CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWO
Resolution of the Swiss Question
While Italy and Switzerland did not witness the bloody clash of battling armies that took place along the Northern Front and across the breadth of Central Europe in the late spring of 1941, the chaos of battle did stalk the region and the pale horse with its rider Death did ride forth with Hades following close behind. Yet the entire region was a remarkable place in that what one would expect to find was not at all what one would find. On the northern extreme of the region found occupied Switzerland with several French armies on the nation’s southern frontier, yet there was an astonishing lack of movement by the French toward the liberation of the occupied ally. At the other end of the region, despite the numerous military calamities that had been inflicted upon the fascist kingdom of Italy, those disasters had proven to be a rallying call for the Italian people and all manner of efforts were undertaken to keep Italy from succumbing to the allied juggernaut. It was this stage that would witness activities that would add to the tensions that were already burdening the allied leaders and would also come to tarnish reputations for years following the end of the war.
Following the successful offensive by Generals de Hauteclocque and Legentilhomme into the southern cantons of Valais, Ticino, Obwalden, Uri, Glarus and Graubünden, culminating in the liberation of Bern on October 29, 1940, in a move that caused a great deal of shock within the allied governments, the generals were ordered by Paris to turn their armies back out of Switzerland to concentrate on driving eastward toward Austria and southward toward Rome. Additionally having been ordered by the French High Command not to leave any garrisons within the Swiss cantons, as the
7ème Armée and
10ème Armées withdrew out of the Alps the Germans marched southward as well to recapture the recently liberated regions. The great hopes within occupied Switzerland, and by the Swiss Government-in-Exile in London, that the liberation of the entire country was about to occur were dashed, the Swiss ambassador in Paris being provided with vague words of assurance that the French Army would return to Switzerland as soon as possible. Once Venice had been captured on January 24, 1941 hopes were once more raised that the French would send either the
7ème Armée and
10ème Armée back into Switzerland, yet again after receiving vague words of promise, the Swiss would find themselves disappointed to hear of de Hauteclocque’s
7ème Armée northward move toward the Italian-Austrian frontier and of Legentilhomme’s
10ème Armée marching southward down the Italian peninsula.
Within Switzerland the Swiss paramilitary organization Aktion
Nationaler Widerstand (Resistant National Action), which had been formed prior to the war and was made up of contacts between selected army figures and conservative civilian circles, had been conducting a small scale resistance movement and working when it could with the Swiss Army units that had remained in Switzerland. The ANW had primarily concentrated on self-defense, freeing prisoners and hostages, defense against pacification measures and the like, while the Swiss Army undertook small scale attacks against the German occupation garrisons under General Guisan’s
Reduit Concept in which units of the army had retreated into the Alps very quickly after the German attack and continued resistance based on guerrilla and stay-behind tactics from within Alpine defensive hideouts. Prior what has come to be called the Anglo-Alpine Agreement, the ANW had carried out hundreds of raids and intelligence gathering operations, sabotaging railway shipments and participating in clashes with German police and
Wehrmacht units. The ANW also had conducted several retaliatory operations against prominent Nazi collaborators and Gestapo officials in response to tactics used by the Gestapo in hunting down members of the ANW. At the time of the French invasion of the southern Swiss cantons, despite the remaining Swiss Army units and the different cells of the ANW being in dire straits due to dwindling supplies, the allocation of German stores notwithstanding, the Swiss rose up in several cities and actually assisted the French in liberating Bern. Despite knowing of the severe lack of supplies facing the Swiss Army units that had begun to form in the French controlled cantons, when de Hauteclocque and Legentilhomme marched back into Italy there were no supplies left for the Swiss with which to resist the German counteroffensive. Once more facing the Germans on the attack, the Swiss once more followed Guisan’s
Reduit Concept.
After several months of being harried all about the small country, the ANW and the Swiss Secret State, the legal continuation of the pre-war Swiss Confederation and its institutions within the occupied borders of the nation, alerted the Government-in-Exile of the eminent failure of the resistance movement and begged that some sort of assistance to be garnered from the allies or for official capitulation to be discussed with Berlin.
Reasonably frustrated by the hollow assertions presented by Paris, which in February amounted to a promise to start a buildup of troops in Besançon and Grenoble to force the German manned Swiss defensive positions, and in no desire to begin courting Berlin, the Swiss Federal Council determined that assistance from the other allied powers needed to be sought out. On February 11, 1941 a personal meeting was conducted between the current President of the Council, Eduard von Steiger, and Prime Minister Churchill. Von Steiger in quite blunt words contending that given the French government’s lack of activity toward the liberation of the Swiss cantons and despite the Aldershot Accords placing Switzerland within the French area of operations on the Continent, the Swiss government had no choice but to beseech the aid of the British Empire in working toward the speedy liberation of Switzerland.
The Swiss request placed the Empire into a difficult situation. The Aldershot Accords clearly prevented Imperial action in the Alpine region without notification of and approval from the French. In addition, at the time of the meeting, the British Army was geographically not in a position to launch an offensive into Switzerland. Yet something had to be done to be off assistance to the Swiss or face the very real possibility of the Swiss to not only withdrawing from the alliance but quite possibly actually joining sides with Berlin against their former allies. Such an occurrence could provide the Germans with men and war material and the ability to launch a counter offensive either out of the Alps into France, thereby cutting off the French armies in Northern Italy, or into southern Germany and stalling if not forcing back the British Army’s spring offensive. That such a drastic change of alliances had not taken place within Europe for over a century did not change the fact that it could occur and with the activities of the French toward their Swiss allies was a very distinct probability. A fact that London was well aware of and over which there was a great deal of concern.
The answer that provided itself to the Empire was the Imperial Intelligence Office, more specifically the Office’s Special Operations Executive. The S.O.E. which had been formed in the autumn of 1936 to combat the Communist militancy in Great Britain, had been transformed from an organization comprised of elements of the military branches, MI-5, MI-6, and Scotland Yard’s Special Branch charged with conducting anti-insurgency missions within the Empire, to become the Imperial Intelligence Office’s paramilitary arm. In that capacity the S.O.E. maintained the original mission of anti-insurgency but had its mission portfolio expanded to conducting warfare by means other than direct military engagement and the encouragement and facilitating of espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines. Such activities the S.O.E. had thus far accomplished quite successfully in Denmark and Poland, and very secretly in Yugoslavia. It was, in fact, the operations within Yugoslavia that had brought the use of the S.O.E. to mind. Since the organization was not under the control of the Imperial General Staff, London could honestly state to Paris, if and when the activities were discovered by the French, that the actions of the S.O.E. were not in violation of the Aldershot Accords. In the Machiavellian environment that was beginning to develop between members of the alliance, the use of the S.O.E. in Switzerland and the resulting anti-German insurgency leading to a self-liberation of the country would diplomatically prove beneficial to the Empire and detrimental to the French. That it would also be a diplomatic insult to the French was and would be officially downplayed.
Having had preparatory plans for such activities already well established, the S.O.E. was able to present
Operation Desert Rose for approval within days of the Empire’s offer to the Swiss being accepted. The plan called for several flights of Westland Lysanders to overfly the Jura Mountains within a fortnight and drop off teams of S.O.E. agents into the Swiss Plateau to rendezvous with ANW operatives. Once the S.O.E. and Swiss resistance teams were organized the next stage of
Desert Rose would begin. Phase Two of the operation would see an air ferrying of supplies and additional S.O.E. teams into Switzerland, the twin engined de Havilland Dominies (militarized de Havilland DH.89 Dragon Rapide) being used for the majority of the work while the S.O.E. used several captured Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condors for larger loads that needed to be delivered to areas of high German troop concentration. When sufficient quantities of supplies were stockpiled, a goal which was planned to be reached within a two week timeframe due to the rapid shuttle flights of the Dominies and Condors, the ANW would begin a full scale insurgency to build up to the ultimate goal of staging several simultaneous uprisings in Geneva, Zürich, Berne.
Desert Rose’s first two phases went as were planned, despite several early setbacks due to the Germans breaking a handful of ANW cells. The third and final phase was delayed as it took far longer than the S.O.E. anticipated in laying the groundwork for the large scale insurgency, mostly due to the battered moral of the Swiss following the French withdrawal and German return. While a large scale insurgency was not able to undertaken, there were sufficient numbers of S.O.E. teams and viable ANW cells that numerous guerrilla offensives sprang up across Switzerland by the middle of March. So effective were the supply cutting, sabotage and ambushing raids that had been conducted by the Swiss Resistance, those efforts significantly aided to the success of the British Army’s
Operation Dauntless by tying down large numbers of German troops within Switzerland and preventing the transport of a larger number of troops out of the Alps and into Germany.
A mountain mortar crew of a reconstituted Swiss Army unit conducting harassment raid upon a German position within the high Alps.
Due to the successes of those initial operations, some being quite visible to the Swiss population, the ANW cells began to grow in size and more members of the Swiss Army that had lain dormant reformed and began once more to take the fight to the various German garrisons scattered about the country. The rise of the Swiss resistance movement took its toll on the Germans in more than a simple reduction of available supplies and the tying down of combat troops needed within Germany. Confidence and cooperation between the
Wehrmacht and the non-military portions of the Nazi Party suffered significantly as well as an ideological clash between Prussian militarism Nazi ruthlessness erupted.
Höhere SS und Polizeiführer (Higher SS and Police Leader) Walter Schimana came into open conflict with the
Militärbefehlshaber (military governor) of Switzerland,
General der Infanterie Franz Mattenklott over the handling of the Swiss Resistance. Schimana as a HSSPF had direct command authority for every SS and police unit within Switzerland and answered only to Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler in Berlin, and was normally accorded the authority to handle the stamping out of any partisan activity. Mattenklott commanded all
Wehrmacht troops within the occupied territories of Switzerland, and was responsible for defending against allied incursions into Switzerland and providing troops to Schimana. In early April, as the Swiss began to step up their operations, Schimana ordered that courtesies of the Geneva Convention were not to be extended to the resistance, a move with which Mattenklott disagreed as Switzerland, like Poland and Denmark, never surrendered to Germany and therefore under the Convention members of the Resistance were to be considered enemy soldiers and treated accordingly.
A Bren gunner of the ANW
in the Swiss village of Mümliswil-Ramiswil on an ANW
recruitment drive
With control of occupied Switzerland failing rapidly as Swiss operations increased in tempo with Imperial advances into Germany, the fracture between the
Höhere SS und Polizeiführer and the
Militärbefehlshaber worsened to the point were there were several instances in which physical confrontations flared up between members of Schimana’s Gestapo and Mattenklott’s troops. This fracture, of course, simply lessened the ability of the Germans to maintain control over the Swiss countryside and allowed for the spreading of S.O.E. backed ANW and Swiss Army operations out of the countryside and into the cities of Switzerland.
April 22 is marked as the turning point in the Swiss struggle against the German occupation. In the early morning hours of that day, just outside the town of Zofingen in the canton of Aargau, an ANW ambush annihilated a
Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) platoon and the accompanying members of Schimana’s
Einsatzgruppen. In retaliation for the ambush the HSSPF ordered the execution of both the city’s and canton’s officials which, in line with the
Militärbefehlshaber’s standing orders, was protested by and refused to carried out by the
Heer platoon that was traveling with Schimana. Having the soldiers arrested, the execution order was then carried out in the town square by members of the HSSPF’s staff. By April 29, thanks in large part to the supplies ferried in by S.O.E. de Havilland Dominies, the Germans were nearly besieged within the largest cities and could only move through the countryside in large heavily armed patrols or convoys.
Preoccupied in the attempt to withstand the Imperial assault, Berlin was unable to prevent the final breakdown in Switzerland as General Mattenklott began withdrawing his troops toward the German boarder and Schimana unleashed his Gestapo troops on the citizens in the cities he controlled. In each case the result was a disaster for the Germans. On May 1 large cells of ANW members began coordinated attacks in Berne, Lucerne, Geneva and Zürich while several regiments of the Swiss Army began attacking the German withdrawal.
Members of the ANW
fighting from the rooftops in Lucerne
Heavily outnumbered and within an extremely hostile environment, the Gestapo troops faced certain elimination as did the few collaborators that continued to work with the Germans. Despite heavy fighting that did a great deal of damage to areas in each city, within hours of the beginning of the simultaneous uprisings and thanks in large part to the Gestapo not having the support of the Wehrmacht, large areas of all three cities where under the control of the ANW. Even larger areas were an urban no-mans land devoid of anything other than terrified and wary civilians. Again Schimana showed his shortcomings, some historians would go so far as to label it as idiocy, when he announced over Swiss radio his intentions to explode munitions stockpiles within residential neighborhoods if the uprising did not cease. The news was not well received by the as of yet inactive Swiss population within the cities and the revolt increased in such size that the Gestapo garrisons first in Lucerne and then Geneva were overwhelmed. The overnight hours of May 3-4 were tense as both the ANW and Gestapo continued to fight against each other, however mostly in minor exchanges of sniper fire. May 4 brought a conclusion to the Swiss uprising as first Zürich was secured by the ANW with the surrender of the last Gestapo troops near midday and then near 3:45 p.m. Berne was secured with the capitulation of the remaining Gestapo following the suicide of Schimana.
General Mattenklott having taken serious steps to distance himself and his men from the actions of the Gestapo had been in the process of building a withdrawal from Switzerland since the middle of April. His intentions, starting with the transferring of his garrisons in the southern cantons to the northeast on April 25, were to slowly withdrawing toward the cantons of Thurgau and St. Gallen thence to exiting Switzerland by way of Lake Constance into Germany and Austria. It was quite apparent to one and all that the general had no qualms about leaving his fellow Germans standing alone in a sea of angry Swiss if things came to an uprising. Due to the infighting between the
Militärbefehlshaber and the Gestapo the move orders for Mattenklott’s troops were delayed and in all manner of means hampered significantly for “security” reasons and only three battalions of his troops actually being billeted within Thurgau at the beginning of the Swiss uprising. The rest of his units were scattered in encampments stretching from the canton and city of Fribourg (Freiburg in German) in the west half of the country to the cantons of Schwyz and Zürich in the east and northeast. Having keep most of his troops out of the cities, Mattenklott was able to take advantage of the confusion created by the ANW attacks of May 1 and was able to gather the majority of his troops in the area between Lucerne and Lake Zug without significant losses by the end of the day.
Predawn on May 2 christened Mattenklott’s withdrawal as his two divisions of infantry (148th Reserve and 709th Static Infantry Divisions) and approximately a regiment of
Luftwaffe personnel began marching to the northeast in a large scale ad hoc convoy comprised of all manner of vehicles. The Germans, who had been facing guerrilla hit and run attacks by small units of the Swiss Army since midday on May 1, soon found themselves under attack from three reformed Swiss Army regiments. Easily outnumbering their attackers the Germans were hampered by limited supplies and transport, lack of room with which to maneuver and the guerrilla hit and run tactics that had been successively inflicting a toll thus far. The Swiss troops also held the advantage of having intimate knowledge of the terrain and choosing the place to attack, a fact that outweighed the ability of the Germans to respond with localized superiority in forces, and the entire day was an exercise in both small unit attacks on larger bodies and large unit anti-ambush tactics. During the overnight hours of May 2-3 the Swiss held off their attacks and used several public announcement loudspeaker systems tools supplied from the S.O.E. to encourage Mattenklott and his men to surrender. May 3 once more witnessed the Germans marching toward Lake Constance, albeit with far less resiliency, the effectiveness of the Swiss ambushes becoming perceptible as the cohesiveness of the German convoy began to slacken and the Germans found it more and more difficult to use their advantage in numbers as the sheer length of the withdrawal allowed the Swiss to attack entire portions of the convoy and fade away before Mattenklott’s reactionary forces were even able to reach the ambush site.
Yet for all the effectiveness the Swiss tactics were, the affair was not entirely one-sided and the Swiss regiments took heavy losses for their efforts. More importantly for the Germans the Swiss were not able to prevent the overall march of the column and the battalions that had been encamped in Thurgau were having their perimeter bolstered as the head of the column arrived near midday on May 4. However, the moral boost that was provided by that news was soon over washed by the re-emergence of the Swiss Air Force (German:
Schweizer Luftwaffe; French:
Forces aériennes suisses; Italian:
Forze Aeree Svizzere) which began conducting ground attack raids flying captured
Luftwaffe aircraft repainted in Swiss colourings.
A pair of Swiss pilots and their Bf109s
preparing to conduct an interdiction raid against the retreating German troops.
Initially the uncoordinated air raids proved to be a deadly yet minor nuisance to the retreating Germans. This fact changed quickly through the last daylight hours of May 4 as more and more damage began to be inflicted upon the Germans from the guns of the Swiss Messerschmitt Bf 109s. May 5 was a reprise of the last hours of the day before, increase and more organized air attacks coordinated with an emerging Swiss Army that had dropped small unit guerrilla tactics and began attacking the Germans in set piece battle. Mattenklott strove hard to not only bring in the last of his retreating column within the Thurgau perimeter but also begin moving men out of the perimeter and across Lake Constance, but found the task to be nearly impossible. Despite the insurmountable odds the Germans continued to fight throughout the day and suffered heavy casualties, the greatest number coming when a commandeered ferry trying to cross the Lake was sunk.
Unlike the previous nights, the overnight hours of May 5-6 were ablaze with the exchange of gunfire as the Swiss continued to hammer against the shrinking German perimeter and Mattenklott strove hard to evacuate as many of his troops as possible before his troops were routed. The inevitable occurred near 3 a.m. on May 6 when several platoons from the 709th Static Infantry Division’s
Festung (Fortress)
Grenadier-Regiment 739, a regiment comprised mainly of older men or men medically found to be unfit for normal front line units, cracked under the pressure and broke from their positions, fleeing from their positions on the perimeter. As they pulled out in what amounted to a rout, the units on either flank were forced to draw back and in short order the entire German defensive line collapsed. Organized resistance may have disintegrated but it was not until near 9 a.m. that localized resistance was overwhelmed by the inrushing Swiss troops.
Two hundred eighty-three days after it started, the German occupation of Switzerland came to a bloody end.
***
*-
Game Note: In case you were wondering, yes, all of Switzerland was suddenly awash in partisans kickin’ the hell out of the Germans. I could I resist writing that up, eh?
***
Up Next: If you thought things in Switzerland were interesting (an' I'm hopin' ya all did) wait until you see what is goin' on in Italy!
Stay tuned.
