Quote:
Originally Posted by Slartibartfas
It doesn't matter who knew and who was responsible. The money was there, and after the war it remained to unknown but certainly very substantial amounts there and the entire Switzerland profited from that.
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I have to disagree here. Can you produce and present evidence from an unbiased source that "entire Switzerland profited from (this)?"
Here is evidence to the contrary:
The Swiss in the 1940s Were No Worse Than the Rest of Us
By Walter J. Rockler - International Herald Tribune
"The current wave of vilification of Switzerland, most recently abetted by a U.S. government report, is overblown and basically warped. A public image is being created of the Swiss as virtual Nazi collaborators. This is false.
In writing these views
, I should note that I was the Nuremberg war crimes trial prosecutor directly responsible for cases against German bankers, and I spent two years at that work. My cases had no Swiss components or angles.
Switzerland has maintained a policy of neutrality and nonalignment in European and world affairs for hundreds of years. That was its official policy also in World War II. I do not know where the sympathies of most Swiss were directed during the war, but the country is the oldest democracy in the world and has a pluralistic population of German, French and Italian background.
Were some Swiss pro-Nazi? Probably.
But the United States had its German American Bund, Britain its Cliveden set and Mosleyites, and France the Vichy government."
Rest of article at:
The Swiss in the 1940s Were No Worse Than the Rest of Us - International Herald Tribune
This is from a U.S. government report which is condemning the Swiss:
"The study said the Swiss National Bank (SNB) did not know the source of the gold, but that it also made no attempt to find out if victim gold was being deposited."
My question is "how exactly were they supposed to find this out?" They had no legal authority to investigate the Germans, and no means to send bank investigators into a war zone. All they had to go by was the information provided to them by the depositors.
Again, there are some black spots on their record, they were far from perfect, but to say this is what kept the Nazis at bay is false.
Link
I will end with the words of a non-neutral figure from World War 2, Winston Churchill, who said:
"I put this down for the record," wrote Churchill to Anthony Eden in a December 1944 memo reprinted in Triumph and Tragedy. "Of all the neutrals Switzerland has the greatest right to distinction. What does it matter whether she has been able to give us the commercial advantages we desire or has given too many to the Germans to keep herself alive? She has been a democratic State, standing for freedom in self-defense among her mountains, and in thought, in spite of race, largely on our side."