The southern border in the Second World War

Neutrality between two Axis powers

From June 1940, when Italy entered the war and France was defeated, Switzerland was surrounded by the Axis powers and the territories they controlled. Its southern neighbour was a belligerent ally of Germany, which had claimed the Gotthard as its frontier and whose general staff had studied the occupation of the "Ticinese salient". Relations with Rome nevertheless remained correct for most of the war, because both sides had an interest in them. In September 1939 the two countries concluded a transit agreement that allowed goods for Switzerland to pass through the Italian ports of Genoa, Vado Ligure, Savona and Trieste. In 1941 alone about one million tonnes of goods reached Switzerland by this route, and Italy honoured the agreement until July 1943.¹ A serious crisis occurred in January 1942, when Rome demanded that the Swiss foreign minister Marcel Pilet-Golaz recall the Swiss minister in Rome, Paul Ruegger.² The crisis passed, but it showed how quickly the relationship could deteriorate.

For Ticino the war meant mobilization, rationing and isolation. The canton's economy depended on tourism, on trade with Lombardy and on the transit traffic of the Gotthard, and the first two came almost to a standstill. The transit traffic, by contrast, grew. Over the Gotthard and through Chiasso passed the German coal that kept Italian industry and railways running, a traffic discussed in the next section. The border with Italy was guarded by the army and the border guards, and from the summer of 1942 the federal authorities used it to keep out refugees.

Refugee policy before September 1943

Swiss refugee policy during the Second World War is the most painful chapter of the country's modern history, and the Bergier Commission devoted one of its central reports to it. Its main lines are well established. In October 1938, after negotiations between Switzerland and Germany, the German authorities began to mark the passports of German Jews with a "J" stamp, which allowed Swiss border officials to identify and turn back Jewish travellers.³ In the summer of 1942, when the deportations from Western Europe to the extermination camps were under way, Switzerland closed its borders.⁴ A circular of the Federal Police Division of 13 August 1942 instructed the border authorities that "refugees only on racial grounds, for example Jews, are not considered political refugees".⁵ Political refugees could be admitted, Jews as such could not.

The figures remain disputed, but their order of magnitude is clear. The Historical Dictionary states that Switzerland admitted a total of 51,000 civilians from September 1939. Of these, somewhat more than 21,000 Jews found refuge in Switzerland during the war, about 28,000 if those who had come as emigrants before 1939 are included.⁶ The estimates of the number of civilians turned away at the border range from 10,000 to more than 20,000. The article on asylum in the Historical Dictionary speaks of at least 24,000 people, often threatened with death, who were turned back or deported at the border between 1940 and 1945.⁷ These numbers concern the whole of Switzerland. On the southern border the policy took effect above all after September 1943.

Notes

1. Cerutti, "L'Italia fascista e la Svizzera" (above). ↩
2. Hans Senn, Mauro Cerutti, Georg Kreis et al., "Weltkrieg, Zweiter", in HLS, version of 11 January 2015, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/008927/: "gerieten die Beziehungen mit Italien im Januar 1942 in eine schwere Krise, als Rom von Pilet-Golaz die Abberufung des Gesandten Paul Ruegger forderte". ↩
3. Senn et al., "Weltkrieg, Zweiter" (above). ↩
4. Senn et al., "Weltkrieg, Zweiter" (above): "Im Sommer 1942 [...] schloss die Schweiz ihre Grenzen." ↩
5. Kälin, "Asyl" (above), quoting the circular of 13 August 1942: "Flüchtlinge nur aus Rassegründen, zum Beispiel Juden, nicht als politische Flüchtlinge gelten". ↩
6. Senn et al., "Weltkrieg, Zweiter" (above): "Etwas über 21'000 von ihnen fanden während des Kriegs Zuflucht in der Schweiz; rechnet man die Juden dazu, die sich vor 1939 als sogenannte Emigranten in der Schweiz aufhielten, waren es rund 28'000. Insgesamt wurden ab September 1939 51'000 Zivilpersonen aufgenommen." Portmann-Tinguely and von Cranach, "Flüchtlinge" (above), give a total of about 60,000 civilians including about 28,000 Jews. ↩
7. Senn et al., "Weltkrieg, Zweiter" (above) (10,000 to 20,000, disputed); Portmann-Tinguely and von Cranach, "Flüchtlinge" (above) (an estimated 20,000); Kälin, "Asyl" (above) ("mindestens 24'000"). Wikipedia (English), "Bergier commission", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergier_commission (consulted as a last resort), reports about 24,000 "documented rejections" and the final report's statement that Switzerland turned back or deported over 20,000 refugees. ↩

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.