The Switzerland of tomorrow without nuclear weapons

Original poster, designed by Hans Erni for an exhibition in Lausanne in 1964, which goes back to an episode in Swiss politics that seems rather absurd from today's perspective: Immediately after the Federal Council announced its intention in 1958 to equip the army with nuclear weapons, the Swiss Movement against Nuclear Armament was formed to fight these plans – among other things with the aforementioned exhibition «La Suisse de demain sans armes atomiques» («Switzerland of Tomorrow Without Atomic Weapons»), but above all through the constitutional initiative submitted in April 1959: "The manufacture, import, transit, storage, and use of atomic weapons of all kinds as well as their integral components are prohibited on the territory of the Confederation."

The population rejected the initiative in 1962 (otherwise the movement against nuclear armament wouldn't have organized the exhibition) – very decisively so, with 65 percent voting no. However, with the conclusion of the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, it became clear that the nuclear powers had no interest in Switzerland being a nuclear power. Not signing the treaty would have made Switzerland a pariah subjected to considerable pressure. Nevertheless, the government took until 1977 to ratify the treaty.

Against this background, Hans Erni (1909 – 2015) was predestined to design the exhibition poster; commissioned by the Swiss Movement for Peace, he had already created that drastic poster in 1955 denouncing nuclear war:
No to Nuclear War