- Full Text
- Scholarly Journal
CO-OPTING NAZI GERMANY: NEUTRALITY IN EUROPE DURING WORLD WAR II
Full text preview
Neutrality, when practiced by nations, is not always neutral. It does not preclude involvement in international affairs, or even partisanship. According to international law, there are varying kinds of neutrality. For example, Switzerland adopted "differentiated" neutrality in 1920, a decision which indicated a willingness to employ economic sanctions to communicate disapprobation of another nation; in 1938 the Swiss embraced "integral," or supposedly unconditional, neutrality. Despite the apparent precision of these legal terms, neutrality for Switzerland during World War II, as well as for the other continental European countries that claimed neutral status during that period -- Portugal, Sweden, Spain, and the Vatican -- can best be summed up by the phrase, self-interested noncombatant.(1) These nations shared the common objectives of preserving relative independence in foreign policy and resisting encroachment into domestic affairs. But the costs were high: Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal and Spain, at certain points, deserved the unpleasant label -- to borrow the title from Donald Waters' book on Switzerland -- "Hitler's Secret Ally."(2) From a late-twentieth century perspective, these nations can be seen to have occupied a gray area on the continuum between black complicity with the Third Reich and white resistance to the Nazi regime. What is striking about this in relation to Switzerland is not only that it puts that country on a par with fascist Spain, but that it challenges a pervasive myth the Swiss have about their wartime virtue and innocence. Indeed, the Swiss are tainted not just by their collaboration with the Reich, but by their postwar failure to confront a problematic past. To comprehend the magnitude of this "taint," it is necessary both to understand Switzerland's degree of involvement in Nazi crimes, and to place that involvement in the context of the wartime behavior of the other three "neutrals."
The Swiss bolstered the Nazi...