Odd WW2 Fact

[Arthur]

 

 

I came across this curious little fact in a book about the Ford Motor Co. and their Dagenham works.

 

It also covers their earlier manufacturing operation in Trafford Park, Manchester and how that site, still operated by Ford, became a plant for the manufacture of Rolls Royce Merlins during WW2.

 

In 1943 they had a need for jig borers able to work to an accuracy of .00005 in.

 

The only source of such machine tools was a company in Switzerland, neutral but completely surrounded by occupied countries. How to get them out?

 

Well not a problem as it turned out. The Swiss insisted on their right as a neutral country to trade freely with whoever and without hindrance. The Germans were equally dependent on Swiss machinery and did not wish to jeopardise their own relationship with them.

 

So the Germans allowed these machines to be moved across occupied France, into 'neutral' but German friendly Spain, and off by ship to the U.K.

 

All in the knowledge that, though their intended purpose was unknown, they and their output would be turned against them.

 

 

.

[Jongudmund]

Germany almost invaded Switzerland in WW2. The plan was called Operation Tannenbaum (Operation Christmas Tree). I can't remember why they didn't actually invade.

[jjb1970]

In a few violations of Swiss air space the Luftwaffe received bloody noses at the hands of the Swiss air force very early in the war (using German supplied Bf109 fighters). The German's made some genuine navigational errors but some of it was sabre rattling and the Swiss responded quite forcefully until their government decided that calming things down was more sensible. The Luftwaffe lost quite a few aircraft to Swiss interception.

 

On trade, it is surprising how much trade seemed to continue in apparent contradiction of the war, in both world wars.

[Bernard Lamb]

After VE Day there were troops in Italy who had to be returned to the UK.

This was done using train travel via Switzerland.

Technically the Swiss had to ensure that the troops were unfit for further service as the war was still on-going in the Far East.

To preserve their neutrality they had to be seen not to be aiding us.

The troops were also not allowed to carry weapons.

We paid the Swiss a rather large amount of money for this arrangement.

Many years ago I was researching troop movement by train and came across the file at TNA Kew.

There is one odd point that I never got to the bottom of.

There were men known as "Bad Hats". These were people from our side who were in military prisons in Italy for serious crimes. 

It was considered too dangerous to bring them home without an armed escort and the Swiss would not allow the escort to be armed.

Of course in any war you never hear about bad people on the winning side, but I have always been curious about these people and their fate.

I wonder how much their families ever knew about their heroic war service overseas.

Bernard

[Fat Controller]

After VE Day there were troops in Italy who had to be returned to the UK.

This was done using train travel via Switzerland.

Technically the Swiss had to ensure that the troops were unfit for further service as the war was still on-going in the Far East.

To preserve their neutrality they had to be seen not to be aiding us.

The troops were also not allowed to carry weapons.

We paid the Swiss a rather large amount of money for this arrangement.

Many years ago I was researching troop movement by train and came across the file at TNA Kew.

There is one odd point that I never got to the bottom of.

There were men known as "Bad Hats". These were people from our side who were in military prisons in Italy for serious crimes. 

It was considered too dangerous to bring them home without an armed escort and the Swiss would not allow the escort to be armed.

Of course in any war you never hear about bad people on the winning side, but I have always been curious about these people and their fate.

I wonder how much their families ever knew about their heroic war service overseas.

Bernard

Were these trains via Switzerland what were known as the MEDLOC trains?

 I'm surprised the Swiss didn't offer the use of a 'sealed train' for the ner-do-wells, as they'd provided one to move Lenin back to Russia prior to the Revolution.

[bertiedog]

A lot of odd things went on in WW2 on trade with neutrals, don't forget the number one worry was that the US were neutrals and owned large amounts of the German war production till the US entered the war. The US were also big customers for Swiss products.

 

The Swiss are not a Political nation, they are held together by mutual interest between the various areas, business interests and banking, and they preferred neutrality to the fate of Austria.

 

They had maintained close business partnerships with the British as well, and this situation lead to a successful project by the British to hinder German jet production. The Swiss were second only to the British on expertise on gas turbines, with the British holding many patents that Brown Boveri used in the 1930's for power plant gas turbines.

 

The Germans approached the Swiss just before the war to see if they would work with them on Aero jets, and this was reported to the British, who asked what the Germans were designing, and it seems the Swiss told us. Frank Whittles teams in the UK had developed heat resistant alloys for the rear impellers, and in return for the details the Swiss agreed not to tell the Germans about the alloys.

 

After the war started it was decided in Britain to ask the Swiss to let some of the details out to the Germans, as though it came from Swiss research, but the details were carefully altered so as to waste the Germans resources in testing alloys known to fail quite quickly.

In return for the work, the Swiss were promised increased trade after the war, and more jet design secrets.

 

The Germans never realised what had happened and the designs they came up with had a very short operational life. It nearly all fell apart when BMW designed their own more advanced jet, which it seems by chance used the right alloys, but the Germans were unable to obtain the alloys supplies in the last few months of the war, especially as most came from Canada!

 

The reason for not invading Switzerland was given by the Luftwaffe Senior Officer Galland after the war, that the Swiss would have held the Germans off in valley to valley guerilla fighting, and they were and are a very heavily armed country. The Luftwaffe lost several planes in border incidents and Goering rated air invasion of the Swiss impossible, and bombing difficult due to the mountains. In the end it was Hitlers own decision not to invade, after balancing up the neutrality against usefulness with banking and supplies the Swiss controlled. He would also have required the Italians to invade from the south, and they simply did not want to, especially after remembering the appalling carnage of WW1 and the fight with Austria in mountainous areas.

 

Stephen

[Horsetan]

....The Swiss are not a Political nation, they are held together by mutual interest between the various areas, business interests and banking, and they preferred neutrality to the fate of Austria...

 

Interesting

[Bernard Lamb]

Were these trains via Switzerland what were known as the MEDLOC trains?

 

This service was part of the MEDLOC trains and the ones that went via Switzerland were designated MEDLOC "B",

Later these services ran via Salzburg and Augsburg thus avoiding Switzerland.

Bernard

[Robert]

The reason for not invading Switzerland was given by the Luftwaffe Senior Officer Galland after the war, that the Swiss would have held the Germans off in valley to valley guerilla fighting, and they were and are a very heavily armed country.

 

They very definitely still are.  Every male is conscripted into the militia, and females voluntarily.  They are also required to keep their equipment at home - and this included ammunition until relatively recently.

[Jongudmund]

My Grandad served in the Royal Artillery throughout the war on anti-aircraft guns. At some point he was told he was going to Iceland, then the ship stopped at the Faroe Islands and that's where he spent the last 4 and a half years of the war. He met and married a Faroese girl (my Grandma) and brought her back to Wales after VE day.

 

Not a lot of people know about British forces being stationed in the Faroes.

[pH]

 

Not a lot of people know about British forces being stationed in the Faroes.

And (as my brother recently reminded me as part of another discussion), British forces went on to invade neutral Iceland: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Iceland

[bertiedog]

And (as my brother recently reminded me as part of another discussion), British forces went on to invade neutral Iceland: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Iceland

A little more complex, as Iceland was part of Denmark, which was invaded by the Germans who also wanted to take over Iceland with forced permission by the Danish Authorities under the Nazis. Although the UK invaded, as Iceland wanted neutrality, Iceland was transferred to the care of the US as they were still neutral.

If the invasion had not gone ahead it was likely that the Germans would have taken it over as a naval base. Many Danes who had escaped the German occupation and lived in the UK looked upon the action as rescue of Iceland by the British. The British sought no occupation, and sought no claims over the Island, who sought independence from Denmark as a new sovereign state at the end of the war.

 

Stephen

[pH]

A little more complex, as Iceland was part of Denmark, which was invaded by the Germans who also wanted to take over Iceland with forced permission by the Danish Authorities under the Nazis.

 

Debatable, in my opinion. Iceland had been a sovereign state since 1918. While it shared royalty with Denmark, it was a separate kingdom. It became a republic in 1944. http://www.heimastjorn.is/english/forsida/nr/106.html

[bertiedog]

Well if the British had not occupied Iceland it could have cost us the war, and left Germany in control by state terror of the entire European area from the Baltic to Greece. As usual motives are often miss understood, but we simply withdrew very quickly, and let Neutral US defend the Islands, in both our interests.

Stephen.

[Jongudmund]

I don't know about Iceland, but my Grandma always said people in the Faroes were relieved the British got their first. Initially they had some experiences of being bombed as the Luftwaffe targeted British ships sheltering and refueling in the fjords. But as the Eastern front began to take it's toll the Faroes were pretty much left alone.

 

Of course this is a small sample of opinion from a lady who married a British soldier and moved to the UK, talking about events with the benefit of hindsight. I don't know how representative of contemporary views of Faroese people it would be,

[Chris M]

I imagine the Germans left Switzerland alone because of all the mountains. Recent conflicts in Afghanistan have shown that, even today, it is very hard to defeat people holed up in mountains that they know and you don't.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...There is one odd point that I never got to the bottom of. There were men known as "Bad Hats". These were people from our side who were in military prisons in Italy for serious crimes...

Hand out lots of weapons to young men, and a few of them will make use of the opportunity to terminally settle a score, or commit some other crime.

 

Two sides to this though. How is that the Stalag-Luft camps in which our downed fly boys were POW's were 'stocked' with people able to expertly forge identity documents, currency and much else vital to enable escapees to evade capture? Ever wondered what their 'previous' might have been?

[Horsetan]

I imagine the Germans left Switzerland alone because of all the mountains. Recent conflicts in Afghanistan have shown that, even today, it is very hard to defeat people holed up in mountains that they know and you don't.

 

...and that's before you start studying tunnels. Some of the most innovative tunnel engineers today include Palestinians or Mexicans.

[Mad McCann]

Hand out lots of weapons to young men, and a few of them will make use of the opportunity to terminally settle a score, or commit some other crime.

 

Two sides to this though. How is that the Stalag-Luft camps in which our downed fly boys were POW's were 'stocked' with people able to expertly forge identity documents, currency and much else vital to enable escapees to evade capture? Ever wondered what their 'previous' might have been?

It's a indisputable fact that the intelligence world and the underworld operate hand in glove.

[Fat Controller]

Hand out lots of weapons to young men, and a few of them will make use of the opportunity to terminally settle a score, or commit some other crime.

 

Two sides to this though. How is that the Stalag-Luft camps in which our downed fly boys were POW's were 'stocked' with people able to expertly forge identity documents, currency and much else vital to enable escapees to evade capture? Ever wondered what their 'previous' might have been?

Public school?

[jamie92208]

Hand out lots of weapons to young men, and a few of them will make use of the opportunity to terminally settle a score, or commit some other crime.

 

Two sides to this though. How is that the Stalag-Luft camps in which our downed fly boys were POW's were 'stocked' with people able to expertly forge identity documents, currency and much else vital to enable escapees to evade capture? Ever wondered what their 'previous' might have been?

 

​​At least one of the main forgers in Stalag Luft III was my late art master Cyril Harrington.   He was a great bloke who only died recently.  Apparently he was waiting in the hut ready to go down the tunnel when the tunnel was discovered.  It's probably a good thing that he didn't escape knowing the fate that met 50 of the escapees.  After the war he served on a Commission on Ancient Monuments before becoming an art teacher.

 

Jamie

[kevinlms]

I imagine the Germans left Switzerland alone because of all the mountains. Recent conflicts in Afghanistan have shown that, even today, it is very hard to defeat people holed up in mountains that they know and you don't.

Well the Germans certainly came unstuck when they invaded Russia! Its hard to imagine how it could have got any worse for the invading troops. Ill equipped for the weather (nothing worse than being seriously cold to demoralise anyone, even highly trained troops). If the supply line is effectively cut off, there could only be one outcome.

[Horsetan]

Well the Germans certainly came unstuck when they invaded Russia! Its hard to imagine how it could have got any worse for the invading troops. Ill equipped for the weather....

 

It certainly happened to Napoleon's army when they tried the same thing a while before.......!

[jamie92208]

There were some postings that were better than others.  One party spent their war sitting in bothy's on top of an upturned German Battleship in Scapa Flow maintaining the air compressors that kept in afloat.  It was salvaged in 1938 and because of the emerging situation in Europe the Admiralty refused permission for it to be cut up in a dry dock at Rosyth.  It was eventually towed to Faslane and cut up there in, I think, 1947 using a floating dry dock.   IIRC it was the SMS Thüringen which achieved one claim to fame by spending longer floating upside down than it did the right way up.

 

Jamie

[pH]

It's a indisputable fact that the intelligence world and the underworld operate hand in glove.

For example - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Ramensky