Switzerland during World War II

[Heartless]

Wow, okay, didn't expect to get bashed and flamed for being patriotic :/

But I guess I'll... nicely answer statements and questions, although I don't like some of the attitude. Frankly I expect everyone to be proud of where they're from and love their country the way I do. And there isn't much right in demeaning others and their nationalitys but whatever.

Ok, so starting from the first comment.

Yes, I guess you can call it Swiss Propoganda, although verything in that video is true. I made the video as a small part of a bigger project I will do at the end of the year for my AP european history class. I wish I could add more but the song is only so long and it's my first video so I'm not an expert at it either.

I did say one of the most powerful democracys. Why? Unlike some democratic countries, you don't have to register to vote. Rather, you are automatically put into the voting pool and have to opt out if you choose not to. I've been voting since I was 17 and feel privaleged. And unlike some countries, we not only have a say in who the leaders are, but have a say in what leaders do. We have Referendums. Basically, every law that gets passed through out "congress" is sent out in a small leaflet to every Swiss voter, asking them to say yes or no. The law gets passed if the majority says yes. We don't have a house that makes laws for the people, the people make their laws.

Being surrounded by the Axis and surviving was an achievement. Why? Well, why didn't Hitler just attack us then? Because he couldn't. The point of Swiss defense was to put up such a fight that it wouldn't be worth the agressor's cost. Hitler would have lost millions of men taking Switzerland and even then every Swiss would continue a guerilla warfare until the Swiss were no more.
We had more people per capita under arms than any other country in the world. Yes we were attacked by mainly Allies (bombera managing to miss germany and hit switzerland), and instead of getting involved we remained neutral and survived. If Switzerland would have gotten attacked, then Hitler would needed to have commited Ethnic Cleansing. Meaning every single Swiss would need to have been killed and today there would not be such a thing as Swiss or Switzerland.
In some ways we did contribute to the war. Most of the main ally and axis powers chose switzerland to represent them to the other side in diplomatic talks. And I mean germany, the US, Britain etc. all chose Switzerland to represent them. All except Japan who chose Spain.
Ireland, well I don't know much Irish history. Spain was in civil war. (I'm half spanish too so I know some stuff). Francisco Franco (the dictator) was a fascist supported by hitler. And Sweden had it's handful with the russians after the germans. The Swedes where the 2nd most succesful at repelling Nazi invasion, next to the Swiss.
Portugal... honestly I don't know what was going on with portugal at the time.
The achievement here is that we were a splinter in Hitler's dream world. We were in the middle of the axis controlled territory and Hitler hated us. But he couldn't get rid of us, and no matter what he did, the propoganda, the spies, everything, we managed to survive and basically kicked hitler in the knee.

Yes I knwo the video is not everything about Swiss WWII history, it's short, the song was only 5 minutes long and I didn't want to bore people. I read books, I loved it and I invite you to do the same.

I know it may seem as a germany being the bad guys and allies the good guys, and personally I'm against that. I blame WWII on the allies and the treaty of versailles. Germany had every right to build up in response to the versailles treaty and I think the world had it coming.
But let's please forget about the allies and axis here. There is a reason I said Nazis alot and not Germany. Because not all germans where nazis and not all nazis were german. Nazi is a politicla party. Calling someone a nazi is like calling someone a democrat or republican.
The purpose of this video was to educate a little bit about Swiss History, which not many people know of.

Yes, I understand what the fins, norwegians, and sweds did. But they were attacked and some were succesfully invaded. The difference is that they weren't land-locked. We were surrounded 100% on all sides by people who wanted to blow us up to pieces.

As for "Switzerland having their Gold"... we had some... we had some of everyone's gold. Anyone could have attacked us and taken it, but no one did.

Yes, Hitler did sorta "save the swiss for last" as someone said, but there were troops all over ther borders. My great grand father was on the border with germany and it wasn't fun. The invasion was supposed to come a bit after d-day but because of d-day hitler had to divert troops to the western front which is why I mentioned that in the video.

No we did not put up a fight but we were ready to at any moment. The entire country could be mobilized in under 2 days. That means millions of men, women, and children with guns in their hands ready to shoot every invader to cross into our land. Hitler knew this and it would have costed him millions of men to attack switzerland. Is it really worth the cost?

Switzerland is made of swiss germans, swiss french, and swiss italiens. People had their opinions in the war about who's side they were on, but before someone was french or german or italien, they were Swiss and that was more important. (I'm a german swiss btw.)
There were communists and Fascist Swiss, but after a while the government exiled them, forced them to leave, and if they didn't they were killed. Any threat to Switzerland was eliminated, even fascist swiss, and communist swiss. Traitors were killed too.

The money we had from the jews... the jews sent this money to switzerland for safe-keeping and it's still there. Why? Because now a days no one can prove who the money really belongs to so it's just sitting there, untouched. Now, both the Axis AND Allies intercepted trains going to switzerland carrying gold and money. Even americans stoped these trains and stole all the stuff.

Yes, Hitlers army was bigger than the entire Swiss population. The entire swiss population was also the "army". We have a milita (even to this day), which means that everyone is a soldier. By birth and blood I'm a Swiss soldier. But we're damn good soldiers. In 800 years of war-fare we've only ever lost 1 battle. We've lost 1 battle out of hundres, maybe thousands in our existance. Our victories are the closest you can get to the scale of the movie 300. The spartans etc. Some stats are like, 2400 swiss peasents once fought off 24000 proffesional austrian knights. back in the middle ages, every swiss was worth 20-30 of the enemy. During that time, during WWII and even today we have the best eqquipment, the best training, the best mens etc. We are a nation of soldiers and will always be. That's one thing that keeps us alive. Armed Neutrality. We won't mess with you but if you attack us by god we will defend to the last child. And when I said "the best" I meant it. Our modern planes are bought from the US. The US sells us their stuff and we adapt it to our territory and make it better. But we also have great weapon developers, especially the micro stuff.

Did we do better than others? Well, out of all the countries in mainland europe we were the only ones not succesfully attacked or invaded, so yes, we did better because we resisted succesfully to the end of the war.
And don't think that the allies were "saviors". When they got to Europe, we didn't lower our weapons. We weren't going to let allies or axis cross our territory. It made no difference if you were german, american, british, french, or italien. Everyone was a potential threat.

Yes we did have something hitler needed. Lebensraum. But we weren't going to give it to him. Not without a fight at least.

ah, the mountains. The Alps. The main reason we survived. One of the focuses in the video are the mountains, the alps. I give credit to our long existance to the Alps. They've helped us countless times and will in the future. We are mountain people. We are the Alps and the Alps are us. That's whay in the video I said we had only one ally, the country itself. The mountains. We have amazing geographic advantages (as does britain, they were never invaded). But we also knew the terrain and how to use it.


Hope this clears some stuff up, there are books out there, one of them I mentioned in the credits which was very good I recommend to all.

But please no more flaming and spamming. I'm just showing my nationality, who I am etc.
As a person I am very emotional and depressive and if it weren't my love for my country that cut in my arm would have been much more lethal cause I'm no good to Switzerland dead. I swear to god Switzerland is the one force for me to keep on living because I want to serve my country no matter what. If all the worlds' powers decided to attack switzerland I'll be with the other 7.7 million Swiss to take up arms and fire at the first foreigner to cross into our land.
Winning a war against Switzerland means Genocide. The day Switzerland is invaded will be the day the existance of the Swiss race will be determined and I'm sure as hell going to have a word to say in that fight.

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SwissScorch --> Heartless