24. The German Invasion of Switzerland
When France surrendered in 1940, the Swiss found themselves completely surrounded by Axis-controlled territory. One of the major aims of the irredentist Nazis was to gather all ethnic Germans into a single country, and that included the German-speaking Swiss. However, the German-speaking Swiss turned out to feel a stronger attachment to their French and Italian-speaking fellow countrymen, than they did to Germany and Germans. That appalled Hitler, who 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 (see map, above), which envisioned a two-stage conquest with 21 German divisions, a force later deemed excessive and downsized to 11, plus 15 Italian divisions.
First, conventional attacks from Austria, southern Germany, and occupied France, assisted by paratroops dropped behind Swiss lines, would overrun the lower-lying parts of Switzerland where most of the population and economic activity was located. To the south, Italians were to mount holding operations. Once the important parts of Switzerland were conquered, follow-up attacks were to be made against Swiss army remnants in the “National Redoubt” – a fortified zone in Switzerland’s mountainous south. The Swiss army planned to take advantage of topography by retreating into the mountainous part of their country. However, most Swiss did not live high up in the mountains, but in the lower parts of the country in valleys and foothills that were readily accessible to attacking Germans.