ABSTRACT
The second political pillar of the post-war Sonderfall was the successful development of new international roles. The Foreign Ministry encompassed a number of special sections for human rights and good offices. And, from 1961, there was an Integration Bureau dealing with European Community (EC) relations and answerable to Foreign Affairs and Economics. All Swiss International Committee of the Red Cross, based in Geneva and largely financed by the Swiss government. All this encouraged the Swiss to think that their neutrality had a humanitarian and pedagogical nature. Essentially the Swiss came to believe that neutrality and their high level of armaments enabled Switzerland to serve as a locking device in Europe. Both sides in the Cold War knew that, if the other decided to attack them across Switzerland, they would be resisted. Initially, Switzerland had been very cool to moves toward European integration, but gradually it developed a relationship which was helpfully close economically but apparently avoided any political entanglement.
