Foreign Correspondent
Inside Track On World News
By International Syndicated Columnist & Broadcaster
Eric Margolis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
www.foreigncorrespondent.com
SWITZERLAND�S VALLEY OF DEATH
By
Eric Margolis Aug 15 1999
SARGANS, Switzerland - To the casual traveler, Sargans, a small town on
Switzerland�s border with Liechtenstein and Austria, looks like just
another scenic masterpiece in the world�s most beautiful country.
The bowl-shaped valley, five kms long by two kms wide, is girded by
soaring cliffs and snow-capped peaks. The headwaters of the Rhine flow
swiftly northwards through the narrow valley towards Lake Constance.
Nearby is the home of fabled Heidi, a mecca for busloads of Japanese
tourists, and further south, Chur and St. Moritz.
Sargans is the main gateway through the mountains into eastern
Switzerland. Any army seeking to invade Switzerland from this quarter
would quickly discover that idyllic, pastoral Sargans is also the Valley
of Death.
Thanks to the Swiss General Staff, army Maj. Krebs, and my hosts from the
8th Regiment of the elite Festungswachtkorps, or fortress guard corps, I
had the unique opportunity to inspect a part of the powerful
fortifications defending the Sargans valley. My expertise in modern
fortifications, and my schooling in Switzerland, convinced the Swiss Army
to permit me a look at some of the nation�s most highly-guarded military
secrets. So fanatical are the Swiss about secrecy that an officer who had
been stationed in one of the forts for ten years told me he was not
allowed to tell his wife where he was going each morning.
Convinced in 1940 that Hitler and Mussolini intended to invade
Switzerland, the Swiss constructed the `national redoubt,� a huge system
of at least 70 powerful, large artillery fortresses, and thousands of
smaller works, in only three years, at a cost of US $12 billion in today�s
dollars. The redoubt was built in Switzerland�s Alpine uplands and high
mountains, with three principal fortified zones at St. Maurice in the
Valais; the St. Gothard Pass; and Sargans. It has remained a secret for
50 years.
In the event of a German-Italian invasion, Switzerland�s 800,000 citizen
soldiers (out of a population of 5 million) were to abandon their families
and homes, and retreat into the mountain redoubt. The rest of Europe�s
professional armies might surrender to Hitler - Switzerland�s
citizen-soldiers were ordered to fight to the death. There would be no
surrender. General Henri Guisan commanded his troops to fight until their
ammunition was exhausted, then fight with their bayonets.
On a sheer rock face overlooking the Rhine stands the mighty fortress of
Tschingel, the Gibraltar of eastern Switzerland. At first, even I, a
trained fortress observer, only saw a sheer cliff the height of a 20-floor
floor building.
Then I finally discerned four levels of cleverly camouflaged gunports, or
creneaux, behind which were long-barreled 75mm and 105mm guns, mortars,
machine guns, observation posts, and huge white and infrared searchlights
that could illuminate the entire valley. Like most large Swiss forts,
Tschingel had a garrison of 400-500 men( but could hold up to 1,000), with
supplies to last for 90-120 days of combat. Below the fort, which is
reached by its own cable car, the Rhine�s banks had been mined to allow
Swiss Army engineers to flood the valley of Sargans.
I visited another powerful, multi-level fort, Magletsch, dug into a
mountain, and now used for training. Its three, 105mm gun turrets were
disguised, a la Heidi, as small Alpine chalets. Swiss are masters of
disguise. At Festung Gutsch, guardian of Gothard, the fort�s turrets are
camouflaged as large boulders. At Furigen, which guards the Gothard
highway at Stans, south of Lucerne, interlocking its fire with a hidden
fort on the famed Mt. Rigi at Vitznau, I walked right by the fort�s
trop-l�oeil creneaux without even noticing them. Similarly, all of the
Swiss Air Force�s 171 combat aircraft are hidden in caves dug into
mountain sides.
In 1995, the Swiss Army began decommissioning its WWII-era forts, which
were increasingly costly to garrison, maintain, and heat, replacing them
with more modern defenses. I was shown new, six-man `mini-forts,� housing
a 105mm-gun Centurion tank turret, completely hidden, but able to sweep
the valley and cover the new anti-tank barrier that bars the defile.
Smaller concrete bunkers with machine guns have replaced larger works dug
into the cliffs on either side of the valley. More interesting, and
highly secret, however, were new twin, 120mm mortar installations buried
underground on the terraced sides of the valley. Capable of rotating 360
degrees, the semiautomatic mortars can fire 20 rounds a minute, including
the Swedish Stryx anti-tank round, blanketing the entire valley with
deadly accurate, pre-targeted fire. The only visible portion of these
mortar positions are manhole-sized thick steel covers, camouflaged by farm
wagons parked on top of them.
In the heights above Sargans are 10 more major forts. Some are the new
`Bison� installations, such as I saw at Gothard: four, 155mm guns,
capable of firing their five-clip magazines in one minute to a range of 40
kms or more, including `bus� rounds carrying clouds of anti-personnel and
anti-tank submunitions. The `Bisons� and twin-mortars are replacing the
WWII artillery forts, producing more firepower at a fraction of the cost.
Each fort is manned and protected on the exterior by units of the army�s
three fortress brigades. The 400,000 -man Swiss armed forces ( recently
reduced from 600,000) still relies on forts to defend strategic points,
but its has adopted `dynamic defense� since 1995, relying on armored
brigades, equipped with 372 superb German Leopard-II tanks, and mechanized
Panzer grenadiers, backed by heavy artillery.
I attended field training at Col. Rossini�s officer�s combat course at
Wallenstadt, including live-fire infantry assaults and anti-tank
operations. Switzerland�s male soldiers, who are better educated and more
intelligent that troops in other western armies, serve annually from 20-42
years old (longer for officers). The handful of token females in service
are excluded from combat and relegated to minor support roles.
Swiss citizen soldiers are highly competent, serious, deadly professional
and the world�s finest marksmen. Interestingly, all Swiss soldiers keep
their automatic weapons and ammunition at home. Yet Switzerland has one of
the lowest murder rates anywhere.
Why does Switzerland still act as if it about to be invaded? As
Machiavelli observed four centuries ago, the Swiss are `most armed, and
most free.�
Switzerland is the world�s oldest democracy and the first nation in Europe
to win freedom from feudal rule. The Swiss are fiercely independent,
mistrust foreigners, and fear, with some reason, that outsiders covet
their strategic nation and its vast horde of wealth. A recent torrent of
false accusations that Switzerland collaborated with the Nazis, and
enormous payments for World War II it is being forced to make under
intense American pressure, have heightened the national sense of
xenophobia.
The Swiss knew the Soviet Army planned to defeat NATO in a vast replay of
the WWI Schlieffen Plan by cutting across defenseless Austria, invading
Switzerland at Sargans, then advancing on a Zurich-Neuchatel-Geneva axis
to erupt in east-central France near Besancon and Dijon, bypassing and
outflanking NATO forces further north, then racing for Paris and the
Channel. Intelligence sources in Moscow confirmed to me the existence of
this breathtakingly audacious plan.
But Festung Sargans, the other Swiss forts, and a nation at arms barred
the way to NATO�s vulnerable underbelly. In my view, the Red Army would
have been slaughtered by the ferocious cross-fire, minefields, flooded
zones, and obstacles of the Valley of Death, just as the Austrian imperial
knights were in the defiles at Sempach in 1393.
Many foreigners find the Swiss mania for defense Quixotic. I do not. The
Swiss, whom Hitler called `insolent herdesmen,� faced down Nazi Germany
and Fascist Italy in military confrontation, and were ready to do battle
with the armies of Stalin, who hated the Swiss for their independence and
capitalist system.
Switzerland will be ready when the next threat arises. Fortress Sargans
will continue its long, silent watch on the Rhine.
Copyright eric margolis 1999
********************************************************************************
********************************************************************************
---------------------------------------------------------------
To receive Foreign Correspondent via email send a note
to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message
in the body:
subscribe foreignc
To get off the list, send to the same address but write:
unsubscribe foreignc
WWW: www.foreigncorrespondent.com
WWW: www.bigeye.com/foreignc.htm
For Syndication Information please contact:
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FAX: (416) 960-4803
Smail:
Eric Margolis
c/o Editorial Department
The Toronto Sun
333 King St. East
Toronto Ontario Canada
M5A 3X5
---------------------------------------------------------------
