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[This letter was printed, with slight alterations, in the New York Times
Book Review on May 31, 1998.]
The Editor
The New York Times Book Review
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
Dear Editor:
Jean Ziegler's The Swiss, the Gold, and the Dead, reviewed by Peter
Grose [April 5], is the latest instance of Swiss-bashing revisionism.
"Switzerland" and its people are collectively responsible for Nazism because the
country practiced armed neutrality, thereby deterring invasion, rather than
declared war on Germany (one can imagine the Swiss assault on Berlin). The Swiss
were not morally neutral--almost all supported an Allied victory.
The United States did not exactly volunteer for the war--remember Pearl
Harbor?--so why should the Swiss have done so? The country would have been
overrun by Nazi hordes. Swiss Jews and Jewish refugees would have been
exterminated along with Swiss resisters, and Switzerland would have been a
source for slave labor and exploitation.
Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels called Switzerland "this stinking
little state," where "sentiment has turned very much against us." Hitler called
Switzerland a "pimple on the map of Europe" and fumed that "all the rubbish of
small nations still existing in Europe must be liquidated," even if it meant he
would be the "Butcher of the Swiss." The Gestapo prepared lists of Swiss to
execute.
Switzerland mobilized 850,000 citizen soldiers out of a 4.2 million
population. Any "official" surrender was to be considered enemy propaganda, and
it was broadcast for the Nazis to hear that the Swiss soldier was not authorized
to surrender but was required to fight to the last cartridge. From the Alps, the
Swiss would wage a war to the death. That is why the Nazis never executed their
invasion plans, such as Operation Tannenbaum (1940) and the 1943 SS plan. The
invasion plans are detailed in my forthcoming book
Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II (Rockville
Centre: Sarpedon). Ziegler feels guilty that Switzerland was not invaded, but
would it have been better if the Holocaust were extended to Swiss soil?
Isolation forced Switzerland to trade with the Axis, but as Walter Lippmann
wrote in 1943, the remarkable facts were that "the Swiss have an army which
stands guard against invasion, that their frontiers are defended, that their
free institutions continue to exist and that there has been no Swiss Quisling,
and no Swiss Laval. We must not forget it, now or in the future, how faithfully
the Swiss Republic has borne witness to the cause of freedom."
Winston Churchill remains more credible than today's revisionists: "Of all the
neutrals Switzerland has the greatest right to distinction. 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."
Sincerely,
Stephen P. Halbrook, Ph.D.
Attorney at Law
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