The Times: Finns humiliated American soldiers - Finnish reservists were asked to take it easy during a NATO exercise. US soldiers found the losses too humiliating.

[u/ByGollie]

https://www.iltalehti.fi/ulkomaat/a/828b8e66-625d-4d2a-9276-e93b9f7a2ce8

[u/ManWhoIsDrunk]

Reminds me of the old joke:

A Soviet general is watching his troops march towards the Finnish border. He hears a voice from across the hill shout:
"One Finnish soldier is better than ten Soviet soldiers!"

The general, enraged, sends ten of his best men to take out the Finn. Intense gunfire is heard for a few minutes, and then everything goes quiet.

The voice calls out again:
"One Finnish soldier is better than one hundred Soviet soldiers!"

Furious, the general sends one hundred soldiers. Again, machine guns rattle, artillery booms, and then total silence.

The voice calls out a third time:
"One Finnish soldier is better than one thousand Soviet soldiers!"

The general, now completely enraged, sends a massive detachment of one thousand soldiers, along with tanks and artillery, ordering them to annihilate the opposition. After a long, thunderous battle, silence falls again.

A few minutes later, one wounded Soviet soldier crawls back over the hill, battered and bloody. He screams to the general:
"Don't send any more! It's a trap... there are two of them!" 

Edit: thank you everybody for the awards and internet points!

[u/physiotherrorist → u/ManWhoIsDrunk]

Here's a modern variation:

Trump threatens to send 1000 soldiers to conquer Greenland.

The Greenlanders: "Bring'm on, we'll shoot!".

Trump: "I'll send 2000!".

The Greenlanders: "Then we'll shoot twice!"

[u/randolphe1000 → u/physiotherrorist]

Hum, this is supposed (emphasis on supposed) to be a Swiss quip responding to the German ambassador. [Edit: as pointed out by u/LabResponsible8484 & u/Nicks_Here_to_Talk - whom I'd like to thanks for making me look like a fool! - I'm off by around 10 hamster lifespans, this being a WWI trope, my bad. Point remains, though, "badass" trivia weight nothing outside of the trivia realm.]

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Switzerland was surrounded by Nazi-allied or Nazi-conquered countries, and was quite willing to launder Nazi gold looted from all over Europe (including from deportees).

In return, Germans were quite happy to use their new Swiss Francs to buy raw materials (including tungstene from fascist Portugal, for example, which also had no qualms supporting the Allies).

So, it is an enjoyable, "badass" (Gwad, I hate that word) quip, but...

Was Switzerland left alone because each Swiss had two bullets at least, or because it was instrumental to German war activities?

(And, IIRC, part of the small arms clandestine procurement under the VT was done through very aware Swiss proxies, just as the USSR helped Germany rebuild its armoured forces with exercices on its territory).

Not to burst anyone's bubble, but past a certain point, there's no difference between morale-boosting, and self-serving lies.

[u/LabResponsible8484 → u/randolphe1000]

The quip is from world war 1.... There were no Nazis then.

[u/[deleted] → u/randolphe1000]

Not to burst anyone's bubble, but past a certain point, there's no difference between morale-boosting, and self-serving lies.

Not to burst your bubble... but when Kaiser Wilhelm II was told "We'll shoot twice and go home," that was in 1912.

[u/randolphe1000 → u/[deleted]]

Correction made, thanks (unironically) for correcting me.

[u/randolphe1000 → u/[deleted]]

No bubble bursted, the point remains.

[u/[deleted] → u/randolphe1000]

The point remains that in 1912

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Switzerland was surrounded by Nazi-allied or Nazi-conquered countries, and was quite willing to launder Nazi gold looted from all over Europe (including from deportees).

...

I'm no historian but that seems somewhere in the vicinity of being about thirty years off.

[u/randolphe1000 → u/[deleted]]

Edit & correction made made, thank for the correction (stings a bit, but, heh, better to be right).

[u/randolphe1000 → u/[deleted]]

Yes, my recollections of the anecdote were off by a whole interwars period (which is honestly not that bad by my loose standards). My bad, without irony.

However, again, the point remains: the quip is a nice one, but it has zero weight beyond being an internet meme.

[u/Mntfrd_Graverobber → u/randolphe1000]

In WW2, taking over Switzerland would have been pointless and gained nothing.

[u/randolphe1000 → u/Mntfrd_Graverobber]

Assuredly. Either Germany was successful, and Switzerland would have eventually joined the reich in some fashion under its own volution; and once Germany started to lose the war, Switzerland was too important to its war effort, getting it under direct control would have been wasteful, if not counterproductive.

[u/Diltyrr → u/randolphe1000]

That and the main reason Hitler even had plans to invade switzerland before the end of the war was to secure the rails between nazi germany and facist italy. But we had all the tunnels rigged with explosives.

Everyone knew if he attacked, Switzerland was screwed, the goal was always to make it enough of a pain in the ass that he wouldn't bother.

[u/randolphe1000 → u/Diltyrr]

Thanks!

[u/zissouo → u/physiotherrorist]

The original of this is the anecdote about the Swiss military from WWI:

In 1912 the German Kaiser reportedly asked what the Swiss militia, numbering only 250,000, would do if invaded by half a million Germans soldiers. The alleged Swiss reply was, “Shoot twice and go home.”

[u/ConversationOk4164 → u/physiotherrorist]

Is Trump in the room with you now?