telephone calling in 1940

steve123x

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I'm writing a novel, set partly in London and Zurich during 1940. The protagonist is vacationing in a 1 or 2 star hotel in Zurich and needs to make and receive phone calls to London and also to Bern, Switzerland.
How would he be able to make and receive telephone calls coming from the above two cities in that year? Could he use the hotel phone? Or would he have to visit Zurich's central post office to call from there?
 

mirandashell

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I would imagine he could use the hotel phone. He would have to book the phone to call London and then be paged when the call from London came in. I think.
 

waylander

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Could you even do this in wartime? Were the phones not cut off?
 

King Neptune

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Waylander has a good question. If a call could go through, it would have to be routed a long way around.
 

stephenf

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There was no direct international dialling at that time , everything had to go through a manually operated switch board. I don't actuly know if it you could make a international call in 1940 . But even if the lines survived ,it would be very easy to stop personal calls .
 
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mirandashell

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1940 was pretty early in the war and Switzerland was a neutral country. Be something to check though.
 

waylander

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The phone lines would have passed through France. When in 1940 is this set? If it is before the fall of France then the phones might well still have worked. If after June 1940 then I doubt it.
 

waylander

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True! But I was questioning the calls to London
 

King Neptune

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During WW II Switzerland set up direct short wave radio with the U.S. Whether that could have been switched to other modes I don't know.