Word: gotthard
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Before the war, trainload after trainload of Italian goods rolled through the Saint Gotthard and Simplon tunnels to Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Each year German coal miners and steelworkers received almost half a billion tons of Italian lemons, oranges, pears, apples, wheat flour, rice, olive oil. Italy's textile shipments reached an annual value of more than 2.5 billion lire. In return, Germany sent to Italy between 12 and 15 million tons of coal and more than half a million tons of iron and steel products...
...Against attack the Swiss have aces to play. They would destroy the three great Alpine tunnels, Lotschberg, St. Gotthard and Simplon. Man for man, Switzerland probably has the second best army in Europe today. Its general staff, under sagacious, diminutive, popular General Henri Guisan (the fourth general in Swiss history),* has built in the Alps a kernel of defense which an army thrice the size of the Swiss Army (600,000 men) might need valuable months to crack. The Swiss Army can be mobilized in half an hour...
That was all very well, but before invading Switzerland the Axis will think four times. One thought will be for the tough little Swiss Army, one for the perpendicular Swiss terrain. Two thoughts will be for the St. Gotthard and Simplon tunnels, which the Swiss could blow up and thereby close two of Italy's five life lines for German coal and other things. Dynamite, not diplomacy, has kept Switzerland an island of comparative freedom in the heart of Hitler's Europe...