Hans von Dach

Who is Hans von Dach?

Hans von Dach was a Swiss military theorist. He was the author of the influential seven-volume 1957 guerrilla warfare manual Total Resistance, which made him the internationally best-known Swiss tactical theorist.

Von Dach, a Bernese, was employed from 1970 to 1980 in the training division of the Swiss Defence Department. His emphasis on broadly based irregular warfare was not shared by senior Army leaders, who preferred to focus Switzerland's Cold War defence efforts on conventional combined-arms tactics and equipment. Consequently, his views had no influence on army strategy.

Despite the wide readership found by Total Resistance, von Dach was not promoted beyond the relatively junior rank of Major which he attained in 1963, 25 years before his retirement in 1988. This may have been to make it easier for the army to disclaim responsibility for his writings, which were criticized as advocating conduct that violated the laws of war. In 1974, the Chief of the General Staff vetoed the publication of Total Resistance, then very popular among officers, as an army manual, partly because of these concerns.