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1885 1973
Over the course of three centuries many Swiss immigrants and their descendents have distinguished themselves as soldiers in American armies, but for an American-born soldier to reach the highest grade in the Swiss army is an exceptional occurrence.
Herbert Constam was born in Zurich, but his New York-born father had come to Switzerland only a few years earlier to study chemistry at the Zurich Polytechnic, and did not obtain Swiss citizenship until 1908.
Although Constam studied law, he shortly afterwards became a career soldier. His first position was as an instructor at the shooting school in Walenstadt, Canton St Gallen, where he spent much of his career in between holding other positions. He also gained experience commanding mountain troops, and both before and after World War II he taught tactics and mountain warfare at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
He twice went for further training with the French army, and in 1937 he was sent to observe Franco's army in the Spanish Civil War.
Faced with the threat of war in 1939, Switzerland mobilised its reserves and appointed Henri Guisan as commander-in-chief with the rank of general a position which only exists in the Swiss army at time of war.
Guisan promoted Constam to the rank of Corps Commander the equivalent of a 3-star general. At that time he was almost certainly the highest ranking officer of Jewish descent anywhere in the world. (Constam's father had converted to Christianity a few years before his marriage, and changed his name from Kohnstamm.)
A German intelligence report at the time described Constam as "Very capable. Non-Aryan. Hostile to Germany."
As an adviser to Guisan, Constam played an important role in developing the plan for a "redoubt" in the Alps, from which resistance would be organized should there be an invasion. It was hoped that even if most of Switzerland came under Nazi occupation, the redoubt would remain impregnable.
After the war he continued to teach at the Federal Institute of Technology, and remained commander of the 3rd Army Corps.
Constam was admired not only for his abilities as a teacher and a leader, but for his personal commitment and his care for his subordinates.
Although Constam's mother was Swiss from St Gallen, the family kept close ties with the US. His father was US Vice Consul in Switzerland from 1892-95. His brother Ernst a pioneer of ski lifts made his home in the US from 1940, but continued to build ski lifts in both countries, while another brother, Georg, a specialist in diabetes, worked for three years (1925-28) at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, New York.
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