Why did the Nazis respect Switzerland’s neutrality during WWII?

Why did the Nazis respect Switzerland’s neutrality during WWII?

Switzerland was neutral, but was still armed to the teeth. When Germany invaded neutral Belgium in WWI to attack France from a better position, the Swiss got very scared (rightly so). They made a plan called “The National Redoubt”, essentially designed so that any enemy would look at Switzerland on a map and decide that it was not worth it to annex Switzerland. They started compulsory military draft for men and were able to mobilise an army of 400,000 men in 2 days since men had to (and they still do) keep their rifles at home. It is noteworthy that these people were trained to fight in the mountainous Swiss terrain. Anti-tank guns were disguised as barns. There’s stuff like this in the entire country, especially in the Alpine Southern region. For example, in the photo shown below, the building on the left is a machine gun nest and the one on the right is an anti-tank gun. They are connected by an underground tunnel.

Every single road, tunnel and railway track leading into the country can be blown up from a remote location (there are more than 3000 of these points). This would’ve made invasion a logistical nightmare for the Germans. The Swiss have so many bunkers that the Germans couldn’t use their Blitzkrieg tactic to its full extent. Plus, Switzerland held a lot of Nazi Germany’s gold, worth $400 million. If Germany invaded Switzerland, the Swiss would’ve kept the gold for themselves. Even if the Germans annexed Switzerland, they likely wouldn’t have gotten the entirety of their gold back. Moreover, Germany was already fighting on a lot of fronts; it was illogical to open another difficult, unnecessary one. Perhaps in Hitler’s mind when they had won the war, only then could they even attempt an invasion of Switzerland. The Swiss strategy was always to abandon major population centres and retreat into the Alpine South, where over 26,000 bunkers had been built and the enemies weren’t used to fighting in such terrain. In 1938, the League of Nations granted Switzerland freedom from international sanctions due to its neutrality. Germany needed Switzerland to whitewash their money without sanctions. Only Swiss banks would do this, since they had to keep the bank account owner’s name anonymous in accordance with Swiss law. This makes an invasion very costly and though Nazi Germany likely would’ve been able to conquer Switzerland, they would have suffered heavy losses. So while doing the cost-benefit analysis, Germany likely realised that it was a very stupid idea.

In short, it just wasn’t worth it.