Hitler question

[tulsamal]

Having been to Switzerland or not has nothing to do with anything.

The Wehrmacht could have rolled over Switzerland, albeit at a slower pace than their other conquests. They couldn't maintain total control of the countryside, but they could run all of the cities and the majority of the people. The mountains kept them relatively safe for centuries, but couldn't have saved the Swiss from continuous bombing raids, for example.

I can't agree with you. And I've lived in Germany and spent a lot of time in Switzerland. Hitler would have loved to have totally conquered Switzerland. All the money and gold in the bank vaults would have been his. After the Battle of Britain turned against them, the German military studied their next alternatives. Hitler wanted to invade the USSR for a variety of historical and ideological reasons but mostly for the "living space" and the natural resources. But it did bother him to have Switzerland sitting right there apparently immune to his army. So they did a study. The German military generals told Hitler that they COULD defeat Switzerland. They estimated the cost and time involved to be virtually identical to invading the USSR. So you can attack either one, which one gives you the longest advantage? Hitler chose the USSR.

Those mountains totally ring Switzerland. They are full of caves that are loaded with supplies and artillery. The tunnels that lead through the moutains are all booby trapped so they can be totally destroyed. You can't conquer a country by airpower. The US concluded after WWII that all the bombs dropped by the RAF and the US over Europe STILL was not the conclusive reason the west won the war. Air power alone can't do it. At least not with conventional explosives. And that was the US with all those tens of thousands of B-17's and B-24's. The Luftwaffe didn't even HAVE any sort of strategic bomber. You aren't going to do much of anything with long runs of HE-111's! The Luftwaffe wasn't able to defeat Great Britain from the air and that was a far closer and easier target. They possessed airfields right there on the other side of the Channel. No icy and tall mountains to fly over to limit your range or bombload. And they couldn't do it.

Gregg

 

[Axman]

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
--Albert Einstein

 

[Joe Demko]

Those who say the Swiss were spared because they were more valuable as an ostensibly neutral country are correct.

 

[Sharps-shooter]

Notice I was saying that it wasn't because of the armory of the population, but because of the lay of the land. Yes, the germans might have been able to take the swiss cities. Then they would have spent all their money trying to hold them, without really gaining enough stability to get anything accomplished. Just like the russians did in Afghanistan.

Sweden is similar. It gets cold in Sweden, and in some places there isn't a lot of what you would call infrastructure.

Russia is another place on my list of areas not to invade. You can't do it in a season, and once winter hits, you're doomed. Unless your surname happens to be "khan".

Read sun tzu. It's all in there. Situations change, but the principles governing them don't. Sun was an ardent observer of those principles.

 

[BigG]

Notice that most of the folks who talk about the Swiss experience don't mention the Swedes as unconquerable as the Swedes aren't on the gun list superstar list.

Wow - that is an interesting comparison. I didn't know the Swiss were on the "gun superstar list." What? for the SIG Neuhaeusen? (P210) surely nothing else they have is anywhere near on any superstar list that I know of.

I've heard as much about the Swedish Mauser as I have the Schmidt-Rubin or whatever the Swiss gun is.

 

[yhtomit]

stoky -- what "catchy line" do you mean?

Stoky wrote:

Government schools teach a leftist revisionist history that begins with MLK. The Constitution is rendered null and void by a catchy line from the Declaration of Independence.

Could you clarify? I'm not blinking to what you mean there.

Cheers,

timothy

 

[GEM]

By the superstar gun list, I meant:

1. We drool as they get to keep Sig 550 rifles in their homes.
2. They supposedly are the model of the milita that fended off the Nazi hordes - a model for why we need gun in the USA.
3. They have high gun ownership and a much lower crime rate.

In reality, all of these are more complex but that's why they are seen as high on our hit parade of countries.

I didn't mean the Sig as a gun being supreme - not that they aren't nice.

Furthermore, extra-aged Appenzeller constantly makes the best cheeses of the world list and is one of my favorites!!

 

[BigG]

Thanks, I get you now.

To me, the SIG guns of the Swiss Army's advantages are all theoretical. They've never been fired in anger.

 

[Thin Black Line]

It's also interesting to watch Red Dawn and realize how much crap that movie is too... right... commies parachute into Colorado in the middle of the cold war, and nobody shoots at them...

You must have missed the scene of the pistol being pried from the cold
dead fingers of the civilian in the street. However, this does illustrate
what happens when mag capacity is reduced to <10.

In ancient history there was no Pol Pot, no Stalin, American founding fathers were evil and the only atrocity ever committed was Hitler Nazi racism, which was fixed by Democrats.

Yes, this is what they would have people believe. They kind of forget the
ancient phrase of "put the village to the sword".....or that armies (mostly
the so-called civilized Romans) practiced decimation against their own troops
to enforce discipline.

 

[Michael Zeleny]

Wow - that is an interesting comparison. I didn't know the Swiss were on the "gun superstar list." What? for the SIG Neuhaeusen? (P210) surely nothing else they have is anywhere near on any superstar list that I know of.

The Stgw.57 is arguably the finest battle rifle ever built.

 

[kungfuhippie]

rachen wrote,
Today in China, owning a gun is about as difficult as owning one in California

I'm guessing you've never purchased a gun in either place.

 

[FLCLIFF]

I recently read Fighting Back by Harold Werner. As he was dying from cancer he told his sons about his time in the Jewish resistance in Poland in WWII. A remarkable book. His sons insisted he write down his experiences so he did. He died shortly after it was published. His sons asked him why so few fought back. He told them Jews were denied access to guns. NEVER AGAIN!

 

[Cosmoline]

Wesley Clark's quote was made on national television during the Democratic Primary I believe.

http://www.clark04.com/moore/

On the issue of gun control, this hunter and gun owner will close the gun show loophole (which would have helped prevent the massacre at Columbine) and he will sign into law a bill to create a federal ballistics fingerprinting database for every gun in America (the DC sniper, who bought his rifle in his own name, would have been identified after the FIRST day of his killing spree). He is not afraid, as many Democrats are, of the NRA. His message to them: "You like to fire assault weapons? I have a place for you. It's not in the homes and streets of America. It's called the Army, and you can join any time!"

I distinctly remember Clark saying it. The message was crystal clear--power belongs to the STATE, not the INDIVIDUAL. Absolutely chilling.

The whole debate about whether Swiss banks or Swiss rifles protected it is an old one, and there are many hundreds of threads on it. Consider this. Sweden didn't have banks, and Germany could have used her ports and resources. But Germany never invaded. And Hitler knew what happened to Stalin's army when he decided to invade a neutral nation with a well armed citizen army in 1939. Could the Germany army have taken over Switzerland? Certainly. But it would have been costly. An unarmed Switzerland, OTOH, could have been taken over without a shot and all her wealth folded into the Reich.

 

[SniperStraz]

Two of my grandparents were in the Jewish resistance

...in poland during WWII. They told me that in order to join the resistance one had to provide his/her own weapon. My grandfather said that you either had find one that a Pole picked up when the russians left the area, or you had to get one off of a dead German. So he went Nazi hunting. I still have a 1917 Luger from a Nazi that he killed. His whole family was murdered b/c they didn't have guns. Its like that bumper sticker says "Ask the experts, gun control works" and then it shows pics of Hitler and Stalin.

 

[Axman]

All in favor of gun control, raise your right hand!

 

[Art Eatman]

Enuf.

, Art