Correspondence
O'BRIEN, FRANCIS WILLIAM & OWEN, HENRY & Schalk, Adolph
CORRESPONDENCE Swiss army's future George, Tex. To the Editors: Adolph Schalk's tendentious, "The Swiss Debate Their Army's Future" [June 2], makes no mention of several uncomfortable, but highly...
...Where is the "unifying...
...No one can be sure whether Hitler would have invaded Switzerland if it had not been prepared to resist, but we do know that when the Swiss foreign minister began in 1940 to talk about the need for Switzerland to adapt to the new Europe, it was General Guisan, commander in chief of the Swiss army, who called all field grade officers to meet at Rutli, the birthplace of Swiss independence, to say that it was better to die defending freedom than to live adapting to the new Europe, and thus eventually caused the appeasement-minded foreign minister to resign...
...FRANCIS WILLIAM O'BRIEN Southwestern University A unifying factor Washington, D.C...
...The magazine cites a "truism" of the time-"Six days a week Switzerland works for Germany and on the seventh day it prays for victory for the allies"- but adds a correction: "Between June 1940 and June 1943, Switzerland also worked for Germany on the seventh day...
...It was, then, thanks to a defeated army that Swiss neutrality was born...
...It documents, among other things, that the Swiss supplied three-quarters of their output of aluminum to the Nazis, along with arms, foodstuffs, and, not least, loans, so that invading Switzerland would have been counterproductive for the Germans...
...Switzerland is an army...
...A book on the topic by the well-known writer Max Fritsch sold out its first printing of 16,000 copies in two days and remains the country's No...
...until then expansionist-minded, they suffered so great a massacre that they forever abandoned their ambitions for conquest...
...ADOLPH SCHALK...
...and regional differences between Protestant and Catholic areas...
...The author replies: Henry Owen is quite right...
...Recall that in the mid-nineteenth century Switzerland was convulsed by a civil war between Protestants and Catholics, conservatives and liberals, and French- and German-speaking cantons...
...But the army remains, the one Swiss institution in which all men, of whatever social class and from whatever region and ethnic group, serve together...
...For example, soldiers from one language region are never mixed with those of another...
...class divisions also exist...
...20 percent claim French as their first language...
...Francis William O'Brien's thesis that Switzerland's military preparedness spared the country from an invasion by Hitler's troops has been subjected to severe challenge by Swiss sources...
...the canton of Ticino is almost entirely Italian...
...At one point later in World War II the Fiihrer had decided to rescue his faltering Italian ally via a march through Switzerland...
...1 bestseller...
...Now the Hapsburgs, the Dukes of Savoy, and Hitler are gone...
...But under closer scrutiny, the political effect can be inflated...
...The Swiss army numbered 600,000...
...The respect in which the army is held owes as much to its function in overcoming internal divisions as to a perceived need to deter any external attack...
...For Swiss dissidents, that is precisely the point...
...The native tongue of 75 percent of the Swiss is German...
...State Department as an ambassa-dor-at-large and as head of the Foreign Policy Plannins staff...
...Having taught a long time in Switzerland and spoken with hundreds of its citizens, I am sure the Swiss will reject the November initiative...
...Hitler realized that this was no idle bluff...
...I implied as much by quoting John McPhee: "Switzerland doesn't have an army...
...Owen and O 'Brien are no doubt correct that the "Initiative for Switzerland without an Army" will be defeated...
...Messrs...
...HENRY OWEN The writer, now a consultant, served in the U.S...
...It is still remarkable that so unprecedented a proposal is on the November ballot, has gained support from a sizable fraction of voters (from 24 percent to 37 percent), is backed by the Greens, the Progressives, and a majority of Social Democrats, and is no longer subjected to shrill ridicule but is taken seriously-not least by the Defense Department, which has reduced the discharge age from 50 to 42 and the peacetime strength of the army from 500,000 to 400,000...
...In the past, it defended Swiss freedom against the Haps-burgs at Sempach and Morgarten, and against the Dukes of Savoy at Marig-nagno...
...It is known that he twice met secretly with SS General Walter Schellen-berg...
...The (Continued on page 446) (Continued from page 418) respected magazine Schweizerische Beobachter-which, incidentally, opposes the initiative-has just published a series of articles on Switzerland's role in World War II...
...In 1940 he urged the Bundesrat to cooperate more fully with the Germans...
...the army has been a unifying factor in Switzerland...
...Owen mentions the battle at Marig-nano in 1515, pitting the Swiss cantonal armies (there was no federal army until the nineteenth century) against the Dukes of Savoy...
...But the Swiss military chief, General Guisan, warned him in a personal confrontation that the invaders would be fought at every step of the way...
...The country is made up of three ethnic groups...
...To the Editors: Adolph Schalk's tendentious, "The Swiss Debate Their Army's Future" [June 2], makes no mention of several uncomfortable, but highly significant, historical facts...
...It is the school of the nation, teaching each Swiss conscript that his country's freedom and unity are worth defending, and that the values they share with each other are vastly more important than those which set them apart...
...they feel that the army unifies (dominates) too much...
...Add that Switzerland's mountainous terrain produces the usual divisions between people who live in one valley or the other-let alone those who live in valleys and those who live in mountains-and you have a country whose survival as a united country is something of a miracle...
...More generally, there was open sympathy for the Germans at high army and government levels, and a large Nazi movement was tolerated...
...To counter Schalk's nonmilitary arguments, it is pertinent to observe that universal conscription and annual refresher training reinforce Swiss democracy and promote the "equality" clause of Article Four of the Swiss Constitution...
...To the Editors: In his article suggesting the Swiss army be disbanded, Adolf Schalk fails to address an important question: "What holds Switzerland together...
...It was indeed a turning point in Swiss history...
...There are many reasons for Switzerland's unity, but one of them has surely been the Swiss army...
...The role of General Henri Guisan is disputed...
...Hitler invaded and devoured Czechoslovakia in 1939 on the pretext that its Sudetans were really Germans...
...He shelved his bold venture and Switzerland was spared violation and the sad fate of the Czechs...
Vol. 116 • August 1989 • No. 14
