Rothenthurm: The Weapons Site Dispute – A Journey Through History

At the end, the Federal Council praised the government: from the start, it supported the then military department EMD’s request to create a weapons range in Rothenthurm in the high moor. She also said yes to the federal government’s move to expropriate 40 property owners.

36 years after the controversy that occupied the canton, Oberallmeind and the municipality of Rothenthurm for decades and culminated in the adoption of the moor protection initiative, a scientific study is now available for the first time. The Zug historian Stephanie Müller presents the whole story. “Rothenthurm – The Battle for the Weapons Place” will be launched on December 6th.

On December 6, 1987, 57.8 percent of Swiss people said yes to the initiative, putting an end to the weapons range plans. In the canton of Schwyz, the project was rejected by 51.5 percent, with the communities in the inner part of the canton dominating the outer communities, which voted for nature conservation and against the army project.

The first two plans were stopped by the EMD

The cantons of Schwyz and Zug “worked very actively on the development of the project,” praised the then EMD boss Georges-André Chevallaz and thanked them for their “courage and steadfastness.”

Müller was also able to take a look at the archives for the first time, the ban on which has now been lifted after 30 years (see interview). There was talk of a weapons range in the Sattel–Rothenthurm area for the first time in 1943/45. This project was abandoned on the grounds that the region was not suitable for it.

A revival of the idea also failed in 1956. At the time, the argument was that the whole project would ultimately be too expensive. A “planning commission” came to the opposite conclusion in 1974, which saw the need for a weapons range. As early as 1978, Federal Councilor Rudolf Gnägi announced that he wanted to take an “amicable path”, but brought expropriation into play as a last resort. These would also have become necessary because the EMD was only able to acquire 218 of the necessary 354 hectares by 1982.

It would have been the largest expropriation operation in Switzerland, but the united rural and left-green resistance stopped all of the EMD’s plans with the moor protection initiative.

The fight for the weapons position heated up tempers. The no weapons position was fought for with numerous actions. For example, Chevallaz’s departure from Rothenthurm was delayed by tractors. Manure was emptied at his feet. And the fact that the Schwyz government fired Jean Gottesmann, the head of the department for nature and heritage protection, because he, as a private citizen, made critical comments about the weapons range plans, showed how strongly the government stood behind the EMD. But it was the best advertising for preventing the weapons site – and thus for approving the initiative.