Neutral Switzerland, accused of hoarding the wealth of Jews murdered by Hitler, sold arms worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Nazi Germany, according to Swiss wartime diplomatic archives released on Wednesday.
Swiss historian Mauro Cerutti, one of the researchers who worked on the project, said Nazi Germany's share in Swiss arms and war material exports from 1940 to 1944 was nearly two-thirds of the total and worth 600 million Swiss francs then. This is the first time the figure uncovered in Swiss diplomatic archives has been made public, he told reporters.Cerutti, among a group of Swiss historians who published the wartime documents in a project aided by the Swiss National Foundation for Scientific Research, said Swiss exports of arms and war material in the period from 1940 to September 1944 were worth 900 million Swiss francs at the time.
Out of this total, Italy also received arms and war material worth some 150 million Swiss francs at values then, but the bulk went to Nazi Germany, he told reporters.
"These are official figures. They are very precise. It is the first time they are being released," he said. "Italy also obtained arms from Switzerland. Arms exports ended only at the end of September 1944 following pressure from the allies."
The archives also reveal a sense of guilt felt by some Swiss officials at Swiss commercial dealings with Nazi Germany. They also show criticism of Swiss banks for putting the priority on banking secrecy rules. They are the latest in a series of new documents surfacing in Switzerland, where cantonal records in Lausanne recently revealed a mass of records of individual bank accounts, including many closed by the banks without the owners' knowledge during World War II.