Switzerland
and Its Armed
Citizenry
by Stephen P. Halbrook
Copyright Chronicles, January 1998, pp. 38-40

Since the origins of the Swiss Confederation in 1291, it has been the duty of
every male Swiss citizen to be armed and to serve in the militia. Today, that
arm is an "assault rifle," which is issued to every Swiss male and which must
be kept in the home. During Germany's Third Reich (1933-1945), that arm was a
bolt-action repeating rifle, which was highly effective in the hands of
Switzerland's many sharpshooters. Americans of the wartime generation were
familiar with the fact that brave and armed little Switzerland stood up to
Hitler and made him blink. As a map of Europe in 1942 shows, the Nazis had
swallowed up most of everything on the continent but this tiny speck that
Hitler called 'a pimple Oil the face of Europe." The F=FChrer boasted that he
would be "the butcher of the Swiss," but the Wehrmacht was dissuaded by a
fully armed populace in the Alpine terrain. As I point out in my forthcoming
book, Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War 11,
Switzerland's history illustrates the will and ability of an armed citizenry
to resist tyranny to the death.

	The Swiss federal shooting festival, which remains the largest rifle
competition in the world, was held in Luzern in June 1939. Hitler's takeover
of Austria and Czechoslovakia was complete, both countries had been
surrendered by tiny political elites who guaranteed that there would be no
resistance. Swiss President Philipp Etter spoke at the festival, stressing
that something far more serious than sport was the purpose of their activity.
His comments demonstrated the connection between national defense and the
armed citizen:

There is probably no other country that, like Switzerland, gives the soldier
his weapon to keep in the home. The Swiss always has his rifle at hand. It
belongs to the furnishings of his home.... That corresponds to ancient Swiss
tradition. As the citizen with his sword steps into the ring in the cantons
which have the Landsgemeinde so the Swiss soldier lives in constant
companionship with his rifle. He knows what that means. With this rifle, he is
liable every hour, if the country calls, to defend his hearth, his home, his
family, his birthplace. The weapon is to him a pledge and sign of honor and
freedom. The Swiss does not part with his rifle.

	On September 1, 1939, Hitler launched World War II by attacking Poland.
Within a day or two, Switzerland had about half a million militiamen mobilized
out of a population of just over four million. General Henri Cuisan, commander
in chief of the Swiss militia, responded with Operations

Order No. 2

At the border and between the border and army position, the border hoops and
advance guard persistently delay the advance of the enemy. The garrisons at
the border and between the border and the works and positions making up the
defensive front continue resistance up to the last cartridge, even if they
find themselves completely alone.

This astonishing order was the opposite of the policies of the other European
countries, which either surrendered to Hitler without a fight or surrendered
after a brief resistance. For example, in April 1940, Denmark's king
surrendered the country after a meeting with the Nazis and instructed his
forces not to resist. Norway resisted, although--unlike Switzerland--it had no
armed populace and was ill prepared for combat.

	In response to the invasions of small neutral countries, Switzerland issued
its "directions concerning the conduct of the soldiers not under arms in event
of attack." Intended as a warning to Germany, it was pasted on walls all over
the country. It prescribed the reaction against surprise attack and against
the fifth column as follows:

All soldiers and those with therm are to attack with ruthlessness
parachutists, airborne infantry and saboteurs. Where no officers and
noncommissioned officers are present, each soldier acts under exertion of all
powers of his own initiative.

This command for the individual to act on his own initiative was an ancient
Swiss tradition which reflected the political and military leadership's
staunch confidence in the ordinary man. This command was possible, of course,
only in a society where every man had his rifle at home.

	Under no condition, the order continued would any surrender be forthcoming,
and any pretense of a surrender must be ignored:

If by radio, leaflets or other media any information is transmitted doubting
the will of the Federal Council or of the Army High Command to resist an
attacker this information must be regarded
 	lies of enemy propaganda. Our
country will resist aggression with
all means in its power and to the

Switzerland, in other words, possessed the most democratic system of national
defense in Europe. The Nazis were well aware that invasion meant fighting on
every inch of ground (much of it vertical), in every city and village, in
every pasture and mountainside, right down to every man with a rifle. There
would be no easy surrender made by a ruler, as elsewhere.

	The Swiss policy of total resistance is further illustrated by the creation
of the Ortswehren (local defense). It was based on the dictum that "only a
total defense can oppose total war." By allowing boys and old men to be sworn
in as members of the armed forces and issuing them an armband, it permitted
the entire male population to fight and still be recognized as soldiers under
international law. Armed civilians not so recognized would, if captured, be
treated as Franktireure (lone snipers) and shot on the spot. Ortswehr members
armed themselves either with their own rifles or with rifles received from the
military.

	The Ortswehren consisted of former soldiers no longer required to serve, the
Jungschutzen (young shooters), accurate marksmen who were not capable of
military service, those with emergency service duties and others who had been
exempt from the military, and women in the medical service and fire brigades.
By 1941, its membership totaled 127,563, one-fifth of the size of the army.
Had the Germans invaded, the Ortswehren would have provided armed civilian
resistance in every locality of Switzerland, no matter how populous or remote.

	In May 1940, the Nazis attacked Belgium and the Netherlands. After a few days
of fighting, political leaders surrendered, ordering the soldiers to lay down
their arms and discontinue resistance. There was no civilian resistance,
thanks in part to preexisting firearms prohibitions in those countries.

	Within days, the Wehnnacht routed the French at Sedan and were expected to
attack Switzerland. General Guisan issued yet another remarkable command to
the militia. The latest war news, he declared, demonstrated that the French
soldiers could have stopped hostile advances. Instead, defections allowed the
enemy to penetrate through gaps, which quickly widened. In contrast, Cuisan
recalled the high duty of the soldier to resist:

Everywhere, where the order is to hold, it is the duty of conscience of each
fighter, even if he depends on himself alone, to fight at his assigned
position. The riflemen, if overtaken or surrounded, fight in their position
until no more ammunition exists. Then cold steel is next.... The machine
gunners, the cannoneers of heavy weapons, the artillerymen, if in the bunker
or on the field, do not abandon or destroy their weapons, or allow the enemy
to seize them. Then the crews fight further like riflemen. As long as a man
has another cartridge or hand weapons to use, he does not yield.

Cold steel. Never surrender if any weapon is available. This was the tradition
of the fierce medieval Swiss soldiers who defeated many times their numbers
and spread terror in the hearts of their enemies. What would have been the
fate of Europe had the countries that fell to Hider embraced such a warrior
code?

	France collapsed in June 1940 after only a few weeks of fighting. Paris was
taken without a shot being fired. The Nazis promptly proclaimed the death
penalty for possession of firearms in France and other occupied countries.

	Hitler was able to conquer much of Europe by bluffing central authorities
into capitulation. In some cases, after a few meetings and threats, Nazi
henchmen convinced the political leaders of an entire nation to surrender and
to direct the armed forces not to resist. In other cases, the surrender would
come after a brief fight, for which the armies were unprepared. There was no
need to order the people not to resist, because they were unarmed.

	In contrast, Switzerland hardly had a central government, and it had a
militia instead of a standing army. Power was decentralized. The first unit of
power was the individual and the family, with its household and its rifle.
Then came the village or city, then the canton, and finally the federal
parliament. It was power from the bottom up.

	A 1940 Newsweek article characterized Switzerland as the world's oldest and
purest democracy where, in three cantons, government was still conducted by a
show of hands in public squares atthe Landsgemeinden. The militia had no
officer higher than a colonel in
peacetime. "Even when there is no European war on, every member of this
militia army of some 500,000 keeps his gun, ammunition, and equipment at home--
making the Swiss Government the only one in Europe which trusts such a large
proportion of citizens with arms."

	What this meant to the Nazis was that they would have to conquer Switzerland
right down to the last man. And many of these men would be sniping--from steep,
hidden Alpine positions--at German troops with rifles which were accurate at
long ranges. There would be no surrender.

	The April 1944 issue of American Mercury included an intriguing article by
Edward Byng entitled "If Switzerland is Invaded." In that event, warned Byng,
demolition would begin in seconds "Terrific explosions [would] rend the air
all along the Swiss frontiers, as if hundreds of avalanches were thundering
down the mountain slopes of the land." All bridges over the Rhine would
collapse, and mines would await invaders who tried to cross by rafts or
amphibious tanks. The Simplon and the St. Gotthard tunnels would be destroyed.
Roads, railways, bridges, power stations and air fields would be blown up.
Camouflaged tank traps and electrified barbed-wire fences would stop many
panzers and infantry.

	Both World War I and Hitler's blitzkrieg attacks demonstrated to the Swiss
General Staff the need for a lightning mobilization. If the order were
broadcast, every soldier on or off duty would grab his rifle and report to a
nearby post. Byng continued:

Switzerland has only a citizen militia.... It is the pride of the country
that every citizen is allowed to keep
his army rifle and ammunition in his house. So orderly and ethically advanced
is the population of this model country that there is rarely a case where this
officially sanctioned and encouraged custom leads to violence. With her main
inaccessible mountains, her passionately liberty-loving population famed for
marksmanship, Switzerland is a classic background for guerrilla warfare.

The Alps were "honeycombed with bomb and gas-proof shelters, . . . pillboxes
and perfectly concealed nests for snipers, advance machine gun and flame-
thrower units." Just as they had done at Morgarten in 1315, when they launched
boulders down the mountainsides to crush the Austrian invaders, the Swiss
could create landslides and avalanches that no infantry or armored divisions
could survive. "The world's model democracy, Switzerland, is thus on the
alert, in trigger readiness to teach the Nazis a costly lesson should
desperation or arrogance tempt them to attack." There was no holocaust on
Swiss soil. Swiss Jews served in the militia side by side with their fellow
citizens, and kept rifles in their homes just like everyone else. It is hard
to believe that there could have been a holocaust had the Jews of Germany,
Poland, and France had the same privilege. Indeed, just bare recognition of a
right to keep arms would have saved lives. The heroic Warsaw ghetto uprising
of 1943, after all, began when Jewish resisters acquired just ten handguns.

	Swiss-bashing has become fashionable in the American media in the past two
years, but Senator Alfonse D'Amato, who has done more than any to stir up the
frenzy, just does not have the same credibility as Winston Churchill, who
wrote in December 1944:

I put this down for the record. Of all the neutrals Switzerland has the
greatest right to distinction. She has been the sole international force
linking the hideously sundered nations and ourselves. What does it matter
whether she has been able to give us the commercial advantages we desire or
has given too many to the Germans, to keep herself alive? She has been a
democratic State, standing for freedom in self defence among her mountains,
and in thought, in spite of race, largely on our side.

Stephen P. Halbrook is an attorney in Fairfax, Virginia. His latest book,
Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II, will be published
this spring by Sarpedon.