A neutral canton on a belligerent border, 1914–1918

Sympathies, mobilization and the Italian front

When war broke out in August 1914, Switzerland mobilized its army and declared its neutrality. For Ticino the decisive date came nine months later. On 24 May 1915 Italy entered the war against Austria-Hungary, and from that day the canton bordered a belligerent state along almost its entire southern and eastern perimeter.¹ The front itself lay far away in the Alps of the Trentino and on the Isonzo, but the consequences were immediate. Italian reservists living in Ticino were called to the colours, Italian authorities tightened their control of the frontier, and the trade that had connected Lugano, Mendrisio and Chiasso with Como and Milan for centuries became subject to permits, prohibitions and military surveillance. Chapter A.IV describes the old transit and contraband economy of this frontier. The war revived it on a new scale.

The language divide that ran through Switzerland during the war ran through Ticino in a particular way. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland describes a "ditch" (fossato) between French-speaking and German-speaking Swiss, the former sympathizing with France, the latter largely with Germany. In Ticino public opinion sided massively with the Entente. The liberal Gazzetta Ticinese, edited by Emilio Bossi, called on the people to "drive the merchants from the temple".² The sympathy for Italy was in part cultural and political, since the radical and socialist milieu of Lugano had close ties to Italian democrats and the canton depended on Lombardy for its trade. It also had a darker side. The Historical Dictionary notes that the defence of the Italian character of the canton became an emotional issue in the twentieth century and that during the First World War the polemics between opposing nationalisms gave rise to markedly italophile minorities, for example around the cultural review L'Adula.³ The roots of the irredentist affair of the 1930s, discussed below, lie in these years.

Prices, shortages and the Société suisse de surveillance économique

The economic effects of the war were felt across Switzerland. Retail prices rose from an index of 100 in 1914 to 230 in 1918, and the cost of living for food, heating and housing rose on average by 130 per cent.⁴ Wages did not follow, and the social tensions culminated in the general strike of November 1918. Switzerland depended on imports of grain, coal and raw materials that could reach it only through the territory of belligerents. In October 1915 the Allies obliged the country to accept the Société suisse de surveillance économique (SSS), which controlled imports from Entente countries and ensured that they were not re-exported to the Central Powers. The Historical Dictionary judges that the SSS largely limited the economic independence of the country.⁵ For Ticino, whose supplies arrived through Genoa and the Italian railways, the controls of the Entente and of the Italian State had direct effects on the availability of goods and on the business of forwarding agents in Chiasso.

Some Swiss made considerable fortunes during the war and earned the name of "war profiteers".⁶ In Ticino the war hit an economy that had only just suffered the collapse of three banks in January 1914, as Chapter C.IV explains. Tourism, which had driven the growth of Lugano and Locarno since the opening of the Gotthard railway in 1882, collapsed with the departure of the foreign guests. The hotel industry of Lugano was largely owned by Germans and German-speaking Swiss, and between 1880 and 1906 the number of hotel beds in the town had increased fivefold.⁷ The war interrupted the flow of German and British visitors and left many hotels empty for years. In 1915 the federal authorities made the opening of new hotels subject to official authorization. This needs clause, which remained in force until 1952, protected the existing enterprises against new competition at a time when they could not fill their rooms.⁸ The crisis of the hotel industry was also a crisis for the remaining local banks, which had lent heavily to hotels, funiculars and tourist railways.

Notes

1. Wikipedia (Italian), "Fronte italiano (1915-1918)", https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fronte_italiano_(1915-1918): "l'Italia dichiarò guerra all'Austria-Ungheria il 23 maggio 1915, iniziando le operazioni belliche il giorno dopo", and not yet on Germany; Wikipedia (English), "Italy in World War I", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy_in_World_War_I, for the declaration of war on Germany of 28 August 1916 (both consulted as a last resort). ↩
2. Hans Rudolf Fuhrer, Mauro Cerutti, Marc Perrenoud and Markus Bürgi, "Guerra mondiale, Prima", in Dizionario storico della Svizzera (DSS), version of 5 May 2015, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/008926/: "Nel Ticino, dove l'opinione pubblica parteggiava in massa per l'Intesa, Gazzetta Ticinese, diretta da Emilio Bossi, invitò il popolo a 'cacciare i mercanti dal tempio'." ↩
3. Silvano Gilardoni, "Irredentismus", in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), version of 21 August 2008, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/017428/2008-08-21/. ↩
4. Fuhrer et al., "Guerra mondiale, Prima" (above): "l'indice dei prezzi al dettaglio passò da 100 nel 1914 a 230 nel 1918"; "Il costo della vita (alimentazione, riscaldamento, alloggio) crebbe mediamente del 130%". ↩
5. Fuhrer et al., "Guerra mondiale, Prima" (above), on the creation of the SSS in October 1915, "che limitò ampiamente l'indipendenza economica del Paese". ↩
6. Fuhrer et al., "Guerra mondiale, Prima" (above): "Qualcuno accumulò notevoli fortune, guadagnandosi l'appellativo di 'profittatore di guerra'." ↩
7. Giuseppe Negro, "Lugano (Gemeinde)", in HLS, version of 22 December 2022, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/002177/. ↩
8. Quirinus Reichen, "Gastgewerbe", in HLS, version of 26 May 2015, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/014071/2015-05-26/: "1915 wurde die behördliche Bewilligung für neue Hotels eingeführt (Bedürfnisklausel bis 1952)". ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.