Is Switzerland the stepping stone to victory?

It profoundly changes the nature of the war. The western front owed its distinct nature to the short distance 'twixt Switzerland and the sea. One does not simply walk into Switzerland, so one has to go through the small front line which is already heavily guarded by the enemy.

I would make it worth 4 mustering 8 units. This should be enough deterrent in the early rounds, but somebody may chance it to try breaking the deadlock and outflank.

This is one of the first things I noticed when I set up the board to play my first game. My initial response was to make Switzerland an impassable zone but that would not be historically accurate. Hannibal made it through the alps to attack the Roman Empire on it’s home ground in ancient times so why wouldn’t a nation be able to make it through there in the 20th century. He DID lose half his elephants and many of his troops along the way and it took him months to do it BUT he did make it.

There were a few good ideas posted in this thread to make it more difficult to use the Swiss corridor but it seemed to me that they weren’t very accurate at simulating the nature of the problem. Adding a few more infantry to the Swiss army would only prevent movement through the corridor until they were defeated. I’m not sure how that makes it easier to traverse the alps in subsequent turns. Making them a strict neutral would be borrowing a rule from the G40 game and not necessarily appropriate for this game and the nature of the relationship to the rest of the neutral territories in 1914. Allowing only one unit to move through Switzerland per turn seems unrealistic, even Hitler on his worst day wouldn’t give that kind of order to his troops.

My proposed rule change is simply this;
It takes 2 turns to travel through Switzerland.

This would allow a country to attack with whatever number of units it deems necessary for it’s strategy while respecting the true nature of the difficulty in passing through the Swiss corridor. The problem is not troop strength, it’s lack of of a super highway complete with turning lanes. In short, it takes longer to get through the mountains.

Example;
Germany takes Switzerland on turn 2 with 2 infantry and 2 artillery to spare. On turn 3 those units would not be able to move at all. The only thing they can do on turn 3 is defend themselves against an attack from an allied force. On turn 4 those 4 German units can move out of Switzerland one space in any direction with respect to other rules regarding movement. This rule would apply to any force moving into Switzerland for the duration of the game.

The effect of the rule would make Switzerland the major speed bump that it deserves to be without making it an impassible territory which would provide historical accuracy. It would give the opposition time to move their troops into a defensive position which would’ve been the case in 1914 if an army was moving through the Swiss Alps in their direction.

We play with Switzerland, but make some allowance for terrain in 3 ways; by excluding tanks and planes, 1 defending inf gets hits on 1-4, and attacking inf do not get artillery bonus.  Also, we include Afghanistan, Kamerun, Nigeria, and Belgian Congo in the same rule (the former rough terrain, the latter jungle terrain).