Fir tree company

Plans of the German Wehrmacht

Plan booklet Switzerland

The name Tannenbaum summarizes a number of German plans for the attack-like occupation of Switzerland in the Second World War , which Otto-Wilhelm Kurt von Menges worked out on behalf of the OKH after the Franco-German armistice at Compiègne on June 24, 1940 .

It was envisaged that Italian troops would assist with the implementation of this plan with a simultaneous attack from the south. With them an approximate dividing line for Switzerland was fixed around July 31, 1940, which led from Saint-Maurice over the watershed Aare - Rhone to Tödi , into Rätikon and finally to Muttler .

Menges had completed the third updated version of the Army General Staff's operational plan by August 12, 1940 . He assumed that the Swiss army would be smashed in such a way that it would be impossible to evade the high mountains and conduct a resistance ( Réduit ). Here are Bern (Berne), Zurich ( arms factory Rheinmetall Air Defense ) and Solothurn ( arms factory Solothurn occupy) quickly and unharmed. Then came the

"Extraction of the most important railway and road junctions as well as the numerous bridges and tunnels in an undamaged condition in order to make the country usable as a transit area for all transports to southern France."

On October 4, 1940, Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb planned between 18 and 21 divisions for the Tannenbaum company .

The Tannenbaum company was never implemented because the German army's focus was on planning and preparing for a possible invasion of Great Britain and so insufficient funds were available to carry out the occupation of Switzerland. In addition, a trade agreement was concluded on August 9, 1940, which forced the exclusive supply of the Axis powers through Swiss arms exports, whereby there was a German interest in an intact Swiss arms industry and also in the Gotthard transit .

See also

• Switzerland in World War II
• Timeline Switzerland in World War II
• Switzerland in the German expansion calculation 1933 to 45

literature

• Blue spruce. Supplement to ASMZ 2/2003 (PDF) or Schweizer Soldat 2/2003
• Spruce. Supplement to ASMZ 5/2004 (PDF)
• Alberto Rovighi: Un secolo di relazioni militari tra Italia e Svizzera 1851–1961. Ufficio Storico Stato Maggiore dell'Esercito, Rome 1987.
• Klaus Urner : Switzerland still has to be swallowed. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 1990, ISBN 3-85823-303-X .
• Leo Schelbert: Switzerland under siege. Picton, Rockport, Maine 2000, ISBN 0-89725-414-7 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jürg Fink: Switzerland from the perspective of the Third Reich , 1985