German Plans For Nazi Rule in Switzerland
The German political objective in the expected conquest of Switzerland was to regain the bulk of the "racially suitable" Swiss population for Germandom, and aimed at direct annexation into the German Reich of at least its ethnic German parts.
With this purpose in mind Heinrich Himmler discussed the suitability of various people for the position of Reichskommissar for the 're-union' of Switzerland with Germany and its subsequent Reichsstatthalter with his subordinate Gottlob Berger in September 1941. This yet-to-be-chosen official would have had the task of facilitating the total amalgamation (Zusammenwachsen) of the Swiss and German populations.
A document named Aktion S (bearing the full letterhead Reichsführer-SS, SS-Hauptamt, Aktion S) was also found within the Himmler files. It detailed at length the planned process for the establishment of Nazi rule in Switzerland from its initial conquest by the Wehrmacht up to its complete consolidation as a German province. It is not known whether this prepared plan was endorsed by any high-level members of the German government.
After the Second Armistice at Compiègne in June 1940, the Reich Interior Ministry produced a memorandum on the annexation of a strip of eastern France from the mouth of the Somme to Lake Geneva, intended as a reserve for post-war German colonization. The planned dissection of Switzerland would have accorded with this new French-German border, effectively leaving the French-speaking region of Romandy to be also annexed into the Reich despite the linguistic difference.
Read more about this topic: Operation Tannenbaum
Famous quotes containing the words german, plans, nazi, rule and/or switzerland:
“That nameless and infinitely delicate aroma of inexpressible tenderness and attentiveness which, in every refined and honorable attachment, is contemporary with the courtship, and precedes the final banns and the rite; but which, like the bouquet of the costliest German wines, too often evaporates upon pouring love out to drink, in the disenchanting glasses of the matrimonial days and nights.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d
with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me
that follow’d,
And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d,
still I was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health,
refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“We’ll build a democracy here, even if it’s with Nazi bricks.”
—Samuel Fuller, U.S. screenwriter. Samuel Fuller. Captain Harvey, Verboten! American Military Government officer explaining the practicalities of de-Nazification (1959)
“The condition that gives birth to a rule is not the same as the condition to which the rule gives birth.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!”
—Orson Welles (1915–84)