Schweizerischer Vaterländischer Verband

The Swiss Fatherland Association (SIA ) was a club rather bourgeois forces with the aim of averting the alleged threat of socialist revolution in Switzerland. He was in function and development of a Helvetic counterpart to the early fascist organizations in Italy and Germany in the 1920s.

Formation and development

The Swiss Fatherland Association was founded in April 1919 as a merger of the country's strike ( November 1918 ) formed paramilitary vigilante groups and other conservative- military frets. These militias were made ​​up predominantly of rural - rural districts as military -run volunteer organizations to maintain the constitutional security, peace and order, probably out of fear that the militia army against the rebellious workers in the cities would be upheld too little energetic. A meeting between the two populations of peasants and workers would have been a dangerous step towards civil war.

In the canton of Bern vigilantes were in these years of crisis, often in parallel to the founding of the sections of the farmers, commercial and civil party (BGB ) - the predecessor of the Swiss People's Party - formed. The Civil Code established itself after the general strike as a kind of parliamentary arm of acting in secret Patriotic Association. For this orbit originated at the beginning of the 1930s also sympathizers of the front movement and Nazism.

In the 1920s, the Patriotic Association discovered an area of ​​responsibility in the factory service by ( as well as for the Swiss Federal Railways ) organized for vital institutions of the economy a strike defense. His political influence began the SIA to coordinate in elections and voting, the bourgeois forces and thus to prevent the election of Socialists in important offices.

After a bribery affair, the SIA introduced in 1948 its activities.

Assessment

The Swiss Fatherland Association was formed, according to the historian Hans Ulrich Jost, " one acting in civil underground information network, its effect was not to be underestimated on politics and public opinion ." History and significance of the Patriotic Association are currently under a dissertation project at the University of Basel studied ( see reference and web link).