Liechtenstein in the Second World War, unarmed on Hitler's doorstep

A country with no army since 1868, sharing a border with Nazi Germany once Austria had been annexed in 1938, with its own home-grown Nazi movement and no guarantee of defence from anyone. On paper, Liechtenstein had every reason to disappear. It came through untouched, and I find it one of the most gripping parts of the country’s story, not least because it has an ending Liechtenstein remembers fondly and a couple of awkward chapters it has since investigated itself.

Neutral, unarmed and in Switzerland’s shadow

On 30 August 1939, two days before Germany invaded Poland, Liechtenstein declared its neutrality. The Historisches Lexikon is clear about where the danger lay. If Germany attacked Switzerland, Liechtenstein was in the way, and secret German plans against Switzerland included marching through and occupying it. The tensest moment came in May and June 1940, when the government and the municipalities prepared to evacuate.

Switzerland promised nothing. The Federal Council repeated that there was no military guarantee, and the Swiss border guards, who under the customs treaty policed the frontier with Germany, were to withdraw if an attack came. Even so, being inside the Swiss economy was the best protection going. Liechtenstein took on Swiss rationing, nobody went hungry, and in 1941 its workers gained access to the Swiss labour market. From 1939 to 1948 the border with Switzerland couldn’t be crossed freely.

The enemy within

From 1940 a Nazi movement, the VDBL, was active in the country, pushing for union with Germany with its own newspaper, Hitler salutes and punch-ups with opponents. The government banned its marches, uniforms and flags, though it stopped short of dissolving it. A coup attempt aimed at annexation failed in 1939, and its leaders were jailed in 1946. Against them stood the prince, the government, parliament, the clergy, the scouts and the great majority of people.

Some of the gestures from those years are still on the map. On 25 March 1940 Franz Joseph II placed the country under the Virgin’s protection at the chapel at Dux, above Schaan. From that same year, 15 August became a state holiday as an affirmation of unity, which I explain on the page about Liechtenstein National Day.

The shadows the country looked into

It isn’t all heroic, and I think it’s only fair to say so. Just over a hundred Liechtensteiners volunteered for Germany, about 60 of them for the Waffen-SS, and at least six were killed. Some firms founded in 1941, Hilti and Presta among them, produced for the German arms industry; I tell Hilti’s story on my page about Hilti in Liechtenstein. And on estates belonging to the princely house, then inside the Reich, prisoners of war and, in 1944 and 1945, Jewish concentration camp prisoners were made to work.

Between 2001 and 2005 an independent commission of historians examined whether the country had been used to move Nazi loot. The Lexikon’s summary is that the suspicions weren’t borne out, because Liechtenstein was then too insignificant as a financial centre. Around 120 Jewish refugees lived in the country during the war; they couldn’t take jobs that competed with locals but were allowed to set up businesses.

May 1945, the ending people remember

The last days were the most intense. Within a few days more than 8,000 refugees crossed the border, including freed concentration camp prisoners, looked after by the authorities, the newly founded Red Cross and the scouts. Collaborators such as the former Vichy prime minister Pierre Laval were turned away.

On the night of 2 to 3 May 1945, the 494 remaining members of Arthur Holmston’s First Russian National Army, Russians who had fought with the Wehrmacht against the Soviet Union, crossed from Nofels in Vorarlberg into Schellenberg. Among them were 33 women and two children. Liechtenstein interned them. Half left for Vorarlberg to be repatriated and 104 went with a Soviet commission. About 130 refused to go back, and the government would not hand them over. They emigrated by 1948, mainly to Argentina. A memorial stele was put up in Hinterschellenberg in 1980.

What stays with me

What gets me is the sheer mismatch. A country with no soldiers and a police force of seven came through the entire war without being occupied and, at the end, said no to Stalin. Why it had no soldiers in the first place is explained in Liechtenstein’s army and the 80 soldiers. The Lexikon warns that the pride has hardened into a somewhat simplified myth, and that the repatriated men weren’t all shot, as was long believed, though most met a grim fate in Stalin’s labour camps. Even so, on a continent where almost nobody got to choose, it strikes me as a stand worth the trip out to Schellenberg.