61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

its former Swiss holding company must conceal a plot, a tacit exclusion, or a
secret arrangement. Following their entry into the war, the Americans seized
the much coveted factories in spring 1942, giving rise to a prolonged legal
conflict with the Swiss parties involved. This quarrel was resolved only in the
1960s, when a compromise was reached and the disputed assets divided up. 24
Transfer of German assets into Switzerland
The magnitude of German asset-relocation movements is clearly documented
by the Clearing Office findings mentioned earlier: around two thirds of the
German assets registered in Switzerland in 1945/46 were not brought into the
country until after 1939. On the other hand, reports presented as fact,
describing the systematic and planned nature of these endeavours, for example
the alleged conference of leading German industrial and Party representatives
in a Strasbourg hotel in 1944 (Red House), often turn out to be barely verifiable
speculation. 25 Investigations by the Americans and the British into the
Bankhaus Johann Wehrli & Cie. AG in Zurich also ended in 1945 without any
proof of the supposedly important role of the bank in moving German assets.
Initially, the Swiss Clearing Office also intended to look into the question of
which assets flowed into Switzerland in the first half of the war, and which after
the turning point of the war in 1943, but in the end this was never clarified.
The mass of documentary evidence available to the SVSt suggest, movements
of assets may have increased in the latter phase of the war. Information held by
the Allied and Swiss authorities – often from unverifiable secret service sources
– and information provided by the Swiss National Bank and other agencies,
pointed in this direction. During the late summer of 1944, the Swiss press took
up the subject, sure enough following merely the press in the Allied countries.
In the last phase of the war, the wish to save anything which could be saved
appears obvious. The absence of similar reports from the first half of the war
must not, however, be taken as conclusive evidence that transactions during that
period were less numerous. From a German point of view, the first part of the
war in 1939/40 was also associated with high levels of uncertainty about the
future course of events. Pressure from the Allies and the imminent German
defeat provide a perfectly adequate explanation of why these reports – where
previously silence had reigned – began to pile up in 1944.
The aim of asset-relocation movements in the final phase of the war may have
been to prepare German businesses for the post-war period transferring financial
reserves and stocks to Switzerland, or relocating licences and patents there, with
a view to regaining access to the world markets as quickly as possible. It was
equally conceivable, however, that the political elite of the Nazi regime and
their followers, threatened with ruin, were attempting to ensure their personal
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