‘Between neutrality and complicity’: Swiss medical missions on the German-Soviet front, 1941–1943 — Australian Historical Association annual conference hosted by The Australian National University

‘Between neutrality and complicity’: Swiss medical missions on the German-Soviet front, 1941–1943 (109)

Oleg Beyda 1
  1. UNSW Canberra, Canberra BC, ACT, Australia

Among the European countries, only two, namely Switzerland and Sweden, are considered to have preserved a thoroughly neutral status during the dreadful conflicts of the twentieth century. Yet, as the variety of history commands it, there were political lagoons. In Swiss case, one finds a short-lived yet politically crucial fact that the government, through the Swiss Red Cross, tried to hedge its bets in Hitler’s disastrous campaign against the Soviet Union. Working hand in hand with the prominent ultra-right politicians at home, Switzerland came to a secret agreement with Nazi Germany and sent four medical missions; its personnel was to aid the wounded German soldiers billeted in the rear, from occupied Lithuania through Poland and Great Russia down to Stalingrad in the south. After the war, the fascinating story of hundreds of doctors that had taken part in this endeavour, be it out of ideological, humanitarian or career convictions, was clumsily silenced and remained on the margins of the official image of non-involvement. The given paper strives to explain how this cooperation happened, as well as present the rare perspectives of the Swiss medical professionals, beholding the merciless war that the Wehrmacht had waged in the USSR.

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