(film reeling) (dramatic music) - I want you to say something. (upbeat music) You ready? This is a giant map of Switzerland. (choir like music) I love Switzerland. And one thing I have
learned about Switzerland is that the Swiss like to be neutral. (somber music) This country does not like conflict. They avoid it at all costs, which is strange because
they're really good at fighting. Other European countries
used to hire Swiss men to fight their wars for them. But back home in Switzerland,
they don't fight. They don't take sides. That's partly because they
lost a few wars of expansion and kind of just decided
it was probably better to just stay put. But it's also because back when
Europe was full of empires, the big European powers
thought it would be a good idea to have a mountainous small buffer country in between some of the big rival powers. And so Switzerland was kind
of deemed this neutral power, but the result is that today
Switzerland doesn't take sides. They don't send their troops
to fight another other wars. They rarely join alliances. I mean, they're not a part of the EU. They're not a part of NATO. And they reluctantly barely joined the UN as recently as 2002, a
decade after North Korea. And the only countries
that joined after them didn't exist before then. Meaning they came into
existence after 2002. So they couldn't have joined before then. Switzerland is serious about neutrality, no conflict, no alliances. Leave us alone. (somber music) When you're right here, right at the crossroads of people trying to take over Europe, staying out of conflict has
big benefits for your country and its economy. But it also means staying
neutral is really hard, but the Swiss have done it. Using their mountains, some
exceptional engineering, obsessive commitment, and a healthy amount of explosives. The Swiss have kept empires
out of their country, sticking to their guns and staying neutral even when Europe was tearing itself apart. (somber music) So you're Switzerland in the 1940s. Here's your situation. You're surrounded by Nazi
Germany to your North and Fascist Italy to your South and quickly are becoming engulfed with all the countries
that are now in the sphere of influence of these countries. You're surrounded and Hitler
is winning everywhere, but you're Switzerland. And so you're like, don't invade us. We're not going to fight,
we're not taking sides. We'll just keep trading with
whoever wants to trade with us, but we're not going to fight or be invaded. And no, that's not how
Europe was in the 1940s. You couldn't just sit it out. And yet the Swiss were
committed to doing so. The fact is that even with
this commitment to neutrality an invasion from their next door neighbor, the Third Reich, was it
very real possibility. So Switzerland devised, what I argue is just the most Swiss plan ever. To stay neutral during World War II and future global conflicts. It's a plan that still lives on today that you can still see
when you go to Switzerland. Here's what it looks like. (upbeat music) First up, hey looked around their country at any linkages to the outside. They choose key points around the country that would give invading
armies access to the country like roads, bridges, tunnels, any access point. And then they packed
it full of explosives. (explosion noise) Dynamite, TNT, whatever. Anything that would just
completely destroy that linkage. They got really inventive with this stuff. Sometimes they would wire
a bridge with dynamite, but they also would put
secret canons in mountains that would pop out and point at a major road and demolish it if needed, making it unusable. Or sometimes they would
go to their long tunnels like this 10 kilometer tunnel down here at the border with Italy. And they would rig it with TNT so that they could
quickly seal off this part of their mountainous Southern border. (ominous music) Up on mountain passes they even rigged the sides of mountains with explosives to create artificial
landslides to block the road. The thinking here is
that if an invading army were marching into Switzerland, they could pull the
trigger on all this stuff. Igniting dynamite or shelling or otherwise destroying all the ways to get into the country, making it a lot harder to invade and giving them time to
retreat to the mountains. There's a wonderful,
strange irony going on here. The Swiss are really
good at transportation. The trains are immaculate and efficient and go up crazy mountains and are always on time. Roam around the country
and you'll see this. These are the little doors in the streets where they would pack explosives. So it's kind of ironic that
all of this infrastructure was packed with explosives, but I guess that makes
it even more functional because now it's a defense mechanism. In addition to being
infrastructure for transportation. I love Switzerland. (jet engines) (somber music) There's this one bridge that
connects Switzerland to Germany that was built in 2006. And when it was built, it
was packed with explosives. This bridge was built in
conjunction with Germany. Germany paved half of the bridge, and yet they didn't even
know that it was rigged with explosives. It's very aggressive Switzerland. Okay, so anyway. Blowing up their borders
and sealing themselves off was one major strategy for
aggressively staying neutral. Let's get onto the next one. (dramatic music) Zoom into the lower half of Switzerland. And you'll be struck by one massive thing that Switzerland has. Mountains. Big, giant mountains that flank across the South part of the country. (dramatic music) Another thing Swiss was have is an unmatched ability to
drill holes into mountains. The country has over a thousand tunnels. One of which is 57 kilometers long. These people know how to
build holes in mountains. And that skill becomes very useful when your situation looks like this. Most of the population lives here, meaning not in the mountains. And so there wasn't much of a separation between these population centers and Nazi Germany. After the Swiss saw
Hitler march into Paris and take over huge portions of France, they got serious about figuring out what they would do if Hitler invaded. So they had their plan
to blow up the borders and slow down an invasion. But where could they retreat to that would allow them to stay neutral and stay alive during the fighting? In the mountains, they were
building giant fortresses and bunkers and tunnels that work literally inside of the Alps. They built thousands of these things in the side of mountains, and they rigged them with guns, and cannons, as well as full on bases that were equipped with supplies and beds and living space. Sometimes they'd be hidden
in steep mountain passes, disguised as a barn, but really it would be a bunker with hidden explosives, supplies, and men ready to fight. All over the Alps, the Swiss
built these secret bunkers mainly during World War II in preparation for any sort of invasion. Once the war ended, the
idea of putting bunkers in the mountains for defense and neutrality became pretty embedded in the Swiss security doctrine, as well as just Swiss culture. (upbeat music) So I did a call out on Instagram stories to see if this bunker
culture was still a thing. And I caught a lot of
responses that showed me that it's not just World
War II in the mountains. Swiss bunkers are all over the country. (upbeat music) Geez. That's a lot of bunkers. Thank you to all of those who sent me pictures of your bunkers. After World War II, the new
threat was the Soviet Union and the Cold War and nuclear destruction. Bunkers were now built into
homes, apartment buildings, hospitals, public
infrastructure of all kind had bunkers underneath it. By the 1960s, Switzerland had built enough underground bunkers and shelters to protect the entire population and with a healthy surplus. Something that no other
country's ever done. Okay. So let's talk about the last step here, which is kind of the dark
side of Swiss neutrality and the one that no one
really wants to talk about, but gotta talk about it. (ominous music) So let me reiterate here that staying neutral and safe when this is your situation
is a very difficult thing. I mean, World War II was
an incredible tragedy where millions of people lost their lives. During World War II, Switzerland had an official
policy of neutrality. This meant that they
would trade with whomever. Whether it was the Axis and Hitler, or it was the Allies and Churchill. But in reality, Switzerland
traded a lot more with Germany, providing them with anti-aircraft guns and other military supplies and ammunition that was used in the war. In addition, Switzerland
allowed the Nazi regime to store lots of gold and art and other valuables that
were looted from victims of the war. And specifically the Holocaust. Not a super good look. Defenders of this will
tell you that Switzerland was doing what it needed to
do to stay out of the war, to stay neutral and just like blowing up your borders or making bunkers in the mountains. This pandering to Hitler and being kind of on decent
terms with the Third Reich was a way of making it more costly and more implausible that Germany would just pop right down
South from where they are to take over this small country. Neutrality does not mean holding hands and singing kumbaya. Neutrality in the Swiss
foreign policy doctrine means deterrence and defense. There's a Swiss military saying that says, "In order to remain in peace,
you have to have cannons." (artillery fire) This kind of sums it up. Not only did they have
cannons and weaponry, but they also played by
whatever rules they needed to in order to stay out of the war. And it worked. Hitler had a pretty developed
plan to take over Switzerland, but in the end it didn't
make strategic sense. It was too costly and implausible for them to take over their neighbor to the South. Even though he had taken over the majority of the European continent at that point. I would bet a large sum of money that the top comment on this video is someone badmouthing the Swiss for all of this World War II stuff. Which, whatever. I don't have a dog in this fight. If that's how you feel,
that's how you feel. (somber music) Okay. So these two massive global wars are over and Switzerland is still neutral, but they don't have to
take as extreme measures to remain so. So what do you do with all these bunkers? First, the bombing the borders thing, where they packed explosives
in all of these bridges and roads and tunnels. It turns out that the military
slowly started to dismantle all of this a few years ago. And by 2014, the military says that all of the mines and bombs and TNT have been removed from
public infrastructure. Good for you military. No more bombs at bridges. So for the household bunkers that were built during the Cold War, those are still there. And my friends on Instagram tell me that they're just kind of
used for like storage rooms or sometimes like as a laundry room. Extra space, I guess, with really fortified doors that will withstand the
radioactivity of a nuclear weapon. I mean, it's not bad to have. But what I'm really interested in is all of the mountain fortresses and tunnels, and like bunkers that
were in the Swiss Alps. What happened to those? Those were really expensive to build and were expensive to maintain. And the military is honestly kind of eager to get rid of them. Some of them have been sold off and turned into like fancy hotels in the side of a mountain. Others are used as cheese sellers to make delicious Swiss cheese. And then you've got this one, which was purchased by like
a tech security company that specializes in
keeping your data safe. So you can store your Bitcoin or whatever else you need on these super secure servers in the side of a Swiss mountain. They claim these servers are so protected that they are impervious even
to an electromagnetic shock from an atom bomb. It seems to me like a little bit overkill, but if you have some
really important documents and files that you need to save, this is your place. But the majority of these mountain bunkers and fortresses lie completely abandoned. If you hike around Switzerland, you will see these things everywhere, which is something I've never done. And really now want to do. Go like bunker hunting in Switzerland. It sounds kind of amazing. All right, so the Swiss stayed neutral. They've continued to stay neutral. They will probably
continue to stay neutral and it turns out that we'll
use whatever means necessary to do so. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music) All right, I want to tell
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cool videos coming up and I'm really excited
to share them with you. Alright, have a good day. (calm music)
Surprisingly well researched video. Only thing I thought was iffy was the language map (of 1952) he shows later in the video.
He makes quite some videos on Switzerland. Thanks I guess. I expect him to patrol the comments though so no top comment bad mouths Switzerland, haha.
Pic at 4:13 was the "Mitholz accident". Not a rigged mountain range.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosionskatastrophe_von_Mitholz
a bridge from 2006 that was rigged with explosives?? is there a source for this?
Regardless of the accuracy of the facts, he has some really good stuff about countries and the production quality is super high https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ8cMiYb3G5dRe4rC7m8jDaqodjZeLzCZ
They didn't. Hint: "neutrality" is not a unilateral thing. Switzerland was only ever de-jure neutral, de-facto they have always allied with someone (eg with Nazi Germany during WW2).