Yes its not exactly the US military but bloody hell, you would have a very very hard time trying to take over Switzerland - even these days. Road tunnels designed to be blown up, hundreds of thousands of modern trained soldiers with guns at home - fighting on their own terrain, ammunition dumps in individual towns, strong points, bunkers in every apartment block, supplies of modern anti armour weapons, lots of people trained in the use of explosives, etc etc
Good luck getting in there.
The idea of Germany invading Switzerland is surreal.
(Still I'm not sure what it would achieve to start an open war...)
Aircraft caverns :) F18/A Hornets and modern equipments.
The thing about war is that most party's don't really want it. So sometimes it's possible to grab some advantage that theoretically should result in war.
How much damage to the Euro and to the European stock markets would such action cause? Not to mention other costs
Yes that would harm the EU in short term (1-5 years). But so would it get hurt if a powerful member of that alliance is not able to enforce rightful demands. Anyways if we include the EU into the discussion, it's very likely that a lot of other steps would convince Switzerland before the first tank needs to get manned.
Hitler went state shopping because the regions he started to invade had a majority of German speaking folks. As soon as he started to do something else (i.e. Poland) it started a war.
The US, on the other hand could get away with it, being too big to fail.
Moreover, the one thing Switzerland has which is far more important than their pharmaceutical industry is trust. They are not in a strong-arm position like the USA, and any doubt in their solvency would cripple them back to the poverty they had in the 1950s.
So?
Since when would that make a difference to anyone?
The concept of UN "laws" or "illegal" just makes me laugh. The UN has treaties - countries agreeing to limits on their own behavior. The UN is not a government, and does not enforce any law.
So yes, you can just invade a country because they don't give you back your possession. Other countries might get mad at you, but the UN is quite irrelevant.
This guy is suggesting that Germany could invade Switzerland if they refuse to give back their gold, so this is a good reason to keep it there. I'm pretty sure such action would be illegal under UN rules, ie: you can't invade a country because they don't give you back your posession.
And Switzerland neutrality is highly debatable given that it's surrounded by NATO and part in a lot of EU mechanisms.
Also, an invasion would make no sense under the writers own assumption, that something is wrong in the gold market. A war in the heart of Europe will tank a lot of markets.