HOW SWITZERLAND MANAGES TO STAY NEUTRAL

While Switzerland is known for its mountains, delicious chocolate and beautiful lakes, it is also quite famous for being the neutral country.

The small European country prides itself on not choosing sides or getting involved in wars.

Why and how? Thanks to Johnny Harris, we’re about to find out.

The irony is that many neighbouring countries have hired Switzerland’s guards over the last centuries to fight on their behalf. So, it’s not as if they can’t fight or they’re really bad at it, they just choose not to.

Legend has it that, way back when, when Europe was controlled by various empires, someone thought it would be a good idea to create a neutral space between it all, and they decided that Switzerland would be ideal.

While its borders are open to other Europeans travelling through or to the country, Switzerland is not part of the European Union or NATO. It only joined the UN in 2002, very reluctantly we might add.

The only other countries that joined after them didn’t exist before 2002, so they couldn’t have joined before them anyway.

Even during the second World War, Switzerland managed to stay neutral by keeping Germany from invading them. They planted bombs at all their major entrances along the borders and were ready to detonate them as soon as troops marched in. But they never did.

Over the decades, Switzerland has built major tunnels that go through their mountain ranges, and massive bunkers disguised as barns. Yes, it might look like a sweet barn where a farmer would stack his hay but, in reality, it has four levels below equipped with medical supplies, beds, ammunition and whatever else you might need during a war.

The bunker idea became big when the Cold War came knocking. By the sixties, all homes, buildings, hospitals, churches, shops, and whatever else you can think of had its own bunker.

Nowadays, a lot of these mountain bunkers have been sold by the government. Some of them have become restaurants or hotels, one is used to make cheese while another one was bought by a tech company and is used to keep your electronic currencies safe.

To this day, Switzerland has stood its ground and have stayed neutral. While some countries have called them out over it, others admire them for it.

We just like their chocolate and nature scenes.

Watch the video below by Johnny Harris on How Switzerland has managed to stay neutral all these years.