Swiss War Game Envisages Invasion By Bankrupt French

An anonymous reader writes "The Telegraph reports, 'Hordes of bankrupt French invade Switzerland to get their hands on their "stolen" money — such is the imaginary scenario cooked up by the Swiss military in simulations revealed over the weekend. Carried out in August, the apparently outlandish army exercise was based on the premise of an attack by a financially stricken France split into warring regions, according to Matin Dimanche, the Lausanne-based daily. ... Operation "Duplex-Barbara" went as far as imagining a three-pronged invasion from points near Neufchâtel, Lausanne and Geneva, according to a map published in the Swiss newspaper. Behind the dastardly raid was a paramilitary organization dubbed BLD, the Dijon Free Brigade bent on grabbing back "money that Switzerland had stolen from Saônia". "For its credibility, the Swiss army must work (to ward against) threats of the 21st century," Antoine Vielliard, Hauate-Savoie councilor, told Matin Dimanche. However, Daniel Berger, captain of the Swiss armored brigade, sought to play down the specificity of the threat. "The exercise has strictly nothing to do with France, which we appreciate" he told the Swiss press. ... "French towns were cited to provide soldiers with a real scale," he said. ... Neutral Switzerland has not been invaded since the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. '"

Comments

Countries do this all the time

[JoshuaZ]

Countries prepare war games involving invasions to or from nearby countries all the time. This just isn't that big a deal. The US likely has plans to invade Canada if necessary (although at least publicly the last one was canceled in the 1930s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red), and almost certainly has plans to invade Mexico. The Swiss have made their entire foreign policy center around a combination of neutrality and being prepared to repulse any invader, so this shouldn't be at all surprising.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[Animats]

Countries prepare war games involving invasions to or from nearby countries all the time.

True, but Switzerland takes it up a level. Permanent tank traps in farmers fields, hidden military installations all over the country, bomb shelters, and a huge military reserve with regular training.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

I live just outside of Wengen, Switzerland. Every home in my town has a bomb shelter. It was required at the time it was built.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[DrFalkyn]

Countries prepare war games involving invasions to or from nearby countries all the time.

True, but Switzerland takes it up a level. Permanent tank traps in farmers fields, hidden military installations all over the country, bomb shelters, and a huge military reserve with regular training.

All purely defensive measures, which for a small country that hopes to repel potential invaders, while retaining their neutrality and not having rely on "allies" to bail them out, seem pretty reasonable.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[Karmashock]

And its paid off so far... no one has touched them. Less vigilant countries cannot make the same claim.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[AHuxley]

The Swiss had their plans for hidden installations, bomb shelters, and huge military reserve sites sold to the Soviet Union and who knows who else by trusted gov staff.
So the Swiss know most of their much older sites are mapped out and new works can be plotted in by any interested country.
Their officer corp unique in is training, part time officer support and the global private connections of its mid-top ranking "part time" officers.
That upper rank on the CV was always covered.
The Swiss also seem to have done a lot of work with the US war college system and seem to have a very good on going understanding of emerging US military education.
The US mil would also have very good, generational friendship in all things "Swiss".
The Swiss have spread the idea that they will let an army "in" and get stuck with constant small fights, blocked roads, a non helpful local population, raids....
ie make the price per road, tunnel, bridge repair, town, city way too costly.
Modern military thinking would just orbit ~drones...
Farmer ... enemy combatant, group of workers... high ranking enemy combatants meeting, car/truck/van moving ... enemy combatants moving heavy weapons or a leadership convoy.
The vision of the Swiss moving pre selected "civilian" trucks packed with vital war equipment is not so safe anymore.
The Swiss have one expensive option - bring total war to the enemy. Why ruin their small country when a much more 'clean' distant option exists :)

Re:Countries do this all the time

[Dave Emami]

Famous but probably-apocryphal conversation between a visiting German general and his Swiss counterpart, prior to WW2:

German: How many men are under your command?
Swiss: I can mobilize one million men in less than twenty-four hours.
German: What would happen if I marched five million men through that pass tomorrow?
Swiss: I would call up my men. Each man would fire five shots. Then I would send them home.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[cold fjord]

True, but Switzerland takes it up a level. Permanent tank traps in farmers fields, hidden military installations all over the country, bomb shelters, and a huge military reserve with regular training.

And for some of them, an almost fanatical dedication to the pope.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, what else should Switzerland do in their scenarios? Elbonia Invades? They only can pick France, Germany, Italy (on the other side of the alps...) and then they have a very small border with Austria. All four are ridiculous candidates. They simply do not have many candidates to chose from - and unless they want to go totally cliche, they cannot pick Germany.

They should be preparing for the most dastardly enemy of all, Lichtenstein. You think those "denture" factories produce false teeth? Think again. They are gearing up for war, it's only a matter of time.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[laejoh]

Oh my gawd, I didn't expect that!

Re:Countries do this all the time

[Chuckstar]

In fairness, Switzerland also wasn't really in anyone's way and has relatively easy to defend terrain. Is it really the case that the only reason Belgium (which also tried to stay neutral) fell to the Nazis was lack of vigilance?

Re:Countries do this all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Living outside a small town in Norway, this is common here too. Our bridges are also prepared for quick demolition. Same thing in Sweden.

I thought this was common all over Europe, not just Switzerland even if they are the only country commonly mentioned.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[rahvin112]

The difference is the US learned years ago to call the enemy force some made up name even if they are operating canadian weaponry and wearing canadian uniforms. The press eats this shit up and loves to blow it out of proportion. Logic says the military plans for every contingency but idiots get riled up to learn neighboring country has plan.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[someone1234]

So, terrorists don't have much to do?

Re:Countries do this all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Switzerland is one of the most strategic points in Europe. For thousands of years being able to control those mountain passes meant the ability to take nearly the whole continent.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[rapidmax]

That's not true anymore. The explosives has been removed year ago.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Terrorists are such a vanishingly irrelevant problem that it's not on the scale of things we even need to protect ourselves against. We need to protect against vending-machine related accidents before we need to deal with terrorism. Or wide-spread robbery of public funds by the financial sector.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[N3x)(]

In Sweden this practise is being discontinued. Premade drillholes are being filled with concrete and such. I doubt any of swedens larger infrastructure has these devices anymore.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[Sique]

I often compare the number of people dying in a terrorist attack in Germany with the number of people dying due to suffocation by a fishbone (because I have the numbers for both). During the last 40 years, there were less than 200 deaths in Germany caused by known terrorist groups (32 of them killed by the Red Army Fraction, 10 by the National Socialist Underground). Every year, 700 people choke on a fishbone, which gives us 28000 fishbone related deaths in the last 40 years.

When do we start the War On Fishponds?

Re:Countries do this all the time

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

Naming defense structures after a candy bar has to be one of the coolest things I've heard of a country ever doing.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[gl4ss]

yeah and switzerland didn't really matter.

switzerland WAS one of the most strategic points in europe. it ceased to be that long time ago. especially for hitler who had allies on other side of the alps anyways.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[drinkypoo]

In fairness, Switzerland also wasn't really in anyone's way and has relatively easy to defend terrain.

In fairness, Switzerland was already known for banking and the Nazis needed their services as much as anyone else.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[drinkypoo]

You wouldn't believe the number of people here who seriously believe that Switzerland is sitting on "massive french tax-evaded riches", just because the government implied it over and over as it was doing all it could to avoid bankruptcy.

Even if it were true, how would invading Switzerland help? The money would go out the back door as they went in the front. The only solution is to clean up the mess at home, and address the future. The past is already past.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[Karmashock]

By folded you mean what?

The swiss have been making a fortune by acting as a tax evasion haven for Europeans. The dirty little hypocrites have been saying one thing and doing another for generations. And I apply that to most of the EU.

So the Swiss start expanding their game to US clients and shockingly the US IRS isn't as willing to play that game.

We're always told about the taxes in europe. But one of the secrets is that the tax enforcement agencies in europe are a joke compared to the IRS. Income in France for example is negotiable. That is you can bargain about what your income actually was that year. The IRS isn't interested in your bargains. They want to know what you made and on what and when. The IRS is not f'ing around. True, they're getting scammed pretty hard by the multi nationals but its unclear as to why that is happening. It could be bribery or it could be just getting out played. I suspect they're mostly getting out played. The Multinationals like to bury bureaucracies in details until their eyes bleed. IBM famously gave the government something like 5 million documents in a court case involving monopoly charges. Case went on for a decade because the government had to read through all the documents. Which took hundreds of people that whole time. By the time the government got around to making a case it was too late and no one cared anymore.

Microsoft did the same thing. Enron TRIED to do the same thing but it didn't work.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[AmiMoJo]

Conventional war in western Europe is almost unimaginable now. There really isn't much point each country having strong internal defences.

The Swiss do it because they like the idea that everyone does military service and it provides useful employment and economic benefits. As you say, their military serves little practical purpose these days.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[Joce640k]

That's not true anymore. The explosives has been removed year ago.

I guess the chances of a land invasion by Europeans is pretty slim compared to 60 years ago.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[tigersha]

The nazis has a plan to invade Switzerland, Operation Edelweiss. They did not commit to it because while the operation was certainly doable Switzerland's rugged terrain and well trained militia would have caused unacceptable losses to the Wehrmacht. So they let it go. All the surrounding countries were in Nazi hands or allied in any case so it was not worth the fuss.

Yugoslavia was a different matter because it was on the way to Greece which the Nazis considered important to improve control of the eastern mediterranean. Not that that plan worked out very well. The med was a British lake through the war.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[Karmashock]

Not really.

Its a rational response to an out of control tax and spend system.

People... any people... are not going to put up with it.

In the US they mostly try to get the laws changed and the taxes set to reasonable levels so that everyone can do their jobs and no one needs to play games.

In much of europe that battle was lost which means the laws are frequently unreasonable and as a result people don't try to deal with the system reasonably. Instead, they bore wormholes through it and try as much as possible to simply avoid it.

This is most common in Italy but you see it in France and germany as well.

Set the tax rates at reasonable levels and people will pay them. Be unreasonable and people are going to subvert the system. Its that or death. We really don't have a choice on the matter.

Be reasonable or be treated like you're unreasonable.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[khallow]

In Germany, currently, not in the Middle East or Africa. Algeria for example lost somewhere between 40k and 200k people to a nasty ten year civil war and it has a population about a third that of Germany. Even at the lower estimate, that's more than an order of magnitude greater than the alleged death rate from fishbones.

And if as I suspect, the 700 choking deaths from fish bones per year is over the world's population rather than Germany's population, then you're looking at a three orders of magnitude difference.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[dunkelfalke]

I live in Germany, pay the taxes and don't consider them unreasonable. In fact, they were higher 20 years ago (and Germany was better off back then as well).

Re:Countries do this all the time

[shia84]

I've served as field transmission soldier and command staffer in our military for 10 months... reasonable is not exactly a fitting adjective. There's no enemy (except for jokingly mentioning Lichtenstein etc.) we could hold up against, and our main defensive strategy (still basically the Reduit/Bison plan) is just WTF-ish: fully abandon the ~20 biggest cities, most of the population, all industry, nearly all agriculture and hole up in the alps waging guerilla warfare.

We're a country of 8 million and had a military strength of ~0.8 million 30 years ago (keep in mind it's a militia system, that's basically 800k Ueli's [=Joe Public] with a rifle). After the reductions are completed, we'll have roughly 80k militia by 2020. If you want to use the word "reasonable", the continuation of this trend would be a good subject to apply it on.

The military expenses remain mainly penis enlargements for traditionalists, but as has been the case since even long before the French invasion, we absolutely have to rely on allies with actually large/modern militaries (probably northern/western Europe) to bail us out should pretty much any nontrivial invader decide to give it a go.

Diplomacy is our best defensive weapon and has been sufficient for the last two centuries (also: money). Plus there's not even a remote threat on the horizon except for "The Terrorists", though tanks and artillery have not exactly proven effective against those.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[bcmm]

True, but Switzerland takes it up a level. Permanent tank traps in farmers fields, hidden military installations all over the country, bomb shelters, and a huge military reserve with regular training.

It seems to work for them, though. How many countries have had nearly 200 years of peace?

Re:Countries do this all the time

[nukenerd]

Terrorists are such a vanishingly irrelevant problem We need to protect against vending-machine related accidents before we need to deal with terrorism

There is only a mildly negative feedback loop wrt vending machine accidents. The makers might put a little more effort into the safety of the next design, and I might be a bit more careful if I hear of a friend being hurt by one (I never have).

OTOH, there is a very strong positive feedback loop with regard to crime, including terrorism. If potential criminals hear of others getting away with it, they are likely to try their luck too. If you want an example of that, it is the London riots last year when looters came out in force when they heard that the police had lost control (or never took control) and others were getting rich pickings.

By your reasoning, we should repeal the law against murder, because murders are really quite rare.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[nukenerd]

in the UK, we generally focus our efforts on keeping invaders out rather than worrying about them getting in.

No, around 1950 Britain stopped trying to keep any invaders out. There are now millions of people here of foreign origin, increasingly in positions of control, originally invited or let in because some people saw some short-term advantage to themselves. Even recently, Tony Blair welcomed immigrants as more likely to be Labour voters.

A very similar situation to when the Romano-British leader Vortigern invited the Saxons to Britain around 450 AD because he wanted them as allies against other rival Romano-British tribes and the Northern Celts. It ended with the Saxons driving the Romano-British (the ones they did not manage to massacre), including Vortigern himself, into the Western corners of the island (Wales and Cornwall), and some even to France (Brittany) where they are resentfully licking their wounds even to the present day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortigern

Re:Countries do this all the time

[cold fjord]

Terrorists are such a vanishingly irrelevant problem that it's not on the scale of things we even need to protect ourselves against.

Terrorism appears to be a small problem in the West since it is under control and active measures are being taken. The result of that is a regular stream of arrests and prosecutions of would-be terrorists in many countries, such as the US and UK. If you want to abandon all efforts at suppressing terrorism, then you should expect truck bombs at public events and massacres at shopping malls as other parts of the world experience. It isn't magic rocks protecting you, it is intelligence work and police work.

Re:Countries do this all the time

[cold fjord]

Times change. Europe will be undergoing big changes in the next 50 years. The EU is barely holding together now in some respects, and the Euro itself is in danger. Such military concerns may become necessary again in our lifetime. We haven't reached the end of history yet.

Reality is Stranger than Fiction

[VortexCortex]

Just wait till the shut-down the government in USA.

It'll be like Tienanmen Square, but with tanks vs smart phone slinging teenage mutant ninjas.

Even worse! All of the 401ks are backed by the stork market.... Another crash and it'll be 60 something hippies in business casual firing Ronald Rayguns.

Not to worry!

[Black Parrot]

Neutral Switzerland has not been invaded since the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century.

By, uhm, France.

Re:Not to worry!

[grelmar]

Yah, and that worked so damn well in A-Stan that America eventually just quietly started wandering off the field after a decade and declared "Victory" by handing the problem off to a puppet government they created - knowing full well that all the leaders of said puppet government are going to be up against a wall within five years of the last American troops pulling out.

All that tech, and the American/NATO militaries couldn't defeat an insurgency supported by a population with a tech level roughly on par with 10th Century Bulgaria.

Why? Because if the locals don't want you, and have access to even rudimentary firearms, sooner or later, you gotta just leave.

And the Swiss have some very nice rifles, and also hold an annual nationwide marksmanship contest (the largest marksmanship contest in the world at 200,000 participants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland).

Oh, and for reference on what a cranky old Afghan can do with an antique rifle vs. a highly trained Marine unit... http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=327_1301285726&comments=1

Quite playing COD and read a history book. Your perception of how warfare plays out is deeply misguided.

It won't go well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this, because I'm old enough to have googled French military victories .

Nukem

[linear a]

Nuke The Swiss And Steal Their Gold.

Operation "Duplex-Barbara"..?

[drkim]

I saw a movie called "Duplex-Barbara" once, but it was about this girl named Barbara taking a shower (in her duplex), and then the Pizza delivery guy arrives.

Now that I think about it - there was some French kissing in it...

Why Switzerland ?

[o'reor]

That's ridiculous. Why would the French army go to the pains of crossing the alps and trying to invade a country that has atomic shelters everywhere, a well trained national guard and a good army (or reputedly so), when it would only take two days and an infantry division to invade filthy-rich Luxembourg ?

Add a navy operation on Jersey, Guernesey and Sark to hunt down rogue bankers in neighouring tax havens for good measure, and voilà !

Re:They're paranoid about their wealth

[aardvarkjoe]

To preempt right wing whining, I refer to Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on Latinos: "there's another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert." http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57598020/rep-steve-king-stands-by-divisive-immigration-comments/ By the way, this asshat thinks he has a shot as the next Republican President.

You know, if you're going to resort to bald-faced lying by misrepresenting what someone says (hint: that comment was not about "Latinos" in general), you probably shouldn't link to a source that includes the quote in context.

Re:What an odd premise...

[stymy]

You underestimate how much money is in Switzerland. Think trillions.

Re:Historically...

[z0idberg]

I'd count staying the fuck out of Iraq as a pretty big win.

Wish I could say the same for my country.

Re:How about an opponent that has actually won a w

[Anonymous Coward]

That whole thing isn't even funny, it's just emblematic of American ignorance. Given that American independence was only won because of the French through to the fact that America lost, or at least, didn't win, in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan to name just a few it seems a bit rich for Americas to have both made up that myth in the first place and keep persisting it.

I'm from the UK and we really do have a decent track record of defeating the French but I still have more respect for them than I do the US military simply because even with us defeating them a few times they've still won a lot more, and lost a lot less than the US ever has and also because when we've fought alongside the French we've been victim to far less friendly fire incidents than we have suffered from fighting alongside America. Even during World War II the French resistance had an excellent track record of sabotaging the Germans.

You only have to look at Libya and Mali which were French led and compare them to Iraq and Afghanistan which were American led to see that when France goes to war, it more often than not, achieves it's goals quickly and cleanly (the same can be said of the UK: Falklands, Sierra Leone etc.). When America runs a war, it normally loses, and manages to do so over a period of a decade or more costing it thousands of lives and billions of dollars until it's forces lose popular support and just get yanked out with their tail between their legs.

Re:They're paranoid about their wealth

[Xest]

No it wasn't. A lot of money in Swiss banks is money held by the owners illegally, we're not talking about tax avoidance here, we're talking about out and out tax evasion.

Switzerland has gotten rich by allowing criminally obtained money to be stored in it's banks and then refusing to cooperate with the authorities of nations from where it was obtained illegally.

We're talking literally billions of dollars that do not belong to the people Switzerland is letting keep it being held in Swiss banks which the Swiss banks, like pretty much all banks, then use to invest and make themselves wealthier.

Switzerland has very much gotten rich off the back of illegally obtained money. This is the problem with most tax havens and especially Switzerland - it's not just that they act as a low tax place for tax avoiders to stash billions, it's the fact that they also allow tax evaders to store money that does not belong to them.

The fact is that if Switzerland wasn't complicit in supporting criminality in just about every other nation in the world it wouldn't be even close to as wealthy as it is now, and that's what the GP was referring to - that the Swiss know full well if shit went down financially then people are going to come knocking and demand the Swiss hand back all that illegally held money and hence the reason they come up with such scenarios is because they know full well they're guilty and hold such illegally obtained funds in the first place.

A sign of the times

[hpa]

It is a good sign of the times how far things have advanced that a country in Western Europe cannot come up with any military exercise scenario which can be considered credible. This hasn't exactly been the norm, to put it mildly. At this point in time, the risk of a war in Europe is largely confined to the Balkans, and even there is looking increasingly unlikely that we'll have a full-scale return to fighting.

Re:They're paranoid about their wealth

[Xest]

I don't think so, the number of French people living in London now exceeds one million I believe making it the 5th largest French city in the world. I think it's already lost :)