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#6. Good historical overview comment on how the Swedes helped save the lives of many European Jews fleeing the Nazis.

Re Sweden dealing with both sides, they had no choice re Germany, who threated to invade and take them over if they didn’t trade with Germany and let German troops go thru their country. Sweden had no army to speak of and it would have been a slaughter as the Poles suffered resisting the German might.

Switzerland did something similar in that it dealt with all countries in its officially recognized capacity as a NEUTRAL non-combatant and Humanitarian country (Sweden also had that type of status).

Much of European WW2 espionage was based in Switzerland as well as the trade business in watches-clock mechanisms, etc. which were used for time-delayed fuses in ammunition and bombs.

The caught-in-the-middle positions of both Sweden and Switzerland will be debated by historians for many more decades but when viewed from an outside perspective, officially they had no choice except to play the game.

One thing Germany did NOT want to do was to invade Switzerland where every male had a rifle/ammo, the whole country was honeycombed with caves, and roads would have been easily blown up.

Several members of my synagogue were given asylum in Switzerland. A few were turned back at the border but survived with the help of friendly Austrians. Others were held in “camps” in Vichy France or escaped the Nazis in Germany only to be turned back at the Russian borders by the Soviets (they went into the forests to hide and/or fight as partisans. Others were killed in the camps).

War is very complicated but so is the history of what really went on. After 50 years I’m still writing about what went on in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos as new documents and memoirs emerge, and as new “views” of events were posulated.

Even being there, as I was as a journalist, only gives one a segment of time/events perspectives though a few new books by Vietnam Veterans for Factual History (VVFH.org - the Yellow Yearbooks, 1963-75), provide many often unknown or unread on-the-site memoirs from those who served in every capacity from ground pounders/soldiers to naval personnel, Air Force vets, POWs, US civilian aid and foreign service officers, provincial advisors, presidential advisors, and from researchers who are dedicated to finding out/writing about the truth of the war (and it isn’t Ken Burns’ slanted, anti-American PBS crap).

The only part I’d disagree with is Sweden’s defense. They got more and more serious about national defense in the run up to the war and were arming furiously by 1939-1940. They had mandatory mass conscription and a fairly well trained and equipped army shortly. They also demonstrated how they could quickly blow up the iron ore mines Germany depended on by way of deterrence.

Sweden’s real problem is they are a relatively small country. There is only so much resistance they could have offered before being overwhelmed by the Wehrmacht - especially after the invasions of Denmark and Norway.

Switzerland’s case is different. Their terrain makes Blitzkrieg impossible, renders air power of much more limited use and is ideally set up for Defense. It would be very easy to blow up roads, bridges, tunnels, dams etc....to hold the high ground and force the enemy to fight uphill only to retreat to the next mountain and make him do it all over again. Key war material and personnel could be protected in tunnels. Invading Switzerland would be a nightmare.