61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

4 Foreign Trade Relations and Asset Transactions
4.1 Foreign Trade
As regards international developments in the 1930s, Switzerland’s economy,
with its very heavy bias towards foreign trade, found itself in a difficult position
which worsened abruptly when war broke out in the autumn of 1939. In an
environment which was increasingly determined by protectionism and a
striving for national self-sufficiency, there was demand for a new type of adaptability.
The cessation of foreign trade contacts was never seriously a matter for
debate. The Swiss «spirit of survival» during the war years also depended
heavily on foreign trade to supply the country and to stabilise the labour
market. Trade negotiators had to clear the way for goods to pass through the
increasingly dense rings of blockades and counter-blockades erected by the
warring powers. Maintaining trade and business traffic was an «essential
precondition for conducting the wartime economy», as a leading representative,
Jean Hotz, later said. 1
With the armaments-based economy which became prevalent from 1936
onwards, Switzerland was able to use the strong franc, along with the increasingly
comprehensive system of tied payments, to guarantee itself considerable
scope for loans and gold transactions. The franc remained convertible even
during the war years. In a Europe where foreign exchange controls and economic
warfare prevailed, this foreign exchange became exceptional. Until the summer
of 1941, the dollar had been the most important free currency for the Germans.
When the USA and Germany froze one another’s foreign-exchange assets, the
Axis powers, suffering from a notorious shortage of currency, were left with only
the franc as an international currency for armaments purchases on the European
market. The Allies too showed a marked interest in the franc, which they needed
for a wide variety of payments (diplomatic services, espionage, etc.). 2
This section will give an overview of the foreign trade issues revealed by previous
research, and now able to be differentiated and examined in more depth as a
result of new materials from company and association archives. 3 This includes
the way the war economy and the Swiss supply network were organised, negotiations
with the Axis powers and the Allies, and also the interests of the warring
parties in Switzerland during the war. Finally, we will look at the contemporary
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