The Swiss operational planning was the reason of a major dispute after the war ended. The general pointed out that there were no operational plans available at the beginning of the war and that one of the lessons learned should be to do operational planning on a certain level of detail.
There are two key issues which drove the Swiss operational planning and the execution of these plans during the war years (and some do still today):
In addition the Swiss armament was still incomplete and outdated in 1939 and would stay to some extent so until 1945.
On the background operational planning seems to have started in early 1939 in earnest and was then driven by the events afterwards.
Earlier in 1939 the general staff (including the corps commander Guisan, the later general) was involved in an operational exercise which yielded some form of operational planning for three models:
Defense only on the borderline Rhine - Jura mountains.
2 Level Model
Defense on the borderline plus a defensive line stretching from Gempen over the heights of the Jura mountains, across the Aare river, along the Limmat river, the Lake of Zurich, the Linth canal, the Walensee to the East at Sargans (two other lines were considered - Napf - Hauenstein and Aare / Saane). In addition the line along the lakes of Bienne and Neuchatel down the gorge of the Mentue to the lake of Geneva.
3 Level Model
In addition to the 2 Level model a defense of the alpine area was considered.
When the army mobilized on September 2, 1939 it moved into its initial all-around defensive positions. These positions were defined by the Operationsbefehl No 1.
After a month of work the officers entrusted with this task by the general came up with the Operationsbefehl No 2, two level defense with positions along the borders and a defensive line stretching out left and right from the Limmat. There was some controversy after the war, if this delay of one month really had been necessary to prepare a solution which seems to have been largely along the lines of the operational exercise 1939.
In the months after the issue of the Operationsbefehl No 2, the army prepared its position along the Limmat line. There were two issues which had to be solved:
To solve these two issues the Operationsbefehl No 4 was put into action.
The agreement with the French was not critical under purely legal considerations of the neutrality, but was critical under a political viewpoint. Especially after the Germans discovered documents related to the agreement in captured French material after the fall of France.
The Operationsbefehl No 4 was amended several times and re-issued on May 14th 1940.
Beginning of February 1940 the general gave specific orders on the defense of the Southern border to the newly formed 4th Army Corps (see Operationsbefehl No 4). The main role was to delay the enemy for several weeks until the main body would have been able to regroup.
This order defined the defense in case of an attack from the West. It assumed, that the border troops would have been able to delay the enemy and that the main body would have been able to reach the Mentue - Podèze line. It was amended with the order number 8 with a defensive line farther to the East.
This order defined the defense of the Southern front in the case of an attack from the West.
This order was an amendment of the order number 6. The main line of defense would have run from Basel through Langenthal and then along the pre-alpine mountains to St. Maurice.
This order defined the defense of the Southern front in the case of an attack from the West.
With the German troops reaching the Swiss border in the West on June 17 (Recce elements of 29. ID (mot)) there was a necessity to begin to defend in all directions. The decision was to:
This plan left the approaches through the Jura mountains lightly defended. A decision which led to a critical situation following the defeat of France on June 26.
It was planned to move units from the Northern parts of the front to the West and the AA troops were given the task to cover the valleys of the Aare and the Reuss to cover these movements.
Six days after this order was issued a meeting between the general and the corps commanders took place in Bern where the idea of the creation of a central redoubt was discussed.
After the fall of France on the 26. June 1940 the Swiss army had to adapt to a situation where the threat could come from almost all directions (just a gap between the region of Geneva and the Grand St. Bernhard pass belonged to Vichy France). The decision was taken to:
Only a few days after the issue of the Operationsbefehl No 11, the detailed position order was given with the Operationsbefehl No. 12. Since the position of the army was completely new, the general was already prepared to change this order if it proved to be insufficient. The first change came on 17. August 1940 and consisted mainly of the assignment of the 6. Division to the central position. The adjustments were consolidated into the Operationsbefehl No. 12bis.
One important event which followed the issue of the operational order no 12, was the "Rütlirapport".
[Last Update 30.08.2010]