Between the Alps & A Hard Place: Switzerland in World War II and Moral Blackmail Today [Hardcover]

Angelo M. Codevilla (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2000

What really happened to the billions of dollars worth of gold seized by Nazi Germany? What role did the Swiss government play and what are the implications of neutrality during wartime? The author addresses these questions, presents the case for and against Switzerland, and applies the lessons learned from World War II to the broader issue of companies--and countries--profiting during wartime.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...Kritik am Verhalten der Schweiz im Zweiten Weltkrieg wurde primër mit Argumenten aus der moralisch-idealistischen Denktradition vorgetragen." -- Hans E. T³tsch, Neue Z³rcher Zeitung, 4 Oktober 2000

From the Inside Flap

Realpolitik and Moral Blackmail

In Between the Alps and a Hard Place, Professor Angelo M. Codevilla reveals how the true history of the Swiss in World War II has been buried beneath a modern campaign of moral blackmail that has accused Switzerland of secretly supporting Nazi Germany and sharing culpability for the Holocaust. Codevilla—who practiced real-life, hardball foreign policy as an intelligence adviser in the U.S. Senate—offers a primer on the realities of power politics, using the Swiss experience in World War II to illuminate the workings of the balance of power, military deterrence, economic leverage, and subversion.

But more, he exposes how current American leaders are ignoring the realities of international affairs by putting domestic politics and political payoffs ahead of the national interest.

In the context of World War II, Codevilla shows how tiny Switzerland successfully fended off an Axis war machine thirty times its strength and simultaneously made itself available as a lifeboat to Jewish and other ethnic refugees. The Swiss recognized that military power is the foundation of international relations, and they deterred a Nazi invasion by keeping their country more valuable to the Germans as a free nation than as a conquered one.

Codevilla documents how the anti-Swiss campaign offered no evidence for its shocking claims but still managed to shake down two of the largest banks of a friendly power for $1.25 billion. The campaign set a terrible precedent, whereby a powerful domestic interest group—and major donor to the Clinton-Gore administration—harnessed the power of the U.S. government to grossly distort history and secure a financial windfall. In the process, the larger interests of the United States were subverted for the sake of a favorite domestic constituency of the ruling party.

Between the Alps and a Hard Place is both thrilling World War II history and an exposé of the shameful selling of historical truth and American foreign policy for political gain.

Angelo M. Codevilla is a professor of international relations at Boston University. He has been a U.S. Naval officer, a U.S. Foreign Service officer, a senior staff member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and a senior research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His books include Informing Statecraft, War: Ends and Means (with Paul Seabury), and The Character of Nations. He lives in Dubois, Wyoming, and Wayland, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing; 1 edition (November 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 089526238X
• ISBN-13: 978-0895262387
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #670,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #59 in Books > History > Europe > Switzerland

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Worth Your Time, October 23, 2000

By 

L. M. Hadacek "lhadacek" (IOWA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Between the Alps & A Hard Place: Switzerland in World War II and Moral Blackmail Today (Hardcover)

Lively and extremely readable, this is also a first-rate work of history, spanning two time periods-the Second World War and the Clinton Administration. Dr. Codevilla brilliantly analyzes the genuine crisis faced by Swiss politicians and military leaders during the Second World War-how to deter an invasion by Hitler's seemingly invincible Wehrmacht, which by 1940 had left the tiny country completely surrounded. How also to import enough food and coal to keep the Swiss population alive for the duration of the war? How to manage both of these tasks, without surrendering Swiss independence to the hated Nazi regime-which had been threatening invasion and calling for the liquidation of Switzerland since at least 1937? Using original sources, Codavilla answers these questions, and adds important historical perspective and moral nuance to the picture which Americans gained of Switzerland and her citizens during the late 1990s. He also addresses forthrightly the behavior of Swiss banks regarding unclaimed assets of Jews murdered by the Nazis, and the involvement of the Clinton Administration in the politicization of Holocaust accounts.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Switzerland in WWII, a gratifying correction, June 4, 2001

By 

Dr. C.B. Burckhardt (Muttenz, Switzerland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Between the Alps & A Hard Place: Switzerland in World War II and Moral Blackmail Today (Hardcover)

Codevilla's writing is excellent and fluent and full of insight. He gives an excellent capsule history of Switzerland in WWII. I very much liked his approach of looking at several aspects: power, politics, economics and the military. Some of it I already knew more or less but it was very interesting to have everything together. He does give an objective view of the Swiss at the time: neither all heroes or cowards, nor all virtuous or villain, but by determination, cleverness and a generous amount of good luck managed to avoid a German invasion. He gives a very good picture of the unsatisfactory state of the Swiss army at the beginning of the war. Rightly he emphasizes the crucial role of General Guisan in uniting the people in their resistance. His role cannot be overemphasized. He was immensely popular; his picture hanging in almost all public places, inns and in many homes. Yet after the war he made no use of his popularity; having done his duty he became an ordinary citizen again.

The recent political machinations of US pressure groups to extract money from Swiss banks are very revealing. I suspected something along these lines, but the details of it are very interesting, how monetary contributions to the Democratic party bought the power to extort much more money from the Swiss banks. As to the consequences Codevilla again is very insightful: the image of America abroad suffered. What the author only covers lightly (out of politeness?) are the role of the Swiss government, Swiss press and the Swiss Left. By ineptitude or intention they all contributed to the success of the American operation.

Codevilla also correctly states that all this contributed to the success of Christoph Blochers (extreme?)right wing party.

I very much liked Codevilla's references to Roman quotations and excerpts from Machiavelli. The rules of politics both in war and in peace have stayed much the same.

The only critique I have concerns a number of misspellings of "Schweiz", "Schweizer" and "Schweizerisch" in the reference list.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yet another shameful Clinton episode, August 19, 2002

By 

Andrew S. Rogers (Stamford, Connecticut) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Between the Alps & A Hard Place: Switzerland in World War II and Moral Blackmail Today (Hardcover)

After nearly two centuries of honoring her as a noble "sister republic," the United States suddenly turned on Switzerland in the late 1990s and all but named the Swiss the last surviving remnant of Hitler's Third Reich. Though the episode has largely passed from view today, the stench of "collaborated with the Nazis" still attaches to Switzerland's name in key parts of American media and culture. Angelo M. Codevilla gets to the bottom of this shameful episode in American history, and reveals what was really at stake and who stood to gain from it all.

As Codevilla shows, the anti-Swiss spasm in Congress and the media wasn't generated by any new facts or sudden revelations (despite what then-Senator Al D'Amato claimed at the time), but rather by domestic US political concerns and the Clinton Administration's typical desire to pay off wealthy campaign contributors. I suppose that, as a taxpayer, I should be relieved that for once, the money-grubbers set their sights on someone other than working Americans to be their easy-money cash cow. Like D'Amato, this whole sordid story makes me ashamed of my country -- but not for the same reason he gave.

Codevilla gives us chapter-and-verse of how the Clinton Administration put itself to work supporting campaign contributors' efforts to extort money, not from Swiss banks to give to Holocaust survivors, but rather from Swiss taxpayers to pour into their own tax-exempt foundations. He details the anti-Swiss game plan: dig up old and discredited arguments, rejected policy recommendations, and propaganda from American and Swiss left-wingers; clothe yourself in moral righteousness; wave the bloody shirt (Codevilla quotes one, "I speak to you today on behalf of the Jewish people. With reverence, I also speak to you on behalf of the six million who cannot speak for themselves."); employ sympathetic media and politicians to recycle your theories into "history" and your accusations into "proof;" and then watch the money pour in from the victims of your moral blackmail.

At the same time, this title is a fine work of history, as Codevilla reveals what was really going on in Switzerland during the war. Political, military, and economic strategies are all analyzed, and the reader is drawn into Switzerland's wartime dilemma: how to stand up to evil while at the same time preserving its own freedom. D'Amato and others might have preferred that the Swiss allow themselves to be overrun by the Nazis rather than make the (relatively few) compromises they did in order to keep the wolf on the other side of the door. But certainly, it's easier to argue that today than it was sixty years ago. In all, as Codevilla makes amply clear, Switzerland acted far more honorably in the desperate 1940s than America did in the cushy and comfortable 1990s. We owe the Swiss nation and people an apology.