Inside Switzerland's Secret Forts

By Eric Margolis Contributing
Foreign Editor Canoe.ca
7-9-2

ST. MAURICE, SWITZERLAND -- "I shall show those insolent herdsmen and cheesemakers!" thundered Adolf Hitler in 1940, after Switzerland refused to allow the German Army to pass through its territory to outflank France's Maginot Line forts. Soon after France's defeat, Hitler and Mussolini ordered their general staffs to complete Plan von Menges, the invasion and partition of Switzerland by the combined armies of Germany and Italy.   But the Axis never invaded tiny Switzerland, then a nation of only 5 million. The reason was not, as revisionists claim, because they needed Switzerland for banking. Other neutrals - America, Spain, Turkey, Sweden, Portugal - were also available for finance and trade. Or because the Swiss co-operated with Hitler's Germany, an outrageous myth concocted by American lawyers and politicians seeking to soak the wealthy Swiss.   In 1940, when America was still neutral to Hitler, Swiss fighters shot down 11 intruding Luftwaffe aircraft.   The true reason was Switzerland's fierce national determination to remain free, backed by its top-secret National Redoubt - an immense system of over 100 mighty forts and thousands of casemates and bunkers buried deep in the heart of the Alps.   In July, 1940, as Europe was surrendering or being overrun by invincible German armies, General Henri Guisan convoqued all senior officers of Switzerland's citizen army to Rutli Meadow and issued his famous order: "Fight to your last cartridge, then fight with your bayonets. No surrender. Fight to the death." The world's oldest democracy would stand alone against Hitler and Mussolini. The Germans and Italians decided against attacking Switzerland because of the casualties they would have faced.   Switzerland's 700,000 soldiers were given the grim command to be ready to leave behind their homes, wives and children, then retreat into the mountain fortress system, which had only enough food and shelter for the army.   Each high Alpine valley was to become a little Thermopylae; every Alpine fort another Verdun. Working round the clock, in two years Swiss engineers created over 100 powerful artillery and infantry forts dug into granite mountainsides. Switzerland's secret Alpine Redoubt exceeded in size, strength, firepower - and, of course, effectiveness - France's famed Maginot Line, hitherto believed to be the world's mightiest fortress system. Read more here