The Swiss Spectator
Taki
r My Kind of Neutral T he country Papa Hemingway called "more upside down than sideways', is not only among the most beautiful on earth, it is also marvelously run by a central government as...
...TAM THEODORACOPULOS is the London Spectator's High Life columnist...
...r My Kind of Neutral T he country Papa Hemingway called "more upside down than sideways', is not only among the most beautiful on earth, it is also marvelously run by a central government as unobtrusive as it's possible to be and still be called a government...
...Hitler did not attack—not because he needed Swiss banking, but because he would not pay the bloody price the Swiss would have extracted from him...
...The Germans armed themselves with German factories producing Messerschmitts and Heinkel bombers, Krupp and Daimler-Benz making tanks and artillery, and so on...
...Switzerland, a tiny country of four million at the time, surrounded by Axis military behemoths, took in 200,000 refugees, 28,000 of whom were Jews...
...Swiss citizens between the ages of 16 and 65 were obliged to provide mandatory labor, as near-famine conditions prevailed...
...Switzerland had a hell of an army...
...Some slave camp...
...Bern concerns itself mostly with foreign affairs and defense...
...Mind you, when I say the Swiss, I mean a few Swiss bankers...
...This is abuse of language and a terrible calumny...
...The camps were not only unguarded, they were run by the refugees, who were housed in sturdy barracks, some in hotels, and one camp was in an estate above Lake Lugano...
...Now Switzerland's fabled banking secrecy is no longer...
...Charges that the Swiss armed Germany are ludicrous...
...National decisions are taken more often than not after a referendum...
...Only the Swiss have been singled out...
...The Swiss took gold from Jews, profited from it, and didn't give it back until forced to do so...
...A few Swiss bankers acted very badly following the war...
...It was American industry that established critical industrial patents with Nazi industry during the 1930's and which went on helping Germany until 1943...
...French, British, and American banks accepted money looted by the Nazis...
...Armed with evidence from the fine new book by Second Amendment expert Stephen Halbrook —Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II (Sarpedon, 336 pages, $25) — let me now do my humble journalistic part...
...Under General Henri Guisan, the Swiss citizen army was ready to give up the cities to Hitler and fight in the mountains, each of which had been turned into a fortress, with a five-year supply of food and medicine...
...The refugees worked the same hours as the Swiss, and were allowed two weeks leave and free weekends...
...That is, no bank is going to look for the rightful owners of dormant accounts...
...Hitler and Goebbels declared their loathing for the Swiss and Switzerland, where the government had passed several proclamations denouncing anti-Semitism...
...Why is the country closest to Utopia that I know of suddenly on a par with Iraq, Iran, and Libya...
...Easy...
...The Swiss people completely rejected Nazi politics...
...As Churchill said at the end of the war, "Of all the neutrals Switzerland has the greatest right to distinction...
...The stink lingers all the way up to the peak of the Matterhorn...
...Its misuse in depriving Holocaust victims and their survivors of their rights is probably the worst scandal ever to soil the Alpine nation...
...The long campaign of criticizing Switzerland for buying Nazi gold has taken on such proportions that defending the nation has become a mission for Don Quixote...
...The American Spectator January 1999 55...
...In spite of race, they were largely on our side...
...The great majority of the Swiss acted bravely and with great compassion towards the Jews and other refugees during the war...
...And yet, and yet...
...Despite all this, a lying ignoramus like Senator Barbara Boxer of California told a congressional hearing in Washington that Switzerland had no army and was saved by American soldiers...
...Very few know the name of the president of the Swiss Confederation, and local government, starting on the village level, is king...
...It is time we set the record straight...
...Restitutions have been made, but too late and only under pressure...
...Let's take it from the top...
...Every able-bodied man serves in the armed forces and remains on the reserve until past age 40...
...The United States, Britain, and France announced they were in no position to accept Jewish refugees in great numbers...
...Farmers, or peasants, as the politically incorrect Swiss insist on calling themselves, are partly subsidized by Bern, which means the beautiful countryside has not been denuded of its young, and the cities have remained uncrowded and unpolluted...
...So, what's the problem...
...The American collaboration, witting or unwitting, was of a far higher order than that of which the Swiss have been accused—and unlike Switzerland, the USA was not surrounded by conquering Axis powers...
...Every Swiss citizen has the right to bear arms, yet crime is almost nonexistent, and violent crime extremely rare indeed...
...Stolen gold...
...When the ghosts of Switzerland's wartime dealings with Nazi Germany rose up two years ago, I happened to be staying with Sir James Goldsmith, now, alas, conducting business in the other Wall Street up above...
...Switzerland has been at peace for 700 years by what it calls "armed neutrality...
...Criticisms of the Swiss from countries that collaborated with the Axis, countries such as France, are hypocritical to say the least...
...Try this for size...
...Jimmy, a realist, didn't pull his punches: "It's not the Swiss, it's all bankers...
...A few Swiss bankers acted very badly in the cover-up fifty years on...
...The Simon Wiesenthal Center recently accused the Swiss of running slave-labor camps...
Vol. 32 • January 1999 • No. 1
