19. Hitler’s Plan to Conquer Switzerland
After France surrendered to the Germans in the summer of 1940, Switzerland was completely surrounded by Axis-controlled territory. A major aim of the irredentist Nazis was to gather all ethnic Germans into a single country, and that included Switzerland’s German speakers. Hitler was appalled that the German-speaking Swiss felt closer to their French and Italian-speaking countrymen than they did to Germany. He opined that “Switzerland possessed the most disgusting and miserable people“, and that the Swiss were “a misbegotten branch of our Volk‘. He considered democratic Switzerland an anachronism and ordered plans drawn for its conquest and absorption into the Third Reich.
The result was Operation Tannenbaum. It envisioned a two-stage conquest with 21 German divisions – a force later deemed excessive and downsized to 11 – plus 15 Italian divisions. It would begin with conventional attacks from Austria, southern Germany, and occupied France, assisted by paratroops dropped behind Swiss lines. They would overrun the lower-lying parts of Switzerland where most of the population and economic activity was located. In the meantime, the Italians to the south would mount diversionary operations. As seen below, contra the myth that Switzerland was an impregnable mountainous fortress, its conquest by the Germans was quite feasible.