Army and House

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Bronze sculpture readiness for military service by Hans Brandenberger, symbol of the country spirit from 1939, today in the park of the Bundesbriefmuseum in Schwyz

Heer und Haus was a section of the Swiss Army and the most important tool of spiritual national defense to strengthen the will to defend and to resist among the army and the Swiss civilian population during World War II .

prehistory

In June 1935, the social democratic National Councilor Fritz Hauser submitted a postulate to the Federal Assembly in which he called on the Federal Council to examine how the intellectual independence of culture in Switzerland should be preserved in the face of the threatening fascist system in Germany. The Federal Council reacted by creating the Pro Helvetia cultural foundation, organized under private law and subsidized by the federal government . It was initially established as a working group in order to preserve the intellectual independence of culture in Switzerland in the face of the threat posed by National Socialist Germany and its fascist propaganda . While the Federal Council viewed armed national defense as a matter for the state, it wanted to leave intellectual national defense primarily to the citizens.

Origin and goal setting

In order to strengthen the spirit of the troops , General Henri Guisan from the «Army Group» of Pro Helvetia ordered the Army and House Section, subordinate to the General Adjutantur , to be set up as a kind of psychological service. This had the task of maintaining the military will of the troops through lectures and entertainment, even during longer military service. In the army order of November 3, 1939, he wrote: «It is imperative that the troops maintain a high state of mind, despite a long period of service and regardless of the separation of family and work. Free of agonizing doubts and discouragement, the soldier should maintain equanimity and confidence. "

Because no action was taken on the Declaration of Principles of the Federal Council from 1938 of the civilian side, Guisan issued in his order of the day of 1 August 1941, the formula "Swiss think and Swiss act" the adjutant general's command, army and home to the "intelligence service civil" to expand and launch a campaign to educate civilians. For this purpose, cadres were recruited from the environment of the Hans Hausamanns news office and the resistance organizations ( officers ' union, National Resistance Campaign ).

Activity during World War II

Letter of Defense No. 9

Army and House tried to strengthen the will to resist in the population and to supplement the role of the war-censored press. Firstly, it was about “conveying facts” from which citizens should form their own opinion, and secondly, “conveying the foundations for discussion” as a means of forming opinions in a democracy, as opposed to propaganda and agitation and terror, which are the methods by which totalitarian states make their subjects submissive.

It organized around 3,000 two-day educational courses as well as lectures, performances, sports events and film and radio screenings. The approximately 200 volunteer speakers came from all political camps, regions and professions. For the lecture activities by the commanders, the army and house issued military letters, which not only called for resistance against the totalitarian threat, but also took a stand for the old custom of granting asylum (December 1942) or against anti-Semitism (May 1943). More than 7000 shop stewards recruited in the lectures distributed the documentation published by the Army and House in their sphere of activity and gave regular feedback on the respective mood in the population.

In the army order of November 1939, Guisan also gave didactic instructions for the army and house officers and the unit commanders : “I consider it essential that there is a clear separation between serious lectures that require constant attention and the purely entertaining events. The former belong to working hours, the others to leisure. Both are important, sometimes it is a question of teaching, sometimes of pleasure. To teach does not mean to impose any theories, but to stimulate the thoughts and challenge the considerations. It is a matter of describing the tangible and spiritual reality of Switzerland, its honorable past, the military traditions, honoring our heroes, artists, scientists, and showing the high level of culture that it has achieved to the team, primarily using concrete examples to indicate their destiny in this world. In this way the troops become aware of the value of goods that can be called to defend themselves with arms, and in this way our active service receives its full and true spiritual meaning. "

For the historian Peter Dürrenmatt and other contemporary observers, Heer und Haus made a decisive contribution to maintaining and strengthening intellectual resilience from 1941 to 1945: “It can be said that never before in the history of the Confederation has there been a movement of even approximately the same creative unity like those who had formed around the army's intelligence service, around the idea of ​​'army and house'. "

The two officers of the Swiss Army Oscar Frey and Robert Frick, who had aroused the displeasure of the German regime with their public lectures in the army and house in the sense of intellectual national defense, had to justify themselves and received warnings and, in the case of Oscar Frey, received them No speaking. The content of their lectures is likely to have violated the censorship required quietly.

Activity after the Second World War

After the demobilization in 1945, the Army and House Section was dissolved because it was believed that its task was only due to the war. The confrontation with the new threat from the communist east prompted former employees of the army and house in 1947/48 to set up private intelligence services for the civilian population. This is how the Swiss Reconnaissance Service (SAD) , Rencontres Suisses (RS) and Coscienza Svizzera came into being . The SAD, established at the end of 1947 with the help of the New Helvetic Society , was dedicated to the fight against communist totalitarianism in the spirit of spiritual national defense . After the Hungarian uprising of 1956, the army sector was reactivated by army and house by a parliamentary resolution, while the civil sector was left to the already existing civil organizations SAD and RS. The army and the house worked closely with the civilian intelligence services.

With the army reform in 1961 , the army and house were integrated into the troops and included in the troop order. The disputes in 1962 and 1963 between supporters and opponents of intellectual national defense in the army and the EMD (today VBS ) led to the agency being placed directly under the military administration and to a shift in objectives from intellectual national defense to informing the troops. In the 1970s, the agency came under attack from the left, who saw it as a means of social discipline and the spread of ideologies in the army. In 1978 the Federal Council replaced the Army and House with the Troop Information Service to support the commanders. This means that the information tool, which is important for a militia army because of its democratic and pluralistic composition of speakers, was lost. The Troop Information Service, which replaced the Army and House Service in 1978 , recruited journalists and media specialists as information officers for the army.

organs

organization

Army and house consisted of the chief, the office as part of the adjutant department, the chiefs of the army and house in the staffs of the large troop units, the liaison officers and the army staff section, army and house .

Speakers

The speakers were recruited from volunteers of all military degrees, from all parts of the country, political parties, trade unions and professions: mostly teachers of all levels, mechanics, engineers, merchants, pastors, civil servants, instruction officers, social workers, housewives, teachers, kindergarten teachers, etc. three-day speaker training courses, methodically and didactically trained and familiarized with the available resources.

Working methods

Each of the approximately three hundred speakers always expressed their own opinion on a topic that was redefined every two years by the National Military Defense Commission . No documentation was given for this. The technical experts requested by the troop commanders represented their own knowledge. Interfering in party-political or confessional views had to be avoided as well as comments on problems that were the subject of a referendum . From 1971 onwards, recruits received information about their citizenship from the wage-earning unit commanders.

Well-known employees of the army and house

  • Roland Eduard Manuel Ziegler, as Major Head of the Army and House Section during the Second World War. Member of the International Control Commission in Korea from 1951.
  • Oscar Frey , colonel and regiment commander, reorganized the army and house for the education of the population on behalf of General Guisan and was their boss in 1941/42.
  • August R. Lindt , member of the "Officers' Union" and the resulting "National Resistance Campaign". From 1941 to 1945 head of the civil reconnaissance service in the Army and House Section of the Army Command, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 1951 to 1956.
  • Robert Vögeli , Head of Army and House Section, entrusted from 1956 with the reconstruction of the Army and House Section of the Army Command, which was demobilized after the end of the war and of which he was in charge until 1962.
  • Walther Hofer , head of the civil intelligence service of the army and house and president of the working group for intellectual national defense.
  • Ernst Brugger , major service chief in the army and house , later federal councilor.
  • Hans A. Huber , Chief of the Army and House 1969–1974, Colonel in the General Staff.
  • Paul Senn , active duty as an army photographer in the Army and House section .
  • Robert Frick, as a consultant in the Army and Home Section, fought against the defeatism that arose after the collapse of France in the summer of 1940 , and from 1958 to 1965 head of training for the army in the rank of Colonel Corps Commander.
  • Fritz Wartenweiler , active service as a consultant for the Army and House Section .
  • Karl Schmid , as Colonel of the General Staff, speaker of the Army and House and from 1967 to 1970 head of the «Study Commission for Strategic Questions» set up by the Federal Council.
  • Paul Schaefer, seminar director, lecturing in the Army and House section during active service .
  • Gian Battista Mantegazzi composed the Army and House March in 1941.
  • Hans Roelli composed soldiers' songs and sang on around 300 singing evenings for the soldiers in the field on behalf of the Army and House Section . With his singing he has contributed to raising morale in the troupe.
  • Swiss women's movement : women did active service in women's service (FHD), civilian women's service, land service and in the organization army and house .
  • Silvia Plüss-Pozzi, refugee supervisor, 1939–1943 worked for the Swiss Red Cross and 1943–1945 with August R. Lindt in the reconnaissance service for the army and house .

literature

  • Philipp Etter : Spiritual national defense (lecture). Swiss Student Association (Ed.), Lang Verlag, Bern 1937.
  • Roland Eduard Manuel Ziegler (Major): History of the Army and House Section 1939–1945. Army and House, Adjutantur, Bern 1945.
  • General Adjutantur Section Army and House (ed.): Soldier song book. Musikverlag Helbling, Zurich 1945.
  • Hans Rudolf Kurz (Ed.): Documents of the active service. Huber Verlag, Frauenfeld 1965.
  • Peter Neumann: film heroes in the reduit. The Swiss film in the service of intellectual national defense. TV broadcast, documentary, DRS, December 22, 1994, 10:15 p.m., duration: 35 '.
  • Edgar Bonjour : History of Swiss Neutrality - Four Centuries of Federal Foreign Policy. Volume 7, Basel, Stuttgart 1974.
  • Hans A. Huber , Colonel i Gst, Chief of the Army and House: Army and House. Then and now. An overview of the origins, development and current tasks. Frauenfeld December 1974.
  • André Lasserre: Switzerland: The Dark Years. Public Opinion 1939–1945. Orell Füssli publishing house, Zurich 1992.
  • Igor Perrig : Intellectual national defense in the Cold War. The Swiss Reconnaissance Service and Army and House 1945–1963 . Dissertation University of Freiburg i. Ü, Brig 1993.
  • Yves-Alain Morel: Enlightenment or Indoctrination? Troop information in the Swiss Army 1914–1945 . Thesis Verlag, Zurich 1996.
  • Treumund E. Itin: Army and house and the spiritual national defense. Swiss soldier 12/1997
  • Stefanie Frey: Switzerland's Defense and Security Policy during the Cold War (1945–1973). Verlag Merker im Effingerhof, Lenzburg 2002, ISBN 3-85648-123-0 .
  • Ernst R. Borer: Adviser to the Army and House in the Army. In: Sara Arnold-Korf, Ernst R. Borer: For a free and defensive Switzerland - against its enemies. Zurich 2012, ISBN 3-84481-326-8 .
  • Jürg Schoch: With eyes and ears for the fatherland . Heer & Haus's Swiss reconnaissance service in World War II. NZZ libro, 2015. ISBN 978-3-03823-901-7

Web links

Commons : Spiritual national defense  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Message on the federal law on the Pro Helvetia Foundation of June 8, 2007 (PDF; 553 kB).
  2. ↑ Message of the Federal Council on the organization and the task of Swiss cultural preservation and advertising of December 9, 1938.
  3. ↑ General Guisan's army order “Relates to the spirit of the troops”, November 3, 1939, BAR E27 / 9049.
  4. ^ Edgar Bonjour: History of Swiss Neutrality - Four Centuries of Federal Foreign Policy. Volume 7, Basel, Stuttgart 1974, p. 33.
  5. ↑ Philipp Wanner, Colonel Oscar Frey, Schaffhausen City Archives, Schaffhauser Biographien Volume III 46 (1969) pp. 73–82.
  6. ^ Yves-Alain Morel: Enlightenment or Indoctrination? Troop information in the Swiss Army 1914–1945. Thesis Verlag, Zurich 1996, p. 120.
  7. ^ Department for Adjutantur, Army and House Office: Lists of participants in the orientation and information courses 1968–1973.
  8. ↑ Swiss soldier 12/1997