61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

4.8 Industrial Companies and their Subsidiaries in Germany:
Strategies and Management
From the second half of the 19 th century on, the limits of the internal market,
the problem of obtaining raw materials and recruiting labour, as well as customs
barriers pushed many Swiss entrepreneurs to enter other markets by manufacturing
on the spot. 1 This industrial diaspora concerned first and foremost
Switzerland’s neighbours – France, Germany, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian
Empire – and in particular the regions bordering the country such as Alsace,
Baden-Württemberg, Vorarlberg, Lombardy and Piedmont. Around the turn
of the century this phenomenon spread to include England, the United States,
Russia, Scandinavia, Turkey, and even Argentina and Japan. We shall limit
ourselves here to considering the subsidiaries in Germany, but it should not be
forgotten that several of the parent companies were doing business in other parts
of the world, notably in the Allied countries. Georg Fischer had a plant in
Singen (Baden-Württemberg), only a few miles away from its head office in
Schaffhausen, but also in Bedford (UK), while Hoffmann-La Roche had
subsidiaries in Berlin as well as Welwyn Garden City (UK) and Nutley (New
Jersey, USA). Nestlé meanwhile was established in Berlin but also under the
name of Unilac in Stanford (New York). It is not known how many Swiss
companies had subsidiaries in Germany because no lists were made at the time.
All branches of industry and commerce were involved, however, and all sizes of
business were represented, from small workshops or hotels such as the Insel in
Konstanz with only a few employees to large-scale set-ups such as Brown Boveri
in Mannheim, which employed over 15,000 workers. It is not surprising that a
large majority of these subsidiaries were located in Baden-Württemberg and
often just across the border. 2
Swiss subsidiaries as part of the economy of the Third Reich
The behaviour of the parent companies in Switzerland towards their subsidiaries
varied considerably, just as did their management of the subsidiaries. This held
true even though the same legal and regulatory restrictions applied to all
companies operating in Nazi Germany and in the territories it later occupied or
controlled. This equality of treatment was ensured under the terms of the trade
agreement between Germany and Switzerland signed in 1926.
The Nazi economy was always based on the principle of private enterprise,
which differentiated it from the state-run economy favoured by the Soviet
regime. Business circles in Switzerland, and in the West in general, were misled
by this and in the 1930s failed to recognise, at first, that the Nazi economy
concealed a type of totalitarianism. In effect, under Hitler the organisation of
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