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.
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