by ROBERT BECKHUSEN

In the 1957 military manual Total Resistance—which describes how to wage an insurgency—Swiss army Maj. Hans Von Dach sketches out a scenario.

Soviet paratroopers and tanks are overrunning Switzerland during World War III. The army has collapsed and defeat is imminent.

“One thing is certain,” the guide states. “The enemy will show no mercy.”

“The enemy will snuff out one life, dozens, hundreds or thousands without any qualms if this would further his aims. The captured soldier will face deportation, forced labor or death. But so will the worker, the employee, the self-employed and the housewife.”

Von Dach’s proposed solution was to arm and prepare these everyday people for a guerrilla war waged from mountains and the radioactive ruins of Swiss cities.

For a lot of reasons, the Swiss military never officially adopted the manual. The 173-page guide begins with the assumption that the Swiss army no longer exists as a cohesive fighting force in the aftermath of an invasion.

Yet the book was arguably more influential outside the country. German left-wing terrorists studied it during the Red Army Faction’s heydays during the 1970s and 1980s.

The German Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons banned the book—only putting it up for review in 2013.

Total Resistance is still a terrorist’s guide in Germany. Tino Brandt, the neo-Nazi leader of the Thuringia Homeland Defense Group possessed several copies of the book. Brandt is now in custody and charged with 157 counts of aggravated child sexual abuse.

Brandt’s organization also had ties to the terrorist National Socialist Underground, which is responsible for the murders of nine immigrants between 2000 and 2006.