In August 1942, Hitler further described Switzerland as "a pimple on the face of Europe" and as a state that no longer had a right to exist, denouncing the
Swiss people as "a misbegotten branch of our
Volk."
[3] From a Nazi viewpoint, Switzerland, as a small, multilingual, decentralized democracy where
German-speakers felt more of an affinity with their
French-speaking fellow Swiss citizens than towards the German speaking people living across the border, was the antithesis of the racially homogeneous and collectivised "
Führer State".
[4] Hitler also believed that the independent Swiss state had come into existence at a time of temporary weakness of the
Holy Roman Empire, and now that German power had been re-established after the
National Socialist takeover, the independent country of Switzerland had become obsolete.
[4]
Although Hitler despised the democratically-minded German Swiss as the "wayward branch of the German people", he still acknowledged their status as Germans.
[5] Furthermore, the openly
pan-German political aims of the Nazi party called for the unification of all Germans into a
Greater Germany, which included the Swiss people.
[2] The first goal of the 25-point
National Socialist Program stated that "We [the National Socialist Party] demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany on the basis of the people's right to self-determination."
[6]
In their maps of Greater Germany, German textbooks included the
Netherlands,
Belgium,
Austria,
Bohemia-Moravia, the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, and western
Poland from
Danzig (
Gdańsk in Polish) to Krakau (
Kraków). Ignoring Switzerland's status as a sovereign state, these maps frequently showed its territory as a German
Gau.
[2] The author of one of these textbooks,
Ewald Banse, explained, "Quite naturally we count you Swiss as offshoots of the German nation, along with the
Dutch, the
Flemings, the
Lorrainers, the
Alsatians, the
Austrians and the
Bohemians ... One day we will group ourselves around a single banner, and whosoever shall wish to separate us, we will exterminate!"
[7] Various Nazis were vocal about the German intent to "expand Germany's boundaries to the farthest limits of the old Holy Roman Empire, and even beyond."
[8]