Wartime Switzerland & Espionage

Switzerland remained formally neutral during the Second World War while surrounded for much of the conflict by Axis-controlled territory. Its location and international connections made cities such as Bern, Geneva and Zurich important centres for diplomats, intelligence officers, refugees, financial intermediaries and competing clandestine networks.

British, German, American and Soviet services all used Swiss territory for intelligence gathering and covert contact. Neutrality offered opportunities but not safety: agents crossing borders or travelling into Nazi Germany faced arrest, surveillance and the constant risk that apparently neutral contacts were working for another service.

Alex Gerlis’s The Swiss Spy uses this real intelligence environment as the base for Henry Hunter’s fictional missions into Germany before Operation Barbarossa. The characters and individual missions are invented, while Switzerland’s wartime role as an espionage crossroads is historical.