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Brian_Ghilliotti's avatar

Did Switzerland provide sanctuary and training facilities to partisans fighting German occupation forces in World War II?

Asked by Brian_Ghilliotti (328points) April 15th, 2017 from iPhone

Did Switzerland provide sanctuary and training facilities to partisans fighting German occupation forces in World War II? It is known that Sweden, despite being officially neutral, provided sanctuary and training facilities to the Norwegian resistance movement fighting German occupation forces in World War II. These training facilities were disguised as “police training” facilities. I wonder if Switzerland was also involved in similar operations?

Brian Ghilliotti

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1 Answer

Zaku's avatar

I am pretty sure not. Switzerland’s people felt very anti-Nazi, but the country needs imports (e.g. food) to keep its population alive, and they were concerned about a potential invasion by Germany, and so negotiated trade & other deals with Germany and Italy which helped keep them able to trade for food and not be invaded. Operating training bases or safe sanctuary for partisans would have violated neutrality and invited intervention and/or sanctions. Not only would the government not risk that, but Switzerland is generally quite rule-oriented and it would not be easy for covert operations involving the Swiss people to go undetected. There might still have been a few unofficial, covert, or partisan-only moves, but I don’t know of any.

This is a pretty interesting little page about Switzerland in World War II. If there were known partisan assistance events, I’d imagine the page author would likely know of and include those. If you do find any, please post back here, as I’d be surprised and curious to hear about them too.

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