ABSTRACT
The remarks that follow are an attempt at a structurally oriented presentation, confined to the Second World War, of that aspect of Swiss foreign policy which found expression in the sending of official representatives to international conferences, and governmental support for international organisations, irrespective of whether the institution concerned was a governmental one or, formally, non-governmental. 1 This governmental internationalism was based on the concepts of multilateral cooperation that stretched back into the nineteenth century and also played a major part, alongside the League of Nations system, in international relations and Swiss foreign policy during the inter-war period. At the outbreak of the Second World War, the Swiss version of internationalism clashed with an expansionist National Socialist version. Trapped in a policy vacuum that was only skimpily camouflaged by protestations of neutrality, Swiss foreign policy unintentionally drifted off course, a position that was confirmed and reinforced by the lack of differentiation from National Socialist internationalism and the country's reluctant attitude - justified by the policy of neutralitytowards the internationalisation strategies launched by the Allied side.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, international gatherings of the most varied origins breached Europe's internal frontiers. Apart from politically motivated alliances, such as the Socialist International, the 'flood tide of internationalism' was borne along by a broad spectrum of apparently non-pOlitical processes of internationalisation. What seemed at first sight to be the internationalisation ofcivilian associations
