The Soviets received vital information from Switzerland during World War II. The spies of the ‘Red Three’ knew exactly what Hitler was up to.

Rudolf Rössler was a mild-mannered journalist who ran a publishing firm in Lucerne. At the same time, he was supplying the Soviets with highly sensitive information straight from the Führer’s headquarters. The story of the master spy Lucie.

Jakob Leonhard spied for the Nazis. When they realised that the information he was feeding them had been rubber-stamped by Switzerland, his life hung by a thread.

In 1929, mountain film pioneer Arnold Fanck shot his global hit The White Hell of Piz Palü in southern Graubünden. The secret star of filming was the Bernina railway, a track system that could handle tough winter operation.

In 1925, the Schweizerische Maschinen- und Lokomotivfabrik in Winterthur was contracted to build ‘Krokodil’/‘Crocodile’ locomotives for the Great Indian Peninsula Railway.

In May 1940, a Wehrmacht attack was imminent. At least the inhabitants of Basel thought so, and many fled to the interior of Switzerland.

Shortly before the war ended, the Nazis managed to spirit away a hoard of gold they had stashed in Bern. The trail of all this precious metal goes cold in the basement of the German embassy.

The first Jews settled in Lengnau and Endingen in the 16th century, and the country’s first synagogues were built in those villages.