Why Switzerland never takes sides
Back in the Middle Ages, the Swiss were very good at winning wars. So good that they turned it into a thriving business. “Basically [mercenary service] was due to economic reasons,” said Laurent Goetschel, professor of political science at University of Basel and director of the research institute Swisspeace. “[The old Swiss confederacy] was a very poor country – it was not suitable for large-scale farming and it had no access to colonial resources and no sea access, so being mercenaries was just a source of income.”
And the Swiss were reliable winners, so it continued to be a good source of income – until they lost. The reckoning came at the Battle of Marignano in 1515 when the French and Venetians arrived with artillery and armoured cavalry, and the Swiss brought pikes and spears. Sadly, technology had passed them by.
“After that defeat, they realised they were good soldiers in their way but halberds are not much good against artillery,” Church said. “They then stepped back from getting involved in Europe’s major political things.” Instead, the Swiss rented themselves out almost exclusively to France, which kept them in the black and also solved the inconvenience of occasionally finding themselves on two sides of the same battle. “It didn’t happen all the time but when it did happen, it was extraordinarily worrying and encouraged moves to neutrality,” Church said.
During this time, it became clear that the Swiss had fought too many wars on too many sides to be able to safely pick one for the long haul, especially when all the big powers wanted Switzerland for themselves because of the country’s strategic location guarding the Alps. So when the Congress of Vienna met in 1814–15 to sort out European peace after the French Revolutionary War (during which the Swiss had continued to serve as hired bodyguards for the French monarchy, including the last king, Louis XVI) and the Napoleonic Wars (during which the French invaded Switzerland and broke up the old confederacy), the Swiss put forth an elegant win-win solution for the whole continent: let us be neutral. This validation was key. As Goetschel points out, “Neutrality only makes sense if the other powers recognise you.”
Since then, Switzerland has basically been the non-partisan state we’ve all come to know. Stop by the statue of Charles Pictet de Rochemont to say thanks next time you’re in Geneva; he’s the soldier-[deleted]-diplomat who personally wrote the Swiss declaration of neutrality ratified by the Vienna Congress.
But then the World Wars happened, and that reputation was sorely tested, especially during WWII when Switzerland controversially bought Jewish gold from Nazi Germany and refused Jewish refugees. “From a Swiss perspective, [neutrality] was successful in so far as Switzerland wasn’t involved in fighting,” Goestchel explained. “There have been many debates if Switzerland was really neutral, especially in WWII, but it wasn’t involved in fighting activities.”
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/2017 ... ose-a-side
