61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

popular meaning of «Grenzbesetzung» (border occupation) that had existed to
date was undermined. From summer 1940 onwards, the term «Aktivdienst»
(active military service) became a key concept of political language. After 1945,
almost all Swiss defence activities were concentrated in this term with the result
that non-military activities, i.e., the all-important economic factors, were barely
acknowledged.
The economic national defence activities directed at the outside world were
based on close co-operation between the state and private economy and
consisted in the main of safeguarding the goods necessary for survival, i.e., fuel
and raw materials for industrial production and agriculture. In order to achieve
this, much skilled negotiation was necessary to make the double blockade ring,
consisting of the Western powers’ overseas blockade and the continental
counter-blockade of the Third Reich, as permeable as possible and the control
practices of the blockade guards as restrained as possible. The decision-makers
primarily considered foreign trade in terms of provisions and supplies, job
creation and also social peace. Little consideration was given to the question as
to whether these economic relations were in some cases less in the national
interest and more in the interest of private enterprise. The maximum of
attention was invested into taxing the enormous profits generated by the export
economy caused by the war, particularly in the arms industry. Max Weber (SPS)
of the National Council declared at the start of the war in 1939: «normal income
will not be touched, however anything beyond that must also be subject to the
military-oriented ‹conscription of property›» 110 He repeated in the autumn
session of 1940: «the principle that the war must not be permitted to lead to
individual financial gain should therefore be a guideline of Federal policy.» 111
A further form of national defence comprised the safeguarding of sales markets
in view of the post-war period. The worry about jobs or the fear of the «threat
of renewed mass unemployment» also dominated the thinking of the Socialist
Robert Grimm, who feared falling orders in the arms industry in June 1940.
2.4 The War and its Consequences
Since 1936 when Hitler breached the Treaty of Versailles and remilitarised the
Rhineland, which had been disarmed in 1919, the view was that another general
war in Europe was possible, likely or unavoidable. The «bringing home»
(«Heimholung») of the Sudetenland in autumn 1938 and the occupation of «the
rest of Czechoslovakia» («Rest-Tschechei») strengthened this view.
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