Swiss Patriotic Association

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The Swiss Patriotic Association (SIA) was an association of right-wing civil forces with the aim of averting the supposed threat of a socialist overthrow in Switzerland . In terms of function and development, it was a Swiss counterpart to the early fascist organizations in Italy and Germany in the 1920s.

Origin and development

The association was formed in April 1919 as a merger of paramilitary vigilante groups and other conservative-military groups formed during the state strike (November 1918) . These vigilante groups had been built up mainly by right-wing and rural-rural circles as military-run volunteer organizations to maintain constitutional security, law and order, probably out of fear that the militia army would take too little force against the revolting workers in the cities. The vigilante groups, organized under private law, were mainly financed by banks, insurance companies and industrial companies, but armed from federal arsenals and partly through smuggling from Germany. They had a highly problematic hybrid position between the auxiliary police and the ideological paramilitary. A leading figure in the vigilante group was the Aargau doctor, officer, BGB politician, founder of the Aargau Patriotic Association and SIA President Eugen Bircher , who maintained close relationships with German voluntary corps and right-wing extremists such as Waldemar Pabst and Erich Ludendorff .

In the canton of Bern , vigilante groups were often formed in these crisis years parallel to the establishment of sections of the Farmers, Trade and Citizens' Party (BGB) - the forerunner of the Swiss People's Party  . After the state strike, the BGB established itself as a kind of parliamentary arm of the clandestine Patriotic Association. The first fascist groups in Switzerland came from this atmosphere in the 1920s and sympathizers of the front movement and National Socialism at the beginning of the 1930s .

In the 1920s, the Fatherland Association discovered an area of ​​responsibility in the works service by organizing strike defense for vital economic institutions (including the Swiss Federal Railways ). The SIA used its political influence to coordinate the bourgeois forces in elections and votes and thus prevent the election of Social Democrats to important offices.

After an intelligence bribery affair in which the association management bribed police officers, the SIA ceased its activities in 1948. However, some SIA sections continued to exist, the longest in the canton of Aargau until 2019.

rating

According to the historian Hans Ulrich Jost, the Swiss Patriotic Association formed “an underground information network whose impact on politics and public opinion should not be underestimated”. According to the historian Hans von Greyerz , the SIA was “a mixture of vigilante elements and the Ku Klux Klan spirit”.

literature

  • Werner Baumann: Farmers and Citizens 'Block: Ernst Laur and the Swiss Farmers' Association 1897–1918 . Zurich 1993.
  • Willi Gautschi : The national strike in 1918. Zurich 1968
  • Thomas Greminger: Order troops in Zurich: The deployment of the army, police and city defense from the end of November 1918 to August 1919 . Basel etc. 1990.
  • Sébastien Guex: A propos des gardes civiques et de leur financement à l'issue de la Première Guerre mondiale , in: Jean Batou, et al. (Ed.): Pour une histoire des gens sans Histoire. Ouvriers, excluEs et rebelles en Suisse, 19e – 20e siècles , Lausanne, 1995, pp. 255–264.
  • Daniel Hagmann: Citizens clean Basel . City.History.Basel 2019.
  • Charles Heimberg: La garde civique genevoise et la grève générale de 1918: Un sursaut disciplinaire et conservateur , in: Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 44 (1997). Pp. 424-435.
  • Daniel Heller: Eugen Bircher. Doctor, military, politician. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-85823-195-9 .
  • Hans Ulrich Jost : Threat and Narrow. In: Ulrich Im Hof (Hrsg.): History of Switzerland and the Swiss. 2nd Edition. Basel 2004, pp. 731–819 (quotation p. 784)
  • Christian Koller : "Red Scare" in two sister republics: fear of revolution and anti-socialism in a Swiss-American comparison, 1917–1920 , in: Hans Rudolf Fuhrer (ed.): Innere Sicherheit - Ordnungsdienst, Part II: The general strike in November 1918 . Zurich 2018. pp. 84–114.
  • Christian Koller : 100 years ago: The paramilitarization of Europe and Switzerland , in: Social Archive Info 3 (2019).
  • Hans-Rudolf Kurz: Basic military concepts: The vigilante groups , in: Schweizer Soldat 56/8 (1981). Pp. 5-7.
  • Renato Morosoli: “... facing the red tide”: Zug vigilante groups and anti-Bolshevik residents' associations 1918-1921 , in: Tugium 34 (2018). Pp. 189-192.
  • Roman Rossfeld: «Out to fight, you bourgeois brothers». How the bourgeoisie reacted to the end of the war and the state strike with a policy of fear in 1918 . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , September 25, 2018.
  • Hanspeter Schmid: War of the Citizens: The bourgeoisie in the fight against the general strike in Basel in 1919 . Zurich 1980.
  • Oliver Schneider: Of stick guards, revolutionary heroes and brethren: The Lucerne militia after the national strike in 1918 , in: History Culture Society. Historical Society Lucerne Yearbook 31 (2013). Pp. 63-84.
  • Andreas Thürer: The Swiss Patriotic Association 1919–1930 / 31. Dissertation, University of Basel, Basel 2010; Table of contents (PDF).
  • Andreas Thürer: The Swiss Patriotic Association (SVV): an anti-socialist protective wall (1919-1930 / 31) , In: Michel Caillat, Stéphanie Roulet, Mauro Cerutti, Jean-François Fayet (eds.), Histoire (s) de l'anticommunisme en Suisse , Zurich 2009, pp. 133–146.
  • Carola Togni: Les gardes civiques en Suisse romande: Dossier de sources . Univ. Lausanne 2000.
  • Joanna Vanay: Les gardes civiques de Sierre (1918-1919) , in: Annales valaisannes 2004. pp. 93-129.
  • Dorothe Zimmermann: Remember the state strike. Anti-Communist Activities of the Swiss Patriotic Association 1919–1948 , in: Swiss Journal for History , 2013, No. 3, pp. 479–504; doi : 10.5169 / seals-358027 .
  • Dorothe Zimmermann: Swiss Patriotic Association , in: Daniel, Ute, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer and Bill Nasson (eds.): 1914-1918-online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War, 16 December 2015.
  • Dorothe Zimmermann: Protecting the state: With vigilante groups and informers against the workers , in: Rossfeld, Roman et al. (Ed.): The national strike: Switzerland in November 1918 . Baden 2018. pp. 127–151.
  • Dorothe Zimmermann: Anti-Communists as State Guards: The Swiss Patriotic Association, 1930–1948 , Zurich 2019.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Flurin Condrau : The Heusser Saga. How the patriotic people dealt with the Red Zurich , in: Committee to End the Sniffer State (ed.), Sniffer State Switzerland. A hundred years are enough, Zurich: Limmat 1990, pp. 28–35.