Swiss and the Nazis Read online

  February 1939: A powerful Swiss kicks out a weakling bearing the sign, “Gau Schweiz NSDAP” (Switzerland as a future Nazi administrative unit). The caption: “‘prepare to dismiss’ as opposed to ‘Ready for action.’” In the days before this cartoon, German propaganda organs had launched a series of anti-Swiss attacks. The cartoon’s message was that the Swiss must expel Nazi subversives before they could act.

  September 1939: A smiling British prime Minister Neville Chamber lain shows Hitler to a door marked “Stalin.” Chamberlain says, “After you, Sir.” little did the world know that Hitler and Stalin had already made an alliance which included the carving up of Poland.

  September 1939: Nazi Germany and Communist Russia had just attacked and partitioned Poland. The picture shows a gruesome Nazi hugging an equally gruesome Communist. Both are laughing and dripping with blood. The caption reads: “The New Friends. ‘We now have to wipe off the dirt we threw at each other for so long!’”

  October 1939: “polka.” Stalin merrily dances over Poland’s corpse with a woman wearing a swastika ribbon. While the Allies would not discover the military agreements set forth in the Hitler-Stalin pact until after the war, just weeks after it was signed a Swiss satirist depicted in this cartoon a pact without limits.

  August 1940: Western Europe has fallen to the German blitzkrieg. Switzerland is surrounded but armed and determined. In this cartoon, a short, fat Swiss man, his dog at his feet, folds his hands before a sharp Nazi face. The main caption: “If need be, pretend to be deaf!” The subcaption is a little lesson on “playing dumb” and thwarting the Nazis:

  “Isn’t it true that every man possesses his own rifle?” “No no, my dog is called Mopsli not Trifle.” “Don’t you keep your rifle ready all the time?” “Unfortunately, Mopsli eats more than he can handle at one time.” “Will you please listen: a heavy rifle and rounds of ammunition?” “Well, this is true, for Mopsli food is always a temptation.” “As far as I know, you also maintain an Ortswehr (local guard)?” “I agree, Mopsli is too fat by far.”

  Such obfuscation is exactly what the Swiss did in countless confrontations with the Nazis that followed. They played dumb, answered and didn’t answer, delayed and evaded, and proved in the end to be skilled and tenacious negotiators. Against the military strength of the Nazis, it was often better to pretend to be the bumbling idiot who only wants to talk about his dog, but who has a pistol in his pocket.

  Once Switzerland was surrounded and locked in, however, Nazi threats had to be taken seriously. Not only did German leaders openly make death threats against Swiss writers, but attacks in the Swiss press provoked the Nazi leadership to threaten trade sanctions on essential goods such as food and coal, and to consider military action to wipe out the republic once and for all. While formal neutrality did not require moral neutrality on the part of the country’s people and media, as a measure of self-defense the Swiss government established an official—if mild—form of censorship to make it appear that it was cracking down. It applied to published writings depicting either of the combatants. The censorship did not involve any prior restraint, but was applied after publication took place; items which were overly “biased” would result in a warning, and might even be seized. However, no censorship existed of oral or private communications, which became the primary methods in which political sentiments were expressed.

  The censorship explains why, in the last year of peace, Nebelspalter published 54 caricatures of Hitler, but in the next five years featured only eight. Attacking Hitler personally in print became “illegal,” and he vanished from political cartoons in the public media.2 Indicative of the emotional tilt of the Swiss people toward the Allies, unfavorable caricatures of Churchill and Roosevelt were virtually non-existent from the start.

  Within Switzerland, censorship itself became a subject of satire. Yet, apparently only a single issue of Nebelspalter was officially censored during the war. Heidi Moore, a childhood friend of the daughter of the publisher Ernst löpfe-Benz, recounted the incident as she heard it from her friend. “We both remember the consternation in the country when this happened. Her father was at a loss why [the censorship] happened. The only objectionable cartoon and text was actually taken from a German (underground) publication and was identified as such. Apparently that was the reason why the German ambassador lodged a threatening protest with the Foreign Affairs Department in Bern.”3

  Toward the war’s end, however, open vehemence returned. Nebelspalter published a whole series of cartoons like the following:

  January 1945: “The Shoes of the Dead in Maidanek.” Nazi propaganda Minister Goebbels gestures to a sea of dead victims’ shoes. The further caption: “Dr. Goebbels writes in Das Reich: ‘Among the peoples the Germans of today are the pioneers of new convictions and hence of a better and nobler human race.’”

  February 1945: Ridiculous looking musketeers with swastikas and bent swords are surrounded by gigantic shadows of American, British, and Russian soldiers with bayonets. The only caption, “Redoubt,” mocked the hope of a Nazi “Fortress europe” strategy.

  April 1945: Hitler, Himmler, Göring, and Goebbels smiling around a table while being served cake, champagne, and fruit. “Why capitulate?” To the end, the Nazi leadership denied that the war was lost.

  May 1945: With the Axis finally defeated, Nebelspalter could lambaste with no holds barred. One cartoon is captioned, “The very last reunion.” The deceased Hitler and Mussolini, with black wings, ascend over ruins of cities and piles of corpses. In another cartoon, a train falls over a cliff, Hitler as driver and skulls as passengers. The caption reads: “We are grateful to our Führer.”

  With the liberation of concentration camps by the Allies, a cartoon appeared of the ghosts of Goethe, Bach, Schiller and Beethoven looking down on the devil portrayed by Himmler. “Viewing the concentration camps in Germany. ‘And this is what is left of Germany.’” On the same theme is another cartoon with the caption, “Buchenwald. Himmler being awarded the highest German order of the ‘Rote Buche’ [Red Beech].” This is a word play on “Buche” and “Buchenwald.” Happy devils kiss and surround Himmler.

  Marking the guilty verdicts in the war crimes trials, a cartoon in the October 1946 edition bears the caption: “The end of dastardliness.” A hydra with all its Swastika-marked snakeheads hangs from the gallows. The war is over and Nazi war criminals condemned at Nürnberg have been executed.

  Nebelspalter is still published today, but its greatest achievements were its caricatures during the period of the Third Reich. It took on all forms of totalitarianism, lambasting Soviet Russia as roughly as it did Nazi Germany. A book of leading Nebelspalter cartoons entitled Gegen Rote und Braune Fäuste (Against Red and Brown Fists) was published just after the war and was recently reprinted.

  Despite the censorship of public newspapers and radio during the worst years of Axis encirclement, in private one could insult the Führer freely or otherwise say one’s piece. In those years, there was a lively cultural life reflecting both directly and indirectly on Switzerland’s predicament and the nature of her enemies. It ran from the constant lectures given both for and by members of the military to a wide range of entertainments for civilians. Of the latter, the most intriguing was cabaret.

  Although it may seem to reach a smaller audience, cabaret, or stage-produced satire, can be far more revealing of the mindset of the times than official proclamations or political speeches. In cabaret, performers use dialogue, poetry, songs, dance, music, and props to express parody, mockery, farce, melodrama, and tragedy.

  In the world of cabaret, it would be difficult to surpass the anti-Nazi spirit of Zurich’s Cabaret Cornichon (The pickle Cabaret), the stage of Elsie Attenhofer (1909–99), the grande dame of all Swiss cabaret.4 Attenhofer’s book on the Cornichon—symbolized by a smiling pickle with chicken legs and an umbrella walking a high wire—presents a side of Swiss defiance that complemented the country’s military preparations.

  On December 9, 1938,
the Federal Council declared: “Although the preparation and organization of the military and economic defense of the country is a matter for the state, we would like to leave the geistige Verteidigung [mental or spiritual defense] to the initiative of our citizens.” Through its satirical attacks, the Cornichon played that role to the maximum. Indeed, when German diplomats protested against its anti-Axis invective and the Swiss censors would come to inquire, the Cornichon pointed to the declaration by the Federal Council.5

  In 1933, Hitler’s seizure of power drove many of Germany’s prominent intellectuals and artists from the country. Poet Thomas Mann moved to Zurich with his family, including his daughter Erika, a blossoming cabaret star.6 Erika Mann established herself in the Cabaret Pfeffermühle (pepper Mill), which was constantly satirizing the pretensions of the Germans. Seeing the success of the Pfeffermühle, Walter Lesch and his colleagues emil Hegetschweiler, Alois Carigiet, and musician Billy Weilenmann decided to found the Cornichon. Two very talented beginners applied to play leading roles, and Lesch chose both: Elsie Attenhofer and Mathilde Daneggers.7 From its first performances in September 1934, the Cornichon became a thorn in the side of the Nazis.

  Its attacks were both ingenious and hilarious. Already some Swiss publications, including the Nebelspalter, had been prohibited in Germany. The cabaret’s first program featured children singing what was ostensibly a folk song but which asked the question, “How many Swiss newspapers are prohibited in the Reich? Only [Nazi propaganda Minister] Goebbels can count them.” The smallest newspaper “from the smallest Swiss village gnaws like a worm at the Third Reich.”8

  The 1935 program “These Are the Days of Roses” contained a special presentation “for which we will charge a bit more,” said the Master of Ceremonies in Basel when the Cornichon started its first tour of several Swiss cities. “The Cornichon unfortunately failed to contribute anything to the wedding of Reich Marshal Göring and Emmy Sonnemann. We want to correct that now. Maybe you have heard that the noble bride and groom received a wild boar as a gift. We are now collecting money for a collar and a leash so that Mrs. Göring can walk the wild boar every evening.”9 Calling one of the highest officials of Nazi Germany a pig brought howls of laughter from the Swiss and howls of protest from Germany.

  In a 1937 newspaper interview, Cornichon founder Walter Lesch said that he wrote the skits with Max Werner Lenz, who was then living in St. Gall but had been a long-time actor and producer in Germany. It was a perfect match—an exile from the Third Reich and a Swiss from the German-speaking part of Switzerland, where antipathy toward the Hitler regime was most pronounced. Yet, it still took courage to denounce Nazism, for, as Lenz well knew, the path to the concentration camp could be short.10

  But ridicule and taunt the Third Reich they did. The 1937 production “Landesausstellung” (Foreign exhibition) featured a Nazi bookseller hawking Mein Zwist (My Strife, a parody on Hitler’s Mein Kampf) and other books with twisted titles. A skeptical Swiss, speaking dialect filled with double meanings, is not buying. The NSDAP (Nazi party), the Gestapo, and the SA (Storm Troopers) are jeered by name.11

  Nazi agents and stenographers sat at the back of the theater recording the dialogue and listing performers and even enthusiastic members of the audience who booed Nazi symbols. The information was passed on to Berlin.12 The Nazis fully expected to take revenge when the Führer got around to dealing with Switzerland.

  A 1938 production depicted “a duel between fascism and democracy.” A Swiss with only an umbrella fights a huge armored figure. The Swiss falls back, but when he utters the word “freedom,” the fascist figure collapses. The victor examines the fallen giant and finds that there is nothing at all inside the armor.13 The same program featured a song, sung to a street organ, entitled “It’s All His Fault.” It made fun of the Nazis blaming the Jews for all social ills while imposing totalitarianism upon everyone else. The lyrics run as follows:14

  In Nazidonia, Nazidonia,

  where the ancient Aryans live,

  there in the Reich of a thousand years

  and of the people of pure race,

  a great and strong leader is standing guard,

  over butter, blood and cottage cheese….

  And the Führer is doggedly searching

  for the evil assassin,

  because there is no question

  that this whole mess is someone’s fault.

  And of course,

  that’s it:

  Isidor, who has always been degenerate,

  has committed this crime too.

  And to punish him for his hatred,

  the Führer seizes his money and his passport.

  And the people, even though exploited,

  at least feel they have been saved.

  And the moral of this story

  is very short and simple:

  were it not for the hated Jew,

  who would we have to blame?

  German and Italian and Japanese,

  pure and pious and Franco-Spanish,

  the people will only degenerate,

  unless we give them someone to execute.

  Jew or Communist,

  Gypsy or Christ—

  nothing but enemies all around,

  take them away, kill them!

  And so we gain some time,

  until it is our turn.

  And the people, even though they have been betrayed,

  still do not smell the bacon.

  And the moral for all times

  until eternity:

  were it not for the hated Jew,

  who would we have to blame?

  Why is the Führer guarding “butter, blood and cottage cheese”? Butter (as in “guns and butter”) probably referred to a prosperous economy, in other words, “the goodies.” Blood meant the supposed purity of the Aryan race. Cottage cheese was thrown in to make the lines rhyme while at the same time making fun of Hitler.

  The Cabaret Cornichon became so popular that the Zurich police feared that its shows might provoke the Germans to take measures to punish all of Switzerland. A police report dated May 1, 1939, described a performance as follows:

  The entire piece is directed solely against the Axis powers and their heads of state. Individual acts ridicule Hitler, Mussolini and their policies, especially Act 4, “little Aspirations,” and Act 5, “The Rat Catcher.” In Act 4, actors do grotesque impersonations of Hitler and Mussolini. It concludes when a nurse and a physician from a mental hospital enter and declare both of them incurable. In Act 5, the Rat Catcher of Hammeln appears as the “Idea of National Socialism,” hypnotizes several persons and makes them dance to his tune.15

  On May 25, the police reported that the German Consul General in Zurich had complained about the performance, which by that time had rocked the city with its defamatory satire. Anti-German sentiment ran high, and the Swiss play was filled with dangerous wordplay. The report explained:

  In “The Rat Catcher,” an announcer opens by telling Swiss children that Switzerland has become a part of the Third Reich. The Rat Catcher then enters and uses his flute to hypnotize the children to determine how they react to the Anschluss. Then actress Voli Geiler comes on the stage. She declares that her mother, a very fashionable French-speaking Swiss, had strongly favored the Anschluss. But now, she laments, all her jewelry has been stolen. Her broches [brooches] and all her money went to the “boches” [slang for Germans]. This entire sketch is directly anti-German… and the applause of the audience shows that it has had its intended effect.16

  The very same day, Zurich police sought the advice of Confederation legal counsel in Bern on whether they should intervene. The German Consul General was outraged that “The Rat Catcher” could be performed on stage in a supposedly neutral country: “The expression ‘Boches’ is the worst insult that there is for a German.”17

  Confederation counsel responded the next day, admitting the Consul General’s protest was justifiable. The expression “Boches” insulted a foreign pe
ople and should not be allowed.18 Notably, he did not go on to suggest that speaking ill of Nazism was forbidden.

  The portion of the “Rat Catcher” that caused the most commotion follows a Nazi plot to overcome Swiss resistance and establish a police state. Voli Geiler, referring to her mother, delivered the following lines in a typically topsy-turvy mixture of Swiss-German and French:

  Wer hät ere de Bolle gstucht

  Who took all her money

  et toutes les broches?

  and all her brooches?

  Wer hät namal Devise brucht?

  Who needed currency?

  C’étaient les boches!

  The Germans [les boches]!

  Jetzt äntli merkts mis Mami gwüss

  Now my mother finally understands:

  Les Nazi sont

  The Nazis

  encore plus rouge que les Russes!

  Are even more red than the Russians!

  Elle a raison…

  She is right…

  O lala! 19

  O lala!

  The Zurich police duly admonished the Cornichon, and author Walter Lesch, that it was “not nice” to disparage foreign peoples. Lesch didn’t give an inch. He held his ground and refused to strike anything from the scene. He did issue a written explanation in response to the charge that the cabaret had insulted the German people.20 pointing out that the performance portrays a Swiss woman who uses some French words, Lesch (who himself was an exile from Germany) brazenly declared that he had never written a direct insult in his five years with the Cornichon. Artistic freedom cannot be suppressed: “If you take away our artistic freedom, you take away any effectiveness we have as an instrument of geistige Verteidigung [spiritual defense]. That freedom is protected by the authorities and sanctioned by the public.” Therefore, Lesch concluded, “we refuse to alter a single word of the text in question.”