61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

Swiss-German border, and these firms found that he was often willing to listen
to their requests. In March 1945, Köhler opposed the «Nero» order, according
to which all industrial plants were to be destroyed. 3
Thus in the Nazis’ authoritarian system of economic fiat, there existed ways of
escaping some of its constraints. And indeed they were available for use by those
Swiss firms which chose to remain operational in Germany and to make the best
of it, maintaining, despite being «foreign» in a country that was fiercely nationalist
and ideological, a certain degree of freedom of action and choice of policy.
Everything depended on a series of factors, some of which were objective, e.g.,
legal status of the firm, share capital structure, geographical location, size, type
of production; while others were more subjective, e.g., attitude of the senior
management of both the subsidiaries and the parent company, level and
frequency of communication between them, importance to the Swiss head office
of what was happening in Germany in relation to other parts of the world,
network of political contacts, and competition between Swiss subsidiaries and
German firms in the same sector. Dye manufacturers were thus able to gain
favour with the German Superintendent of the Chemical Sector («Reichsbeauftragter
für Chemie») because, to his mind, they represented a counterweight to
the powerful industrial giant IG Farben.
All the Swiss companies operating in Germany between 1933 and 1945 had set
up their subsidiaries long before that time. The chronic instability prevailing in
Germany after 1918 and the worldwide depression had not encouraged
investment of any importance. And no one, except perhaps very small, local
companies, would have considered setting up a plant in Germany after Hitler
came to power, in view of the constraints mentioned above as well as discouraging
tax laws. Almost all the companies that were already operating in
Germany, however, preferred to remain in place. There were very few exceptions.
We have already mentioned Wild Heerbrugg, which was brought to a standstill
owing to low profitability. More significant is the case of the conglomerate
Gebrüder Sulzer in Winterthur, where political and personal considerations were
combined with economic reasons. Until the outbreak of the war, Sulzer sold the
majority of the diesel machinery and engines that were the basis of its success
(patented in 1893) to the UK, South and North America, France, the Netherlands,
South Africa and Egypt; barely 3% of its production was supplied to Italy
and Germany. Sulzer had two subsidiaries in Germany, however, one in Stuttgart
(heating systems) and the other in Ludwigshafen (diesel engines). It decided to
sell them in 1939 at the outbreak of war.
The companies maintaining a presence in Germany had made investments that
were now expected to produce a return. They had conquered a market and won
over a certain clientele. They had taken on, and sometimes specially trained,
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