61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

internal propaganda, exclusion of Jewish employees, appointing Party members
to the board, etc.). In turn it was rewarded with advantageous production conditions
– a head office in Berlin (1938) and a plant in Singen (1940) – and with
being granted the title of «exemplary Nazi firm» which it shared with the
likewise Swiss company Schiesser in 1940. It was the desire to survive rather
than any ideological convictions which forced these subsidiaries into the arms
of Nazism. As far as Maggi’s parent company in Kemptthal is concerned, it
depended to too great an extent on the success of its German subsidiary not to
support this policy, whether it wanted to or not.
The means and the players
The way in which these strategies were implemented depended on many factors.
Among them, the legal structure of the companies, i.e., the degree of formal
autonomy that the subsidiaries enjoyed, does not seem to have been a determining
factor. Most of these subsidiaries were joint-stock or limited liability
companies for which the parent company held all or the majority of the shares.
Some of the subsidiaries, such as Brown Boveri in Mannheim, even had their
own subsidiaries. In a few cases, the Swiss firm had several subsidiaries that were
legally distinct entities. This was the case with Nestlé and DAN (milk products
and later Nescafé as well) and Sarotti SA (chocolate and biscuits) taken over
through share purchase in 1928/29, or AIAG, which held the share capital of
several companies. In autumn 1939, these companies joined to form a sort of
consortium called ALIG (Aluminium-Industrie Gemeinschaft) with its head office
in Konstanz. It was managed by Hans-Constantin Paulssen, who was already a
director of the main subsidiary, Aluminium-Werk Singen. This unique combination
considerably restricted AIAG’s control of its German business affairs. To
the Allies, AIAG appeared not to be responsible for its German business and
could therefore hope to avoid having an administrator imposed and being put
on the black lists. Furthermore, ALIG drew up a profit and loss account together
with its affiliated companies, which made it easier to transfer what it owed to
AIAG in foreign currency. Conversely, it was in Switzerland that three large
chemical companies – Ciba, Sandoz and Geigy – had joined to form an alliance
under the name of «Basler IG» (1918–1951), which operated like a cartel and
enjoyed common leverage on the world market. At the other end of the range
of formal structures, the factory that Geigy ran in Grenzach was not a subsidiary
but depended directly on the Basel company. It was situated only a few hundred
metres away, like an exclave in German territory. The frontier separated the two,
however, and became an increasingly important barrier during the period we
are dealing with. Production activities and the market for its products were
subject to German legislation, and to the economic demands of the Nazi
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