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?
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I read that the Swiss were trained as marksmen in school as a sport. All small towns were well stocked with rifles. If they were invaded the populous was told to snipe the officers. The book Aldo said that bridges were booby trapped. The was a huge deterrent. The book made plenty of sense but there was no proof of this claim.
The IRA nearly got us involved because their enemy was england and the enemy if my enemy is our friend. We would have been speaking German now if their plan wasn’t foiled.
My grandmother can remember the rations and milk bottle refills during WW2. We called it the emergency rather than WW2. We were hit hard since Britain was right next door but we had had a rough couple hundred years so we were able to adapt I think
Portugal was far enough from the areas of friction and only later joined WW1 and due to a lot of political turmoil in the country it was barely active in the war effort.
WW2 was a different matter all together, in part protected to the east by the Spanish government being amicable with Germany as long as boundaries weren’t crossed and also because the Portuguese government saw it as a business opportunity in helping both sides, providing raw materials to Germany and Great Britain and allowing the use of the mid Atlantic Portuguese islands, the Azores (howdy btw), to the allied powers as a military outpost for air and naval forces, there was also a lot of fine print regarding rules of engagement and neutrality within Portuguese maritime and air territory such as how much help and what kind of it could be allowed.
All in all it worked out well since the state reserves were loaded with gold, some of it used to build a lot of infrastructure in Portugal such as transportation and education but a lot of those funds were sucked dry in the Portuguese colonial wars to maintain control of our former colonies in Africa and Asia later on in the 60s and 70s.
Switzerland has a lot of geographical features that make it very hard to invade, an armed population(?) and strategically set defense points through the entire country as well as playing nice as the piggy bank for a great deal of high ranking Nazis who wanted to stash away their personal fortunes.
In WW2, Spain played its neutrality well. Recovering from a civil war, they weren’t ready for another major war. They support the Axis with materials, workers, and even a division or two on the eastern front. Germany didn’t want them in the Axis because Spain couldn’t defend itself from the allies and it would add insane amounts of coastline to the Atlantic Wall, meaning it would make Europe largely indefensible for Germany. The allies were content to get there own economic concessions, and prevent another nation from joining the axis. As the war turned Spain got closer to the allies, and navigated the Cold War scenario to keep Franco around for quite awhile. It was basically the best case scenario for Spain, who supported Axis goals, but Franco would’ve been dead much earlier if he had moved to join the war.
Many of the major “neutral” countries weren’t really, but the big thing is that WWI and WWII (at least in Europe) were not primarily wars of territorial acquisition (there was a bit early on in WWII, but that was mostly viewed as territorial reconquest), so there’s no need to open another front just for the sake of it.
This is best exemplified with how the USA got involved in WWII, primarily having stayed out of the war (though not technically neutral) until Japanese territorial acquisition attempts led to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Suddenly that front became active for them but also the USA was able to aid officially in the other fronts.
As for Switzerland, which seems small enough to not be a big concern, it’s so geographically defended (with man-made measures to reinforce that defense like plenty of AA turrets) that beyond at least IRBMs, any attempts to exert military force against them is useless
I live in Sweden and our whole economic boom during the decades after WW2 was due to us being neutral. This is in reference to OP using the used the word “afford” in the title.
Note that I’m not saying that it was morally right for Sweden to be neutral. I’m just commenting on the economic aspect.
The Swiss were absolutely Nazis. They just officially stayed out of the war to not lose money from Allied countries.
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