61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

the civil leaders, had a similar influence. It is no secret that he was no great
friend of parliamentarianism and liberal democracy. 85 In 1934, he expressed his
great admiration for the Italian dictator: «The great merit of this man, of this
genius, is to have been able to discipline the nation’s various forces.» 86 It is
characteristic of Henri Guisan that he was more concerned about the popular
front government in France in 1936 than about the Nazi regime in Germany.
He declared to a French contact: «[...] Germany? Yes…of course…, but it is not
Germany that worries us at the moment…, it’s you.» 87 Accordingly, he
supported the ban on Communist parties in the French-speaking part of
Switzerland and maintained friendly relations with Pétain until 1944.
Nonetheless, the General grew to his task and was soon able to develop a good
relationship with the Social Democrats. 88 Guisan was the central integrating
figure of the wartime period and embodied the spirit of resistance to such an
extent that efforts to relativise this at a later date met with vehement rejection
from the older generation. 89
National solidarity and new tensions
The national solidarity and spiritual cohesion which had grown from 1935/36
and formed a firm basis for co-operation by 1939/40 experienced a certain
weakening during the war years, described by some with the analogy of a
«tunnel». In the years from 1939 to 1942/43, the parties practised an internal
and party-political moratorium with no real formal agreement, resulting in a
kind of truce. The real scandal regarding the attempt to remove the chief editors
of the main liberal newspapers in 1940 – the so-called petition of the «two
hundred» – was not part of any complicated submission to the expectations of
the Reich. It consisted in the fact that the right-wing bourgeois circles wanted
to use the moment of national crisis to settle the score with exponents of more
left-wing positions, thereby ending the truce. 90 This rigid stance, which in
different times and under different circumstances would have signified
weakness, proved here to be a strength. Switzerland reacted to external influences
and internal disruptions with, as Herbert Lüthy said, a combination of
individual and collective defence reflexes, with no central organisation or
planning and no commando headquarters, and proved itself to be «a more
viable, loosely structured but cohesive social body» which took spontaneous
action in order to maintain the status quo. 91 This stance also produced a healthy
portion of scepticism against the high ambitions of the national government
and certain stage-managed bourgeois moves.
After 1940, however, relations between employers and the workforce began to
deteriorate. Despite a price surveillance operation, an increase in consumer
prices could not be avoided due to the diversion of economic resources into the
80