In the words of Max Petitpierre:
"These credits and the deliveries of war material and other products [...] contributed to the war efforts of one of the belligerents. Not only had we abandonded integral neutrality, but - even worse - in so doing, we were as a rule deviating from the very notion of neutrality. "
Re:A world without power
by jacques_chester on Wednesday January 02, 2013 @08:54AM
(#4996669)
The problem with being truly neutral is that while you are a bastion against tyranny, you are also the refuge of scoundrels.
It wasn't quite that simple. Very interesting but very long reading:
http://www.uek.ch/en/schlussbericht/synthesis/ueke.pdf
Almost 600 pages but if you have a spare bit of time and really interested you could do a lot worse than looking at this, it is one of the most candid introspective pieces about world war II.
Of course, but Swiss were not the only country that declared neutrality. Netherlands did that both during World War 1 and 2. And both countries were strategically interesting. Thanks to both geography and effective deterrence Switzerland was able to enforce its neutrality, while Netherlands wasn't.
Similarly, in wartime, everyone needs strictly neutral parties to get a lot of the humdrum business of war done.
Through Swiss front companies the Nazis could obtain critical war supplies (vanadium, I think it was); similarly the allies could obtain critical intelligence through the availability of Switzerland as a staging post into Austria and Germany.