Target Switzerland

by Stephen P. Halbrook

Book Overview

Countless books have been written on the military history of World War II, however astonishingly little information has appeared about the one country that stared the Nazis down and refused to become an accomplice to the horrors of the Third Reich. This book provides an objective, year-by-year account of Switzerland's military role in World War II, including her defensive strategies, details of Nazi invasion plans, and Switzerland's moral, material...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0306813254
• ISBN13: 9780306813252
• Release Date: December 2003
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A superb look at Switzerland's balancing act.

Swiss independence was maintained in World War Two by an amazing balancing act. It was 50% military preparedness, and the remainder a constantly shifting mixture of varying economic collaboration and political defiance. To get food and raw materials, the Swiss had to make weapons for the Germans and Italians. They did a billion and a half Swiss marks worth of business with the Fascist governments during the war. They also did two and a half billion marks worth of business with America, and almost another billion with Britain, all while providing Allied intelligence with aid, information, and operational cover. The chronometers used by allied bombadier/navigators to find and level German cities were made in Switzerland, and sneaked out of the country inside cheap watch bodies. The value of each Allied contract resulted in an exactly equal reduction of business with Germany. The almost hysterical anti-nazi feeling among the Swiss, especially among the German speakers, made it easy for the Swiss government to institute a program of asylum for hundreds of thousands of refugees and allied military personel, and their uncensored radio and print media made it possible to beam anti-nazi plays and propaganda directly into Germany and Facist Italy. The knowledge that every man in Switzerland was (still is) a trained soldier with his weapon in his home, combined with the almost impregnable vastnesses of the Swiss Alps, resulted in all three of the planned German offensives being called off. Hitler had to vent his spleen with caustic remarks about the "Berg Semiten", as he called the Swiss, or the "Mountain Jews". A remarkable story of a remarkable and very admirable people, told in a totally informative and lucid way. Attorney Halbrook researched and prepared this book as he would one of his presentations before the Supreme Court, and it will become the standard by which all similar books will be judged.

The Necessary Counterpoint to Misguided Insinuations that the Swiss Were Pro-Axis

~Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality In World War II~ by researcher Stephen Halbrook is an erudite work, illustrating the dilemma that Switzerland faced in the 1930s and 1940s. The Swiss have been wrongly slandered, scapegoated and extorted for their role in WWII as a neutral power, and are wrongly belittled for supposed accommodations to the Third Reich. Sandwiched between hostile two Axis powers, the Swiss were between the alps and a hard place literally. Her terrain was her best ally. Halbrook has taken to the task of an honest, forthright treatment of the Swiss diplomatic and political scene during this time, and offers a remarkable look at her anti-Nazi international posturing amidst her proclaimed neutrality. Swiss newspapers insulted Hitler in his own language. Afterwards, when the Nazi government demanded that the insults be quelled, the Swiss attaché politely informed him that the newspapers were not organs of the Swiss state, and they could take no such action. At movie reels, when the Swiss were shown pictures of German crowds greeting Hitler with their salute, throngs of them erupted in laughter, mocking the lampoonish nature of the spectacle and their willing subservience. Needless to say, they were few friends of Hitler and Mussolini in Switzerland. The Swiss were realistic to the possibility of an Axis invasion, and they made ample military preparations to deter invasion, and make it totally unfruitful. The Swiss were prepared for an all out war of resistance. Herein, Henri Guisan, the Commander in Chief of the neutral Swiss Army during World War II is presented as an unlikely hero. Huisan realized that the German Panzers had the upper hand, and could easily descend upon the northern plateau of Switzerland, and posited that free partisans operating from a fortified alpine redoubt as their base of operations would wage a fierce war against the invader, and make them pay heavily for every inch of Swiss soil. Fortresses were established at passes in the southwest, south, and southeast, and a barrage of artillery fire and gunfire from every direction would pummeled the German Panzers and troops entering through the narrow vallies. The vast majority of the Swiss populace, even in the German-speaking regions, hoped for Allied victory. The fear of a Nazi invasion was a legitimate concern of the Swiss. The Swiss had a well-supplied military redoubt where the bulk of the military was stationed and the remnant. The redoubt was a veritable fortress with earthworks, trenches, tunnels, AA guns, and machine guns. If attacked, the underdog Swiss planned to exploit the terrain (i.e. towering mountains, narrow passes) to harness every possible tactical advantage in much the same way the as the beleaguered Spartans did at Thermopylae. This book is complimented by the book by intelligenbce analyst Angelo Codevilla, and is much more detailed. The Swiss were not taking chances with national security before and during World War II. The few N

David and Goliath

I am a history buff and have always been interested in World War II, especially in Europe. In TARGET SWITZERLAND, Stephen P. Halbrook gives a fascinating explanation of Switzerland's role in that epic conflict.I had never given much thought to the Swiss experience in the Second World War. About the only current material I had seen on Switzerland tended to be critical of it for staying neutral and maintaining a certain level of commercial cooperation with Hitler and his allies. Jean Ziegler's THE SWISS, THE GOLD AND THE DEAD, is an example of contemporary Swiss bashing.Halbrook's book provides a well-written, thorougly researched antidote. He describes how a polyglot republic with a population of only 4 million could defend its territory while surrounded by 120 million Nazis and Fascists devoted to Hitler's and Mussolini's dreams of conquest.Switzerland placed an unprecedented one-fifth of its population under arms in the process. That didn't leave enough people for agriculture so the Swiss were hungry throughout most of the war, and cold. German coal heated most of their homes.Yet, when Luftwaffe aircraft invaded Swiss airspace they came under attack and several were shot down. It is interesting to compare the Swiss response to that of the Great Powers and their policy of Appeasement.I enjoyed this book and came away with a new found respect for the Swiss and their determination to keep the Holocaust off of their soil.

Superbly documented and beautifully written

A slightly different version of this review appeared in "The American Enterprise" magazine.Review by: Dave KopelIf all you know is what you read in the papers, then you must think that Switzerland is one of the most despicable countries in the world. Switzerland, rather than joining the Allied cause, stayed neutral World War II. After the war, Swiss banks helped themselves to the deposits of holocaust victims, rather than giving the deposits to the victims' heirs. Case closed?Not at all, historian Stephen Halbrook shows in his new book Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality In World War II. Wrongful as was the bankers' post-war behavior, the behavior of the Swiss people during the war was morally exemplary-superior, indeed to the conduct of most of the rest of Europe. As Winston Churchill recalled, "of all the neutrals Switzerland has the greatest right distinction... She has been a Democratic State, standing for freedom in self-defense among her mountains, and in thought, in spite of race, largely on our side."Except for Britain, France, and Canada, virtually all of the Allied nations during World War II joined the war only because the Axis declared war on them, Halbrook reminds us. Even after Pearl Harbor, the United States remained neutral in the European war, until Hitler declared war on United States a few days later. Nazi maps showed that the Third Reich would eventually include Switzerland, just as it would include all portions of Europe with German-speaking people. While the majority of Switzerland's population is German-speaking (the rest being French, Italian, or Romansh) the nation was virtually unanimous in hoping and praying for the defeat of Germany. Infuriated by the lack of ethnic solidarity, and by the strongly anti-Nazi stance of Switzerland's free press, Hitler predicted that Switzerland would be "liquidated" and that he would be known as "the butcher of the Swiss."As Halbrook details, in every stage of the war, the Axis had powerful military reasons to invade Switzerland. Before the fall of France, the non-alpine part of Switzerland offered at inviting path to sweep into France and avoid the Maginot Line. After France fell and Italy entered the war, Switzerland offered the only convenient transport of military men and supplies between Italy and Germany. After the Allied landing in Italy, Germany's need to swiftly deploy troops into Italy became even more urgent. As the war came to conclusion in 1944-45, the Nazi leadership laid plans to make a stand in the Alps, but Switzerland stood right in the middle.By the summer of 1940, there was only one country on Germany's borders whose free press and rights of assembly allowed the Third Reich to be publicly and lawfully denounced as the evil empire that he was. In every country on Germany's borders--except Switzerland--Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and other targets of Hitler's hate were sent to extermination camps. But there was no Holo