INDEPENDENT COMMISSION OF EXPERTS
SWITZERLAND - WORLD WAR II

Switzerland and Gold Transactions in the Second World War: Interim Report

The Reichsbank's shipments of gold to Swiss commercial banks were set in a complex background

Bern/Zurich, 25 May 1998. In 1940 and 1941, the German Reichsbank made intensive use of Swiss commercial banks for its international gold transactions. Beginning October 1941, upon the request of the Swiss National Bank, the Reichsbank ceased its shipments of gold to commercial banks and made all of its future shipments only to the Swiss central bank.

As the Independent Commission of Experts: Switzerland - Second World War has explained in its interim report published today, the Reichsbank's gold shipments to Swiss commercial banks during the war comprised a total of approximately 50 tons of gold for a value of 243.7 million Swiss francs, or the equivalent of 56.3 million dollars. The Reichsbank conducted such physical transfers of gold to private Swiss banking institutions up until October 1941. At that point, the Swiss National Bank stepped in with a request that the Reichsbank effect its future shipments of gold only to the Swiss central bank.

For the gold shipped to Switzerland, the Reichsbank acquired large amounts of Portuguese escudos which the Swiss commercial banks, in turn, purchased in Portugal using Swiss francs. The Banco de Portugal redeemed these francs at the SNB for gold. Following the June 1941 freeze on Swiss assets in the United States, the SNB intervened in this complex arrangement of circulating payments which was going on between the Reichsbank and Portugal, and whose objective was to supply the National Socialist regime with the raw materials needed to wage war.

After the SNB's intervention, Swiss commercial banks still remained active in foreign currency operations with the Reichsbank. Furthermore, even after 1942, there is evidence of isolated gold import transactions from Germany to Swiss commercial banks.

The commercial context of the gold transactions which took place between the Reichsbank and Swiss commercial banks must be more closely examined on a case by case basis. Based on various sources, the fact does emerge that about three-fifths of the shipments made from Berlin concern gold of Soviet origin which was partially used to pay for deliveries of American and Swiss good to the Soviet Union. The Commission plans to study these events in their historical setting in further detail in the process of its on-going research.