In English: Every Swiss citizen is a menace for his own homeland. It is a fact, well known in Switzerland, that after World War II, the role of a Swiss Gestapo was taken over by every Swiss citizen himself, moving the curtain whenever someone left the house or arrived, noticing painfully if She has a man with her or not - the next time: if He is the same man She had before with her. Such a day is long, especially for the house-wives and the retired: No wonder that the results of this breathtaking observations have to be reported meanwhile and exchanged with the other finks and informers and plants. Officially, however, "Spitzels" there were only behind the Iron Curtain, and the big difference of the Swiss "Fröntler" from the German Nazis was THE reason that Hitler did not invade Switzerland. This "strategy" has even gotten a name: Geistige Landesverteidigung (Spiritual Homeland-Defense), and prices were given for people who won merits. That the most terrible events in and around World War II can obviously best or only treated in the form of comedies, we know since Chaplin's "Great Dictator" and until Achternbusch's "Das Letzte Loch". And "Beresina", too, is a comedy, although director Daniel Schmid has ever done one before. That "Beresina" grew also into Scmid's last movie, was due to his progressive disease rather than purpose.
