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View Full Version : How The Swiss Opted Out of War




ItsTime
02-01-2012, 07:40 PM
Switzerland has not been in a foreign war of any kind since 1815. This would be astounding, even miraculous, for any nation. But Switzerland borders Germany. And France. And Italy. And Austria. And Liechtenstein. Now the Vaduz regime has rarely lashed out in blitzkrieg in a desperate bid to reign über alles, but all of Switzerland’s other neighbors have spent their histories invading other countries.

In addition to the encircling foreign marauders, Switzerland itself is composed of four different language groups (German, French, Italian, and Romansh) that get along as well as, well, Germans and French.

The Swiss finalized their no-wars policy of armed neutrality in 1815. Their decentralized citizen army was good enough to keep them out of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, World War I, and other European gang fights. In 1934, they addressed the looming threat of aerial bombing by starting a massive civil-defense effort. They maintained their citizen army and kept out of World War II, even while provoking Hitler by letting Jews hide their assets in secret Swiss bank accounts. Many Jews only escaped the Holocaust because they had their money where Nazi tax authorities couldn’t get it.

http://original.antiwar.com/?p=2012038692&preview=true&preview_id=2012038692&public=1&nonce=cbcedb9584

This is another piece by Bill Walker, hard working Ron Paul supporter and former co-chair for his NH county. Be sure to like his facebook fan page.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bill-Walker/222478167836386

BuddyRey
02-01-2012, 09:34 PM
I'd also be interested in knowing how many suicide terrorist attacks, if any, have taken place there. If there was one, I've never heard about it.

acptulsa
02-01-2012, 10:12 PM
Well, you know, we'd never be in a war, either--if we kept our noses to ourselves the way the Swiss do. We have the Atlantic, the Pacific, and no excuses. But we will be imperialist. Hell, pretty much the only places we've been attacked or invaded is Hawaii, which is remote, the Aleutians, which are the same and nearly uninhabited, and New York and Washington. And in spite of the fact that Cheney was clearing a path for those attacks, We the People still managed to stop one of them (no wonder they won't allow us to arm ourselves before boarding airplanes, it spoils their plans...)

swissaustrian
02-02-2012, 04:22 AM
I'd also be interested in knowing how many suicide terrorist attacks, if any, have taken place there. If there was one, I've never heard about it.

Yes. Zero suicide attacks...

The article in the op misses one point: our neutrality was guaranteed by all major European nations during the Vienna conference of 1815.

cindy25
02-02-2012, 05:22 AM
Hitler considered treaties just pieces of paper, and neutrality did not help Belgium in 1914, or Luxembourg in 1940

Hospitaller
02-02-2012, 06:17 AM
Hitler considered treaties just pieces of paper, and neutrality did not help Belgium in 1914, or Luxembourg in 1940

Bam.
Well maybe geography saved the swiss then?

Victor
02-02-2012, 06:28 AM
1813 for Sweden. Next year Sweden have had 200 years of peace.

MikeStanart
02-02-2012, 07:53 AM
Bam.
Well maybe geography saved the swiss then?

Their population is heavily armed as well

Acala
02-02-2012, 09:42 AM
I often point to the Swiss as an example of how a country can remain strong and neutral even sitting in the midst of the maelstrom of war. HOWEVER, as I have come to understand how the international banking cabal rules the world, I now wonder if maybe Switzerland's ability to remain neutral has something to do with it being the friendly host of world banking.

Pericles
02-02-2012, 10:40 AM
I often point to the Swiss as an example of how a country can remain strong and neutral even sitting in the midst of the maelstrom of war. HOWEVER, as I have come to understand how the international banking cabal rules the world, I now wonder if maybe Switzerland's ability to remain neutral has something to do with it being the friendly host of world banking.

It doesn't hurt, but we will see what happens after Switzerland basically caved in to the IRS over banking secrecy. I no longer feel that my money is as safe there.

KingRobbStark
02-02-2012, 10:54 AM
Only isolationists opt out of war.

Acala
02-02-2012, 11:14 AM
Only isolationists opt out of war.

Yup. If you aren't starving, bombing, and torturing people, you aren't really participating in the world. Isolationsist! You think you are Jesus with your golden rule crap? Something is WRONG with you if you don't advocate wholesale slaughter of your fellow human beings.

BamaAla
02-02-2012, 11:20 AM
Bam.
Well maybe geography saved the swiss then?

Probably the biggest point. If Hitler needed to march troops through the Alps to get to France, Switzerland wouldn't have been neutral, but luckily for them, the Nazi army went through the low countries.

Sweden has been "neutral" for just as long, but they weren't exactly uninvolved in WWII; their location wasn't as advantageous as the Swiss.

AuH20
02-02-2012, 11:40 AM
I often point to the Swiss as an example of how a country can remain strong and neutral even sitting in the midst of the maelstrom of war. HOWEVER, as I have come to understand how the international banking cabal rules the world, I now wonder if maybe Switzerland's ability to remain neutral has something to do with it being the friendly host of world banking.

Three letters. B I S
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_for_International_Settlements


The BIS was formed in 1930. The main actors in its establishment were the then-Governor of The Bank of England, Montagu Norman, and his German counterpart Hjalmar Schacht, later Adolf Hitler's finance minister. The Bank was originally intended to facilitate reparation payments imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War.[4] The need for the bank was suggested in 1929 by the Young Committee, and was agreed to in August of that year at a conference at the Hague. A charter for the bank was drafted at the International Bankers Conference at Baden Baden in November. The charter was adopted at a second Hague Conference on January 20, 1930.

During the period 1933–45, the board of directors of the BIS included Walter Funk, a prominent Nazi official, and Emil Puhl, who were both convicted at the Nuremberg trials after World War II, as well as Herman Schmitz the director of IG Farben and Baron von Schroeder, the owner of the J.H.Stein Bank, the bank that held the deposits of the Gestapo. There were allegations that the BIS had helped the Germans loot assets from occupied countries during World War II.

As a result of these allegations, at the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944, Norway proposed the "liquidation of the Bank for International Settlements at the earliest possible moment". This resulted in the BIS being the subject of a disagreement between the American and British delegations. The liquidation of the bank was supported by other European delegates, as well as the United States (including Harry Dexter White, Secretary of the Treasury and Henry Morgenthau),[5] but opposed by John Maynard Keynes, head of the British delegation. The disagreement led to Chase Bank representative Dean Atchison interrupting Keynes at one of the conference sessions. Fearing that the BIS would be dissolved by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Keynes went to Morgenthau hoping to prevent the dissolution, or have it postponed, but the next day the dissolution of the BIS was approved. However, the liquidation of the bank was never undertaken.[6] The British delegation did not give up and the dissolution of the bank was still not accomplished when Roosevelt died. In April 1945, the new president Harry S. Truman and the British suspended the dissolution and the decision to liquidate the BIS was officially reversed in 1948.[7]

The BIS was originally owned by both governments and private individuals, since the United States and France had decided to sell some of their shares to private investors. BIS shares traded on stock markets, which made the bank a unique organization: an international organization (in the technical sense of public international law), yet with private shareholders. Many central banks had similarly started as such private institutions; for example, the Bank of England was privately owned until 1946. In more recent years[when?] the BIS has forcibly bought back all shares held by private investors, and is now wholly owned by its member central banks.

Since 2004, the BIS has published its accounts in terms of Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, replacing the Gold Franc as the bank's unit of account. As of March 2007[update] (end of month) the bank had total assets of $409.15 billion, given a dollar/SDR exchange rate of 1.51 for March 30, 2007. Included in that total is 150 tons of fine gold.

ItsTime
02-03-2012, 04:34 PM
If the Alps saved the Swiss in ww2 the Oceans should save us from a full scale attack as well.