Conrad Ulrich Sigmund Wille (April 5th 1848 with Hamburg - January 31st 1925 with Meilen) was the general of the Swiss Armée during the First World War. Inspired by the Prussian techniques that it had been able to observe at the time of its studies in Berlin, it tried to insufflate with the Swiss army a spirit based on the instruction, the discipline and the technical control.

He was married with Clara Gräfin von Bismarck, the girl of Friedrich Wilhem von Bismarck.

Nomination as a General

At the dawn of the First World War, Switzerland confirmed its will to remain neutral and to avoid the conflicts which were going to set ablaze Europe. But Switzerland was divided between Germanic the, favorable ones to the Germans, and the French ones whose opinion turned rather to the allies. As Germanic and close to the Kaiser , Wille benefitted from the pro-Germanic current and the disparity within the Federal council which counted only one French. The 1914, the general mobilization is issued. Wille, then colonel, are named by the federal Parliament the August 8th 1914 with 122 votes against 63 votes for the other candidate, Theodore Sprecher von Bernegg. This last will be all the same chief of the general Staff and a reliable partner for Wille.

The opponents of the general described it as “militarist” whereas its partisans saw in him a chief ready to manage an army in mobilization thanks to its talents of pedagog. Wille decided to concentrate the forces (238000 men and 50000 horses) close to the borders, in particular in Ajoie and Engadine.

Political matters and soldiers

The mandate of Wille was strewn by political matters and soldiers. Wille caused a scandal in French-speaking Switzerland by proposing to the Federal council the July 20th 1915 to enter in war and to be combined with the central Empires.

Thereafter, the business “of the colonels” in 1916 also had a great repercussion. Two Swiss colonels had given to German diplomats and Austro-Hungarian of the specimens of the “Gazette of the staff”, a confidential newspaper and Russian messages deciphered by the Swiss Cryptanalyste S. The business was likely to put in danger Swiss neutrality since it updated ambiguous relations with one of the belligerents. Wille decided to condemn the two colonels to 20 days of stop, an unsatisfactory sorrow for the pro-allies.

The context tended between the French-speaking Switzerland and the German-speaking Switzerland developed. The Germanic newspapers greeted the German actions in Belgium, whereas the French ones reflect ahead the resistance of the allied troops.

The economic situation was degraded and of the strikes burst with the apogee of the General strike from November 11th to 14th 1918. In a note of the November 10th 1918, Wille announced its concern as for the rise of the Bolchevism and the internal disorders to come in the country:

It there two years, I was brought on several occasions to make share at the Federal council of my conviction that the congresses of Zimmerwald and Kiental had decided to begin with Switzerland the process of inversion of the established order in Europe. The triumph of the Bolsheviks in Russia supported this project. Each one knows that many messengers of Russian Bolsheviks, having important money sums, are in Switzerland with an aim of exploiting the situation and to accelerate the execution of this plan.

But he added that it was necessary to avoid the climbing and violence:

We should not seek the confrontation, nor the civil war. Our duty is to prevent them. (...) All risings which occurred in Zurich so far showed with an obvious clearness which the local authorities are not capable to intervene and to act without causing serious bloodsheds. I do not make the reproach with the persons in charge of it. Their difficulties are inherent in the democratic institutions. It for a long time is known and this is why the Confederation must intervene in time.

Wille had to meanwhile manage the Pandémie of the Spanish influenza which touched the troops and the schools of recruits. The service entrances were pushed back in order to dam up the epidemic.

Assessment

At the end of the First World War, Wille left its functions of general. It left behind him a turbid climate with a strong cleavage between the two parts of the country, but Switzerland had not entered in war. The general died in 1925 with Meilen in the Canton of Zurich, a city where the street General Wille-Strasse pays homage to him.

The historians reconsidered on several occasions its relationships to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his germanophiles influences. In 1987, the historian Niklaus Meienberg published in Weltwoche several letters of the general which reflect with evil its reputation. Under the title of " Die Welt als Wille & Wahn" (the world according to Wille & Wahn), another report of Meienberg raises the veil on the history of the family Wille, the actions of the general during the first world war like those of his/her son during the Second world war.

References

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