What should/could Switzerland have done differently during WW2 ?

There’s a lot of critics about what Switzerland did during WW2, and especially about Swiss banks taking in Nazi and Jewish Gold, but I was wondering how realistic it was for Switzerland to stand up to the Nazis and refuse cooperation with them.

As a Swiss myself, I’m obviously ashamed about how our country behaved during this time, even if the whole situation back then was complicated.

From 1940 to 1944, the country was completely surrounded by Nazi Germany and its allies, and there were even invasion plans of Switzerland created by the Nazis and fascist Italy. The Nazis could have also simply blocked all trade between Switzerland and the rest of the World if they wanted to.

There was a plan to increase Swiss production of food (Wahlen Plan), but even near the end of the war only about 70% of food could be produced inside the country so that still leaves 30% of forced food imports. Same thing for coal and energy, about 41% of coal had to be imported [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland\_during\_the\_World\_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland_during_the_World_Wars)

How realistic was it for Switzerland to stand up against the Nazis and refuse cooperation ? Even if cooperation with the Nazis was necessary, what could have realistically been done differently ?

The obvious thing I think could have been done is giving the Nazi Gold stored inside Swiss banks to Israel in 1948, because large parts of it were taken from the Jews. But even this would have been seen negatively by some countries for obvious reason, so I don’t know how realistic this would have been. This is just my personal opinion, feel free to disagree.

What should/could Switzerland have done differently during WW2 ?

by GetOutBasel