Storming the Eagle's Nest Read Online Free PDF Page A

cut through Switzerland to outflank the southern end of the Maginot Line. The Swiss thought they were about to be invaded. The French drew precisely the conclusion intended by OKW, that they should reinforce their southern flank. This they duly did with nineteen divisions sorely needed in the north around the Meuse. Meanwhile, the units of Kleist and Guderian attacked in the north around Sedan, crossed to the west bank of the Meuse and opened the way to the Channel. The northern border with Switzerland was left untouched. So, too, was the southern frontier between Canton Ticino and the Italian province of Lombardy. Mussolini’s energies were focused further south in the Alps.
    Yet for the Swiss, the situation was still dire. The Fall of France left the country a democratic oasis in a fascist desert. On 4 July 1940 Shirer was visiting his family in Geneva and took the opportunity to gauge Swiss opinion:
    They see their situation as pretty hopeless, surrounded as they are by the victorious totalitarians, from whom henceforth they must beg facilities for bringing in their food and other supplies. None have any illusions of the kind of treatment they will get from the dictators …now that France has completely collapsed and Germany and Italy surround Switzerland, a military struggle in self-defence is hopeless.
    Mont Blanc from the quay today was magnificent, its snow pink in the afternoon sun. 21
    This pessimism was understandable. The Wehrmacht, revelling in victory, was at the height of its powers. In six weeks it had accomplished what the Kaiser had failed to achieve in four years. On 18 June 1940 there was a thanksgiving service held in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The following day a victory parade was staged on the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin. It was the first such parade since 1871 when the Second French Empire had been defeated and the Second German Reich founded. On 24 June, the day the armistice between the French and Italians was signed, Swiss intelligence reported that Hitler had once again discussed the invasion of Switzerland with Göring, Keitel, Ribbentrop, Hess (Hitler’s deputy) and Goebbels. The following day a new plan for the invasion of Switzerland was drafted by the OKW staffer Captain Otto Wilhelm von Menges. Operation Tannenbaum – Christmas Tree – envisaged a pincer movement between the Germans in the north and the Italians in the south. It was just as the Swiss had feared in May.
    This was also the momentous day on which the Swiss federal president, Marcel Pilet-Golaz, addressed the Swiss nation. The fifty-year-old was a bureaucrat who had made his name putting the Swiss railways in order. Affairs of state were less his
métier
. He sported a toothbrush moustache, reminiscent of Hitler’s, and his tone, if not his precise message, was clear. ‘The time for inner renewal has come. We must look forward, determined to use our modest but useful strength in the reconstruction of the world in the state of upheaval.’ 22 The Swiss took this to mean they should accept the New Order in Europe. Henceforth, the country would be a satellite of the Third Reich. The President told the government that Switzerland should seek a pretext for breaking off diplomatic relations with Great Britain so as to facilitate an accommodation with the Reich.
    Europe’s New Order had arrived in the Alps.
    Notes
    1 . William L. Shirer,
Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934–1941
(Baltimore, MD, and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
    2 . Urs Schwarz,
The Eye of the Hurricane: Switzerland in World War Two
(Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980).
    3 . Jon Kimche,
Spying for Peace: General Guisan and Swiss Neutrality
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962).
    4 . Winston S. Churchill,
The Second World War, Volume II: Their Finest Hour
(London: Cassell, 1949).
    5 . Stephen P. Halbrook,
Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II
(New York: Sarpedon, 1998).
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