The Storm of War - Andrew Roberts [66]
It is impossible to calculate how many innocent lives were lost by the Swiss refusal to accept Jewish refugees escaping from the Vichy militia roundups of 1942–3. Pressure mounted for the Swiss to review their draconian immigration laws, by which only 7,000 immigrants had been allowed into the country since the outbreak of war. Nevertheless Dr Heinrich Rothmund, the chief of the police department of the federal Ministry of Justice and Police, instructed his men to repel Jews attempting to cross the frontier in the wooded area around Pontarlier–Besançon, and those found on Swiss soil were escorted back to France. ‘Incredible scenes developed,’ records the Swiss historian of his country’s neutrality. ‘Some committed suicide in front of the Swiss border guards.’59 The argument the Swiss Government gave for refusing entry to persecuted Jews was that subversive agents might enter the country too, that Swiss people might lose jobs to the immigrants, and that many immigrants would not move on to third countries. A ban was thus imposed upon any refugee or immigrant ‘engaging in any professional activity, paid or unpaid’. By May 1945, there were 115,000 refugees in camps, however, with more staying in hotels, in hostels and with friends or family. During the war a total of 400,000 people moved to or through Switzerland, including, of course, towards its end German and Italian Fascists.60
Swedish accommodation of the Nazis started early. Although they resolutely refused to allow the British and French expeditionary forces to cross their territory to aid Finland in her struggle against Russia in early 1940, the Stockholm Government allowed the Germans to cross it to reinforce their army of occupation in Norway later that same year. Between July 1940 and August 1943, no fewer than 140,000 German troops and countless thousand tons of military equipment and supplies had used the Swedish rail network, thus protecting the Kriegsmarine from the Royal Navy.
Just before the German invasion of Russia, the Swedes allowed an entire German division to traverse the country in order to take part in the assault. The next year, Swedish ships were carrying 53 per cent of Germany’s iron-ore imports – the raw material most needed for her armaments industry – to German ports, thereby saving the German Navy further trouble and danger. It was only after the battle of Stalingrad in February 1943, when she saw which side would probably win, that Sweden gave in to Allied pressure and forced the Germans to carry the ore in their own ships; not until April 1944 did Sweden stop selling Germany ball-bearings, and after the war crucial components for the V-2 rockets were found to have ‘Made in Sweden’ stamped on them. Albert Speer records that Hitler intended his vast new capital at Berlin – named Germania – to be very largely built from Swedish granite, which was being obligingly shipped to him throughout the war along with the iron ore and ball-bearings. Had Hitler won the war, of course, the sovereignty of Switzerland, Sweden, Eire and several other neutrals would have been swatted overnight. In late January 1942, after saying that the Swedes and Swiss were merely ‘playing at soldiers’, the Führer told cronies at the Berghof that ‘the Jews must pack up, disappear from Europe… they’ll have to clear out of Switzerland and Sweden. We cannot allow them to retain bases of withdrawal at our doors.’61
The most notable absentee from civilization’s line of battle, however, was Eire, whose actions cannot be explained, like Sweden’s and Switzerland’s, by a close physical proximity to Germany. Neither was it a case of malingering, for even when in the latter stages of the war there was no chance of a German invasion the Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, still refrained from publicly denouncing the Nazis or Hitler himself. (When