Bunker process

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The bunker trial was the legal processing of a building scandal by the Swiss army in the middle of the 20th century. Serious construction defects were found in Swiss bunker systems from the Second World War in 1946. The responsible military and construction companies were sentenced to mild and mostly conditional sentences in a trial that took place in 1950 before the divisional court.

Bunker construction during the Second World War

To defend against Nazi Germany and fascism in Italy , the Swiss Army built countless bunkers before and during the Second World War under great time pressure (→  List of fortresses in Switzerland ), many of them in the Alps, the so-called Reduit .

Discovery of construction defects

For training and test purposes, the Swiss Army fired at the “Widdersgrind”, “Bürglen” and “Morgetenpass” bunkers near the Stockhorn in the Bernese Oberland in autumn 1946 . Guns of various calibers were used, as well as 200-kilogram high-explosive bombs. To the horror of the military personnel present, the “Widdersgrind” artillery plant did not withstand the bombardment and was in ruins. The supposedly tough reinforced concrete structure was completely destroyed by the storeys.

The Federal Military Department immediately ordered an investigation. All 52 fortifications in the area of ​​the 2nd Division were checked. During the war years, the systems were built within a radius of 30 kilometers and at heights of up to 2000 meters. The investigations were carried out by the Federal Materials Testing and Research Institute Empa . The results of the investigations and rock analyzes showed: Six percent of the buildings were unsatisfactory due to poor quality concrete, ten percent of the bunkers were unusable. Too little cement and unsuitable additives were used in the construction. In the worst case, the compressive strength of the concrete was only 54 instead of the required 700 kilograms. However, the contractors who carried out the work charged high-quality material.

Informing the public

The discovered building botch at the Reduit could be kept secret until the summer of 1949. Then the media began to speculate about “soft bunkers”, “huge fraud in fortress construction” and alleged “sabotage of national defense”. However, due to the maintenance of military secrets and the complex facts, the Federal Military Department only issued information after the preliminary investigation had been completed in February 1950.

A wave of indignation then swept across the country. Politicians from left to right as well as soldiers and officers called for transparency and rigorous punishment of those responsible. Under the pressure of the media, the Federal Council published the names of the accused even before the trial began. High-ranking officers of the engineering troops of the 2nd Division were accused of neglect of duty when placing orders with construction companies, checking work and invoices and inspecting the bunkers. In addition, building contractors were accused of having built the fortifications in a sloppy manner.

Trial in Bern

On October 25, 1950, the "bunker trial" began before the divisional court in Bern . The judges should judge 25 defendants and 200 offenses. 100 witnesses were summoned and the files were over 300,000 pages. During the trial, all of the accused denied any guilt or could not remember details. They also referred to the "difficult times" at the time. All the accused always wanted to have acted in good faith.

The process took four months. In the end, there wasn't much left of the spectacular indictment. No deliberate harm to the army could be proven in any of the defendants. The army itself did not fare well. It turned out that the construction of the bunker had been carried out in an amateurish manner. Officers without any structural engineering knowledge led the construction work in disregard of elementary guidelines. The judges sentenced a colonel, a first lieutenant, a lieutenant and six entrepreneurs to mild and mostly conditional sentences. Left-wing newspapers sensed class justice and wrote of a farce.

swell