The Swiss, the Gold and the Dead: How Swiss Bankers Helped Finance the Nazi War Machine

Recent startling revelations that Switzerland helped to bankroll Nazi Germany's war effort, and Swiss intransigence in the face of redress claims by Holocaust survivors, have shaken Switerland's international reputation. In this uncompromising account, leading Swiss sociologist Jean Ziegler closely examines the shady relationship between Swiss bankers and Nazi Germany. Based on the records of the German Armaments Ministry and other official documents, The Swiss, the Gold, and the Dead shows how Switzerland's leading financial institutions provided Hittler with the foreign exchange essential to his war effort-laundering gold looted from the banks of occupied Europe and from the bodies of concentration camp victims; granting sizable loans; and supplying Germany's war economy with weapons, ammunition, and precision instruments. In returen, Switzerland was spared the devastation that befell the rest of Europe. Ziegler argues forcefully and authoritatively that without Swiss complicity the war in Europe would have ended earlier, sparing hundreds of thousands of lives. Drawing on more than thirty years of experience in Switzerland's domestic politic and international diplomacy, Professor Ziegler has made an important contribution to this highly controversial and emotional subject.