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by wkat4242
1188 days ago
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> The reason they weren't invaded during WW2 was mainly that they had a strong military in a very mountainous country with next to no strategic or material importance to Hitler. Just not worth the trouble. If Hitler saw a strategic reason to invade Switzerland he would have; he had no reservations about ignoring neutrality. Are you sure? I was told in history class that it was because too many of Hitler's cronies stored massive amounts of money there. Which would obviously have disappeared to the allies before they could capture the whole country. I've never investigated that in detail though so perhaps this was just wrong. |
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Either way it's still true it was quite easy for the Swiss to remain neutral since they're a pain in the ass to invade, and there was no reason to. I can definitely see them being more useful to him with their neutrality intact, but in some sense that only reinforces my point. If Switzerland had, say a bunch of oil, the equation might have changed.
Norway on the other hand had no realistic hope of remaining neutral once Hitler laid his eyes on our iron ore and massive, honkin' coastal line.
Whereas Sweden managed to maintain their neutrality partially by continuing to sell iron ore to Germany throughout the war as well as allowing them to move troops through them en route to Finland. And Hitler was more interested in the Soviets at that point, so Sweden would have been a distraction.
Finland was also neutral originally and they ended up in all sorts of wars theoughout WW2.
It seems pretty clear that neutrality in WW2 was respected by the large powers only to the extent it was convenient, and ignored otherwise. Most of the countries that remained neutral were city-states and the aforementioned countries + Spain(aligned with the axis powers though still neutral), Portugal(insulated by Spain) and Ireland(insulated by the British).