WI Stalin invaded... SWITZERLAND

[Magniac]

I know the possibility of Hitler invading Switzerland has been discussed around here at some length. Someone recently said that the Swiss deciding to enter WWII is truely ASBish--I'm sure others have talked about the Allies going over the alps.

But what about a Red Army conquest of those not-quite-clean-money-launderers?

The POD is no opening of a Second Front and no Allied movements on the Italian boot significantly north of the Gustav Line area--perhaps a bloody withdrawal from Salerno in '43 causes the WAllies to get all jittery about a lack of sufficient fighter cover at Normandy, they go for Calais, things go badly--anyway the Soviet's end up having a very expansive campaigning season in 1945.

Will Uncle Joe decide to invade the plucky little Swiss because he has everything in Europe east of Brittany in his sights, or might he consider invading Switzerland because he's a vicious wuss and doesn't think he can seize and hold any really surprising territories beyond maybe northern Italy above the Po, a bit of Denmark and a whole lot more of Germany--why look for atomic embarassment in the Dardanelles or the Benelux countries when you can, say, prove how well hard you are by taking over a pariah* country and boasting of having stabilised your sphere of influence along a line from Genoa to Stuttgart with a huge bulge in between.

How difficult is a Red Army campaign in these mountains, technically speaking, under either kind of strategy?

Thoughts?

*Knowing what we now know, will Molotov have an easy time convincing the West that, 'fuck it, they're reaping the wind they've sown, these fondue-eating war profiteers'?

 

[Saladan]

Stalin soon learns why everybody, including Hitler has respected Swiss neutrality.

 

[Lord Roem]

Stalin soon learns why everybody, including Hitler has respected Swiss neutrality.

The Swiss, neutral, too neutral...

 

[General Mung Beans]

There are two possibilities; either the Allies go to war with the Soviets for invading Switzerland or the Allies simply ignore the Soviet invasion and let them occupy Switzerland.

 

[Valdemar II]

There's four way to invade Switzerland from Germany, from France, from Austria and from Italy.

From Germany: pierce of cake you run over the majority of country and only leave some thinly populated mountains in the south, which can be a long term problem.

From France: see Germany

From Austria: Hell on Earth will make Afghanistan seem like paradise, you need to invade through a thin corrido, where you can be easily stopped.

From Italy: See Austria just a lot worse, a few enclave can be easy occupied, but the vast majority of Swiss population and industry is safe on the other side of the Alps.

If USSR use the usual brutality, they're going to have a armed insurrection based in the Alps for at least the next twenty-thirty years (think a mix between 40ties Yugoslavia and 80ties Afghanistan, just worse). Insurrection in Switzerland can only be beaten down with the carrot, not the stick, something USSR seem to have been bad at, but excessive Soivet violence, deportation and attribution will likely end this insurrection at last, but two entire Russian generation will be traumatised by dealing with a neverending insurrection.

 

[lichtbringer]

I know the possibility of Hitler invading Switzerland has been discussed around here at some length. Someone recently said that the Swiss deciding to enter WWII is truely ASBish--I'm sure others have talked about the Allies going over the alps.

But what about a Red Army conquest of those not-quite-clean-money-launderers?

The POD is no opening of a Second Front and no Allied movements on the Italian boot significantly north of the Gustav Line area--perhaps a bloody withdrawal from Salerno in '43 causes the WAllies to get all jittery about a lack of sufficient fighter cover at Normandy, they go for Calais, things go badly--anyway the Soviet's end up having a very expansive campaigning season in 1945.

Will Uncle Joe decide to invade the plucky little Swiss because he has everything in Europe east of Brittany in his sights, or might he consider invading Switzerland because he's a vicious wuss and doesn't think he can seize and hold any really surprising territories beyond maybe northern Italy above the Po, a bit of Denmark and a whole lot more of Germany--why look for atomic embarassment in the Dardanelles or the Benelux countries when you can, say, prove how well hard you are by taking over a pariah* country and boasting of having stabilised your sphere of influence along a line from Genoa to Stuttgart with a huge bulge in between.

How difficult is a Red Army campaign in these mountains, technically speaking, under either kind of strategy?

Thoughts?

*Knowing what we now know, will Molotov have an easy time convincing the West that, 'fuck it, they're reaping the wind they've sown, these fondue-eating war profiteers'?

If Stalin doesn't have enough nukes to erase the alps then the Red Army is screwed. The whole Swiss is a fortress with every citizen able and willing to fight.

 

[Valdemar II]

If Stalin doesn't have enough nukes to erase the alps then the Red Army is screwed. The whole Swiss is a fortress with every citizen able and willing to fight.

The will of the Swiss to fight is quite overrated, but in this case you got a point, the usual charming behaviour of the Red Army together with the revolutionary policies forced on the Swiss, will ensure that they have so little to lose that a large minority will be willing to fight for decades, mostly because their families will dead or deported, and surrender will likely be rewarded with death or worse.

 

[CalBear]

The Swiss are a hedgehog. The Red Army was an avalanche. Game over.

The Swiss defensive structure, combined with their overall neutral stance, is designed to make it less attractive to attack them than to do business with them. It is a very good system that has worked for years, but it isn't perfect. If Stalin wanted Switzerland he could have taken it. Fortunately the Swiss are too important to the West to abandon them so the Superpower confrontation is still on.

If however, you take things down to the basics, the Swiss don't have a prayer. The Swiss can make you pay for every inch of ground, but Stalin was never afraid to pay the price with other's blood. The Swiss Air Force had a total of 350 fighters, some Bf-109 (around 60 plus a few interned ones the SAF started using late in the War) and 290 M.S. 406 fighters. In the late 40's these were replaced by 130 surplus P-51's as the USAF transitioned to jets. Ivan would have rolled over that sized air force in two weeks in 1945. The 1945 Swiss Army was designed around fixed defenses, something that the Red Army was designed to overcome. The Swiss might make the Muj look like choirboys (though I doubt it), but in the end it wouldn't matter at all. If Stalin REALLY wanted the place, it was his, likely depopulated (see Ukrainian Famine).

No doubt the Country of Switzerland would have cost Stalin 250,000 men. I doubt he would have even blinked.

 

[Valdemar II]

The Swiss are a hedgehog. The Red Army was an avalanche. Game over.

The Swiss defensive structure, combined with their overall neutral stance, is designed to make it less attractive to attack them than to do business with them. It is a very good system that has worked for years, but it isn't perfect. If Stalin wanted Switzerland he could have taken it. Fortunately the Swiss are too important to the West to abandon them so the Superpower confrontation is still on.

If however, you take things down to the basics, the Swiss don't have a prayer. The Swiss can make you pay for every inch of ground, but Stalin was never afraid to pay the price with other's blood. The Swiss Air Force had a total of 350 fighters, some Bf-109 (around 60 plus a few interned ones the SAF started using late in the War) and 290 M.S. 406 fighters. In the late 40's these were replaced by 130 surplus P-51's as the USAF transitioned to jets. Ivan would have rolled over that sized air force in two weeks in 1945. The 1945 Swiss Army was designed around fixed defenses, something that the Red Army was designed to overcome. The Swiss might make the Muj look like choirboys (though I doubt it), but in the end it wouldn't matter at all. If Stalin REALLY wanted the place, it was his, likely depopulated (see Ukrainian Famine).

No doubt the Country of Switzerland would have cost Stalin 250,000 men. I doubt he would have even blinked.

Yes the conquest isn't the problem if the Soviets have a good position for the invasion (Baden-Württermberg) or France-comte, the problem is that Switzerland will be a neverending drain of manpower and resources.

 

[General Mung Beans]

There's four way to invade Switzerland from Germany, from France, from Austria and from Italy.

From Germany: pierce of cake you run over the majority of country and only leave some thinly populated mountains in the south, which can be a long term problem.

From France: see Germany

From Austria: Hell on Earth will make Afghanistan seem like paradise, you need to invade through a thin corrido, where you can be easily stopped.

From Italy: See Austria just a lot worse, a few enclave can be easy occupied, but the vast majority of Swiss population and industry is safe on the other side of the Alps.

If USSR use the usual brutality, they're going to have a armed insurrection based in the Alps for at least the next twenty-thirty years (think a mix between 40ties Yugoslavia and 80ties Afghanistan, just worse). Insurrection in Switzerland can only be beaten down with the carrot, not the stick, something USSR seem to have been bad at, but excessive Soivet violence, deportation and attribution will likely end this insurrection at last, but two entire Russian generation will be traumatised by dealing with a neverending insurrection.

If the war goes extremely bloodily; Stalin's successors might withdraw from Switzerland like Gorbachev did with Afghanistan.

 

[CalBear]

Yes the conquest isn't the problem if the Soviets have a good position for the invasion (Baden-Württermberg) or France-comte, the problem is that Switzerland will be a neverending drain of manpower and resources.

Not really.

I would again point to the Ukraine as a textbook example of Soviet pacification methods. Take an area of any desired size, remove ALL THE FOOD, set up a perimeter, kill anyone who tried to enter or exit, wait for everyone to starve to death. Repeat as necessary until the desired area is pacified.

Somebody shoots are Red Army units and you kill 5,000 people. You than take a 20 square kilometer area around the attack site, and pacify it as outlined above.

Best part is you use mostly punishment troops with NKVD minders to move the bodies and take the food. They do anything to stay alive while the NKVD monsters will look at the event as a lark, all the rape and senseless violence they can handle.

Problem is who you are dealing with. Stalin is, with the probably exception of Mao, the most prolific mass murder in Human history. Killing masses of people is a hobby. He'd likely get a case of the giggles reviewing the death lists.

 

[Valdemar II]

Not really.

I would again point to the Ukraine as a textbook example of Soviet pacification methods. Take an area of any desired size, remove ALL THE FOOD, set up a perimeter, kill anyone who tried to enter or exit, wait for everyone to starve to death. Repeat as necessary until the desired area is pacified.

Somebody shoots are Red Army units and you kill 5,000 people. You than take a 20 square kilometer area around the attack site, and pacify it as outlined above.

Best part is you use mostly punishment troops with NKVD minders to move the bodies and take the food. They do anything to stay alive while the NKVD monsters will look at the event as a lark, all the rape and senseless violence they can handle.

Problem is who you are dealing with. Stalin is, with the probably exception of Mao, the most prolific mass murder in Human history. Killing masses of people is a hobby. He'd likely get a case of the giggles reviewing the death lists.

That only work to some point, the Alps is perfect guerilla land, a small group can stay there for years, especialle if they have nothing to lose, don't forget that the Ukrainish Guerilla movement lasted to the late 50ties, the Alps is better territorium than that.

 

[Ward]

That only work to some point, the Alps is perfect guerilla land, a small group can stay there for years, especialle if they have nothing to lose, don't forget that the Ukrainish Guerilla movement lasted to the late 50ties, the Alps is better territorium than that.

As did the Polish Home Armys .

 

[aktarian]

The Swiss are a hedgehog. The Red Army was an avalanche. Game over.

The Swiss defensive structure, combined with their overall neutral stance, is designed to make it less attractive to attack them than to do business with them. It is a very good system that has worked for years, but it isn't perfect. If Stalin wanted Switzerland he could have taken it. Fortunately the Swiss are too important to the West to abandon them so the Superpower confrontation is still on.

If however, you take things down to the basics, the Swiss don't have a prayer. The Swiss can make you pay for every inch of ground, but Stalin was never afraid to pay the price with other's blood. The Swiss Air Force had a total of 350 fighters, some Bf-109 (around 60 plus a few interned ones the SAF started using late in the War) and 290 M.S. 406 fighters. In the late 40's these were replaced by 130 surplus P-51's as the USAF transitioned to jets. Ivan would have rolled over that sized air force in two weeks in 1945. The 1945 Swiss Army was designed around fixed defenses, something that the Red Army was designed to overcome. The Swiss might make the Muj look like choirboys (though I doubt it), but in the end it wouldn't matter at all. If Stalin REALLY wanted the place, it was his, likely depopulated (see Ukrainian Famine).

No doubt the Country of Switzerland would have cost Stalin 250,000 men. I doubt he would have even blinked.

However there is a minor thing of Soviet losses during WW2. With no second front Gemrany has even more forces on E front meaning even higher soviet losses. Take that and add losses that would happen during Swiss war and you get.... a military that may be running out of troops or a ccountry which has so many people in military home economy starts to collapse.

And when discussing guerilla warfare consider this. Guerillas need outside support. In 1940s this wasn't as important as it is now but it wasn't something you coan ignore. Without access to good stuff (heavy weapons, arty, mines, explosives, radios....) guerillas become a nuisance, not a problem. specially if occupier is willing to let them run free in some unimportant region while keeping tight control over important infrastructure ((rail)roads, cities, industry and so on).

 

[chris N]

The west would probably gp to war against the Soviet Union. In which case the Swiss would benefit from allied airpower.

 

[Magniac]

There's four way to invade Switzerland from Germany, from France, from Austria and from Italy.

From Germany: pierce of cake you run over the majority of country and only leave some thinly populated mountains in the south, which can be a long term problem.

From France: see Germany

From Austria: Hell on Earth will make Afghanistan seem like paradise, you need to invade through a thin corrido, where you can be easily stopped.

From Italy: See Austria just a lot worse, a few enclave can be easy occupied, but the vast majority of Swiss population and industry is safe on the other side of the Alps

In my original post I hinted at a POD involving no successful D-Day and no Italian campaign advancing as far as Rome. Perhaps all it would take would be merely no successful D-Day--the 8th Army and co. could still run amok in Nothern Italy in the late spring of '45 and it wouldn't make a difference to a Red Army invasion of Switzerland, as the Sovs would be coming down into Switzerland from Germany.

I would again point to the Ukraine as a textbook example of Soviet pacification methods. Take an area of any desired size, remove ALL THE FOOD, set up a perimeter, kill anyone who tried to enter or exit, wait for everyone to starve to death. Repeat as necessary until the desired area is pacified. Somebody shoots are Red Army units and you kill 5,000 people. You than take a 20 square kilometer area around the attack site, and pacify it as outlined above

Is this the early '30s or the post-Nazi period you're referencing (I know Stalin executed many ex-partisan fighters but had no idea he went back to the genocidal methods of the famine.)
Anyway, point taken about Stalin's ruthlessness; I'm afraid people here are too optimistic about a people with no recent combat experience (the Swiss) standing up to NKVD anti-insurgency methods.

Does anyone really believe the British and Americans would raise a finger to stop Stalin doing any of this? After all, Finland was within his sphere and I've never heard of Churchill et al saying anything negative about that front after the beginning of Barbarossa.

What do people think about the WAllies quietly promising Stalin Switzerland at an ATL Yalta as part of a Greater Bavaria-Austria-Lichtenstein-South Tirol sphere of influence, to add to what he would obviously get with the Balkans, as in 'here's a good chap; remember, when you defeat the bulk of the Wehrmacht we'll automatically rush emergency occupation forces to France, Benelux, Scandanavia, Greece--but you can impress your rapacious Red Army fellows by allowing them to plunder the hitherto untouched wealth of the Swiss.'
So, perhaps this invasion is a consolation prize for not making it to the North Sea or fulfilling the age-old Russian dream of the Bosphorus?

 

[chris N]

To begin with Switzerland was not an Axis Power. Next it in Western Europe and the western allies would not want the soviets any where in that area.


If we are going to talk about the failure of the West to intervene regarding Finland then you got to take into account the fact that the allies were already at war with Germany and that it was wintertime and thus not easy to land forces there. I admit that they should have done something.
However, Switzerland is in Western Europe within range of allied Bombers and fighters. The western allies could have gotten military forces there in a shorter period of time. They could also interdict the soviet lines of communication thus cutting resupply of soviet forces .

 

[Prinz Richard Eugen]

There seens to be a feeling that whenever the Western Allies don't do an invasion of Northwest Europe - or that invasion is unsuccessful - the Soviets (for some unstated reason) are even more successful in overrunning Germany, Why is this?
Would Hitler have poured more units into France - where there is no fighting - and ignore the East - where the Germans are getting beaten back AS FAST AS THE SOVIETS CAN MOVE UP SUPPLIES? This alone would prevent the Soviets from getting any deeper into Germany than they did, Didn't Hitler build up the West in 1944 so they could shift troops to the East after the Anglo-Americans were defeated? Not only would the Germans been able to move a significant proportion of theier divisions East, but they would have sent mainly Panzer and mobile infantry divisions. And the divisions that went West in late '44 and '45 would have wound up in the East. Yes, some reinforcements would have gone to Italy, bit few compared to those going East.
Stalin would not be worried about invading Switzerland because he would still be stuck in Poland and still be worried about the Germans.
Sure, the bomber war would have been intensified, but the damage done by the fighter-bombers would be much less. This is a trade-off
Don't worry about Stalin and the Swiss.

 

[CanadianGoose]

Not really.

I would again point to the Ukraine as a textbook example of Soviet pacification methods. Take an area of any desired size, remove ALL THE FOOD, set up a perimeter, kill anyone who tried to enter or exit, wait for everyone to starve to death. Repeat as necessary until the desired area is pacified.

Somebody shoots are Red Army units and you kill 5,000 people. You than take a 20 square kilometer area around the attack site, and pacify it as outlined above.

Best part is you use mostly punishment troops with NKVD minders to move the bodies and take the food. They do anything to stay alive while the NKVD monsters will look at the event as a lark, all the rape and senseless violence they can handle.

This is quite impressive picture you're painting. Too bad it describes pretty much alternate USSR. IOTL Soviets fumbled 10 years with Ukrainian and Baltic guerillas (as those ceased to be a threat for what Soviets were doing in areas related to their mainstream plans) and Holodomor had likely been a giant fuck-up, not some pre-mediated plan (there's as much truth in "Stalin creating famine to eliminate Ukrainians" picture as in Hitler's "Jews are plotting to take over the world and exterminate Aryan race").

 

[Magniac]

There seens to be a feeling that whenever the Western Allies don't do an invasion of Northwest Europe - or that invasion is unsuccessful - the Soviets (for some unstated reason) are even more successful in overrunning Germany, Why is this?

Folks smarter than me have long thought the Reich's defences were done for once Army Group Centre was broken in '44.

The jumpoff points from southern Baden into Switzerland are about the same distance from Vienna as Czechoslovakia is from the Rhine (thus, the Red Army gets to Austria and then has to advance as far westwards across the Heimat as Pattons forces in OTLs '45 moved eastwards for an invasion of Switzerland to become plausible.)

To begin with Switzerland was not an Axis Power. Next it in Western Europe and the western allies would not want the soviets any where in that area.
If we are going to talk about the failure of the West to intervene regarding Finland then you got to take into account the fact that the allies were already at war with Germany and that it was wintertime and thus not easy to land forces there. I admit that they should have done something.
However, Switzerland is in Western Europe within range of allied Bombers and fighters. The western allies could have gotten military forces there in a shorter period of time. They could also interdict the soviet lines of communication thus cutting resupply of soviet forces

You really suppose Britain and America would go to war with Stalin over Switzerland? I think I'm more realistic in my assessment that after a failure to open a Second Front, the WAllies would consider sacrificing the Swiss as part of a deal to keep Stalin out of, in no particular order, allied Western Europe/the North Sea/Greece & the eastern Med.
Of course a 'Finlandized' or 'Austria-ized' Switzerland is the most likely scenario if Southern Germany and Northern Italy end up in the Soviet sphere of influence as determined at an ATL Yalta; but if paranoid Uncle Joe gets those two regions plus Austria he might feel uncomfortable with a Western frontier with such as huge salient in it. Plus there's the loot to be had in the country untouched by war.
Plus they (the Swiss) are just not going to receive the kind of sympathy from the West the Finns got during 1939/40.
It all really depends on what quid-pro-quo arises at the 'failed D-Day Yalta'. (I have to admit I started this thread because I think 'Stalin invades... Switzerland' sounds cooler than 'The Red Army in Milan'. There's a similar, but more detailed, discussion about the slightly less implausible Soviet Denmark in the archives of AH.com.)