61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

Nobel AG in Bratislava. The banks continued to lend money to IG Farben in
1941 and 1942. The SBC even helped the company out in enemy territory in
1943 when it granted IG Farben loans in pounds sterling for the purchase of
Romanian oil shares. It is extremely difficult to determine today how these
loans were in fact used and, in view of the interchangeable character of money,
it is in many cases impossible. Basically, they offered the possibility of
purchasing foreign exchange. It is not possible, however, to establish a direct
link between these loans and, for example, the funding of the enormous
IG Farben chemical plant in the vicinity of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The loans were probably used for importing raw materials that may well have
been used in Auschwitz-Monowitz. For the Swiss banks the main purpose of
these loans was to deconcentrate the open credit items and regroup them among
financially strong debtors which, if Germany were to lose the war, would offer
the most security.
In some cases, Swiss loans were used for constructing buildings which, forming
an immediate part of the military infrastructure, were also connected to the
Nazi genocide. In 1941 and 1942, for example, the Union Bank of Switzerland
and the Swiss Bank Corporation tendered for the financing of a supply of
wooden sheds from Switzerland to the Wehrmacht and the SS. The transaction
was completed in an unusual and covert way; in addition, bribes were paid to a
series of well-positioned middlemen including General Guisan’s son, Henry
Guisan, who received a commission of 13,000 francs. 18
Other transactions, equally questionable, were carried out by less central institutions.
For example the Schweizerische Bodenkreditanstalt (SBKA), a
mortgage bank associated with Credit Suisse, gradually specialised in liquidating
those non-transferable German liabilities (in so-called Sperrmark, i.e.,
blocked marks) towards Swiss banks which had originated with the debt
moratoria of 1933 and 1934. 19 The Bodenkreditanstalt developed various
methods of liquidating or indirectly transferring stocks of marks that were
frozen in Germany. For this purpose it built up a network of personal contacts
including Wilhelm Frick, a Zurich lawyer, and Wilhelm Oeding, a confidant
of Hermann Goering. The SBKA would obtain a permit to pay for goods and
raw materials imported from Germany in Sperrmark and to be credited the
purchase price by the Swiss buyers in Swiss francs. These sorts of transactions
always involved considerable bribes or commissions. During the war years, the
transactions became more complicated and obtaining a permit to use Sperrmark
involved ever more time-consuming conditions such as supplying strategically
important goods to Germany. In this way, 3% of the total German demand for
tungsten, which was essential for the production of special steel, was supplied
to the Third Reich through the offices of the Bodenkreditanstalt.
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