Mountain Fortress

Spying for Peace, by Jon Kimche. Roy, $4.00 MR. Jon Kimche’s vivid account of the Swiss resistance to Nazi pressure during the Second World War is eminently readable. It is, as a Swiss remarked to me, something of an achievement to have made a near best-seller out of the defense of Swiss neutrality.

I was lecturing for the British Council in Italy when the Germans invaded Belgium, and I arrived in Switzerland on May 13, 1940. The Germans were massing troops along the Swiss frontier, and the Swiss Intelligence was convinced that an invasion was imminent. If the Germans had not broken through the extension of the Maginot line near Sedan on May 14, it is probable that Switzerland would have been invaded. On the nights of the 13th and 14th the roads from Basel and other frontier towns were crowded with the cars of civilians in full retreat from a feared invasion. I was encouraged next day to read the sturdy proclamation of General Guisan warning the population to ignore, in the event of an invasion, any statement announcing surrender which purported to come from a Swiss station. There would be no surrender.

SL

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Sir Arnold Lunn

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Spying for Peace, by Jon Kimche. Roy, $4.00 MR. Jon Kimche’s vivid account of the Swiss resistance to Nazi pressure during the Second World War is eminently readable. It is, as a Swiss remarked to me, something of an achievement to have made a near best-seller out of the defense of Swiss neutrality.

I was lecturing for the British Council in Italy when the Germans invaded Belgium, and I arrived in Switzerland on May 13, 1940. The Germans were massing troops along the Swiss frontier, and the Swiss Intelligence was convinced that an invasion was imminent. If the Germans had not broken through the extension of the Maginot line near Sedan on May 14, it is probable that Switzerland would have been invaded. On the nights of the 13th and 14th the roads from Basel and other frontier towns were crowded with the cars of civilians in full retreat from a feared invasion. I was encouraged next day to read the sturdy proclamation of General Guisan warning the population to ignore, in the event of an invasion, any statement announcing surrender which purported to come from a Swiss station. There would be no surrender.