SWITZERLAND.

The war years 1914 to 1918 were a time of profound political, cultural, and economic change in Switzerland although the country avoided being involved in acts of war. The concept of its "permanent neutrality" (immerwährende Neutralität) imposed by the Congress of Vienna (1815) only provided a superficial protection against severe internal and external tensions.

Internally, the differences between the culturally and economically Germany-oriented and German-speaking majority and the France or Italy-oriented French, Italian, and Romanic-speaking minorities threatened to tear the country apart, along the borders of its four language regions. This conflict, which biased the political climate during the entire war and postwar years, became obvious when a general known for his support of Prussian militarism was elected commander-in-chief. The secret attempts to bring about a separate peace between Germany and revolutionary Russia in 1917 led to the resignation of the foreign minister. To calm the Allies as well as the non-German-speaking and less German-friendly Swiss, the foreign minister was replaced by a "Romand," as the French-speaking Swiss are called. Ever since his election, the Romands have had the right to appoint two federal councillors to the government, a seven-man executive elected by both chambers of parliament and supposed to represent all major parties and regions.

SOCIAL TENSIONS

In addition to these tensions bearing upon foreign relations, social unrest among the population proved a burden domestically because the government did not have an effective economic policy: some entrepreneurs profited by the export of war goods, and the farmers gained from inflation, whereas others—especially industrial workers—suffered from a rise in prices and shortages of everyday goods. As there was, moreover, still no financial support for the families of the soldiers serving at the borders, violent demonstrations and strikes became more and more frequent. In July 1918 the Swiss Workers' Congress gave the Olten Action Committee, a union consisting of leading figures of the Social Democratic Party (SPS) and the unions, the go-ahead to threaten a national strike. The situation escalated in late autumn of 1918, when the Federal Council, irritated and alarmed by the class struggle, was misled into mobilizing army units for a precautionary occupation of Zurich. The Olten Action Committee reacted with protest strikes that expanded to a nationwide general strike from 12 November until 14 November 1918. The strikers' demands included key political and social conditions, such as the introduction of a proportional representation of the electorate and of women's right to vote, a forty-eight-hour work week, and an old-age, disability, and survivors' social security system. Given the mobilization of about one hundred thousand soldiers, the Olten Action Committee stopped the strike, fearing it would cause a civil war.

The interpretation of the conflict as a revolutionary attempt, controlled by outside forces (Soviet Union), to overthrow the regime hampered social reform and determined the domestic climate until the 1930s. From among the political objectives of the national strike, only proportional representation was implemented. In 1919 this led, during the first elections based on the new system, to a shifting of the parliamentarian balance of power: the Liberals lost their traditional predominance, the Social Democrats improved their position and won 20 percent of the seats, though their gains were offset by the newly founded Agrarian Party, which won 14 percent and thus again strengthened the Liberal-Conservative alliance. The result of these elections can be taken as a sign of the rather contradictory situation and self-image of Switzerland. By the end of the nineteenth century, the country was highly industrialized. The fact that Switzerland grew to be an international financial center soon became an additional key element of modern economic growth. But although nearly half the inhabitants lived in urban surroundings and worked in industry, the self-image of Switzerland and especially that of its political elite was deeply rooted in a conservative belief in the value of an idealized peasantry. Part of this contradictory ideology was a conservative definition of women's role and the family. Attempts to introduce women's suffrage in the 1920s at least on a cantonal level were doomed to fail because of its rejection by male voters.

The economic depression of the 1930s hit Switzerland comparatively late, but lasted until 1936. Fascist tendencies had been latent in Switzerland since the suppression of the general strike of 1918. Advocates of fascism received support by the Nazis' takeover in Germany in 1933. Federal authorities were slow to react and even showed some sympathy for these tendencies. Swiss Nazi groups—the so-called Fronten (fronts)—were founded and right-wing Conservatives made plans to remodel the state along corporative lines. The threat of war, however, caused the general population to turn away from right-wing ideologies.

WORLD WAR II AND AFTER

Switzerland's war preparations were influenced by the experience of World War I and the fear of social unrest. The election of the first Social Democratic federal councillor in 1943 was considered as much a token of social unity as the election of a general from the French-speaking Canton of Vaud as commander-in-chief was considered a sign of national unity. In September 1939 the country quickly mobilized. After the fall of France in 1940, when Switzerland was completely surrounded by the Axis Powers, the defense strategy was reduced to the Alps. The "Reduit National" (Alpine Redoubt), a huge system of fortresses in the Alps, was expanded to offer a place of retreat for the army and the government in case of a German attack, robbing civilians of any protection. Nevertheless, the commander-in-chief managed to maintain the image of a country ready to defend itself to the last. This defense strategy allowed a partial demobilization in order to use all forces for production, not least for the export of goods deemed important to the war effort. Despite an affirmation of neutrality, the Axis Powers profited more from Swiss exports than did the Allies. Modern historians hold that Switzerland was most likely spared during the war not only because of its army but because a neutral and largely cooperative Switzerland—with its railways, Alpine passes, engineering resources, and banking services—was useful to the Third Reich.

In 1938, when Adolf Hitler annexed Austria, the stream of refugees into Switzerland, which had begun immediately after the Nazi takeover in Germany in 1933, started to swell. By the time the war began, Switzerland played host to seven or eight thousand emigrants, among them five thousand Jews. The refugee policy was restrictive; victims of racial persecution were not granted the status of refugees. It became the official policy of the federal government and administration to deny sanctuary to Jews for fear of "over-foreignization" (Überfremdung). Some of the cantons and several private organizations and individuals dodged these restrictive policies. During the war, about 53,000 civilians (about half of them Jews) and 104,000 soldiers (deserters, prisoners of war, soldiers of the French army) were taken in. The number of people turned back and physically prevented from crossing the borders is estimated to have been about twenty thousand. Restrictions were loosened as late as 1944.

Once the war was over, Switzerland was internationally isolated. Trade with Germany had undermined the credibility of Swiss neutrality. Relations with the United States were normalized only after painstaking negotiations (Washington Accord of 1946). But the country was soon integrated into the anticommunist American-dominated postwar order. At the end of the Cold War, Switzerland was again confronted with its role during World War II, when the question of Jewish assets and looted gold threatened to damage the credibility and image of the Swiss financial market. In 1996 this led to the appointment of the Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland (IEC) to study the relations between Switzerland and Nazi Germany. The research results confirmed that Swiss banks had been serving as a repository for Nazi gold and cash, stolen in part from murdered Jews, and had been responsible for retaining dormant Jewish accounts. The banks had to pay back 1.2 million dollars. The Swiss government expressed its deep regret for the repulsion of refugees but, in the end, did not acknowledge responsibility for the policy in general.

The postwar political system proved to be stable but also extremely rigid. This was because important decisions and change had to be accepted by a majority of voters (for laws that were to be changed) or, in addition, by a majority of all cantons (for changes of the constitution). Thus, women's right to vote, put to a vote for the first time on the federal level in 1959 but then rejected, was only accepted in 1971. Voters proved even less flexible concerning the renewal of civil rights: the extremely long periods of residence required from foreigners (twelve years) were maintained, and voters several times denied foreigners a right to be naturalized. Thus the high share of foreigners (which increased from 5.1 percent in 1950 to 15.9 percent in 1970 and 20 percent in 2004) is partly a result of these inflexible and rigid naturalization provisions. The first system of social security was created in 1948 and has been expanded gradually ever since.

The Swiss government, composed of all larger political parties, was based on the so-called Zauberformel or magic formula of 1959: two Liberals, two Christian Democrats, two Social Democrats, and one representative of the People's (or Farmer's) Party. For the first time ever, it was not adhered to in 2004, when a second representative of the populist, right-wing People's Party was elected to the detriment of the Christian Democrats.

Economically, Switzerland developed in the second half of the twentieth century from an industrial society into a society dominated by the service sector. In 2004, two-thirds of all employees worked for the service industry and about one-quarter for trade and industry. By the early twenty-first century, agriculture was of marginal significance.

Switzerland avoided the international alliances of the postwar period because of its definition of neutrality: several times, the Swiss said "nay" to joining the United Nations; it finally joined in 2004. The country also remained reserved in the face of European political integration efforts; it did, however, join the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and established a political and socioeconomic system largely conforming to the European Union ("autonomous adjustment"). The end of the Cold War saw Switzerland once again face the issue of whether and how neutrality was still a viable position in the world of the twenty-first century.

See alsoGermany; Nazism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fahrni, Dieter. An Outline History of Switzerland: From the Origins to the Present Day. 8th enl. ed. Zurich, 2003.

Hettling, Manfred von, et al. Eine Kleine Geschichte der Schweiz: der Bundesstaat und seine Traditionen. Frankfurt, 1998.

Imhof, Ulrich, et al. Geschichte der Schweiz und der Schweizer. 3rd ed. Basel, 2004

Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland–Second World War. Switzerland, National Socialism, and the Second World War. Final Report. Zurich, 2002.

Joris, Elisabeth, and Heidi Witzig, eds. Frauengeschichte(n): Dokumente aus zwei Jahrhunderten zur Situation der Frauen in der Schweiz. 4 vols. Zurich, 2001.

Steinberg, Jonathan. Why Switzerland? 2nd ed. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 2002.

Regina Wecker