61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

In summer 1940, the Swiss diplomacy and the military authorities made every
effort to encourage the armaments industry to use its full production capacity
to supply war material to Germany. Bührle, who maintained very good relations
with Berlin, got most of the contracts. At the end of 1939, Bührle won his first
contract for 8 million francs. At the beginning of August 1940, the German
Army Supreme Command (Oberkommando des Heeres) and the navy ordered arms
and ammunition for a further 195 million francs. By January 1943, Rudolf
Ruscheweyh, a German arms dealer and armaments specialist who had received
11 million francs in bribes from Bührle, had managed to acquire further
contracts valued at 246 million francs from the army and navy. According to his
internal accounts, Bührle supplied 20mm guns, ammunition and fuses worth
around 400 million francs to Germany up until 1944. Oerlikon could not fulfil
contracts worth a further 49 million francs. The authorities were aware of orders
to the value of only 318.3 million francs (70%; see Table 2). Bührle relied on a
large number of subcontractors: the cartridges were supplied by the Eidgenössische
Munitionsfabrik in Altdorf and powder by the Eidgenössische Pulverfabrik
in Wimmis, which constituted a violation of the neutrality-linked ban
on state-owned companies exporting arms to belligerent powers. 27 SIG was also
one of Bührle’s main suppliers. Owing to its lack of contacts at the German
procurement agencies, SIG did not manage to export its own war material to
Germany, as mentioned above. An important product it did supply to Germany,
however, was SIG track-laying machinery, which was not considered as war
material by the Swiss Federal Council.
Between 1940 and 1943, the main customer of the Waffenfabrik Solothurn was
Italy. In addition, thanks to the efforts of Rheinmetall Düsseldorf, it supplied
Germany in April 1942 and in December 1943 with one tank gun and its newly
developed universal automatic gun. Rheinmetall tested them at its own testing
site in Unterlüss but did not manage to persuade the German procurement
agencies to buy the 20mm guns from Solothurn. 28 This was even more
surprising since Germany’s need for 20mm guns was greater than ever at that
time. In summer 1943, Solothurn was left with 450 of its 20mm automatic
guns and 150 boxes of 20mm ammunition imported from Germany, weighing
a total of 120 tons, that had already been paid for by Italy but could not be
delivered after Mussolini’s fall. After risky but unsuccessful efforts to sell them,
the guns were destroyed in 1961. The Waffenfabrik Solothurn had more success
with vehicles also manufactured for Italy which it was able to sell to the Swiss
army in autumn 1943. Solothurn subsequently laid off the majority of its
employees.
Before the war the products manufactured by the Waffenfabrik Solothurn were
sold by Solo GmbH in Berlin; from 1 July 1939 on, they were sold by Solita in
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