Talk:Operation Tannenbaum

Misc

I changed the article to reflect sources from the archives and secondary literature --ResH 20:54, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

This article is drawn from a single source, a talk given by a right-wing author. [1] I don't know what's questionable in it, but presumably the article ends up being somewhat biased (perhaps just through omission – the guy rails against ideas of the Swiss helping the Germans, so something probably ought to be said about that.) If anyone has some more knowledge (or knows more conventional wisdom) on the topic, the article would be better off for having it. --Twinxor 09:12, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Cannot back this up by citing sources (but might find the time to do so later), but I remember that Germany was allowed to use the Swiss railway net for shipping and that Switzerland largely collaborated with Germany in other aspects, too. (Acquiring rare material, chemicals, largely preventing Jews from flleing to Switzerland...) So I doubt there was any real reason to invade Switzerland that made sense strategically.

Yes, this is mostly just my opinion - but quite frankly the article isn't much better in that it appears clearly biased without citint any source either.

I think that Switzerland economy importance for various Nazi leaders (where did they send their gold after all?) was an important behind-the-scenes reason for why the Switzerland was left alone. On a related note, I read that Swiss had plans to destroy their industry if faced with defeat? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 23:11, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I do believe that Switzerland did stay neutral during WWII. However, it would not surprise me if there was a group of people that unofficially supported Nazis financially or any other way. You have to take into consideration that Switzerland comes from Germanic branch.

The German version of this page seems to contain a lot more information, including maps - could someone translate and put it here?

A myth...

it's a common myth in switzerland, that the nazis did not invade us because of the army... the swiss army was much weaker than most conntinental armies, it was ill-equipped, compared to other continental victims of the nazis (except for the eastern european countries). switzerland didn't have fighter aircraft, almost no artillery, no tanks, no fortresses worth mentioning, event though many people think so. there were only riflemen whose resistance surely would have crushed within days by the wehrmacht and it's superiour support weapons, aircraft and so on. the swiss army bulked up heavily only after the war.

(Switzerland posessed 21 aircraft squadrons at the outset of the war, its 100 newly delivered Bf 109Es were among the best planes of the day. The percentage of artillery was more or less identical to that of the German Wehrmacht. A fortification programm had been initiated in 1937 along the borders to Germany and France, about half of which was finished by the time war broke out, all of which was finished by the time Tannenbaum was drafted. While many older Swiss people credited the forces with deterring the Germans, many younger people see the cooperation with Germany as the desiding foctor. Be that as it may, Germany was a superpower in 1940, and it is unthikable that the Swiss Army could have fielded an effective resistance alone. (morahun)

the reason why the nazis didn't invade switzerland was that they needed swiss intermediaries to buy chemicals to produce gunpowder, to buy oil, and to do financial services for the nazis because they couldn't participate in the international financial system anymore. only those compannies who illegally cooperated with the nazis preserved a token neutrality.

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When and how did the Swiss shoot down 11 German planes? Bastie 22:22, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

The Swiss Army's role

I would like to respond to the article written by Bastie (see above). Firstly let me tell you that I am a Swiss Army Lieutenant, part of the militia, actually studying government at Harvard. Secondly let me bring forward a few key elements to understand Switzerland during World War II.

1. What about the role of the Swiss Army in preserving the country from a German invasion?

Many have argued that Switzerland's army has never been a determining factor in saving the country from Nazi invasion. The veracity of this argument is very questionable. Let us imagine that Switzerland had not had any army in the course of the war; evidently, Hitler would have invaded it. To argue against this is simply to argue without reason. It is undeniable that the Swiss Army played a role in saving Swiss citzens from dictatorship. However, it is also undeniable that it wasn't the only thing that stood between Hitler and Bern.

2. What stood between Hitler and Bern

The Swiss Army was the main reason preventing the Germans to set foot on Swiss soil. As it is mentionned in Bastie's article,the Swiss Army was indeed ill prepared for war. But only in the beginning of the war, namely in 1939 and early 1940. Military expenditures rose to astonnishing levels after Poland's fall. Through the entire course of the war, Switzerland constantly improved and strenghtend its military forces. General Guisan built the "Reduit National", which effectively became the largest forteress complex in the world. It was a formidable barrier, mixture of Alpine moutains and forteresses, covering every key choke point necessary to make Switzerland hard to assail. The reduit National was more than a forteress complex, it was a military strategy of pure defense. If invaded, the Swiss military would retreat to it's forteress in the Alps, abandoning the citizens in the flat part of the country (Plateau/Mittelland). An Army of 800'000, ready to fight to last man, entrenched in the very mountains that had helped them defeat so many foreign enemies in the past, represented a formidable foe. It is also worht mentionning that the Swiss military had mined all of the key industrial complexes as well as all major civilian edifices (bridges, tunnels, railroads etc...); at the push of a button, Switzerland would destory all what it was worth taking for. If Hitler invaded, all he would have had, was a ruined country with a formidable foe left to defeat. But for what purpose? Towards the end of the war, Hitler would have had to pay to great a price for having Switzerland. It remains possible that, had he acted in early 1939, he could have defeated the country with little effort. But that was his only chance, and he failed to take it.

3. German military doctrine

Germany had calculated that to take Switzerland would cost at least 3 divisions. To lose 3 divisions was never an easy decision for Hitler to make. First rushing towards the East, and then towards France, he had no sufficient available troops. After that, he went on to operation Barbarossa which turned out to need more troops than initially expected. After that it only went downwards, the Allies grew stronger and were a constant concern for the German military, which needed to fight on many fronts (Atlantic, North Africa , and Eastern Europe) and defend its conquests (Atlantic Wall). Switzerland was not a threat to Germany. And it was not either helping the Allies (at least not officially). Startigically Switzerland was not worth it. The benefit of an invasion outweighted the costs. There was only two times that Germany seriously thought of invading Switzerland: in 1939 (to go to France) and in 1944 to stop the Allied advance, which was coming from Italy.

4. The other reasons

Well of course Switzerland did have some trade agreements with Germany. It was surrounded by the enemy and was barely self-sufficient. It is also true that Swiss banks held Nazi money. But they also held American money, Jewish money, and, in fact money, from all around the world. To say that the Germans did not invade Switzerland because of the money they had placed there is ridiculous; the nazis could have taken much more gold back, had they invaded. Undeniably some private companies might have done wrong, and indeniably there were some Nazi supporters in the Swiss population. But that doesn't mean that Switzerland was helping the Nazis. The majority was fiercely opposed to Hitler and his regime and by all means would resist it. To state that the Germans needed Switzerland for trade agrements is non-sensical; Switzerland needed Germany more than Germany needed Switzerland. In the end, Switzerland was saved by its army and by the belief in German military that, in the end, Switzerland served better German interests by remaining as it was.

Conclusively

I do not deny that the army was the sole reason that prevented invasion, but I do firmly assert that it was the main reason.

I'd agree with your arguments. In a rugged country with a highly motivated population, it is possible to resist a technologically superior invader. For instance, Finland resisted the Soviets with irregular troops and improvised weapons. Norway inflicted constant losses to the Nazi occupiers. Afghanistan was equally difficult (and was a money/troops/morale drain) on the Soviet army. 20:40, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

This may all sound very plausible, but, as far as I know, the jury is out (and probably always will be) regarding Switzerland's factors of deterrence and their respective weight. All we can do, is present, cite, and reference different, possibly conflicting views found in notable publications. ---Sluzzelin 04:20, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

"Let us imagine that Switzerland had not had any army in the course of the war; evidently, Hitler would have invaded it. To argue against this is simply to argue without reason." Why? Hitler did not invade Lichtenstein and they had no army. Sweden's army would probably have succumbed as easily as the Norwegian and Danish ones but Sweden was not invaded. Obviously Hitler was capable and willing to decide not to invade even a helpless country (for practical rather than humanitarian reasons of course, this being Hitler).

"Germany had calculated that to take Switzerland would cost at least 3 divisions." Could I see a source to that statement please?

Sensemaker

To revise

Operation Tannenbaum was the third of several detailed invasion plans drawn up for the German General Staff after France collapsed, but Hitler never gave the go-ahead, perhaps because Switzerland had defenses no other country had. It is often suggested that Every Swiss home was equipped with a rifle and the alpine terrain gave a tactical advantage to Swiss general Henri Guisan and his army which included a fifth of the Swiss population. The Swiss had also heavily fortified most of the country, specifically the national Reduit in the center of the country. But arguably the massive Wehrmacht could have easily overcome those obstacles by a blitzkrieg campaign.

This paragraph has more to do with nationalism than with any serious strategic assessment. The presumably impassable Ardennes were breached by the German cavalry in 1940, and presumably impassable Switzerland had more or less become a highway for France, Russia and Austria during the Napoleonic wars a century earlier. It is undeniable that the existence of a Swiss army, by itself, meant that there was going to be opposition, but to repeat the ridiculous claims that it was a "defense that no other country had" is veiling one's eyes from the basic fact that France, and probably Poland (I don't know) had mandatory military service as well, and the Franco-Polish reservists (and regulars), in the end, were walked over by the Wehrmacht. (unlogged, but User:Snapdragonfly who also will have rewritten the paragraph quoted above by the time someone reads it).

The revision is, sadly, weasel-ly to my taste, but it appears to me as slightly more encyclopedic than stating as fact the already destroyed myth of Swiss invulnerability (or even a variant). Or using a generic US gun-nut as an encyclopedic source for a viewpoint, which would be disingenuous as they have a political stake in maintaining this kind of populist myths. Snapdragonfly 13:44, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

The Ardennes are higher hills of the low lands of West Europe. The Alps have twice the altitude, and a far more extreme climate. There really isn't a comparison between the two. As far as a "highway" for the European powers, the plan as stated above was to abandon the lowlands and conduct guerilla warfare against the Axis.130.13.16.51 02:43, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Canaris

interesting to see that however rich the Canaris - oriented bibliography has grown, treatment of the issues the man's action influenced hasn't really changed.

Admiral Canaris was head of the Wehrmacht's counter-intelligence unit (Abwehr) and one of the leading figures of the anti - nazi conspiracy. Particularly worth mentioning is his personal intervention on Franco leading the Caudillo - even after Hitler's June 1940 triumph - to decline the Fuehrer's request to either let German troops occupy Gibraltar or occupy it through his own troops.

Most biographies today acknowledge Canaris' critical impact in convincing Hitler - in good or bad faith - that invading Switzerland would be militarily too costly. Whether this stems from Canaris' Swiss connections, military expertise or coup planning contingencies won't be considered here.

Zossen 21:06, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

unecessary comments

I deleted an unsourced and frankly out of context comment about American businesses "profiting" from Nazi Germany at the end of the article. If someone finds a source for the comment, feel free to replace it.130.13.16.51 02:43, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Lack of cause

Is it possible that Hitler never invaded Switzerland simply because he never had to? In all the other countries he invaded because ( in his eyes ) he had a reason : raw materials, threatening moves ( in his eyes ), could be used by the enemy etc, but none of these apply to Switzerland ( or Sweden either ). Racism could also have been an issue : Switzerland is afterall considered part of the German speaking world. 91.128.24.37 (talk) 23:23, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I find this believable, but there were three separate invasion plans drawn up so the intent was there to some degree or another. 68.214.70.248 (talk) 18:20, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I find it hard to argue about the reasoning of Adolf Hitler in this case. The arguments of Hitler on other subjects show a mix of logic and emmotional reasoning. Rational and ideologic thinking were intermingled in a mixture, depending on the mood of the moment. Several anti Swiss statements are reported to have been made by him. The Swiss governement saw it as its duty to keep the country out of the war because every other course of action could not have been taken voluntarily. It succeeded.(morahun)