Area: 70,553 km²
For geographical and cultural reasons Germany was always the most important trade partner to Switzerland. As most other countries, Switzerland was still in an economic recession at this time while Germany boomed due to Hitler's industrial initiatives. So Switzerland's economic dependancy on its large neighbour Germany was even bigger than in normal times. This is the reason, why the Swiss government took some censorship measures focusing on external trade matters.
Switzerland's industry always depended to an extraordinary extent on exporting machinery, watches, chemicals and pharmaceutics. The high population density, hard conditions for agriculture especially in the alpine region and a scarcity on raw materials are responsible for a notorious deficit in food production and a notorious trade deficit. During the 20th century tourism, transport services and financial services (banking and insurance) had to provide for a favourable balance of payments.
During World War II imports fell from 30 % of the net national product (average value at the end of the 1920's and again during the 1950's) to 9 %, exports from 25% to 9% and tourism to almost zero.











