Target Switzerland

This is the story of one small nation's heroic resistance to Nazism, leading the reader to wonder how history might have been different had all of Europe been equally well-equipped to resist Nazi terror.Stephen Halbrook's vigorously argued and controversial thesis is that Switzerland's federal system, which lacks a central authority capable of surrendering the country, and its militia-based defence, effectively enabled Swiss neutrality during World War II. He offers much evidence that the Swiss armed and equipped themselves at considerable cost to defend their independence, for which most of them were prepared to fight even against the might of the Wehrmacht. Whatever the range of Swiss sympathies was, and however much the necessary bribes to the Third Reich may have benefited the Axis, the Swiss deterred the Germans, remained neutral, and thereby benefited the Allies - and the many thousand refugees allowed into Switzerland - far more. Whether the Swiss would have offered a last-ditch resistance in the face of the full range of German terror tactics remains an open question, of course, but Halbrook suggests that the questions of Swiss 'complicity' with the Third Reich should also remain open.