Swiss should rebuff the Fourth Reich like they did the Third Reich

During World War II, as today, every man in Switzerland was armed and trained to fight to the death. Hitler could have invaded and taken over the country and absorbed it into the Third Reich, but the price would have been too high. So Switzerland remained independent, and neutral.

Now a new German threat, the Fourth Reich, is threatening to take over Switzerland. The NY Times reports:

GENEVA — Like Paul Revere, Konrad Hummler sounded the alarm last week as he made his way by train and by plane to his bank’s branches across Switzerland. This country’s storied role as secret banker to the world’s wealthy is under threat like never before, Mr. Hummler warned.

Mr. Hummler, the jaunty, blunt-spoken managing partner of Wegelin & Company, a small private bank in St. Gallen, has watched a German tax-evasion scandal evolve into a debate about banking secrecy here. Worried that the treasured discretion of Swiss banks is under assault, Wegelin’s foreign clients have been inquiring about their money.

Mr. Hummler says that this time, Switzerland may not be able to stop the rest of the world from prying open Swiss banking….

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is due to visit Switzerland in late April and is expected to press demands for more investigative assistance from Swiss authorities in tracking down German tax dodgers — and less secrecy generally.

The Fourth Reich is upset that some tax refugees are stashing their Euros in Switzerland’s secret banks. The Krauts also are using the European Union — really the European Soviet Union — to batter the Swiss.

Frau Merkel doesn’t have a funny mustache like that other chancellor. But she did grow up in Communist East Germany so, despite her pro-market rhetoric, she obviously hasn’t shed her socialist habits.

It’s ironic that, when West Germany absorbed poor, Communist East Germany after the Berlin Wall fell, the reality may have been that the socialist East absorbed the capitalist West.

Germany has among the most socialist tax policies in the world. No wonder people want to avoid paying taxes to the Fourth Reich.

The Jerries should leave Switzerland alone. If Germany wants to keep its taxpayers’ money in Deutschland, it should cut its taxes to a level people don’t mind paying. That’s how Germany achieved its Wirtschaftswunder — “economic miracle” — in the 1950s. The war ravaged-country, under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who had been an anti-Nazi, slashed taxes and saw rapid economic growth.

And it was Adenauer who advised JFK to cut taxes to “get America moving again,” to use JFK’s phrase. JFK worked for that, and the tax cuts were passed just after he died, giving us the booming economy of the 1960s (until LBJ and Nixon increased taxes and wrecked everything).

Let’s hope the Swiss stick to their guns and rebuff the Germans. If not, their banks soon will be run to the tune of “Deutschland über alles.”