61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

elief that relations would continue, others seemed to expect Germany’s
exclusion from such business to persist for a longer period. «It is shameful how
many people believe they could now profit from these German assets»,
remarked Max Ott, director of the Department for German Assets at the
Clearing Office, with respect to the resulting behaviour and added, on a subsequent
occasion in November 1948: «If the Allied pressure eases on Germany, a
number of Germans may claim that we robbed them.» 151
When the Germans regained their capacity to act in the course of 1949, this
was precisely the situation that arose on a number of occasions. In some cases,
it was only possible to assess the ownership situation at camouflaged German
companies in Switzerland in court. In the early 1950s, the German insurance
companies that had been made independent – Union Rück and Nationalversicherung
– had to make payments in arrears running into millions to the
former German parent companies, as the German parties put forth a credible
argument that the «Swissification» at the beginning of the war had not taken
place unconditionally. The documents in these cases were eloquent. It was also
plain that Nationalversicherung had undoubtedly taken advantage of a
favourable opportunity to free itself of a burdensome and materially oppressive
connection. One of the key managers behind the separation, Hans Theler, was
a Swiss native but had worked for many years for the German Allianz in
Germany, Spain, and Italy in a position of confidence. The Germans found the
conduct of «Mr. Theler and the Union Bank of Switzerland […] to be highly
dishonourable.» 152 Putting the problem into this kind of moral framework was
not unusual. Confidence had always been a key factor in this type of cross-border
business, even in those cases where camouflage was not involved. In Switzerland
too, it was acknowledged – with some irritation – that the Germans were on
the doorstep once again, as if nothing had happened in the meantime.
The Interhandel case
The legal and media discussion in the case of Interhandel, the former Swiss
finance company of the IG Farben group which bore the name IG Chemie until
the end of 1945, took on quite unusual proportions. 153 The Americans
considered this company to be a typical case of German camouflage, whose
significance consisted primarily in its controlling the majority of shares of one
of the most important groups of chemical factories in the USA. As a result of
the virulence of the American reproaches and the extraordinarily large amounts
of capital involved, there was also considerable interest in Switzerland in clarifying
the type of German interests at stake.
Two unusually detailed audits in 1945–46 in the circle of the companies in
question produced a wealth of material. Unlike the usual procedure adopted by
482