Invasion of Switzerland was seriously considered, even imminent: "Operation Tannenbaum", the military plan was already in place. The Swiss even knew it and were expecting it. It was scheduled for 1940 and slated for a few days at the most, strategic cities, wham bam, thank you man!
Four reasons why it was aborted (it was close):
- Switzerland was strategically unimportant as regards its geography. Who wants to transport things through the alps at a time when they didn't even have today's tunnels?
- It was around the time where Hitler hoped to goad Churchill into a truce, he didn't want to appear too grabby. As if.
- A neutral country, even in the worst of wars, is handy for all kinds of hedging your bets (the Nazis had assets there, it is also where they dumped there counterfeit Dollars which by the end of the war had reached amazing quality good enough to dupe Swiss bankers) and secret diplomacy missions. You need some place where you can talk. Hitler met Wallenberg in Switzerland as 1944 to "sell" (repulsive, ain't it?) Jews from the concentration camps to the Swedish Red Cross.
- The Swiss largely cooperated (and bought fine weapons from us paying with convertible currency!). There is a nasty saying in Switzerland: "
From 1939-45, the good Swiss worked six days a week for the Deutsche Reich to then go to church on Sunday and pray for Allied victory." Less funny: Zyklon B, the gas used in Auschwitz and other places of despair, had components produced in Switzerland, the maker was a German-Swiss joint venture.
So it wasn't the guns. In 1940, the French Army was both larger and better equipped than the German one and they had, they thought, their invincible Maginot Line. But they had crappy strategy and tactics (plus a wavering belief in their political position) so the Blitzkrieg blasted through their country straight into Paris.
Take Denmark on the other hand. It surrendered without a shot in 1940 in exchange for mainly two guarantees while its army was disarmed: Let us keep our democracy internally (and so it came that Denmark was the only Nazi occupied country that had democratic elections during the war and, ironically, a left-wing government won!) and "hands off our Jewish population". Initially, the Nazis even held their word. Up to 1944. Then the raids began. But the Danish police refused to cooperate. The Royal family began wearing yellow Jewish stars in solidarity. As did many of the Christian population. Danish police helped Danish Jews make it into Sweden. The Nazis, flabbergasted and dumbfounded, called a halt to the operation, the Danish Jews were saved.
Now why did
in that one case non-violent civil resistance work actually against the Nazi beasts? Answer: A semblance of joint values. Had the same thing happened in Poland or Russa, the Nazis would have cracked down draconically as they were used to. But in their perverted minds, the valiant Dutch might have been ill-led democrats and pussyfooting holders of Jewish "pets", but one thing they were not:
Untermenschen. They were - no two ways about it - fellow "Aryans". And you can't shoot fellow Aryans like you can shoot Russian and Polish peasants. Perverse, I know.
