Abstract
Neutral Switzerland, surely among the least likely states in Europe to be attacked, nonetheless has the most complete civil defence system in the world. Swiss civil defence, administered by the Federal Office of Civil Defence (FOCD)1 is concerned with a broad range of threats, including nuclear attack, conventional invasion and peacetime disasters. Their goal is to have a government-approved blast shelter space in or near the residence of every one of the approximately six and a half million Swiss inhabitants.2 The Swiss commenced a mandatory shelter-construction programme in the early 1960s which neatly coincided with an unprecedented upsurge in new building. By the mid-1980s this programme was more than 85 per cent complete.3 By beginning early and proceeding slowly but steadily the Swiss managed to spread out the costs of their programme evenly, thereby avoiding the economic dislocation that would arise from a surge mobilisation. In addition to civilian home shelters, the Swiss system provides 80 000 protected underground hospital beds and extra shelters for those who work at key industries which must be kept operational during wartime.4
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Notes
FOCD, The 1971 Conception of the Swiss Civil Defence (Berne: FOCD, 1971).
FOCD, ‘Civil Defence Balance per 1st January 1984’ (Berne, FOCD, 1984). In time of war approximately 10 per cent of the population will be serving in the army and will not necessarily be needing places in the civilian shelter supply; in this sense, 85 per cent complete is really 95 per cent.
FOCD, Civil Defence Medical Service (Berne: FOCD, 1982), pp. 6–7.
‘1971 Conception’, p. 9. A ‘conception’ is defined as ‘not a legal means but solely a guide or directive, a work programme, (which has however a certain measure of obligatory force)’ [OFPC, La Protection Civile en Suisse - 83/84 (Berne: OFPC, 1982), p. 21]. The weight of the ‘1971 Conception’ would seem to be much the same as that of Jimmy Carter’s PD-41, though without that American document’s initial secrecy.
Jonathan Steinberg, Why Switzerland? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 165. It is only on grounds of mental or physical unfitness that a Swiss male citizen can be legally excused from the army. Periodically, the Swiss have put an Initiative on the ballot which calls for an alternative service option for conscientious objectors. This option has been voted down each time, most recently on 26 February 1984. Those who do not serve must pay a compensatory tax. As Steinberg notes, ‘the tax is a symbol of his obligation.’ (Steinberg, p. 165.)
Département Fédéral de Justice et Police, ‘La Protection Civile Vue Par le Citoyen Suisse’, press release, 18 January 1982, p. 4.
Cited in Pierre A. Piroué, ‘Civil Defense in Switzerland’ (Berne: FOCD, January 1982), pp. 14–15. See also ‘Loi Fédérale sur la Protection Civile’, 23 March 1962, articles 34, 35, 36, 52 and 53.
Départment Fédéral de Justice et Police, Défense Civile (Aarau: Edition Miles, 1969) p. 30.
OFPC, L’histoire de la Protection Civile Suisse (Berne: OFPC, 1983), pp. 54–5.
Gustav Däniker, ‘La Protection Civile et les Armes Atomiques’ (Berne: OFPC, 16 March 1984), p. 4.
Leonard Beaton and John Maddox, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons (London: Chatto and Windus, 1962) p. 162.
See Beaton and Maddox, pp. 165–6; Lewis A. Dunn, Controlling the Bomb: Nuclear Proliferation in the 1980s (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 14,
and Urs Schwarz in Alastair Buchan (ed.), A World of Nuclear Powers (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966). pp. 152–3.
For an overview of these intelligence operations, see John Lukacs, The Last European War: September 1939-December 1941 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), p. 362,
and M. R. D. Foot, Resistance: European Resistance to Nazism 1940–45 (London: Eyre Methuen, 1976), pp. 212–20.
FOCD, Civil Defence: Figures, Facts Data (Berne: FOCD, 1983), p. 1.
La Protection Civile 83/84, p. 11. See also OFPC, Rapport Intermédiaire sur l’Etat de Préparation de la Protection Civile (Berne: OFPC, 31 January 1983), p. 6.
OFPC, ‘Assertions et Réponses Sur le Thème de la Protection Civile’ (Berne: OFPC, February 1984), p. 3.
Conseil National, ‘Construction en Matière de Protection Civile’, 6 March 1963, p. 19.
The size of this ‘space’ varies but consists of at least 11 square feet of floor space and ninety cubic feet of air per person. If the shelter is designed to hold more than 200 persons, these and other standards are raised by 50–100 per cent. See Will Brownell, ‘Civil Defense Swiss Style: State-of-the-Art Civilian Protection,’ Survive, vol. 3 (March/April 1983) p. 30.
Peter Laurie, Beneath the City Streets (St Albans: Granada, revised, updated ed., 1983) p. 90.
OFPC, ‘La Protection Civile Vue Par le Citoyen Suisse,’ (Berne: OFPC, 1982), p. 1.
Cited in Conseil Des Etats, ‘Interdiction des Armes Atomiques’, 5 December 1961, p. 226.
FOCD, Emergency Aid By Civil Defence (Berne, FOCD, 1981) pp. 5–6. These technical disasters include industrial accidents and the ‘unintentional explosion of a nuclear warhead’.
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© 1987 Lawrence J. Vale
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Vale, L.J. (1987). Switzerland. In: The Limits of Civil Defence in the USA, Switzerland, Britain and the Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08679-5_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08679-5_6
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