Nazi Gold is an expose on Switzerland's senior government officials and bankers who conspired to keep billions of dollars in gold and other valuables that were deposited by Jews in Swiss banks or stolen by the Nazis. The amount of facts given in the book were overwhelming to read and resulted in the book reading like a textbook. The main thrust of the book is that Swiss bankers and politicians were just as anti-Semitic as the Nazis. The extent of the hate toward Jews in Switzerland was a surprise for me.
The publisher's summary:
The 1945 Allied victory in Europe ended that military and political might of the Third Reich but its financial power lives on in the secret vaults and numbered accounts of Swiss banks. In Nazi Gold, author Tom Bower uncovers the sordid lengths to which Swiss bankers went after the war to protect the plundered wealth hidden in their coffers. Switzerland's excuse for even accepting Nazi gold is a plausible one: in order to maintain their status as a neutral country, they were forced to deal equally with all sides. This does not, however, explain their postwar reluctance to return hundreds of millions of dollars of stolen wealth to central European banks or even to Holocaust victims as a means of restitution.
In this well-researched book, Tom Bower revisits the years following the war's end, focusing on the unholy alliance between Swiss bankers and Nazi sympathizers. He leaves no doubt as to the bankers' motives for maintaining secrecy: they were setting a precedent for potential customers in need of safe refuge for other looted fortunes. Finally, he chronicles the United States' overwhelmingly ineffective attempts to force the Swiss to disgorge the Nazi millions. Nazi Gold is certain to raise the hackles of the Swiss banking industry, but Tom Bower has bravely tacked a complicated topic.
Is is surprising to me that even today Swiss bankers refuse to release these assets to the descendants of the Jewish depositors. Tactics such as demanding death certificates for Jews who were gassed in the camps prevent family members from obtaining the assets. These bankers know there are no death certificates and they are becoming wealthy by stealing the assets for themselves personally or getting rich off the interest accruing on these accounts.
It is estimated that $400 million dollars of gold was shipped to Switzerland by the Nazis. Swiss bankers have held onto the gold by arguing that they are merely holding on to the assets for the eventual legal government of Germany. The only problem here is that 70 years after the end of the war, Switzerland still has possession of the gold. This is just another lie perpetrated by the bankers who remain anti-Semitic to this day. Bower names the guilty bankers. However, nothing has happened to them since the publication of this book in the 1990s.
Nazi Gold is an informative book but it is hard to read. The textbook style of writing does not do the material justice. 3 out of 5 stars.
