Strategic ways to bypass Switzerland

Only the bypassing of Switzerland enabled undisturbed troop transports in the south of the German Reich

Viaduct at Fützen on the Hintschingen – Weizen section

The strategic railways to bypass Switzerland were a project of the German Empire in the Grand Duchy of Baden to "complete the rail network in the interests of national defense". This involved four strategic railway lines which, in the event of an emergency, were to bypass Switzerland and ensure an efficient connection between the Ulm fortress and the southern Rhine Valley Railway , all of which went into operation in 1890:

• Inzigkofen – Tuttlingen (37.1 kilometers)
• Hintschingen-Weizen (41.3 kilometers)
• Säckingen – Schopfheim (19.7 kilometers)
• Lörrach-Stetten – Weil am Rhein (4.8 kilometers)

As a result, the Schaffhausen railway junction and the Badische Bahnhof in Basel could be bypassed, which was necessary for political reasons, and the detour and change of direction via the Plochingen station in the north or the Singen (Hohentwiel) station in the south was no longer necessary .

background

In Prussia, Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke (1800-1891) - in contrast to the General Staff of the Army of the French Empire - recognized early on the importance of the railway for rapid mobilization in an emergency and in 1864 in the war against Denmark and also in the Austro-Prussian war war in 1866 successfully used. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, the Prussian army deployed surprisingly quickly for the French leadership. After the victory and the subsequent amalgamation of the small German states with the establishment of an empire under the leadership of Prussia, central state planning for the future became possible at all levels.

The German Empire annexed Alsace and Lorraine , which had been disputed between the two powers for centuries ; France had to pay high reparations and Germany had no illusions about the future attitude of the French:

A war of revenge was expected soon. The following measures on the part of Germany to expand the 'proven' railway network for the purpose of “national defense”, which of course now included Alsace and Lorraine, are to be seen under this impression. South Baden appeared to be particularly endangered by a French attack - just as it was then led immediately in 1914.

There was also no doubt that the surprise effect of the railway march had now been canceled out. At von Moltke's “suggestions, strategic paths were laid towards the western borders. For southern Baden he assumed that a new armed conflict with France would take place in the area of ​​the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine, which now belongs to Germany . His plans therefore included building a railway connection in the south from the federal fortress of Ulm, bypassing Switzerland and along the High Rhine to Alsace near the French fortress Belfort . "

It was about supplementary buildings on twelve strategic (in the event of war with priority set up for military purposes) railway lines in the west of the Reich and only about a new building:

"1. Between Leopoldshöhe and Immendingen, a coherent railway is to be created, completely avoiding Swiss territory. 2. The inclines and slopes of this track must not be more than 1/100 at any point. 3. The smallest arc radius is set at 300 m and should be used as little as possible, at least only on the wheat-customs house route. 4. At intervals of no more than 8 km, sidings for military trains must be installed. "

The new construction was necessary for strategic reasons, since the high Rhine railway was partly routed over Swiss territory, and the State Treaty of 1852 gave Switzerland the right to transfer parts of the railway line on its national territory to Swiss ownership with a five-year transition period. In addition, Switzerland was able to prohibit the transport of troops and weapons across its territory if this were necessary in the interests of its security or neutrality. In order to strengthen the southern Upper Rhine border or the then connected Alsace, it was essential in a military sense to be able to use a railway line independent of Switzerland in the event of mobilization, especially since Alsace and thus the area on the right bank of the Rhine could be reached quickly from the French region. On the German side, however, when the Hochrheinbahn was blocked, it was impossible to bring Württemberg (Ulm Fortress) and Bavarian troops to the Upper Rhine line north of Basel or Alsace at short notice, because the Höllentalbahn (Donaueschingen - Freiburg) was due to its steep gradients for troops and troops Laying of material unusable and the closest junction of the railways coming from Munich is only at the level of Offenburg about 100 km north of the Hüninger Rhine bridge .

The memorandum concludes with a reference to the usable sections of the Oberheintalbahn , the necessary new construction of three routes to bypass Switzerland - including Weizen – Hintschingen – Immendingen - "while the construction of a new railway to Inzigkofen following the Donauthale from Tuttlingen (on the Hohenzollernbahn near Sigmaringen ) provides a direct and efficient connection with Ulm and Munich. "

The route investigations commissioned and financed by the Reich government in 1884 were completed by the General Directorate of the Reich Railways in Strasbourg by the end of 1885. At the beginning of 1887, the Baden government provided this “preliminary draft with a cost estimate” with a comment on the route, which “by and large could hardly have been better chosen” and took over the construction management. However, "the Baden technicians had considerable concerns about the prescribed time of almost 3 years for project planning and construction of the total of 70.576 km long route with an expected cost of 34.8 million marks"; one could "only give the promise to want to do everything in order to meet the planned completion date."

Since there was considerable opposition in the Reichstag on the question of costs, the March 1887 memorandum affirmed: "The demands of the army administration only correspond to the urgent need for countermeasures caused by the progress made by neighboring countries."

"After the general management of the Grossh. Staatseisenbahnen [..] at the end of May 1887 it was announced that the Reichstag, in its 3rd reading, was in the interest of completing the rail network in the supplementary budget for 1887/88, based on the agreement of March 11, 1887 the state defense, was not delayed, and although the supplementary budget law by His Majesty the Emperor had not yet been implemented and the necessary approval of the Baden state estates had not yet been given, the work in question began with all the energy, initially with those for the production of the project on the assumption that the entire construction should be completed by the end of May 1890. We succeeded in this so far that the new trams were operational on April 1st, 1890 and operational by May 20th, 1890. "

- Memorandum of understanding railways for bypassing Swiss territory. Building director Würthenau, Karlsruhe 1890, p. 8.

Due to the strategic military orientation of the railway in the event of war with France, no other provision was provided, the question of costs only played a subordinate role. According to this standard, it was irrelevant whether or not civil traffic covered costs - the only thing that counted was its importance in the event of war. Since the railroad was decisive for the mobilization in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, parts of the reparations payments from the war were also used to expand the strategic rail network.

prehistory

The military interest in the rail connection and the possible realization of the complex course of the section through the Wutach Valley benefited from plans that had been determined by economic policy considerations a decade earlier: “In Switzerland, the Gotthard should be driven through with a tunnel, so that goods exchange from the northern Italian up-and-coming industrial areas in year-round operation with the new German industrial areas in the Rhineland up to the port of Rotterdam. "

Since the only possible connection between the Baden and the Swiss railway network at the time was the Waldshut-Koblenz railway bridge built by Robert Gerwig in 1859 , the existing branching to Basel and Singen or a connection that was still being planned to the Württemberg-Bavarian area "came through the Wutach valley somehow to Donaueschingen ”. However, this interest was only concretized in Baden through an authorization from Grand Duke Friedrich von Baden on April 29, 1870 to "the government [...] concerning the construction of a Gotthard railway ." Three million francs were made available for this.

This was preceded as early as March 15, 1870 by a “building decision by the 2nd Chamber of the Baden State Parliament in Karlsruhe, [... which] was based on a report by a railway commission. […] The report was written by the Karlsruhe engineer and MP Robert Gerwig, who, among other things, advocated the Wutachtalbahn. ”The argument was“ also the close prospect of the Swiss Gotthard Alpine Railway, which will put the Wutachtalbahn in the front row for Baden has provided the necessary paths. "

After the decision, the construction of the railway began on the still unproblematic area of ​​the lower Wutach valley: The first section to Stühlingen was opened on April 1, 1875, and the line to Weizen on October 15, 1876 . Then the efforts were stopped because of technical and financial imponderables. Presumably, the importance of this connection to a Gotthard Railway was also put into perspective.

The project was therefore no longer implemented under the aspect of economic benefit. A planned connection from Brugg via Böttstein to Waldshut was never built.

It was not until the political tensions that emerged in Western Europe in the 1880s that, for military-strategic reasons, the Wutach Valley line was continued in 1887–1890, i.e. In other words, the initiative and the regulation of responsibility now passed to the German Empire .

With a view to purely military use, the line in western Württemberg in Immendingen could be connected to the Danube Valley Railway and thus to the main military base in Ulm. From there, the troops already stationed here could be transported immediately and then, after the mobilization, the newly called up units could be transported afterwards.

Technical regulations

“The regulation of a maximum gradient of only a maximum of 1% was based only secondarily on the transport of certain loads, but on the fact that the steam locomotives only had a limited power [... and] did not (have) any continuous brakes. Only the locomotives had hand brakes in the early days, [...] which only acted on the wheels of the tender . "

“Because a complete military train could be loaded with cannons, one of which was calculated to be 20 tons (the so-called forerunner of the ' Dicken Bertha '), the train length and the number of locomotives had to be specified. Military trains should be hauled by three locomotives and be a maximum of 700 meters long. [...] Depending on the length or weight of a train, so-called brakeman's cars were set up after three or four cars. ”In its raised“ brakeman's house ”sat a brakeman who had to operate his brake wheel in response to a certain signal from the locomotive and thus help to brake the train. "

The maximum train length was also defined by the sidings to be set up every eight kilometers with a length of 700 meters, which were set up at the Fützen and Grimmelshofen train stations.

The plans included the entire route from Ulm to southern Alsace near Belfort.

Track system

Two of the strategic railway lines for bypassing Switzerland connected to the Hochrheinbahn from Konstanz via Schaffhausen to Basel, which had been in existence since 1863 , whereby the canton of Schaffhausen and the city of Basel had to be bypassed: the Schaffhausen canton through the Wutach valley line and the Basel area through a connection from Säckingen via Schopfheim to Lörrach-Weil am Rhein to the Upper Rhine Plain. The Bad Säckingen – Wehr – Schopfheim section with the Fahrnau tunnel is now closed. The Wiesentalbahn was used to transport troops from Schopfheim to Lörrach .

The section from Hintschingen to Weizen, built from 1887 onwards, including the existing line to Lauchringen

From 1887 the line between Weizen and Hintschingen was completely rebuilt in order to create a cross connection between the Black Forest Railway and the Hochrheinbahn.

First World War (1914-1918)

The fact that no offensive - as planned by Helmuth von Moltke - for conquering the Belfort Fortress was prepared and supplied via the railway was due to the changed planning situation ( Schlieffenplan ), which provided for a major German offensive in the north. An attack in the south - via Alsace, which was newly annexed in 1870/71 - was no longer planned. Precisely because of this, however, a French attack on the Upper Rhine was expected from the German "Grand Headquarters" .

As a result, the Swiss bypass railways had become even more important, because an attack by the enemy did not have to be carried out, but an enemy attack had to be intercepted as quickly as possible. In addition, it was not possible to station enough regular troops in Alsace; these could only be supplied after mobilization.

The mobilized troops could only be provided and equipped in the Württemberg-Bavarian area, and seen from there, the Black Forest was an insurmountable obstacle for military transports. It was not possible to use the Höllentalbahn because of the steep inclines there. The Black Forest Railway was also out of the question, as it was already busy to supply the northern section of the front for reinforcements around Strasbourg as far as the Palatinate. This meant that only the route along the Upper Rhine remained for transport to the southern Upper Rhine front. There was no risk of interference from Switzerland, because the French army had only a very short way to attack Alsace.

Even before the start of the French entry into the war on August 3, 1914, troops were sent preventively to Baden via the strategic railways. From the beginning of the war, the line was increasingly used: It was necessary to move the now mobilized Württemberg and Bavarian reservists (from the hinterland) to the Upper Rhine and Alsace, because with the French mobilization that took place at the same time, as expected, the attack to recapture 1870/71 lost Alsace was set in motion.

From the beginning of August 1914, for up to four weeks, troops and material were sent to Alsace, which was now threatened by the French attack. The Swiss newspaper Schleitheimer Bote reported on August 7, 1914, when the mobilization officially began in full force:

"On Thursday [6. August], military trains carrying troops and artillery ran en masse on the strategic railway. A train drove through every half hour. "

- D. Reimer: Strategic Railway / Museum Railway , newspaper quote, p. 60 f.

Despite the uninterrupted supply of troops and weapons ("a train every half hour") via the bypass, not enough units could be opposed to the French attack on Alsace, so that the 6th Army, which is neighboring in the north, was ordered to carry out a relief attack to the south, although it was still in the list. Even after the subsequent retreat of the French to the Vosges, the front now running across Alsace remained restless and a resumption of enemy attacks had to be expected.

The full military utilization of the strategic bypass could be reduced from the end of August 1914, as combat troops and weapons were no longer required. Nevertheless, the traffic remained intense until the end of the war, not only due to supply transports and hospital trains, but also due to the increased need for commercial transports, because the northern railway lines remained heavily loaded as a result of the course of the war.

The Swiss bypass railways therefore retained their importance during the war, which is also reflected in the fact that all bridges and tunnel portals were under military guard during the war.

The overall view showed that the expectations of the route's benefits 30 years earlier had largely been met. Although the French had been able to occupy large parts of the Vosges, they could be denied access to the urban territories of the Rhine plain. The fact that the outcome of the war fundamentally changed the situation does not make the construction of the railway itself “pointless”, since Baden was saved from a French invasion.

Interwar period

After the war, all regional railways in Germany lost their special status and were subordinated to the Deutsche Reichsbahn , founded on April 1, 1920 .

The low number of trains in the first post-war years "changed suddenly when, following the French occupation of the Rhineland in 1923, Offenburg was also occupied by French troops (February 4, 1923). The rail traffic on the Upper Rhine route from Karlsruhe to Basel was interrupted. [...] Passenger and freight trains were now increasingly running on the bypass line. "After the closure of the Rhine Valley Railway was lifted on December 12, 1923," it was quite calm again. "

Second World War (1939–1945)

The conditions on the German-Swiss border had changed significantly from September 1939 onwards compared to the First World War. Switzerland did not take over the parts of the Upper Rhine route across its own territory or the closure of the Badischer Bahnhof in Basel: “The Apparently, the Swiss government did not want to give their neighbors, who now appeared to be far more powerful and threatening than 1914, a reason for complications in their mutual relations by closing the train station. "Until the mutual tolerance came to an end," German traffic temporarily used the bypasses guided, temporarily led through the Badischer Bahnhof under the strict guard of the trains without stopping. "

After France declared war in September 1939 because of the German invasion of Poland, the French shot at areas of the Rhine Valley Railway near the border from May 1940 . Sections of the route were shut down by the end of June 1940, but the import of German coal over the Gotthard and Simplon routes, which was necessary for the Italian alliance partner, was maintained by diversions across the Black Forest. On the other hand, Wehrmacht goods that were excluded from the State Treaty of July 27, 1852 were not allowed to be carried over their territory:

"All transports that might be subject to these regulations were therefore driven on the Weil - Lörrach - Schopfheim - Säckingen and Oberlauchringen - Immendingen bypasses, which were used by the armed forces throughout the war."

- H.-W. Scharf: Eisenbahn am Hochrhein , 1993, p. 24.

A greatly increased number of trains followed the German withdrawal from France, also "from Alsace to the Altreich"; Thus, “in the period from September 2 to November 20, 1944, a total of 118 evacuation trains, mainly to Lindau, some also to the Stuttgart area.” The Hochrheinbahn “could only transport trains that did not contain Wehrmacht goods (42 trains ), while the other trains had to be diverted via Immendingen. "

After the occupation of Wutachtal and the Blumberg area at the end of April 1945, the railway was placed under French control.

After the Second World War

The post-war relations in the West made neither a new armed conflict with France nor tensions with Switzerland appear realistic. This eliminated the military use of the routes. They had served their purpose for over 60 years, but they were not all made for a purely civil purpose. Now economic efficiency came to the fore and for the new Deutsche Bundesbahn (DB), the Wutach Valley Railway in particular threatened to become a “bottomless pit”. In addition, the increasing truck traffic after the war promoted the tendency "to dismantle the rail network while at the same time increasing subsidies for road traffic." On May 22, 1955, the DB temporarily stopped all operations in the central section of the Wutach Valley Railway ; the Federal Minister of Transport extended this with a decree from November 11, 1955 until further notice . "

At the "time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the construction of the Berlin Wall (1961)", both of which brought the world to the brink of war again, strategic military considerations arose in the West to also take remote railway lines into account:

"From 1962 to 1965 the Federal Ministry of Defense had the central section completely operational for 4.7 million DM, ie renovation of the tunnels and bridges, reinstallation of the dismantled passing tracks in Epfenhofen and Grimmelshofen and the signaling systems [...] from 1964 to 1974 inclusive per year for maintenance 50,000 DM. "

- Ullrich Müller: Die Wutachtalbahn , 1990, p. 43.

These renovations were carried out “on behalf of NATO ”.

Until 1974, the Ministry of Defense paid “an annual maintenance subsidy of DM 50,000 to the DB on behalf of NATO, with the stipulation that the line should be kept operational.” Soon afterwards, the DB ordered “the complete suspension of rail traffic on December 31, 1976. [... and] planned to dismantle the facility, which had become unprofitable. However, the Wutach Valley Railway was retained as a museum railway, so of the four lines that were once there, only the Wehratal Railway is now closed.

literature

• Memorandum on the construction of the railways in the Baden Oberland Leopoldshöhe – Lörrach, Schopfheim – Säckingen, Weizen – Immendingen, to bypass Swiss territory. Edited by A. v. Würthenau, building director, Chr. Fr. Müller´sche Hofbuchdruckerei, Karlsruhe 1890.
• Hans-Wolfgang Scharf: The railway on the Upper Rhine , Volume 2: From Basel to Lake Constance 1939-1992 , EK (Eisenbahn-Kurier) publishing house, Freiburg 1993. ISBN 3-88255-756-7 .
• Dietrich Reimer and Bernhard Prillwitz: The Sauschwänzlebahn in the southern Black Forest. Sutton Verlag, Erfurt 2010, pp. 7–15. ISBN 978-3-86680-605-4 .
• Dietrich Reimer: The Sauschwänzlebahn - from the strategic bypass train to the tourist museum train. Writings of the Association for History and Natural History of the Baar, 2016, Volume 59.
• Ullrich Müller: The Wutach Valley Railway. Strategic bypass railway (Sauschwänzlebahn). Schneider-Verlag, Grenzach-Wyhlen 1978 (3 further editions until 1990). Without ISBN.
• Joachim Sturm (Ed. On behalf of the city): Blumberg , Dold-Verlag, Blumberg 1995. ISBN 3-927677-06-X . Author: Annelore Walz.
• Reichsarchiv (Ed.): World War 1914–1918. Military operations on land. Volume 1: The border battles in the west. Verlag ES Mittler & Sohn , Berlin 1925, digitized .
• Simon Gonzer: Railway construction in the Wutachtal. Civil and military intentions at the end of the 19th century in the Grand Duchy of Baden and the German Empire. GRIN Verlag GmbH, Norderstedt 2002. ISBN 978-3-640-59572-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Dietrich Reimer: The Sauschwänzlebahn - from the strategic bypass railway to the tourist museum railway. Writings of the Association for History and Natural History of the Baar, 2016, Volume 59, p. 55.
2. ↑ Würthenau: Memorandum , 1890, p. 8.
3. ↑ U. Müller: The Wutach Valley Railway. P. 15, relating to: The German railway system of the present. Berlin 1911, Volume 1, p. 502.
4. ↑ D. Reimer: From the bypass to the museum railway. 2016, p. 53.
5. ^ Reimer, 54, in relation to: Martin Wanner: History of the founding of the Gotthard company. Bern 1880.
6. ↑ Reimer, 56 f.
7. ↑ Sharp, Jan.
8. ↑ Hans-Wolfgang Scharf: Die Eisenbahn am Hochrhein , Volume 2: From Basel to Lake Constance 1939-1992 , EK (Eisenbahn-Kurier) -Verlag, Freiburg 1993, p. 18. ISBN 3-88255-756-7 .
9. ↑ Sharp, 20.
10. ^ Sharp, 40 and 44
11. ^ Dietrich Reimer: The Sauschwänzlebahn - from the strategic bypass railway to the tourist museum railway. Writings of the Association for History and Natural History of the Baar, 2016, Volume 59, p. 64.
12. ^ Dietrich Reimer: The Sauschwänzlebahn - from the strategic bypass railway to the tourist museum railway. Writings of the Association for History and Natural History of the Baar, 2016, Volume 59, p. 65.