Between the Alps and a Hard Place Read online

  This, then, was just another instance of the semi-official use of American power to transfer cash from not-so-favored parties to powerful officials’ favored private constituents, who then recycle some of the money back to the officials who made it all possible. A basic feature of pseudo events is that they serve the interests of their creators. Edgar Bronfman’s World Jewish Congress, the principal creator of the campaign outside of government, was also among its beneficiaries. As for President Clinton and Senator D’Amato, Edgar Bronfman paid them in advance with major political contributions. In sum, contemporary American politicians play with humanitarian and moral outrage as they do with other deadly tools of statecraft.

  On April 23, 1996, Senator D’Amato opened a hearing of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee he chaired, claiming, “We have in our possession recently declassified documents that shed new light” on Switzerland’s role in World War II.3 D’Amato claimed that the money deposited in Swiss banks in the 1930s by Jews like the father of one of his constituents, Greta Beer, amounted to “[h]undreds of millions of dollars of assets . . . monies under the direction of the Nazis being hidden away in Switzerland, we’ll get to that.”4 The only evidence for this nonsensical statement was a hearsay report from 1945 that cited someone saying that he had deposited $28 million in a Swiss bank. The Swiss government claimed that only $32 million in unclaimed assets remained in major banks in 1996.

  The only documentation D’Amato cited was an article in the Wall Street Journal that had broken no new ground but rather had reported charges the World Jewish Congress had made against Switzerland.5 The emotional component at the hearing came from the elderly Mrs. Beer, who said her father had told her before the war that he had deposited a lot of money in a Swiss bank. She didn’t know how much or in which bank, much less had she ever seen a passbook or an account number. Pitifully, she recounted that after the war, she and her mother had gone from bank to bank, and that no bank had come up with any money.6 What monsters, asked D’Amato, would oppose justice for a sweet old lady like Mrs. Beer? (And how shameful should someone note that D’Amato had proved nothing.) Shame too on the bank employees who refused to hand money to a stranger walking up to the window with a story about a dead depositor.

  Then came the threat, and it involved more money than the combined total of what families such as the Beers ever possessed. Edgar Bronfman testified that. . . the documents uncovered by your committee and by others working elsewhere demonstrate that during the Nazi era the Swiss were far from neutral. Their assistance to the Nazi war machine through the clandestine conversion of looted gold into Swiss francs enabled the Germans to buy fuel and other raw materials they needed to prolong the war. Some estimates in testimony before the U.S. Senate hearings following the war suggest the costs may have been staggering in the lives of American soldiers, Allied soldiers, Jews, and other civilians across the continent.

  Having transformed suggestions into facts and accusations into proof, Bronfman asserted: “I speak to you today on behalf of the Jewish people. With reverence, I also speak to you on behalf of the six million who cannot speak for themselves.”7 Then, having taken onto himself all that power and moral authority, Bronfman took on the right to dispose of what he called the rightful patrimony of the victims of Nazism. D’Amato spoke of “hundreds of millions” of dollars, while Bronfman spoke of “billions.” The money, said Bronfman, would go to survivors of the Holocaust, as well as to individuals and institutions, museums and writers who would keep alive the memory of the Holocaust. The survivors were few and dwindling, while the latter categories would become long-term political supporters of those who would provide their livelihoods with Swiss money.

  Note that at this point Bronfman and D’Amato intended the money to come from the Swiss government—that is, from Swiss taxpayers. Why should the Swiss people have paid any attention to these demands, much less felt the need to comply? Because behind the demands was the threatening insistence of the Clinton administration. The threat was first delivered by Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, U.S. special envoy for property claims in Central and Eastern Europe, U.S. undersecretary of commerce, and a friend of President Clinton.

  Eizenstat reported to the Senate that his purpose was to achieve openness in reporting about unclaimed accounts in Swiss banks, to make sure that heirs got what was properly due them and that heirless assets were distributed to poor elderly Jews in Eastern Europe. Who could object? But Eizenstat also reported that his practical job was to add the authority of the U.S. government to the claims of Mr. Bronfman’s organization, through “government to government conversations and facilitation with international and local organizations.”8 The practical meaning was that, until Bronfman et al. were happy with Switzerland, the U.S. government wouldn’t be happy either. D’Amato underlined this as he concluded Eizenstat’s testimony: “I have every confidence that we will have a full court press led by you on behalf of the Administration.” This full court press included U.S. Ambassador to Bern Madeleine Kunin’s countless interventions as well as a speech to the Swiss parliament by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

  Note that Ambassador Eizenstat’s formal job description—to promote “the nondiscriminatory, transparent, and just resolution of claims arising out of properties confiscated during and after the Second World War by the Nazis and their sympathizers or by the communist governments in Central and Eastern Europe”—did not include Switzerland at all. Nevertheless, his pressuring of the Swiss included commissioning a voluminous U.S. government report that bears his name and served as the basis for campaigns against Switzerland and other Western European countries.

  The preface to the Eizenstat report asks, “Why the sudden surge of interest in these tragic events of four decades ago?” And it answers: “[T]he most compelling reason is the extraordinary leadership and vision of a few people who have put this issue on the world’s agenda: . . . Edgar Bronfman, Israel Singer, . . . Senator Alfonse D’Amato of New York, and President Bill Clinton. . . .”9 The report also leaves no doubt that these extraordinary leaders were adopting judgments that had been aired and rejected during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. Rather than discovering new facts, the Eizenstat report reversed the values placed on old facts by Americans who had actually fought and defeated Nazi Germany. In presenting his report, Eizenstat said, “Our task is to complete the unfinished business of the twentieth century’s most traumatic and tragic events,” while the report’s principal drafter, William Slany, spoke frankly of reversing the actions of a previous generation, of “doing things now that couldn’t be done then.”

  According to the report, “As late as the end of 1944 Secretary of State E.R. Stettinius, Jr., and his State Department colleagues concluded that, on balance, Switzerland’s neutrality had been more a positive than a negative for the Allies during the War.”10 But, the report notes, there were people in the U.S. government, primarily in Henry Morgenthau’s Treasury Department and in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), who did not think so well of the Swiss. Indeed there were. The report, however, does not mention that these people lost policy arguments within the U.S. government on the merits (for example, the Morgenthau Plan to pastoralize Germany) as well as because they tended to follow the Soviet line. Nor does it ever explain why the anti-Swiss views should be accorded greater credence than the pro-Swiss views. Rather, the report simply piles accusation upon accusation, and, in short, blames the presidents and secretaries of state of the time for discounting the anti-Swiss claims: “The U.S. government . . . over the objections of the Treasury Department, decided not to pursue sanctions.”11 The implication was that this decision had been incorrect, and that the U.S. government now had grounds, if not an obligation, to act otherwise.

  Senator D’Amato aptly summed up the effect of this litany by faulting the “moral fortitude” of the people who ran America at the time because they “ran out on our obligation” by not treating Switzerland as a hostile power. As a result, D’Amato said he was a
shamed of being an American. Strong stuff. But not serious.

  Had the report and the campaign attempted to remake the image of Switzerland in America rather than provide a pretext for extortion they would have had a big job. Americans have traditionally had a most favorable image of the Swiss. On the lowest level, the Swiss were seen as Alpine yodelers who make fine chocolate, watches, and camping knives.

  The bible of the middlebrow, National Geographic, has offered moving descriptions of how the International Committee of the Red Cross, organized in Switzerland by the Swiss, has tempered the horrors of war and ministered to the victims of disaster.12 Europe and the world, says the Geographic, are lucky that the roof of the old continent is occupied by such a multiethnic, multireligious nation, dedicated to peace within itself and with its neighbors. International institutions that seek the peace of the world have made their headquarters in Switzerland, which is seen as a haven for the oppressed. Even Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), a staunch Clinton supporter and backer of the accusations, began her statement to D’Amato’s committee by stating this standard view: “[M]y memory as a child is that Switzerland really acted as a haven for many Jews who escaped. I had a cousin there who [sic] I visited, and he and his wife actually used Switzerland as a base from which they actually got many Jews out of Germany and other parts of Europe. So it is ironic that we’ve run into this situation.”13 D’Amato followed suit by confessing that he too had shared the common herd’s ignorance of Swiss villainy, and wondered what sort of base reasons might have led so many to hide it for so long.

  The pro-Swiss, right-wing conspiracy at the highest levels of culture must have been vast indeed. Prior to 1995 hardly a harsh word about the Swiss could be found in serious literature. In 1512 Niccolò Machiavelli, from whose pen praise did not flow easily, described the Swiss as “most armed and most free”—a people who knew the fundamentals of statecraft and used them to guard their sober way of life.14 Stanford historian James Murray Luck and CUNY professor Rolf Kieser are among the many authors who spread the image of Switzerland as America’s “sister republic,” a place where most issues are decided at the local level by direct popular vote, and where even national-level decisions are most often made by referendum.15 Neither federalism nor democracy could exist, never mind in such straight doses, if the population were not unusually habituated to tolerance and the practice of civic virtues. Foremost among these is universal military service.

  As regards World War II, the most authoritative judgment on Switzerland came from Winston Churchill, whose personal commitment to decent government might well have surpassed even that of Bill Clinton, and whose knowledge of Nazi machinations must at least have matched that of Alfonse D’Amato. Churchill wrote:I put this down for the record. Of all the neutrals, Switzerland has the greatest right to distinction. She has been the sole international force linking the hideously sundered nations and ourselves. What does it matter if she has not been able to give us commercial advantages we desire or has given too many to the Germans to keep herself alive? She has been a democratic state standing for freedom in self-defense among her mountains, and in thought, in spite of race, largely on our side.16

  One can only wonder whether Clinton and Eizenstat, confronting live Nazis at the height of their power rather than their discredited memory, would have dealt with them with any less deference than they showed to the Soviet Union when it had the wind in its sails.17 In fact, when Hitler was riding high only one European or American statesman ever refused a chance to pay his respects to him. That man was Winston Churchill. But if Clinton, D’Amato, and Eizenstat were correct about Switzerland, does Churchill’s expression of solidarity with the Swiss mean that he was ill informed or insufficiently anti-Nazi?18 As for Presidents Roosevelt and Truman and their secretaries of state, who treated Switzerland as a friend in straitened circumstances rather than as a Nazi ally, were they dupes too?

  Those actually in charge of running the economic war against the Axis powers long ago explained why the people responsible for Allied foreign policy treated Switzerland as they did. In 1946 David L. Gordon and Royden Dangerfield wrote how the U.S. government’s “Blockade Division, Foreign Economic Administration,” which they had headed, had pressured neutral countries to reduce economic activity with the Axis and to contribute to the Allied war effort. Switzerland, they wrote, had been judged a special case because it was totally surrounded. Hence, Allied economic warriors allowed Switzerland to trade on the world market five times as much “enemy content” as other neutral countries were permitted. As for who was on whose side, these men wrote:The great majority of Swiss and Swedes unquestionably hoped the Allies would win. But the Allies did not threaten invasion while the Nazis did. So until an Allied victory appeared certain and imminent both Sweden and Switzerland deviated from strict neutrality only in one direction, in favor of Germany. They gave way reluctantly, yielding inch by inch, stalling as long as possible, and taking advantage of every bargaining point which promised to give them room for maneuver—but they still gave way. They did fight stubbornly, however, to preserve contact with the Allied world. . . . Thus they remained little islands of peace and relative plenty in the enslaved and beleaguered continent.19

  In his preface to their book The Hidden Weapon, Thomas K. Finletter, who served as special assistant to Secretary of State E. R. Stettinius, Jr., and was a close confidant of Franklin Roosevelt, tells readers that Gordon and Dangerfield and their Blockade Division had admirably carried out the victorious policy of the administration.

  On what bases then does the Eizenstat report contradict such judgments? In fact, the report does not even attempt to show why Churchill, Roosevelt, Stettinius, or America’s economic warriors were wrong—and therefore forfeits intellectual respectability. But when you have power and social standing, who needs respectability?

  The Eizenstat report also takes up the chevaux de bataille that extreme leftists within Switzerland had been trying to ride ever since the war. Switzerland is a very conservative country. Women didn’t get the vote in national elections until 1971. Pet proposals of intellectuals on the extreme left, such as abolition of universal military service, regularly get trounced in referenda. The Swiss Socialist Party threw out its extreme leftist minority midway through World War II. Ever since, these marginalized leftist intellectuals have tried to delegitimize their country’s social order by tarring it with nothing less than guilt for collaborating with the Holocaust. The New York Times Magazine summed it all up with a quote from Swiss novelist and notorious extremist Adolf Muschg: “Auschwitz was also in Switzerland.” 20 Perhaps to show its disregard for conventional notions of truth, the Times did not point out that this statement was literally false, and that literal falsehoods are to be found throughout that set of accusations. Read the magazine Une Suisse Sans Armée, a publication of the Swiss far left, and see with what pride, for over a half century, all the themes of the Clinton administration’s campaign have been part of extreme leftist propaganda: Switzerland’s sociopolitical system shares responsibility for the murder of Europe’s Jews.21 Nevertheless all this was sufficient for the Clinton administration.

  According to the Clinton administration, then, people like Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, nearly all historians, the flood of journalists and ordinary people who have dealt with Switzerland over the past half century—all are dupes at best and at worst soft on Nazism.

  Now, to take reality seriously, what insights into the logic of international affairs did the successes and shortcomings of the Swiss in World War II provide?

  Military Deterrence

  Prior to 1940 the Swiss military publicly relied on its well-advertised capacity to muster in arms over 10 percent of the population in well-prepared border positions, to defend its internationally guaranteed neutrality against all comers. But in reality, since the rise of nation-states the military safety of tiny Switzerland has depended on the willingness of a neighboring power to rush its army into Switzerla
nd to help block another neighboring power from using Switzerland for its own ends. Thus in World War I the Swiss held off the Germans by the prospect that they would call in the French, and held off the French by the prospect that they would call in the Germans. When World War II began, the Swiss feared Germany exclusively. But they hoped that France, and even Italy, would know enough and be potent enough to help safeguard their own Swiss flanks. When France fell and Italy joined Germany, Switzerland was quite unexpectedly thrown back on its own military resources.

  At most these military resources could make Germany’s price of conquest too heavy to pay. And that depended on the extent to which Switzerland could maximize the value of its three military assets: Alpine terrain, the Gotthard and Simplon tunnels, and the Swiss soldier’s historic bloody-mindedness. But exploiting Alpine terrain to the maximum essentially meant sacrificing half the country and more than two-thirds of the population. Holding hostage the tunnels and the country’s infrastructure meant destroying the Swiss people’s livelihood. Making the most of the Swiss soldier’s penchant to fight to the death meant firing up the population’s martial spirit, which many influential Swiss believed was already provoking Germany.