The Swiss, The Gold And The Dead
How Swiss Bankers Helped Finance the Nazi War Machine
By Jean Ziegler
1997
First Published
3.83
Average Rating
336
Number of Pages
Recent startling revelations that Switzerland helped to bankroll Nazi Germany's war effort, and Swiss intransigence in the face of redress claims by Holocaust survivors, have shaken Switerland's international reputation. In this uncompromising account, leading Swiss sociologist Jean Ziegler closely examines the shady relationship between Swiss bankers and Nazi Germany. Based on the records of the German Armaments Ministry and other official documents, The Swiss, the Gold, and the Dead shows how Switzerland's leading financial institutions provided Hittler with the foreign exchange essential to his war effort-laundering gold looted from the banks of occupied Europe and from the bodies of concentration camp victims; granting sizable loans; and supplying Germany's war economy with weapons, ammunition, and precision instruments. In returen, Switzerland was spared the devastation that befell the rest of Europe. Ziegler argues forcefully and authoritatively that without Swiss complicity the war in Europe would have ended earlier, sparing hundreds of thousands of lives. Drawing on more than thirty years of experience in Switzerland's domestic politic and international diplomacy, Professor Ziegler has made an important contribution to this highly controversial and emotional subject.
Avg Rating
3.83
Number of Ratings
102
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Author
Jean Ziegler
Author · 11 books
Jean Ziegler is a former professor of sociology at the University of Geneva and the Sorbonne, Paris. He was a Member of Parliament for the Social Democrats in the Federal Assembly of Switzerland from 1981 to 1999. He has also held several positions with the United Nations, especially as Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from 2000 to 2008, and as a member of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council from 2008 to 2012.
