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PARTISAN REVIEW
posited a regime of unity at home , a new respect in the world, dynamic
energy, and the end of disorder in the streets and the government.
A dramatic, yet little known , case of the use of a highly emotive
national symbol as an antidote to realistic anxiety is the Swiss crisis of the
summer of 1940. With the capitulation of France on June 17, 1940,
Switzerland was surrounded on all four borders by the Axis powers.
Hitler's ground forces were engaged in neither East nor West; therefore,
it was a time of extreme danger for Switzerland. The President of
Switzerland, Marcel Pilet-Golaz, gave a Petainist radio address on June
25th, suggesting that Europe was under a New Order, Switzerland must
adapt to the New Europe, and "that the people shou ld follow the
government of a sure and devoted leader IFuhrer!, who will not always
be able
to
explain, elaborate, and give the reasons for his decisions. " The
army was to be partially demobilized, as though the threat to Switzer–
land had been from France. Pilet-Golaz said not a word about resisting
aggression.
However, not all Swiss were in concord with a mood of collabo–
ration with Hitler. A group of army officers were resolved not
to
sur–
render to Nazism and
to
fight it out to the end. General Henri Guisan
called a secret meeting of all commanding officers, from corps comman–
ders down to battalion commanders, a total of six hundred-fifty men, on
July 25th. They boarded a lake steamer on the Lake of the Four Cantons
and were taken to the meadow of Ri.itli, a site shrouded in myth and
sentiment in Swiss culture. Here in 1291 the three forest cantons had
pledged to each other an oath of perpetual mutual defense out of which
modern Switzerland was born. This meadow is a place hallowed by Swiss
history and tradition and known to all school children. The term Ei–
dgenossenschaJt
is the Swiss German expression for the federal union , syn–
onymous with "Switzerland" in official usage , and RLitli is synonymous
with Swiss patriotism and freedom. General Guisan's refle ctions on his
choice of site is telling:
I wanted to speak with them personally, eyeball to eyeball, as soldier
to soldier. I could have done it in any place or on another mcadow,
at Morgarten or perhaps at Sempach (sites of victorious battles against
the Austrians in 1315 and 1386 respectively), but no, it had to occur
here, on the meadow at Rotli, in the cradic of our independence, on
the soil that must conjure up so much in the spiritual vision of
everyone. I was convinced th at there everyone would understand me
better than in any other place.
General Guisan gave a short informal speech from penciled notes
evoking the theme of centuries-old Swiss independence and pledging
