the outset of war, Swiss aircraft were intended to keep foreign ones out of Swiss airspace, much as Swiss ground forces were to prevent foreign soldiers from stepping onto Swiss soil. But the fifty modern Swiss fighter planes were even less capable of securing Swiss airspace than the army was of securing the ground. True, during May–June 1940 Swiss pilots had established a favorable attrition ratio of better than three-to-one against German planes that had violated Swiss airspace. But even at that ratio, a German invasion would have used up the inventory of Swiss planes quickly and without benefit to Switzerland. Any serious attempt to use the Swiss fighters to prevent Allied bombers from crossing Swiss airspace would have ground down the Swiss air force just as quickly and would have aided the Germans. So, what good were airplanes?

In fact, aircraft became a key part of the Alpine redoubt. By the end of the war, Switzerland had acquired from Germany
or manufactured 328 modern Messerschmitt 109s and Morane 3801-02 fighters, as well as 202 C36 bombers. They were based entirely within the fortified region. Many were hangared in tunnels. Their job was twofold: protect the fortified region against enemy bombers and paratroops, and support Swiss ground forces' efforts to hold the gates to the redoubt.

Modern weapons have not invalidated the concept of fortress; they simply require that any given area be protected against modern weapons by modern weapons. By the end of the war, Switzerland's stock of modern 20 mm anti-aircraft tubes had passed two thousand, and long-range 75 mm anti-aircraft tubes numbered more than five hundred. Anti-aircraft batteries were concentrated in the Alpine region in general, and on the three fortresses and airfields in particular. Belgian fortresses had fallen to the Germans so easily because German aircraft had been able to fly over them with impunity. But if the Germans had tried to drop paratroopers onto the Swiss fortresses, or even to bomb them, the surrounding mountains would have forced the attacking aircraft to fly along narrow corridors. After 1940 Swiss fighters from within the redoubt might have been waiting for them around every bend, with anti-aircraft guns hitting them high and low from mountain and valley alike. Operating from behind friendly mountains, the Swiss aircraft would have darted in and out of the envelope of their own anti-aircraft guns to control the skies over the gates to the redoubt and to bomb the enemy on the ground as well.

Switzerland's terrain dictates that military forces going toward one of the entrances to the Alpine redoubt cannot easily shift laterally to go up another valley. By the same token, defensive forces within the redoubt could not easily shift their weight from one sector to another. The bomber force therefore proved to be the most economical means by which the Swiss high
command could reinforce any particularly hard-pressed sector. The bombers' advantage consisted in part of their own relative safety. To bomb Germans approaching the redoubt from the ground, the Swiss bombers had to expose themselves to a hostile environment for only a few minutes before ducking back behind their mountains. A force of more than a hundred bombers, seconds from secure areas, could have had a fearsome effect. More recently Egypt, in its 1973 Sinai campaign, stymied Israel's tank-plane assault by quickly covering its advanced positions with a network of SA-6 anti-aircraft missiles, from behind which inferior Egyptian pilots were able to fight the Israelis with some advantage.

The Swiss defense of the redoubt began at the border. Each sector, corresponding to a valley leading to an entrance to the redoubt, was entrusted to an army corps. The corps headquarters and most of the troops were located in the redoubt. But the corps would manage the border troops' delaying action, as well as the work of the demolition troops, the light brigades, and the mini-fortresses along the invasion routes. By the end of the war, the weapons in the hands of these light brigades had become serious. Foremost, these troops were now riding primarily motor vehicles. Swiss forces also possessed some three thousand antitank tubes of various kinds, plus some five hundred self-propelled heavy guns. Even the horse cavalry was equipped with antitank rocket launchers.
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The job of the ground forces outside the redoubt was to wage a hit-and-run war of attrition against the invader. In this war the Swiss forces outside the redoubt would seek to mingle with the enemy, fighting at short distances to deprive him of the opportunity to use his superior artillery.

This sort of warfare implied a very different sort of infantry from the one at the beginning of the war. No longer would masses of men be delivering small amounts of fire along a static front. Now, small groups would have to dart into (and with luck out of) loose enemy formations, delivering a blast of fire against trucks, tanks, and even aircraft. Infantrymen would thus have to be trained in a variety of crew-served weapons, as well as in the tactics of small-unit warfare. They would have to be motivated in ways very different from those of European parade ground armies. In short, Swiss warfare outside the redoubt could only be guerrilla warfare. General Guisan's final report relates that he tried to turn every Swiss infantryman into a commando.
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