How did countries afford to stay neutral in wars, primarily WW1 and WW2?

Question

In WW2 the likes of Spain, Portugal and Switzerland remained neutral, how could these countries stay neutral?

What stopped the Axis powers from invading these countries to add to their countries?

In: 278

Answer 1

There’s various ways to remain neutral in a conflict but often times they’re not always as morally sound as they may sound. In the case of Europe for example being neutral often meant getting chummy with the germans, or at the very least letting them through your country with no resistance which meant another country would get a rude awakening when they found the germans at their borders unopposed.

But there’s also the case of countries whose strategical importance was limited or irrelevant so wasting the resources to occupy them was unecessary.