Swiss to vote on ending Militia system

[regexcellent]

Not to mention, the terrain would have been pretty much a non-factor if the Swiss had a small army. Climbing up mountains may be difficult, but it's people shooting down at you that makes it really costly.

Besides which, the tallest mountains are in the south. The northern part looks more like West Virginia.

[SlowwHand]

Because of the long history of neutrality, the army does not take part in armed conflicts in other countries, but does take part in peacekeeping missions around the world.

They may be neutral, but Swiss are renowned for their efforts.

[MRT144]

Strategic advantage of Switzerland?

I think itd be nice to have an entity hold on to your money just in case things go south. If you need to roll em they're right there.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Didn't the Swiss avoid getting invaded by Germany because they basically hid all the higher ups' money?

Why can't that happen again?

[regexcellent]

Switzerland didn't get invaded because it was already surrounded by the Axis and there were higher priorities.

[Felch]

Didn't the Swiss avoid getting invaded by Germany because they basically hid all the higher ups' money?

Why can't that happen again?

Hide their money from whom? Nazis weren't too concerned about legal oversight. And that theory ignores what we know about Operation Tannenbaum.

[Ben Kenobi]

I don't understand why right wing idiots want America to more resemble... say... Somalia.

Never took Felch for a sharia law supporter.

[Dinner]

Didn't the Swiss avoid getting invaded by Germany because they basically hid all the higher ups' money?

Why can't that happen again?

Yes and no. Yes they were very cooperative with the Nazi regime convincing it that it was more valuable to them as a friendly neutral (both by laundering money but also even by cooperating to prevent people escaping into Switzerland) but another part of the deterent was that they had a decent sized army with really good mountain defenses. I'm sure it didn't hurt that Switzerland really wasn't worth invading to begin with.

[Lonestar]

Never took Felch for a sharia law supporter.

Somalia is the end state for all Libertarian circle-jerks. "I hate government! We need a place where government is nearly non-existent. Let the free market sort things out!"

[Hauldren Collider]

Wrong. Libertarian thought doesn't devolve into anarchy, because anarchy actually results in authoritarianism. Anarchy doesn't really exist. Someone is ruling somebody. Government is just the biggest and toughest organized crime syndicate in the neighborhood. Ours happens to have elections.

There are people who do think that we should have essentially no central government and believe it would somehow magically work, but they aren't libertarians, they're anarchists.

[kentonio]

Didn't the Swiss avoid getting invaded by Germany because they basically hid all the higher ups' money?

No.

[kentonio]

Because if there was one thing the German military was infamous for during WW2, it was making sober assessments of the environment while war planning.

The German high command made careful plans and sober assessments of most things they planned on doing. Hitler had a habit of forcing issues however.

So the Germans just looked up and said, "nope, not climbing that, lets go freeze on the steppes instead!"

The plan (Operation Tannenbaum like Felch mentioned) hoped to draw out the Swiss army to be destroyed. There was however a very real danger that the Swiss would simply pull back its army and citizens into the more mountainous region and then successfully completing the operation could have been hugely costly. Then again there was also a chance that the whole thing could have been pulled off peacefully, as another anschluss. If they'd tried the threat of invasion however and it had turned into a war in the mountains, that would have potentially dragged on and tied up large amounts of troops that would be more useful for Barbarrossa or other operations. The German plan was for 11 divisions and 15 Italian divisions.

It's become a bit of a stupid conservative talking point that they didn't get invaded because of their gun ownership. That's just idiotic however.

[SlowwHand]

It's better than throwing rocks.

[Lonestar]

The German high command made careful plans and sober assessments of most things they planned on doing. Hitler had a habit of forcing issues however.

No, not really.

Lots of German higher ups post-war tried to blame their general incompetence on Hitler. People read postwar writings by Guderian and that crowd, and took at face value their statements that foisted the blame on Hitler. Which, of course, conveniently absolves them of all (military) wrong.


What really happened was after the Fall of France they drank their own Kool-aid and assumed that everything would happen as planned, and the plans themselves made a lot of assumptions that hinged on everyone they fought being raging idiots.

[kentonio]

No, not really.

Lots of German higher ups post-war tried to blame their general incompetence on Hitler. People read postwar writings by Guderian and that crowd, and took at face value their statements that foisted the blame on Hitler. Which, of course, conveniently absolves them of all (military) wrong.

What really happened was after the Fall of France they drank their own Kool-aid and assumed that everything would happen as planned, and the plans themselves made a lot of assumptions that hinged on everyone they fought being raging idiots.

Sorry that's completely inaccurate. Barbarossa for instance (although based on faulty intelligence of Soviet troop numbers) was originally a fairly sound plan. Hitlers interference in it, and insistence on certain aspects taking precedence over others led it to fail. His interference grew as the war progressed.