Switzerland in the German expansion calculation 1933 to 45
Switzerland in the German expansion calculus 1933-45 sheds light on the policy of National Socialist Germany with regard to a possible annexation of neighboring Switzerland, in a similar sense to the fact that Austria was annexed in 1938 .
Management level
The doctoral thesis of Jürg Fink, noted in the bibliography, shows that the National Socialist regime had a fundamental racial and ethnic interest in integrating the German-speaking part of Switzerland into a Greater Germanic Empire. B. would have included the Netherlands and Denmark . However, this interest was kept within relatively narrow limits, Austria and the non-racially motivated campaigns against previously large countries had absolute priority , especially with Adolf Hitler .
Another question was the motive for occupying the country for tactical reasons . Several archive documents (e.g. Fink p. 72 and p. 74) indicate that there was no compelling interest here either. From a military point of view, the "Operation Sickle Cut" heading northwest over Belgium was always favored for the western campaign , where the prospect of an immediate territorial threat to Great Britain opened up.
Staff planning
The situation was somewhat different in the area of the subaltern levels, the management staff, where purely preventive planning was carried out. In this regard, v. a. the Operation Tannenbaum . There is also a letter from SS group leader Berger to Heinrich Himmler dated September 8, 1941 (excerpt):
In Württemberg you can smell the morning air. Both the Mayor of Stuttgart, Dr. Strölin, as well as the Reichsstatthalter Murr consider themselves the given 'Reichskommissare' for Switzerland.
Himmler only replied indirectly to this on February 10, 1942, in two letters, one of which was also addressed to the aforementioned Berger (excerpts):
At the moment we have an interest in not getting into conflict with Switzerland.
More economic contracts are to be awarded to German-friendly Swiss companies.
This confirms what recent Swiss historical research has gradually learned since the 1980s / 1990s: Germany temporarily had an interest in an intact Switzerland, which was primarily an armaments supplier and foreign exchange hub (i.e., looted gold against foreign exchange , which was used to procure raw materials for German arms production were needed) could provide valuable services without having to tie up German occupation troops.
Otherwise, no such preventive planning is known. However, especially in June and July 1940, there were short-term and rather improvised efforts to join Switzerland in a "peaceful" way. The fact that the country was psychologically weakened by the German war victory over the only democratic neighboring country France was to be exploited. For example, the German press attaché in Switzerland, Georg Trump, tried from July 9, 1940 on the publishers of the daily newspapers Der Bund , Neue Zürcher Zeitung and Basler Nachrichten to get their editors-in-chief Ernst Schürch , Willy Bretscher and Albert Oeri , who were clearly critical of Germany were discontinued. However, with relatively little success: Bretscher and Oeri remained in office; Schürch was advised to resign from the Bund-Verleger, but in the end he stayed at his post until his retirement the following year.
literature
- Jürg Fink: Switzerland from the perspective of the Third Reich, 1933 to 45 , 1985.
- Jakob Tanner : Reduit national and foreign trade. In: Philipp Sarasin et al .: Raubgold - Reduit - Refugees, 1998.
- Edgar Bonjour : History of Swiss Neutrality: Four Centuries of Federal Foreign Policy . Helbing & Lichtenhahn: Basel 1965–1976. (9 volumes)
Individual evidence
- ^ Fischer Weltgeschichte / RAC Parker: Europe 1918 to 1945 1967/1985.
- ↑ Jürg Fink, 1985.
- ^ Georg Kreis : July 1940. The Trump Action , 1973
- ↑ Andreas Tobler: Why a Trump was expelled from Switzerland. In: Tages-Anzeiger of March 22, 2017.