“Brother Tronchet”: A Swiss Trade Union Leader within the US Sphere of Influence

During the Cold War, whilst formally neutral in terms of its foreign and security policies, Switzerland actually found itself bound up in numerous ways with transnational anti-communist initiatives, whether in bilateral or multilateral settings. One of the facets of this still poorly understood protean involvement is the participation (deliberate or otherwise) of the Swiss Left — itself a component of soft power toward Western Europe — within the “Non-Communist Left” approach of the United States.1 Plenty of research has already been conducted on American “state-private networks” and the political, trade union and cultural circles of the European Left, but Switzerland has been largely absent from these investigations.2 However, there were “progressives” in Switzerland who joined forces with the United States in their anti-communist (or rather anti-Marxist, anti-Stalinist or anti-totalitarian) battles. The trade unionist from Geneva, Lucien Tronchet (1902–82), was among their number. Leader of the Federation of Wood and Construction Workers (FOBB), he was without doubt one of the principal men of the Swiss Left on whom the Americans decided to pin their hopes at the start of the 1950s.