Swiss Defences As You've Never Seen Them

Some ingenious camouflage here-
"With the threat of foreign invasion a thing of the past, thousands of military bunkers and fortresses in Switzerland have been put to commercial use, from hotels to data centres, museums to cheese factories. The Swiss army has sold most of these decommissioned strongholds, but about a thousand unused bunkers remain, many still disguised as houses and barns. "
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/switzerland/12087515/A-new-life-for-Swiss-military-bunkers-and-fortresses-in-pictures.html?frame=3543725

 

Great post, Gordon. In 1980 my family was exploring Switzerland in a rented Fiat and spent 2 nights at a ski hotel in the Furka Pass, it was August, very off season ! We hiked and climbed the area about the hotel and thought we we looking at barns, chalets, various farm buildings until we got closer and discovered many were concrete and painted. They were locked and appeared out of use but hard to tell. After that we began to look for them in other areas and our son became quite good at spotting them. We stopped in many places to verify. We also spotted a post-war series of hangers cut into the sides of mountains with aprons that opened onto the highway. An open one revealed the nose of a jet fighter but I could not identify it. We left Switzerland on a dirt road over a wooden bridge where a border guard verified our passports. Then we drove through rows of "tiger teeth" on the same road. Most interesting excursion.

Your posted site also has beautiful pictures of the Atlantic Wall. today. Well worth a look. I watched a blockhouse just south of the ferry terminal at Calais slowly slide into the North Sea over about 25 years in 5 to 7 year periods.

PS, my apologies for all the typos of late. I have central serous retinopathy which causes my eyes to blur on occasion....then clear up with drops I cannot believe some of the wordings I post, sorry.

 

excellent GT and Historian......great viewing pictures with a war theme and very scenic....some of the structures look like they are burrowed into mountains....very historical and interesting architecturally...I am always interested in the engineering and architecture of most anything...wow GT!...any type of details of scenery, weather, structures, etc would be enjoyed....

 

Last time I was in France was 11 years ago, and had to physically stop myself slamming on the brakes as we left Calais to inspect a bunker lying right beside the dual carriageway.
The wife was less than chuffed, to say the least.

 

I worked with a Swiss guy and his Mom still lived on a farm in Switzerland and I remember him telling me one day about the new stove in the farm house. It had been put in during the 1960's. This was the newest thing in the house.

Our views on what is old here in North America really do not compare with what Europeans think as old. If it is 200 hundred years old here, that is practically pre-historical.

Good post.

Thanks

KTK

 

Brilliant idea.

 

yes Ken...the Europeans have a great historical 'playground'...lucky them....

 

There's suprisingly little available in English about Swiss military affairs during WWII, except a few encyclopedia entries and one website that's more about the actual format and formation of the Swiss Army, and the two major threats of Nazi invasion...which sent me hunting a few years ago. Luckily I turned up Willi Gautchi's biography of Gen. Henri Guisan, the Swiss "Commander In Chief"....

So, a quick precis....

First of all, two bits of essential backround. 1/ the Swiss, in times of major military threat, appoint a single senior military officer as a "Commander In Chief" for the duration of the emergency, and cede quite a few civil powers to him from the federal government. It's not unlike the old Roman idea of appointing a "Dictator". Theyve only done this four times during their entire history, and the last two were during WWI and then Guisan in WWII.

Second - the Swiss HAD a "war" in 1914-1918! or rather....while they didn't fight, they took up military positions all along the frontier with France, in a trench-based defence line, and suffered ALL the rigours of trench warfare without the actual fighting! Disease, malnutrition, all the problems of high altitude in mountain sections etc.. They were ready at a moment's notice to hold back the French IF they should invade for whatever reason....while at the same time casting a glance over their shoulders at the Germans and the Austrians in their "rear"....

Between the war, as the possible threat from Germany increased, the Swiss built a long river-based defence line roughly along the border with Germany, the Limmat Line....several of the pics above show these 1930s-period strongpoints And formed a series of border defence units - the idea being that THIS defence line would hold back any invasion of German-speaking Switzerland, one of the country's few extensive bits of flatland The border defence lines would man these defences, and fight delaying actions - allowing the citizen-based Swiss Field Army to muster, formate and take the field. Meanwhile, to the west....the Swiss covertly allowed French military observers to tour Swiss defences, they drew up military conventions between the two nations, and prepared maps etc. for a French advance THROUGH Switzerland...along the cleft in the mountains containing Geneva, Lausanne, lake Geneva etc..

THEN the Phoney War "happened", and both sides sat down to do nothing Except the Swiss....who immediately on the outbreak of war, and again in November 1939, and once more at the turn of the year mustered their Field Army against perceived threats. Remember - this was (is) a citizen-based army, with c.3330-380,000 men out of a total population of just over 4,000,000...which meant that every Swiss in uniform was out of the workplace - field, factory or office And swiss economic production plummeted, so musters were as short as possible.

Then the unthinkable happened...and with the Fall of France, there were potential enemies along every single inch of the Swiss border But effective positions ONLY on the Limmat Line. Guisan saw that morale in the standing officers' corps was plummeting as they became fully aware that Switzerland was wholly unable to preotect itself....so he came up with a different way of doing it all...

He called the entire officers' corps by steamer to a meeting at a historic site on the other side of Lake Geneva from the city , the Rutli, a traditional canton mustering place...where he told them en masse of an idea he had come up wioth; the idea of a "National Redoubt". Switzerland is two-thirds mountain, in two main blocks, with the larger being the bernese Oberland. His idea was that IF Switzerland should be invaded, the border defence units would try and slow down the enemy...while the entire rest of the Field Army and as much of the Swiss population as could be moved in time would transplant themselves into the two mountain areas! And the three passes into the Oberland would be defended and fortified to the teeth.

They already were; a period of friction with Italy at the turn of the 19th/20th century, and WWI, had made the Swiss defend these three mountain passes as being the obvious paths into the "heart" of Switzerland, and the ways into the passes and the oberlands behind were already defended by 19th century-style forts dug into the mountains Guisan's idea was to START with these defences...and plan for every single element of the Field Army and ALL its support units and facilities to be accomodated underground in the defences of the three passes and the Oberlands! In other words - for every single gun and artillery piece that COULD fight above ground....there would be bunkers and hidden defences under the ground, with underground infantry defences covering fortified artillery points etc....

THEN - once this was built, at a great expense - Switzerland would bite ANOTHER equally huge financial bullet....and shoulder the burden of the Field Army being mustered indefinitely, and physically moved into the Redoubt! Turning it from an emergency fallback position into the entire defence plan of the Swiss Army. The Border units, and the home guards and civil guards in cities that were mustered through the war, and the armed boyscout uniuts, and the womens' units, and the hydroelectric dams' defence units of old men, and the factory guard units etc., etc., etc....would be the ones to fight on the lowlands, while the rest of the Swiss population fled to the shelter of the Oberlands...and were to be the ones who DESTROYED every single building, pile of bricks, dam, factory, shop, road junction, set of traffic lights etc....every single thing that would be of use to an invader seeking to take Switzerland for his own use...

And THEN...Guisan made sure that that "potential enemy" KNEW ALL ABOUT IT! Through Col. Roger Masson, head of Swiss Army Intelligence and a HUGE player in the Allies' and Nazis' intelligence game played back and forth through Switzerland during the war, with back channels to every mover and shaker.

Because his strategy of national defence was "Dissuasion"....while Switzerland was to VISIBLY do so much to protect itself - the flipside was that, once surrounded by the Germans and italians, Switzerland would make/trade ANYTHING they wanted to them. Yes, they got paid a certain amount for their optics, arms ( Switzerland had a BIG arms industry), agricultural produce etc. The idea was to make Hitler and Mussolini fully aware of just how much they had come to rely on Switzerland....and how EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF THIS would go away if the Nazis invaded Not only would the Germans occupy a charred ashpile of lowland Switzerland, they'd lose tens of thousands of men doing it - and end up with a totally hostile and virtually impregnable National Redoubt still there. With supplies stockpiled to feed the Swiss Field Army and about a third of the entire population for up to eight months! And the Nazis would get NOTHING - not a bushel of hay, nor a single scrawny animal carcass, nor a single bullet from the demolished Switzerland. It would be the ultimate in "scorched earth".

And an essential element of this plan was that the Swiss Field Army had to be SEEN standing-to fulltime, and occupying the National Redoubt A bit like "conspicuous consumption" LOL And in reaction to another period of threats of Germany in 1941, Guisan ordered the Field Army into the Redoubt in the summer of 1941. Finishing the Redoubt physically with all the thousands of new bunkers, gun emplacements, underground facilities wasn't scheduled to be completed until 1943...so the Field Army moved temporarily into above-ground positions protecting those that WERE already built...while helping in the construction of the rest. Which went ahead and finished roughly on-schedule in 1943.

Changing the age limits for Field Army service allowed numbers to swell to c. 380,000 fighting men with thousands more in support units....but the financial drain on Switzerland's economy of all those workling men out of the labour pool meant that Guisan was persuaded after a time to go to a "half-on, half-off" rotation, with c. 225,000 men in the Redoubt at any one time, and c.225,000 back at their farms and factories and offices for six months....

At the end of the war, Guisan stood down, presented a Report to the federal parliament, and retired but as world events segue'd almost immediately and seamlessly into the Cold War...while the Field Army was also stood down, the Swiss kept the SAME military establishment in place...and roughly the same size as for manyd ecades after Switzerland's population stayed roughly the same! ALL that was done was that many of the facilities and installations were hardened further for the new potential NBC environment of modern warfare, underground fields for jet aircraft were excavated, radar was installed, etc. etc....

And it ALL stayed in place until the mid-to-late 1990s, the Swiss hedging their bets for longer than WE did! TWICE in the noughties there were referendums held to change the nature of the Field Army, and to do away with compulsory military service...but each time it was defeated. Now IIRC what they HAVE done is to play with the age limits and fitness requirements of the Field Army, so that far fewer Swiss teens have to undergo compulsory service than during the 20th century.

 

Here's a website with info on the Swiss defences etc in WW1-
http://www.switzerland1914-1918.net/

 

Bronk7, my pictures of that era was 35mm slide film, Ektachrome and Fujichrome. I turned them over to my university to digitize and the military items seemed to have not made the cut, years ago. I shall see what I can dig up as I can digitize at home now. Had some good shots of the Maginot line in it's leased know areas. If I were more able I would go back and reshoot !

Phylo-roadking, thank you for the Swiss bits. I am greatly curious as to what happened in the smaller countries in Europe during the war, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Andorra, San Marino, etc. The Vatican, Monaco, etc. I have read, long ago, that a diplomatic plane flew from Geneva to Lisbon quite often, with all parties in agreement and with strict protocol. Need to look that up. also wondered about how Sweden communicated with the allies.

There have been some post on these various areas.

Gaines

 

Monaco was invaded by the italians...IIRC there was a single firefight with the Italians during which the then-Prince's palace guards were killed.

The Vatican hunkered down; early on they'd made an agreement with Il Duce to keep out of civil affairs in return for religious freedom of action....and the Pope was castigated after the war for doing nothing to protect Italian jews from being deported, stopping massacres etc., etc. This inactivity hurt then and still hurts the Papacy's position in the world somewhat. Keeps getting chucked back at the Vatican at times....

 

Guisan had a very difficult time of it. He came from a French-speaking part of Switzerland....and thad to deal with rivalries inside the Army for his own position, particularly from former colleagues/friends from German-Speaking areas. He also faced a number of officers' conspiracies - including one so bad it required a couple of hangings! Switzerland as a whole had a lot of issues politically during the war; not only were there a number of low-level Nazi organisations, and pro-German ones...but because of its tradition of compulsory military service, there was always a threat from a more "fascist" mindset in the population, the idea that the men in uniform could always do things better

There were also terrible problems with both military and civilian morale. in the end, he had to take the step of having Roger Masson organise a sort of psiwar ops department to Military Intelligence, who among other things toured the country with question-and-answer sessions and film show, explaining to the people as a whole the valuable work their menfolk were doing being stuck up in the Oberlands for half a year at a time! The travelling roadshows also toured military installations.

The compulsory service thing was a HUGE problem for Switzerland; across the war years, economic output dropped to 40% of its pre-war totals. Meanwhile, of course, the Germans were ordering more and more from Switzerland as the years went by - which because of Dissuasion, Switzerland had to supply. HUGE amounts of agricultural produce and fodder were being shipped abroad; Swiss OAPs today still call the war years the "years with no meat", it was VERY common for children born in the war years to reach 1945 without tasting meat in their diet at all! Even some staples were in short supply; the Swiss, seeing war on the horizon, had started stockpiling some foodstuffs and materiel as the threat of war appeared....starting with steel...and potatoes!!!

Gaines, in respect of its Neutrality....technically, even after the fall of France, there was a legal "hole" that would allow Swiss companies to supply war materiel out to the "Allies" I.E. the UK Technically, with Vichy "neutral" for the next two and a bit years, the Swiss COULD trade out via Vichy to Britain! And for a few weeks in the summer of 1940 they did - Britain had orders in to Swiss optical and arms companies too - but very rapidly they came under pressure from Germany to cease this trade.

That was the Swiss dilemma - but also the lynchpin of "Dissuasion". They had to give in to any pressure from Berlin for any material or resource....but each incremental increase or request made Switzerland ever more valuable to the Third Reich

 

Thanks for the nice explanation. I imagine the internal ethnic divisions, German, French, Italian and Romansch all be legally recognized as official which directly reflect the people and there characteristics simply added to any since of how to make decisions and govern. Let allow being completely surrounded by the Axis forces. Even Italy dropping out still meant the Germans controlled the southern border. I did not realize the part about Vichy. I must have been strange to be completely surrounded but a force that might turn at any moment. I realize there were reasons to keep switzerland neutral. there are many complex aspects to war than military.n As late as the early 80's I took a train from Milan to Zurich and just over the border the crews were switched and the train continued !

Gaines

 

Talking of which...one of the major resources the Germans/italians wanted and got free use of was the three main rail tunnels through Switzerland And the Swiss were equally very much aware of how vital these were to the Axis...so they mined them for demolition, and made the Germans aware of it of course! In fact IIRC they had been mined since WWI, and part of the explosive was actually removed during WWII to create the demolition munitions to be used elsewhere in Switzerland in extremis.Trying to do without them would have made the Germans' control of Italy after 1943 hugely tenuous, they'd have been unable to supply their defensive effort there except by a very lengthy dogleg via Austria and the Tyrol, the terrain that italy and Austria had struggled so bloodily over in WWI.

In fact, the Swiss were VERY aware of how valuable this transport route was...at one point, in the constant back-and-forth European wars of the 16th century, the young nation of Switzerland had shrunk back to one single fortress sitting above what would be, c.400 years later, the underground route of one of the three rail tunnels!

The Swiss reached a maximum of c.850,000 people under arms during the war; the 380,000 of the Field Army, the thousands of auxiliaries (men a couple of years too old for Field Army service but still hale, or partly incapacitated, the border defence units....the home guard units, the civic guard units in towns and cities, the units mustered by individual factories or installations like the dam guards, the womens' units - that happened mid-war, and only after the Swiss had armed....the boy scouts LMAO As you probably know, the Swiss still now, but then too, fostered the use of arms and respect for arms from a very early age, with shooting being part of the education system, kids joining gun clubs and taking part in shooting competitions and field sports etc. During the war, the lower age for compulsory Field Army service was brought down by a year to 17...but the Swiss ALSO formated 15-16 year olds eventually into fighting units. After doing that there wasn't any real way to argue against armed womens' units

Now....at a time when the ENTIRE population of Switzerland wavered around the 4-4.2 million mark, you can see that 850,000 people under arms represented almost a quarter of the entire population! That too was part of Dissuasion; yes, they'd fight, they weren't fake in any way....but the point was - and Guisan made sure that Berling "got it" - how bitter a pill to swallow Switzerland would be

 

Personally speaking....there were TWO main ways of "doing" Neutrality at the start of and during WWII.

There was the "weak" Neutral - Norway, Holland....in fact most of the expanded Oslo Group, who had adopted Leopold of Belgium as their spokesman internationally. THEIR idea of being Neutral was to make themselves no bother or concern to any of the potential belligerents. In fact, several opted to declare their armed forces as "Neutrality Guards" rather than armed forces....and took the (mostly fatal) step of ensuring their forces were SO weak that noone would EVER think that they could be anything else but Neutral!

Yeah, reads great, doesn't it? But what happens if you happen to be ones of those "weak" neutrals....and one or more of the belligerents had something you wanted??? The Danes, the Norwegians, the Belgians....all found out pretty quickly To be blunt - their idea of "Neutrality" only really worked in peacetime LOL

The Swiss....and to a certain extent the Swedes....went in the other direction; they opted to be "strong" Neutrals. The Swedes IIRC rapidly expanded their armed forces from 4 to 12 divisions, and rearmed their air force and to an extent mechanized their army. The Swiss....being a belligerent nation themselves for much of their history - something people seem to forget! - and VERY firmly wedded to their national indepedence - were never ever going to be anything but a "strong" Neutral.

 

Well to be fair it also worked for some during the war. Paraguay for instance. The secret was either making sure you didn't have anything they wanted or being far enough away that it wasn't worth while trying to get it.

There was also a third way (whether it really counts or not is up to the reader) that was the way practiced by the US for the first couple of years and the Soviets for a bit over a year and a half. Didn't work long term though and in the case of the US that wasn't the plan.

 

Well, distance DID mean the various Central and South American Neutrals were never going to be at any real threat. They only became of any importance if the the war came to them...such as the Graf Spee sailing up the River Plate!

As for the Soviets - were they ever truly "neutral"? The British never regarded tham as such. They went through al, the diplomatic niceties - while at the same time, the Cabient, the British press, etc. were all regarding them as German "allies" in reality....with the former working out at various times how best to come to grips with the Soviets!

U.S' Neutrality was never truly impartial either - not while the President's exception list of which belligerents could be traded with and which could not controlled the U.S. main involvment in the war as a Neutral until December 7th 1941....the purchase from/sale to of vital arms and war materiel. Then there was the whole issue of taking over responsibility for the garrisoning of Iceland - a self-declared and short-lived but definitely Neutral and thus "invaded" by the British in 1940. Somehow I don't think the "rules" allowed for a Neutral to take over the occupation of a country invaded by a belligerent...

Hitler certainly didn't think so - look at the long litany of so-called "breeches" of U.S. Neutrality in his December 11th "declaration of war statement"...! It's as much about perception as the reality....

You see - there's no real thing as "Neutrality". It's not really a "Third Way". That's the mistake the Oslo Group made - they thought that as a group they had some political strength...no they didn't LOL Sweden and Switzerland illustrate what Neutrality when directly faced by belligerent(s) means - it's not a "Third Way", a place in between belligerents....really it's more standing with one foot in either camp to a lesser or greater extent in a constantly-rebalancing balancing act...and your gentleman's vegetables poised over a very sharp knife! And if you didn't constantly rejig your position depending on the demands of one camp or the other, or their perceptions of you...you lost your balance and came down on the knife...