61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

corporations could therefore not constitute lawful seizure under the international
law in force at the time (and, indeed, ever since). At that time, however,
many national banks (including the Belgian and Swiss national banks) were
privately owned. Indeed, in the face of demands for greater political control over
monetary policy, such private ownership of central banks was frequently
justified on the grounds that it protected the bank’s gold reserves in the event
of war, invasion, or occupation. The principles underlying these Articles of the
Hague Convention had been widely endorsed during the final three decades of
the nineteenth century, and in a famous precedent, the Prussian armies of
1870/71 had left the gold held by the Banque de France untouched.
The most extensive discussions with the political authorities and within the
SNB’s supervisory bodies thus occurred in 1943, at a moment when neither the
defence argument («deterrence» or «dissuasion») put forward in 1940, nor the
debate about protecting the currency which had emerged during the second half
of 1941, had much weight. At the same time, the legal basis was extremely
tenuous. The SNB continued to purchase gold – regardless of its problematical
origins – simply because its previous conduct had created a logic and
momentum of its own. The bank was a prisoner of its earlier actions.
Postwar restitution
The discussions of 1943, which were based on many false premises, influenced
the SNB’s position after the War when the problematical nature of the gold
purchases was a major theme in Switzerland’s dealings with the Allies,
especially in the negotiations leading to the Washington Agreement in
May 1946. Two possible lines of defence were put forward: firstly, it was claimed
that the gold purchases were required as a result of Switzerland’s neutrality (this
is as unconvincing an argument as the opposite view, often put forward by the
Allies, that the purchases violated Switzerland’s neutrality). In fact, neutrality
neither prohibited nor required such purchases: it merely permitted them. The
second line of defence – that the SNB had no reason to believe that the gold was
not part of Germany’s pre-war reserves – was also tenuous and was contradicted
by the Allies’ interrogation of Reichsbank Vice-President Puhl, who stated that
the SNB directors had been aware of the situation regarding the Belgian gold.
Switzerland’s position was further undermined by a bitter struggle among the
SNB directors on the issue of who had been responsible for the wartime gold
policy. In addition, during the Washington negotiations of 1946, internal
documents came to light, to which the US had access as well, and which revealed
the internal polemic which had taken place in Switzerland (including the anti-
Semitic views and comments of SNB Director General Alfred Hirs).
The eventual outcome of the Washington Agreement – Switzerland’s payment
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