Franz Burri (26 October 1901 – 24 July 1987) was a Swiss political figure who, from his base in Germany, became the leading disseminator of Nazi propaganda in the country.

Born in Lucerne to a half-German working-class family, Burri was a supporter of Nazi Germany from an early age and frequently visited the country during the 1930s.

[1] Known for his crude language and his fondness for wearing the brown uniform of the Sturmabteilung, his hopes for a career in the SS were dashed when Reinhard Heydrich deemed him unsuitable.

[1] Also involved in the larger National Movement of Switzerland, Burri quit this organisation after the rejection of his SS application in 1941 to set up his own Nationalsozialistischer Schweizerbund (NSSB),[1] although he moved to Germany full-time soon after this and ran a sister group, the Nationalsozialistische Bewegung in der Schweiz, from there.

[2] After moving to Germany, Burri took up his role as the leading producer of Nazi propaganda for the Swiss market.

Within its pages Burri and his fellow writers, notably his closest ally and NSSB chief Ernst Leonhardt, called for a Union of the German Peoples in which Switzerland would be absorbed into the Third Reich in the same way that Austria had been.

In 1944, leaflets by Burri described General Henri Guisan, who'd mobilized Swiss forces for a potential invasion by Germany, as a "traitor", "mercenary of Jews and liar", and "miserable idiot".

The prosecution presented German files which showed that in 1941, Burri had sent a letter to Heinrich Himmler discussing the importance of a Nazi coup in Switzerland.

Burri said he and his colleagues were "ready for action at any time" and had a paramilitary of 1,800 men prepared for deployment in all German-speaking Swiss cantons.

He claimed his arrest and extradition by the Americans constituted a kidnapping in violation of international law and that he was being punished for his political beliefs.