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Switzerland’s astonishingly polite armed conflict of 1847 (2019)

122 points by DrZootron 5y ago

eatonphil 5y ago
On a tangent, the list of Liechtenstein-Switzerland military conflicts on Wikipedia is hilarious and kind of cute. For example: > On 26 August 1976, just before midnight, 75 members of the Swiss Army and a number of packhorses mistakenly took a wrong turn and ended up 500 metres into Liechtenstein at Iradug, in Balzers. The Liechtensteiners reportedly offered drinks to the Swiss soldiers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein%E2%80%93Switzerland_relations#Incidents_involving_the_Swiss_military https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein%E2%80%93Switzerl...
- panick21_ 5y ago
  There is actually a joke in the Swiss military that they Switzerland invades Lichtenstein every year because some of the army somewhow ends up going into it.
  - martopix 5y ago
    It happens all the time between Italy and San Marino too.
  - throaway46546 5y ago
    Well if you know you are going to get free drinks why not?
- xhevahir 5y ago
  I like the story of how the foreign minister of the Bavarian Socialist Republic declared war on Switzerland and Württemberg for declining his request for sixty locomotives.
- nix23 5y ago
  >On 3 March 2007, a company of 171 Swiss soldiers mistakenly entered Liechtenstein That was my company :) BTW: I think a year or two later the same happened but with France (was a bit a bigger "outcry") EDIT: The wikipedia story is not the full one, two pretty nice police guy's stopped us and told us where the swiss border is.
Victerius 5y ago
Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. - Harry Lime, The Third Man
- vmception 5y ago
  And an international brand and perfect geopolitical positioning as if production is the coveted metric
- collias 5y ago
  The very conflict this article is about gave birth the the Red Cross.
  - Ichthypresbyter 5y ago
    While General Dufour (who had commanded the Federal forces in the Sonderbund War) was one of the five-man founding committee, the event that precipitated the founding of the Red Cross was the visit of Henri Dunant to the battlefield at Solferino immediately after the battle. The Battle of Solferino (part of the Second War of Italian Independence, in which an alliance of France and Sardinia defeated Austria) took place 12 years after the Sonderbund War, in 1859. As far as I know Dunant had taken no part in the Sonderbund War- he was a student in Geneva at the time- and neither had anyone else on the committee apart from Dufour. In fact, two of them had been outside Switzerland at the time.
- Archelaos 5y ago
  Harry Lime was misinformed. The cuckoo clock is primarily a product from the Black Forest region of southern Germany. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock#%22Chalet%22_style,_the_Swiss_contribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock#%22Chalet%22_styl...
- Bayart 5y ago
  The Swiss were actively involved in those very wars in Italy as mercenaries, and that's also where their neutrality originates. At the same time and throughout the Early Modern period, Switzerland was rife withe religious zealotry going awry. It remained an impoverished agrarian country up until the 20th c.
m_mueller 5y ago
Much of this was thanks to General Dufour afaik, the federalist General. Can’t think of a better way to navigate 150k combatants to come out of this war basically unharmed, on both sides. The conclusion was foregone, but convincing everyone of this was the tricky part.
- nabla9 5y ago
  International Committee of the Red Cross and The First Geneva Convention are part of General Dufour's legacy. He was one of the Henry Dunant's "Committee of the Five".
  - m_mueller 5y ago
    Having a person at the helm who actually experienced the horrors of industrial warfare was a lucky break I guess. Maybe Swiss overall had enough memories and experience with severe poverty and warfare to be motivated for a change. Btw. in many ways the US was a model for the new Swiss Republic as the Swiss must have felt very close to the American independence movement, having had a similar history dealing with foreign powers. It's kind of a shame that this closeness faded in the 20th century, but in its basic political setup Switzerland still is a mini-US in Europe, just with the major addition of direct democracy - something in turn that I'd hope the US could adopt in order to bring new life into its political system.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Karlsonn 5y ago
      There is very very little overlap between US and Swiss culture. The swiss were known for being good mercenaries and for living in such rugged terrain that few nations dared to take them over. Unlike the US, the Swiss have universal healthcare, free education and a banking secrecy law. Politically, unlike the US, the Swiss have a council of 5 elders instead of a president. They also have direct voting rights so the citizens can influence the decisions their country makes. for example: to buy or not to buy fighter jets. socially, the Swiss are much different from the US, giving women a right to vote in 1978. Also having mandatory military service and strong workers protection rights. In which way is Switzerland mini-US?
KennyBlanken 5y ago
Astonishingly polite indeed, compared to them claiming neutrality in WW2, yet: - shooting dead American soldiers they found inside Switzerland who had escaped from German POW camps - abusing banking privacy laws to seize bank accounts from murdered Jews (who had been using Swiss banks for a number of years because they saw the writing on the wall), refusing to grant access to surviving relatives - happily accepting Nazi gold, knowing much of which was melted down jewelry and dental fillings collected from the ashes of human incinerators. Post WW2, Switzerland was required to return twelve percent of the gold they accepted from the Nazis.
- ggm 5y ago
  Yes, this is insufficiently discussed, as is the sweden/rare-earths issues. Not ALL POWs were shot, but it wasn't all drinks on the balcony of the sanitorium until 1945
  - bedobi 5y ago
    Oh man, the Swedes stubbornly taking pride in being "neutral" really grinds my gears first of all, given how much Sweden helped the nazis, including literally transporting nazi troops to invade neighboring countries, and providing resources etc, they can hardly be called neutral, second, in a conflict of *literal nazis* vs everyone else, being neutral is nothing to be proud of - any sane person can see that but Sweden's education system very successfully brainwashes the population into eating that nonsense up, hook line and sinker
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      To a significant degree the complete failure of the allied defense of Norway (not help by Norway complete incompetence of defending itself) plays a significant role here. It is one of those under-appropriated parts of WW2. Had Norway been defended Sweden would have been in a massively different position. They could have exported Iron Ore to Britain instead and Britain would have been in a position to help Sweden in its defense from potential German attack. The Sweds had the Germans very close on one side and practically no other trading partner to sell to. Iron ore was vital to the Germans and there is no question they would have gone to war to get it, Germany controlled all export routes. At the same time you have the Soviets, who are now often seen as the second biggest evil, but this was not at all clear back then. Lets remember that the Soviets had just conducted the Katyn massacre for example. The Soviets had invaded Finland and all the Baltic states. And their treatment of those places was far harsher then the Nazis were in Norway. 10000s of people from the Baltic states were transported to the Gulags at that time and most were never seen again. So Sweden was stuck between a aggressive Germany and an aggressive Soviet Union with no way for the allies the help them in any meaningful way. Germany very much had the capability of invading Sweden, specially once they controlled Norway. Just as the Swiss had no question that if Germany wanted to they could invade and take most of Switzerland. Not being in that positions its easy for us now to be morally outraged. However, at the time a wrong choice could lead things mass starvation, air attacks against civilian population, mass rape and many other things. > second, in a conflict of literal nazis vs everyone else You should go back and actually look at WW2. It was not Nazis vs everybody else. In fact, because of Soviet actions in Finland, Baltic, Romania and so on, it was actually the case that many countries looked to Germany to protect them from the Soviets. Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia were allies of Germany. And Italy of course but for other reasons. > they can hardly be called neutral, Diplomatic neutrality does not mean you treat everybody equally. I don't know about Sweden as much. But Switzerland changed is policies quite a bit once the allies had freed France and a Nazi invasion was no longer as acute a possibility.
ccakes 5y ago
There has been a similarly polite disagreement about land between Canada and Denmark, however from the Wikipedia page it looks to have been resolved as of ~2005 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky_War
- goodcanadian 5y ago
  Not resolved, but Both countries agreed on a process in 2005 to resolve the issue. AFAICT, nothing has really changed since then. Another example that might interest you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machias_Seal_Island https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machias_Seal_Island
aunty_helen 5y ago
> Yet, leave it to the Swiss (those masters of neutrality) to give us at least one example of a truly civil war The same Swiss that banned their citizens from joining mercenary armies after two predominantly Swiss mercenary armies slaughtered each other.
- nix23 5y ago
  Just hope the pope (pun intended) never attacks us.
- magnuspaaske 5y ago
  Fascinating. Do you have a link so we can read more about the mercenary fiasco?
dgb23 5y ago
Another example of the Swiss being polite and avoiding bloodshed during extreme conflict was the general strike of 1918. It lasted two days but the strike leaders capitulated after being threatened by the Swiss military. It could have ended rather brutally. After the strike there was a phase of reforms for workers and democratic rights. It was understood that there had to be good faith negotiation with unions from there on.
lukasfischer 5y ago
Very interesting article for me. I actually grew up in Gisikon (where the battle of Gisikon took place) and my parents still live there. Altought the battle of Gisikon was somewhat a key event in the formation of the modern swiss state (which was founded in 1848), the battle was not a topic in our school curriculum. One funny thing: There is one small remembering-stone right next to the town hall which nobody knows what it’s all about…
- stavros 5y ago
  Not very on-topic, but I find the notion of a forgotten remembering stone hilarious.
  - lukasfischer 5y ago
    Astonishingly polite remembering :D
Synaesthesia 5y ago
In contrast to most European wars which were save gully barbarous in their conduct and ignored human life.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jamisteven 5y ago
Having lived here for the past 3 years I would say that this was less about being polite and more about avoiding human interaction, which is something I find quite common in Swiss culture even today. Highly introverted and wanting to stick to ones self is the norm here. Villages so quiet you could hear a mouse fart.
- ToolsDevler 5y ago
  You lived somewhere and are speaking for the whole country... I live in Zurich (the city) since 2015 (and my wife since 2018) and we have the opposite experience. Small talks with strangers and totally open converations with swiss people if you want. But you have to be open for it. If you are an introvert yourself, people mostly just respect that and cut conversation to a minimum. And yes, Im speaking mostly for Zurich City as part of Switzerland, not Switzerland as a whole.
hogrider 5y ago
If you liked this you should know about endemic warfare and ritualistic warfare, in the most civil examples it amounted to a very intense game apparently where they'd just raid for stuff or women without killing each other. Sicilian decade long vendeta feuds are something like endemic warfare.
IMAYousaf 5y ago
I like the characterization so much of a "polite armed conflict". Seems almost cartoonish.

122 points by DrZootron 5y ago

On a tangent, the list of Liechtenstein-Switzerland military conflicts on Wikipedia is hilarious and kind of cute. For example: > On 26 August 1976, just before midnight, 75 members of the Swiss Army and a number of packhorses mistakenly took a wrong turn and ended up 500 metres into Liechtenstein at Iradug, in Balzers. The Liechtensteiners reportedly offered drinks to the Swiss soldiers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein%E2%80%93Switzerland_relations#Incidents_involving_the_Swiss_military https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein%E2%80%93Switzerl...

panick21_ 5y ago
There is actually a joke in the Swiss military that they Switzerland invades Lichtenstein every year because some of the army somewhow ends up going into it.
- martopix 5y ago
  It happens all the time between Italy and San Marino too.
- throaway46546 5y ago
  Well if you know you are going to get free drinks why not?
xhevahir 5y ago
I like the story of how the foreign minister of the Bavarian Socialist Republic declared war on Switzerland and Württemberg for declining his request for sixty locomotives.
nix23 5y ago
>On 3 March 2007, a company of 171 Swiss soldiers mistakenly entered Liechtenstein That was my company :) BTW: I think a year or two later the same happened but with France (was a bit a bigger "outcry") EDIT: The wikipedia story is not the full one, two pretty nice police guy's stopped us and told us where the swiss border is.

Victerius 5y ago

Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. - Harry Lime, The Third Man

vmception 5y ago
And an international brand and perfect geopolitical positioning as if production is the coveted metric
collias 5y ago
The very conflict this article is about gave birth the the Red Cross.
- Ichthypresbyter 5y ago
  While General Dufour (who had commanded the Federal forces in the Sonderbund War) was one of the five-man founding committee, the event that precipitated the founding of the Red Cross was the visit of Henri Dunant to the battlefield at Solferino immediately after the battle. The Battle of Solferino (part of the Second War of Italian Independence, in which an alliance of France and Sardinia defeated Austria) took place 12 years after the Sonderbund War, in 1859. As far as I know Dunant had taken no part in the Sonderbund War- he was a student in Geneva at the time- and neither had anyone else on the committee apart from Dufour. In fact, two of them had been outside Switzerland at the time.
Archelaos 5y ago
Harry Lime was misinformed. The cuckoo clock is primarily a product from the Black Forest region of southern Germany. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock#%22Chalet%22_style,_the_Swiss_contribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock#%22Chalet%22_styl...
Bayart 5y ago
The Swiss were actively involved in those very wars in Italy as mercenaries, and that's also where their neutrality originates. At the same time and throughout the Early Modern period, Switzerland was rife withe religious zealotry going awry. It remained an impoverished agrarian country up until the 20th c.

m_mueller 5y ago

Much of this was thanks to General Dufour afaik, the federalist General. Can’t think of a better way to navigate 150k combatants to come out of this war basically unharmed, on both sides. The conclusion was foregone, but convincing everyone of this was the tricky part.

nabla9 5y ago
International Committee of the Red Cross and The First Geneva Convention are part of General Dufour's legacy. He was one of the Henry Dunant's "Committee of the Five".
- m_mueller 5y ago
  Having a person at the helm who actually experienced the horrors of industrial warfare was a lucky break I guess. Maybe Swiss overall had enough memories and experience with severe poverty and warfare to be motivated for a change. Btw. in many ways the US was a model for the new Swiss Republic as the Swiss must have felt very close to the American independence movement, having had a similar history dealing with foreign powers. It's kind of a shame that this closeness faded in the 20th century, but in its basic political setup Switzerland still is a mini-US in Europe, just with the major addition of direct democracy - something in turn that I'd hope the US could adopt in order to bring new life into its political system.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Karlsonn 5y ago
    There is very very little overlap between US and Swiss culture. The swiss were known for being good mercenaries and for living in such rugged terrain that few nations dared to take them over. Unlike the US, the Swiss have universal healthcare, free education and a banking secrecy law. Politically, unlike the US, the Swiss have a council of 5 elders instead of a president. They also have direct voting rights so the citizens can influence the decisions their country makes. for example: to buy or not to buy fighter jets. socially, the Swiss are much different from the US, giving women a right to vote in 1978. Also having mandatory military service and strong workers protection rights. In which way is Switzerland mini-US?

KennyBlanken 5y ago

Astonishingly polite indeed, compared to them claiming neutrality in WW2, yet: - shooting dead American soldiers they found inside Switzerland who had escaped from German POW camps - abusing banking privacy laws to seize bank accounts from murdered Jews (who had been using Swiss banks for a number of years because they saw the writing on the wall), refusing to grant access to surviving relatives - happily accepting Nazi gold, knowing much of which was melted down jewelry and dental fillings collected from the ashes of human incinerators. Post WW2, Switzerland was required to return twelve percent of the gold they accepted from the Nazis.

ggm 5y ago
Yes, this is insufficiently discussed, as is the sweden/rare-earths issues. Not ALL POWs were shot, but it wasn't all drinks on the balcony of the sanitorium until 1945
- bedobi 5y ago
  Oh man, the Swedes stubbornly taking pride in being "neutral" really grinds my gears first of all, given how much Sweden helped the nazis, including literally transporting nazi troops to invade neighboring countries, and providing resources etc, they can hardly be called neutral, second, in a conflict of *literal nazis* vs everyone else, being neutral is nothing to be proud of - any sane person can see that but Sweden's education system very successfully brainwashes the population into eating that nonsense up, hook line and sinker
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    To a significant degree the complete failure of the allied defense of Norway (not help by Norway complete incompetence of defending itself) plays a significant role here. It is one of those under-appropriated parts of WW2. Had Norway been defended Sweden would have been in a massively different position. They could have exported Iron Ore to Britain instead and Britain would have been in a position to help Sweden in its defense from potential German attack. The Sweds had the Germans very close on one side and practically no other trading partner to sell to. Iron ore was vital to the Germans and there is no question they would have gone to war to get it, Germany controlled all export routes. At the same time you have the Soviets, who are now often seen as the second biggest evil, but this was not at all clear back then. Lets remember that the Soviets had just conducted the Katyn massacre for example. The Soviets had invaded Finland and all the Baltic states. And their treatment of those places was far harsher then the Nazis were in Norway. 10000s of people from the Baltic states were transported to the Gulags at that time and most were never seen again. So Sweden was stuck between a aggressive Germany and an aggressive Soviet Union with no way for the allies the help them in any meaningful way. Germany very much had the capability of invading Sweden, specially once they controlled Norway. Just as the Swiss had no question that if Germany wanted to they could invade and take most of Switzerland. Not being in that positions its easy for us now to be morally outraged. However, at the time a wrong choice could lead things mass starvation, air attacks against civilian population, mass rape and many other things. > second, in a conflict of literal nazis vs everyone else You should go back and actually look at WW2. It was not Nazis vs everybody else. In fact, because of Soviet actions in Finland, Baltic, Romania and so on, it was actually the case that many countries looked to Germany to protect them from the Soviets. Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia were allies of Germany. And Italy of course but for other reasons. > they can hardly be called neutral, Diplomatic neutrality does not mean you treat everybody equally. I don't know about Sweden as much. But Switzerland changed is policies quite a bit once the allies had freed France and a Nazi invasion was no longer as acute a possibility.

ccakes 5y ago

There has been a similarly polite disagreement about land between Canada and Denmark, however from the Wikipedia page it looks to have been resolved as of ~2005 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky_War

goodcanadian 5y ago
Not resolved, but Both countries agreed on a process in 2005 to resolve the issue. AFAICT, nothing has really changed since then. Another example that might interest you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machias_Seal_Island https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machias_Seal_Island

aunty_helen 5y ago

> Yet, leave it to the Swiss (those masters of neutrality) to give us at least one example of a truly civil war The same Swiss that banned their citizens from joining mercenary armies after two predominantly Swiss mercenary armies slaughtered each other.

nix23 5y ago
Just hope the pope (pun intended) never attacks us.
magnuspaaske 5y ago
Fascinating. Do you have a link so we can read more about the mercenary fiasco?

dgb23 5y ago

Another example of the Swiss being polite and avoiding bloodshed during extreme conflict was the general strike of 1918. It lasted two days but the strike leaders capitulated after being threatened by the Swiss military. It could have ended rather brutally. After the strike there was a phase of reforms for workers and democratic rights. It was understood that there had to be good faith negotiation with unions from there on.

lukasfischer 5y ago

Very interesting article for me. I actually grew up in Gisikon (where the battle of Gisikon took place) and my parents still live there. Altought the battle of Gisikon was somewhat a key event in the formation of the modern swiss state (which was founded in 1848), the battle was not a topic in our school curriculum. One funny thing: There is one small remembering-stone right next to the town hall which nobody knows what it’s all about…

stavros 5y ago
Not very on-topic, but I find the notion of a forgotten remembering stone hilarious.
- lukasfischer 5y ago
  Astonishingly polite remembering :D

Synaesthesia 5y ago

In contrast to most European wars which were save gully barbarous in their conduct and ignored human life.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jamisteven 5y ago

Having lived here for the past 3 years I would say that this was less about being polite and more about avoiding human interaction, which is something I find quite common in Swiss culture even today. Highly introverted and wanting to stick to ones self is the norm here. Villages so quiet you could hear a mouse fart.

ToolsDevler 5y ago
You lived somewhere and are speaking for the whole country... I live in Zurich (the city) since 2015 (and my wife since 2018) and we have the opposite experience. Small talks with strangers and totally open converations with swiss people if you want. But you have to be open for it. If you are an introvert yourself, people mostly just respect that and cut conversation to a minimum. And yes, Im speaking mostly for Zurich City as part of Switzerland, not Switzerland as a whole.

hogrider 5y ago

If you liked this you should know about endemic warfare and ritualistic warfare, in the most civil examples it amounted to a very intense game apparently where they'd just raid for stuff or women without killing each other. Sicilian decade long vendeta feuds are something like endemic warfare.

IMAYousaf 5y ago

I like the characterization so much of a "polite armed conflict". Seems almost cartoonish.