61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

y the media. Successful publishing, and thus commercial success, was created
by criticism of the Axis powers and by the support of clear disassociation from
them along with the notion of freedom in the form of independence and not just
limited to national freedom. 75 The entire area of foreign trade, on the other
hand, was subject to extremely severe press censorship. 76
The development and extension of emergency plenary powers is an important
indicator of the government’s view of which areas required additional regulation
and which needed no regulation at all. A significant fact here was the belief that
film newsreels should be regulated, but not arms trading. Furthermore,
although the freedom of private enterprise in the domestic supplies area was
heavily restricted, the same was felt to be unnecessary with regard to international
trade, major financial transactions, trading in foreign securities, or
imported art objects. An attempt to impose regulation in the area of trade in
war material was abandoned after a very short time with the issue being readdressed
only much later.
The Federal Council and the General
Overall the political culture of the crisis years and the war years was characterised
by a tendency towards authoritarianism. With regard to the partypolitical
groupings, this was apparent in the composition of the Federal
Council. In 1919, the Catholic Conservative party had two seats in this body of
seven representatives (due inter alia to their support in averting the Landesstreik),
which were filled by Giuseppe Motta (later, from 1934 on, Philipp Etter) and
Jean-Marie Musy, both right-wing nationalists and city councillors. In 1929,
the recently formed Farmers’ Party (Bauernpartei) led by the farmer Rudolf
Minger succeeded in reaching the upper Federal Government. His party
political successor, the Bernese lawyer Eduard von Steiger who later (in 1941)
became a member of the Federal Council, further strengthened the right wing
contingent. The political leanings of his successor in the Military Department,
the Radical Karl Kobelt who had also been elected to the Federal Council in
1941, are as hard to assess as are those of Motta’s elected successor in 1940,
Enrico Celio of the Catholic Conservative Party, but tended rather more towards
the centre. During the war years, in particular in 1940, the Federal Council was
united on the most important issues and passed unanimous resolutions. 77 The
two crucial Radical members, Ernst Wetter from Zurich and Pilet-Golaz from
Vaud, belonged to the right wing of their Party. The Radicals from Solothurn,
Herman Obrecht, Minister of the Economy, and his successor, Walther
Stampfli, tended more towards the bourgeois side eager for reform. In 1945,
Max Petitpierre entered the government as the «man of the hour», who on the
one hand was pro-business and interested in the global market, but who was
78