61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

to obtain only limited supplies, if any, of certain highly important raw materials
such as tungsten and oil. Germany’s allies in particular demanded payment in
francs so that they in turn could purchase military equipment and machinery
from Switzerland. For instance, Romania made payment in Swiss francs a
precondition for signing any economic agreements with Germany at all. Francs
were also used in the neutral states such as Sweden (shipbuilding) or Spain and
Portugal (tungsten). During the war, the Reichsbank had access to about two
billion francs, half of which were used in Switzerland and half in international
payment transactions. 31 Overall, therefore, the specific importance of
Switzerland lies less in its supply of armaments than in its function as a «hub»
for international trade. In the case of certain Swiss industrial products however
(machine tools, detonators) we can assume that Switzerland also made an
important contribution to German wartime production.
On the side of the Allies, motivations were different: here it was less a matter
of taking control of the economic potential of the neutral countries than of
preventing Germany from so doing. The granting of orders to Swiss companies
was the result of an Allied strategy aimed at the systematic weakening of the
Axis powers, by making every effort to put a stop to the support they were
receiving from the neutral countries. As far as Switzerland was concerned, this
strategy was not very successful, as can be seen from the continual warnings
from the USA and Great Britain. The Allies used a wide range of measures to
conduct their economic warfare, in particular the freezing of assets in the USA,
and economic sanctions (black lists and denial of navicerts). The USA and
Britain however, did more than simply exercise repressive pressure on
Switzerland. The economic war was also aimed at absorption: the watchmakers’
jewels which were smuggled into Britain and the USA by post on a large scale
at the beginning of the war were used not only to arm the Allies (detonator and
aircraft production), but also with the aim of limiting the enemy’s supply
opportunities.
If Switzerland was not subjected to greater pressure even in the difficult
situation towards the end of the war, this was due to the fact that Allied
economic warfare never pressured the neutral countries so efficiently or to such
an unlimited extent as the war ministries in London and Washington would
have liked. The black lists sometimes contained an element of happenstance.
During the whole of the war, the Allies had to weigh up various interests in
their policy towards the neutral countries. Important motives militated in
favour of handling Switzerland with care. The Under Secretary of State in the
US State Department, Joseph C. Grew, expressed this compromising attitude
clearly:
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