Harry Lime — the fabulous villain in the superb film The Third Man — opined about the Swiss: “Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love — they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!”
Of course, this was as historically false as it was insulting. The Swiss have never been pacifists; they have been fierce fighters, when necessary. In fact, Switzerland has the largest armed forces per capita of any European nation, and it still has the draft. At age 19, all men must undergo military training for five months, and they must take refresher training periodically until age 30.
Regarding Switzerland’s creativity, suffice it to say that among nations with a significant population (over a million citizens), it ranks first in per capita number of Nobel Laureates in the sciences.
All this was brought to mind by the story that in its most recent war games, the Swiss army conducted an exercise that simulated the invasion of Switzerland by — France!
Yes, the Swiss army is training for the scenario in which France, bankrupted by its welfare state excesses, splits into warring sections, and one of them (dubbed “Saonia”) decides to invade Switzerland, to steal its money.
Lord, is this not simply exquisite?
In the simulated invasion, Saonia is dominated by a paramilitary group called the Dijon Free Brigade (the “BLD”), which has convinced its followers that Switzerland somehow stole their money. The BLD invades on three fronts, near Geneva, Lausanne, and Neufchatel.
Considering how offensive the anti-“Saonia” exercise might be to the French — legendarily hypersensitive to slights, or perceived slights — a delicately defensive Swiss captain, Daniel Berger, noted that “the exercise has nothing to do with France, which we appreciate. . . . It was prepared in 2012, when fiscal relations between both countries were less tense.” But, as the article explains, since France elected its socialist government it has become more confrontational about secret Swiss bank accounts — no doubt because most of the productive French citizens who haven’t yet fled the country have hidden their assets abroad.
And this is not the first time the Swiss military has staged politically incorrect war games. Last year, its games simulated an invasion by hordes of southern European refugees after the collapse of something it dubbed “The European Single Currency.” Hmm . . . wonder what that might refer to?
I am moved to offer the plucky Swiss a suggestion for next year’s war games. The Obama neosocialist regime has also pressured the Swiss to provide access to banking information, since some productive Americans who have not yet fled this country are apparently hiding taxes from the president’s “you didn’t earn that” tax ambitions. So perhaps the Swiss should have war games structured around an imagined infiltration of American commando squads, to be dubbed the Obamanista Liberation Army (OLA). The OLA squads would spread through the Swiss countryside, staging attacks on banks, coordinated by their free Obamaphones.
Just a thought.
