Target Switzerland; Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II

Rockville Centre, NY: Sarpedon, 1998. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 24 cm. xii, [2], 320, [2] pages. Illustrations. Maps. Chapter Notes. Bibliography. Index. Ink marks on flyleaf. Stephen P. Halbrook is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and an author and lawyer known for his litigation on behalf of the National Rifle Association. He has written extensively about the original meanings of the Second Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment. He has argued and won three cases before the US Supreme Court: Printz v. United States, United States v. Thompson-Center Arms Company, and Castillo v. United States. He has also written briefs in many other cases, including the Supreme Court cases Small v. United States (pertaining to the Gun Control Act of 1968) and McDonald v. Chicago. In District of Columbia v. Heller, he wrote a brief on behalf of the majority of both houses of Congress. More broadly, his decades of research on the Second Amendment contributed to the intellectual foundation of the Heller decision. He has written many books and articles on the topic of gun control, some of which have been cited in Supreme Court opinions (Heller, McDonald, Printz v. United States). As the Nazi tide spread across Europe from the Pyrenees to the Volga, one nation stood free, albeit armed to the teeth - its flag unbowed in a sea of twisted crosses. This book examines German plans for the conquest of Switzerland, as well as Swiss preparations to resist the assault. After the fall of France the German Army was at the height of its power - but would "blitzkrieg" have worked in the Alps? On the other side stood General Guisan, with the best armed and trained citizens army in the world. Guisan planned to concede the lowlands and take his forces to the mountains - an "Alpine Redoubt" the Germans would later consider as unassailable. Stephen P. Halbrook provides a brief military history of Switzerland, from the days when its pikemen ruled supreme on medieval battlefields, through the American Constitutional debates during which Swiss militia example was considered by the United States, to the 20th century, when Switzerland fielded Europe's highest per capita of trained riflemen. The little-known magnitude of Alpine fortifications is examined, as well as Swiss military doctrine, including its concept of instant mobilization, and the record of its air force in border skirmishes with the Luftwaffe.