GENEVA — Switzerland actively aided Nazi economic interests during World War II and afterward, according to new studies issued by a group of independent historians that the government commissioned to examine the country's role during that era.
Switzerland, a neutral nation that long had an image as a plucky country that resisted the Nazis, formed part of Germany's economic lifeline, said the group, the Independent Commission of Experts on Switzerland and World War II. The commission said that Switzerland helped German companies with transactions, including trading in stolen securities, and that it amassed at least $1.25 billion in German assets by the end of the war.
The commission, led by Jean-Francois Bergier, a Swiss historian, was set up in 1996 as debate raged over the country's wartime conduct, including banks holding the assets of those who perished in the Holocaust. The nine members have issued a series of reports examining numerous facets of Switzerland's actions.
The latest set of 10 studies, amounting to nearly 4,000 pages, delves into the financial aspects of Switzerland's relations with Germany and Italy. The studies also refute criticism of the commission's earlier report that the Swiss turned away thousands of Jews after 1942 when it was known that many would perish in Nazi death camps.
While the ongoing historians' scrutiny has drawn criticism from the country's far right, the Swiss mood appears to be in accord with Jean-Noel Cuenod, who wrote on Friday in the Tribune de Geneve newspaper: "One isn't able to turn the page on the Second World War without defining the exact role of Switzerland during that period, which drastically changed humanity as few events have done over the centuries." In the current reports, the historians found that Switzerland returned millions of dollars in assets to German owners after the war in violation of the 1946 war compensation accord, which committed Switzerland to turning over money from the sale of German assets to the Allies to be used for compensating Nazi victims.
In a debate over the issue during the 1990s, Swiss officials invoked the postwar agreement as having settled all wartime claims. But in 1998, Swiss banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion to settle claims by Holocaust survivors against Switzerland. A volume of the new report titled "Switzerland as a Hub for German Covert Operations from 1939-1952" said that Germans secretly sent assets into the country — for example, diamonds in their diplomatic pouch. However, Christiane Uhlig, one of the five researchers who worked on the report, said they were not able to determine what part of these assets had belonged to top Nazis. After the war, German assets remaining in Switzerland were worth at least twice as much — $450 million — as Swiss officials estimated then and probably much more, Uhlig said.
Because Swiss leaders apparently believed Germany would regain its economic importance, those assets "remained to a large extent untouched thanks to the obdurate and stalling Swiss negotiation and in the course of the 1950s were returned to their German owners," said the historians, from Britain, Israel, Poland, Switzerland and the United States.
At the same time, the study said Swiss banks "obstructed the return of securities seized from Jews and inhabitants of occupied countries." Although some were returned to their rightful owners, many were unclaimed and remained at the banks, according to the study.
The Swiss Bank Corp., now part of Switzerland's biggest bank, UBS AG, and the predecessor to Vontobel Holding AG, one of the country's largest private banks, took active roles in trading stolen securities, which violated Swiss law, the panel said. These companies have consistently said they should not be held responsible for what happened in that era.
At the time, government officials looked the other way, and the frequent transactions "made Switzerland into an indispensable supplier of foreign exchange for Germany," the panel said. This was particularly important because the Allied isolation of Germany left Switzerland as one of the few countries where the Third Reich could get other currencies to buy fuel and weapons to fight the war, the historians noted.
Italy, too, benefited from Switzerland's wartime conduct, using credits to pay for Swiss supplies of arms, according to the report.
The Swiss Bank Corp. also loaned money to German companies, including some of the biggest Nazi collaborators, and helped Hitler's regime repurchase the country's bonds for rock-bottom prices abroad, the report said.
"The buyback, which amounted to a cheap way for Germany and its companies to cut their debt, helped boost exports and put the armaments industry and other sectors important to the war effort back on a healthy footing," according to the report.
Even after the war, Swiss companies hired skilled Germans, including some from I.G. Farbenindustrie AG, which used forced labor and produced gas for Nazi death chambers.
The report also says that after the war, the most notorious war criminals, including Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele, were allowed to enter Switzerland as they fled, but that they remained only long enough to get Red Cross travel documents.