Henri Guisan (; 21 October 1874 – 7 April 1960) was a Swiss military officer who held the office of General of the Swiss Armed Forces during the Second World War. He was the fourth and the most recent person to be appointed to the rarely used Swiss rank of general, and was possibly Switzerland's most famous soldier. He is best remembered for effectively mobilizing the Swiss military and population in order to prepare resistance against a possible invasion by Nazi Germany in 1940. Guisan was voted the fourth-greatest Swiss figure of all time in 2010.
Early life
Henri Guisan was born on 21 October 1874 in Mézières, in the canton of Vaud, a Protestant part of French-speaking Switzerland. He was the son of Louise-Jeanne (née Bérengier) and Charles Ernest Guisan, a doctor from Avenches. He attended school in Lausanne, graduating in 1893, and later studied at the agricultural schools of Écully, France, and Hohenheim, Germany. Upon completing his studies, in 1897, he moved to and became a gentleman farmer in the Broye Valley. That same year, Guisan married Mary Doelker, with whom he had two children, Henry and Myriam. In 1903 he moved to Verte-Rive in Pully, on Lake Geneva.
Early military career
Upon entering the Swiss military in 1894, Guisan was assigned to the field artillery as a lieutenant. He was promoted to captain in 1904 and became captain of the General Staff in 1908. In 1911, Guisan was promoted to major and was transferred to the infantry on the order of the Chief of the General Staff, Theophil Sprecher von Bernegg. In 1916, he was made lieutenant-colonel of the General Staff in the "Operations" section in Bern, and in 1919 was simultaneously made chief of staff of the 2nd Division and commander of the 9th Infantry Regiment.
Guisan reached the ranks of brigadier in 1921, divisional commander in 1927, and was made corps commander in 1932, the highest Swiss rank achievable during peacetime. His appointment as corps commander was supported by Federal Councillor Rudolf Minger, head of the Federal Military Department. Guisan was first at the head of the Field Army Corps 2 then of the Field Army Corps 1.
General
On 28 August 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the Swiss Federal Assembly called a United Federal Assembly to elect a general, a unique rank used only in time of war or national emergency. On 30 August 1939, Guisan was elected general by 204 votes out of 231 members of the Assembly, against 21 votes for divisional commander Jules Borel, who was mostly supported by the socialists. He was given the directive to safeguard the independence of the country and to maintain the integrity of Swiss territory. During the Interwar period, Guisan had belonged to the conservative, federalist and anti-socialist political tendency, and was a member of the right-wing Swiss Patriotic Federation. Nevertheless, he maintained good relations with the Socialist Party for the entire duration of World War II.
In 1939 the Swiss military were able to muster 430,000 men, approximately 20% of the work force. At one point, up to 850,000 Swiss soldiers were mobilized. However, Swiss military equipment was not on a par with that of the German military. Guisan's command was dominated by conflict with the government. Whereas the government preferred an understated and politically riskless neutrality, Guisan, charged with actually preventing invasion, opted to call for determined resistance. In May 1940 he ordered an investigation against 124 army officers suspected of Nazi sympathies. After the Battle of France, Germany found documents in La Charité-sur-Loire proving that Guisan had been secretly making military preparations with France, despite Swiss neutrality. The Swiss military would have been remiss in not pursuing contacts with the French based on their perception of a German threat. Nonetheless, this was politically very risky, and represented a very typical example to be seized upon by Germany to justify aggression, such as occurred prior to the German invasion of the Netherlands in World War II.