[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 55 (Thursday, April 25, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4253-S4256]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ALLEGED SWISS COLLABORATION WITH THE NAZIS AND THE SMUGGLING OF GERMAN
LOOTED PROPERTY TO ARGENTINA
Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss an issue that
continues to trouble me, namely that of the role played by Swiss banks
and their continued retention of assets belonging to European Jews and
others before and during World War II.
In a document from the State Department, entitled, ``Nazi and Fascist
Capital in Latin America,'' dated March 23, 1945, found at the National
Archives, details Nazi capital infiltration of Latin and South America.
Yet, within the report, there are sections which explain the role of
the Swiss bankers in helping to secret Nazi assets out of Europe. At
this time, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this report be
printed in the Record.
The relevant part of the report states that,
``Accusations have also been voiced that Nazi German
capital is escaping in Swiss diplomatic pouches, probably
without the knowledge of the Swiss federal government,
because of the government's practice of entrusting diplomatic
missions to its bankers and businessmen traveling to the
Western Hemisphere.''
If this is true, it suggests that Swiss bankers might have directly
help get Nazi assets out of Europe to Latin and South America. This
revelation could lead to serious questions about the sincerity of the
Swiss bankers with regard
[[Page S4254]]
to Jewish assets in their possession, as well as those of the Nazis.
Where did all of the money go? That is what the Banking Committee will
try to find out.
The report follows:
Nazi and Fascist Capital in Latin America
Ever since the Nazis and the followers of Mussolini began
to lose confidence in their ultimate victory, they started to
establish safe refuges for their capital in neutral
countries. The object of these transfers is only, in a minor
degree, for the purpose of establishing coches for their
loot, for the purpose of enjoying a comfortable old age, with
personal and economic security, such as that of Kaiser
Wilhelm II in the Netherland town of Doorn. The main purpose
is the reestablishment of German industrial and financial
power or influence in countries from which they could again
attempt to dominate the world, first economically and later
politically.
These transfers are being accomplished by various methods.
Most of them are being made by the intermediacy of neutral
countries. A great deal of capital, British and United States
currency, jewels, and technical secrets and stock
certificates have been transported from Germany to neutral
Switzerland, Spain, Tangier, and Portugal, and from there to
the final destination, largely to neutral Argentina where the
capital is expected to enjoy safety from any Allied
interference. Spanish Falangists, aristocrats, and
businessmen have been helping in these transfers, with their
voyages from Spain to Argentina. These activities gained
momentum in 1944.
In Spanish ships and German submarines, as much as possible
of Germany's capital, American and other currency of the
Allied nations, confiscated by the Nazis, inventions,
technical personnel, officers, and machinery has been sent to
Latin America, including some industrial plants complete with
administrators. A typical example was the arrival in
Argentina, at the beginning of 1945, of the heads of the
CHADE (Compania Hispano-Americana de Electricidad), Juan
Ventosa y. Calvet and F.A. de Cambo. The heads of the
Deutsche Bank and the Allgemeine Elektrizitats Gesellschaft
figure prominently on the board of directors of CHADE which
controls electric light and power for the city and province
of Buenos Aires. Before his trip to Argentina, Ventosa y.
Calvet was seen several times in Berne and Montreux,
Switzerland, in the company of Hitler's financial advisor,
Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. That is one example of how the Argentine
Government has managed to speed up the development of war
industries. In that way, Fritz Mandl, former Austrian
munitions manufacturer, organized his armament factories in
Argentina. Collaborators with German investments in Argentina
are: Gen. Basilio Pertine, Dr. Arnold Stoops, Guillermo
Schulenberg, Max Kleiner, Federico Curtins, Dr. Alejandro
Czisch, Fernando Ellerhorst, Dr. C.E. Niebuhr. All of them
are members of the board of directors of the most
important German, or German-controlled, companies in
Argentina: Siemens Bauunion, Siemens Schuckert, Osram,
Wayss & Freytag, Bayer, Allgemeine Elektrizitats
Gesellschaft, known as A.E.G., and many others.
The main German investments include banks, such as the
Banco Aleman Transatintico and the Banco Germanico de la
America del Sud; insurance companies, such as La Germano
Argentina, Compania de Segures Aachen y Munich; construction
companies, such as Siemens Bauunion; electric machinery
companies, such as the half-dozen subsidiaries of Siemens-
Schuckert, and Siemens & Halske; chemical companies, most of
the subsidiaries of I.G. Farbenindustrie, such as Quimica
Bayer S.A., Quimica Schering, Quimica Merck Argentina,
Anilinas Alemanas; machinery distributors, such as Compania
de Motores Otto Deutz Legitima S.A., Sociedad Tubos Mannesman
Ltda., Aceros, Roechling-Buderus, S.A., Aceros Schoeller-
Bleckman, S. de R.L. and many others.
Accusations have also been voiced that Nazi German capital
is escaping in Swiss diplomatic pouches, probably without the
knowledge of the Swiss federal government, because of the
government's practice of entrusting diplomatic missions to
its bankers and businessmen traveling to the Western
Hemisphere.
The vast fortunes of Nazi party leaders and industrialists,
sent out of the Reich for safe-keeping to neutral countries,
but mainly to Buenos Aires, are ready to resume business
through Germany's industrial and chemical cartels in new
headquarters as soon as Germany surrenders. The alleged or
Swiss aid to Germany in these matters is believed to have
contributed to Russia's refusal to attend last year's
international Aviation Conference in Chicago because of the
presence there of Swiss and Spanish delegates.
The personal fortunes of Nazi officials, including Hermann
Goering, Joseph Goebbels, Robert Ley and others, are said to
be reaching Geneva via German diplomatic pouches, and from
there--it is alleged--they are sent to Buenos Aires.
The Nazis once used Spanish diplomatic pouches in Venezuela
and other countries to send strategic materials like
industrial diamonds and platinum home from South America.
Before Argentina broke its official ties with Germany, the
Nazis sent vital materials to Berlin in their diplomatic
pouches and received large shipments of such diverse items as
propaganda, short-wave radio transmitters, and the blueprints
for war weapons now produced in several Argentine arms
plants, notably that of the former Austrian munitions king,
Fritz Mandl.
Another method of obtaining allied or ``free'' currency in
neutral countries, a method which furthermore obviates the
necessity--often involving a certain risk--of smuggling
currency, valuables, or stock certificates into neutral
countries, was extortion from Germans living in neutral
countries. The system of extortion, which the Nazis had
employed on a world-wide scale during that year, was based
upon the sale of exist permits from Germany and occupied
territories. Persons seeking such permits were compelled
to persuade their relatives or friends in the Western
Hemisphere to place at the disposal of the Nazis large
sums of ``free'' currency of the neutral powers. At the
same time, residents of the American Republics were
informed that their relatives or friends in Germany, or in
territories occupied by it, would be sent to concentration
camps or subjected to other tortures if the specified sums
of money were not paid within a fixed period of time.
Through this procedure, many persons in Europe, who had
ties of friendship or relationship with residents of the
New World, were held as hostages pending the payment of
ransom in the free currencies.
The fortunes in securities, bullion and cash transferred to
the Argentine capital are only part of the sums being
invested abroad for the Nazi hierarchy by banks of neutral
countries. International financial speculators have invaded
the United States, Argentina, and Panama to assist the
Germans in one of the greatest mass exodi of capital ever
known. United States Government agents have successfully
blocked the activities of a number of these speculators but
have as yet been unable to do anything about the misuse of
diplomatic immunity of neutral countries. Such neutral
diplomatic pouches are passed without inspection on Spanish,
Portuguese, and Swiss merchant ships at the British control
stations in Gibraltar and Trinidad.
It is reported that Reichsmarshal Goering lately used this
method to transfer personal funds. According to these
reports, Goering previously sent more than $20,000,000 of his
personal fortune to Argentina via the Dresdener Bank of
Berlin and the Schweizer Bankverein of Geneva. His
representative in Argentina is Dietrich Borchardt, a German
of Argentina citizenship, who not long ago visited the United
States and engaged in financial transactions.
Goering is also reported to have transferred some funds to
Argentina by a Nazi submarine which in the Spring of 1943
surfaced near Mar del Plata on the Argentina coast and
transferred some forty boxes to a tugboat of an Axis-owned
line in Buenos Aires. Part of that money is said to have been
invested in the ``Electro Metalurgica Sema'' arms plant in
Buenos Aires which Goering recently sold to the Argentine
government for $5,000,000.
One of the latest reports is the discovery that Nazi
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels has $1,850,000 in United
States money in a safety deposit box in a German-controlled
bank in Buenos Aires, under the name of a friend of German
origin there.
Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop has a large sum
deposited in the name of his cousin, a German named Martin,
who recently received $500,000 from a Swiss bank from the
account of the Nazi diplomat.
Admiral Karl Doenitz, chief of the German Navy, has an
undisclosed sum in the care of a relative, Edmundo
Wagenknecht, owner of one of the largest German import and
export firms in Argentina.
Robert Ley, Chief of the Nazi Labor Front, recently bought
a large farm near Bahia Blanca, Argentina, under the name of
Franz Borsemann, a trusted Nazi friend.
It is estimated that in 1939 German investments in Latin
America amounted to at least 150 million dollars or 16
percent of the total foreign investment of Germany. This
figure does not include the capital belonging to persons of
German lineage or capital employed by those who had acquired
an American citizenship while maintaining Nazi contacts and
sympathies. It consists of those investments whose ownership
is known to be German, hence it is a minimum figure. Much of
this, although small in proportion to British and United
States holdings, was effectively and intensively organized
and integrated into the Nazi political system.
When the Germans overran almost all of continental Europe,
they seized many millions of French francs, Dutch guilders,
Belgian belgas, Norwegian and Danish kronen, Czech korunas,
Polish zlotys, and a great deal of American and British
currency found in the banks of these countries. They
transported or transferred them to neutral banks, and from
there much of it went to South America, mainly to Argentina.
This money was partly used for the purpose of expanding Nazi
controlled industries in these neutral countries.
According to some Argentine estimates, the Germans have
$750,000,000 cashed or invested in South America, including
their pre-war investments.
During the war, these investments have been considerably
increased through the infiltration of German capital.
``Anilinas Alemanes'' (German Anilines), which is part of
the huge German dye trust, is an example. According to
figures registered by this company with the Argentine
[[Page S4255]]
government, its capital there in 1940 was 5,000,000 pesos. In
1943 it was 9,600,000 pesos, the balance having been invested
from abroad during the war. Although the company officially
was cut off from all supplies from Germany during that
period, its 1939 profits of 69,453 pesos had soared to
1,731,847 pesos in 1943.
German government officials ``bought'' millions of dollars
in Argentine securities from their owners in occupied Europe,
giving the victims worthless German paper money or securities
in exchange. The Argentine securities thus obtained have been
sent to Buenos Aires for safe-keeping. Future attempts of the
victims to recover these Argentine securities will be a
difficult, if not impossible task.
Previous Commercial Ties
Industries and commercial houses operated by Germans in
Latin America conducted their activities as though
nationalized by the Third Reich, in the interest of the Party
and often with little regard for financial profit and
ordinary business enterprise. Commercial enterprises such
as retail and wholesale distribution, importing and
exporting, commodity brokerage, and drug compounding and
distribution were the types preferred for German
investment. More than half of the German capital in Latin
America was invested in this field of endeavor.
The largest and most extensive investments were made by
Germans in Brazil. Here the basis for a thriving trade in
German and Brazilian commodities existed as a result of a
large colonies of Germans in Brazil which had been
established under the leadership of the Hanseatic
Colonization Company beginning in 1887. Most of these early
colonists were farmers and laborers and as their economic
status became stronger and more prosperous, German
industrialists, traders, technicians, and small capitalists
were attracted to the country. Thousands of farms owned by
Germans and citizens of German descent and in 1939 an
estimated 40 million dollars in German capital was invested
in commercial houses. German traders maintained the closest
of ties with Germany, dealing principally in German goods and
in products specially prepared, packed and shipped from
Brazil to German markets. These strong commercial ties were
fully utilized by the Nazi party organization not only to
extend the party network but to provide powerful financial
support.
Similar commercial penetration occurred throughout Latin
America reaching a position of dominance in Chile, Colombia,
and Bolivia. In 1939, German investments in commercial firms
in Chile were estimated at 16 million dollars, in Colombia 9
million, and in Bolivia 5 million. German business agents
covered the area reaching remote districts with products of
German industry and seeking commodities in exchange. Easy
credit terms were extended, personal favors granted, and
buyers tied to sellers by means of continuing obligations.
Such firms as Bayer, Becker, Elsner, Kyllman, Swertzer, and
Zeller operated prosperously and with extensive credit
furnished by banks with German connections. With typical
thoroughness the Germans extended their control until
dominance was achieved in many fields. In Uruguay a Nazi
gauleiter named Delldorf used the firm of Lahusen and Company
as a center of party espionage. This firm with other German-
owned and controlled units dominated the wool export trade of
the country. The financial strength and commercial prestige
of these firms enabled them to exert effective powers over
press and radios; a power which was fully used.
In addition to these strictly German investments there were
substantial capital holdings in the hands of local citizens
of German descent with Nazi sympathies and connections. In
Colombia alone there were an estimated 225 firms of this type
with capital aggregating about 5 million dollars.
Agricultural Investments
Second in size to German investment in commercial
enterprises were German land holdings in Latin America. In
Argentina, German colonies were established, principally in
Patagonia. More than half of the population in this area was
foreign, the Germans numbering 15,000. Several of the richest
and most extensive land holdings in Patagonia were dominated
directly or indirectly by powerful German interests. The
Germans lived here as Germans speaking their own language,
retaining German customs, schools, and religion, celebrating
German holidays, and spreading a continuous flow of Nazi
propaganda. The area was virtually a Nazi State, followed the
party line, and kept alive the issue of creating a separate
State.
In Peru, Gildermeister and Company with home offices in
Lima and Berlin operated under the name of Negociacion
Agricola Chicama, Limitada (formerly Casagrande Luckner
Plantagen, A.G.). In 1939 this firm owned the largest sugar
plantation in the world (more than 1.5 million acres) and
controlled the production of more than half of all sugar
produced by Peru. The capital investments of this firm were
estimated at about 20 million dollars; it possessed its own
private seaport, Puerto Chicama, but the total quantity and
composition of exports and imports which flowed through the
port is a matter of conjecture. Gildermeister maintained
close ties with the Nazis, one of the Gildermeister brothers
serving as the Peruvian ambassador in Berlin until 1942. The
concern employed German as well as native personnel, and
dominated completely the economy of the Chicama Valley.
In Central America, notably Guatemala and Costa Rica,
German land holdings were substantial. In Guatemala, German
capital controlled about 60 percent of the coffee acreage and
the amount invested was estimated at 20 million dollars.
Similarly, in Costa Rica about 5 million dollars of German
capital was invested in coffee and sugar plantations.
Banking Interests
Ranking third in size, the German investments in banking in
Latin America were of considerably greater importance as
instruments of Nazi control then might appear from their
capital. German personnel was strategically placed in local
banks; correspondent contacts were developed and maintained
on an extensive scale; loans to institutions of strategic
importance and to governments were made and the dominant
motive was often clearly political rather than economic.
In every report or news dispatch from South America, two
banks have been named as the key transmission-belts for
financing German enterprises in Latin America: the German
Overseas Bank (Deutsche Ueberseeische Bank) and the German-
South American Bank (Deutsche-Suedamerikanische Bank).
The former--its Spanish name is Banco Aleman
Transatlantica--is under the control of the Deutsche Bank,
the largest private bank in Germany, with eighteen
branches in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay.
Its board of directors contains, besides the heads of the
Deutsche Bank, the director of the Krupp combine, Dr.
Busemann; the general director of the potash trust, Dr.
Diehn; and representatives of the Steel Trust and of
Siemens-Schuckert, one of the two largest electricity
trusts in Germany. The German Overseas Bank has interests
in the Central Banks of Argentina, Chile, and Peru.
The majority of shares in the German-South American Bank
(Banco Germanico de la America del Sud) belong to the
Dresdener Bank, Germany's second largest private bank. Here,
too, the Krupp combine is represented in the person of
Krupp's brother-in-law, Baron von Wilmosky. Hermann Buecher,
chairman of the board of AEG, Allgemeine Elektrizitats
Gesellschaft, the largest German electricity trust, is also a
director of the bank. Consul Heinrich Diederichsen, head of a
large Hamburg import and export house, is a director of the
bank; while his son, utilizing the money of the German-South
American Bank, plans a very important role in the fascist
Integralists movement in Brazil.
German banks were of notable importance in Argentina,
Brazil, Colombia, and Chile, operating with numerous branches
and controlled from Berlin. The former Banco Italiano (now El
Banco Credito del Peru) was a 10 million dollar Axis
institution which dominated the banking business of Peru. It
has such power that few important steps, affecting government
finance or of major economic importance, were taken without
consulting the officers of this institution. Through
selective financing, it controlled the public utilities and a
substantial number of private business interests in Peru.
Investments in Transportation
The major German investment in Latin American
transportation was made in airlines. The systems developed in
strategic areas. The principal lines, Condor, Lufthansa,
Sedta, Varig, Scadta, and Lloyd Aero Boliviano, operated
largely with German personnel (some of whom were officers in
the Nazi Army) and systematically mapped the strategic areas
of Latin America. This subject is treated in a separate
section of this report.
German shipping companies forced to suspend business
activities as a result of the British blockade did not close
their offices but in many cases expanded and opened new
offices to carry on propaganda functions.
The Compania Union Industrial de Barranquilla was the only
shipbuilding firm in Colombia for the river trade. Its
control was German, most of its personnel was German and
nearby property and business was owned or dominated by
Germans.
Public utilities
Though direct financial investments by Germans in public
utilities in Latin America were small, Germans held key
positions in many utility concerns, notably Argentina; and in
Uruguay, the German firm, Siemens, contracted to build a
great hydroelectric power and distribution system at Rio
Negro using German technicians and German equipment and
installations. The entire technical personnel of the electric
plant in Quito was German. The chief engineer on this project
was Walter Giese, a Nazi gauleiter who established in Ambato
a powerful Nazi radio transmitting station.
transfer of italian fascist capital
The Italian Government in Rome, cooperating with the Allied
Commission, seized and sequestered Fascist estates valued at
$80,000,000 in liberated Italy. But high-ranking Fascists are
said to have smuggled between $400,000,000 and $500,000,000
into neutral countries, most of which is the result of
wholesale looting.
Edda Mussolini, the Duce's daughter and widow of Count
Ciano, executed Fascist Foreign Minister, escaped to
Switzerland and is credited with having stored away more
pillage than any other Italian Fascist.
[[Page S4256]]
Other nations where Fascists have succeeded in hiding funds
include Portugal, Argentina, and Brazil, according to an
Allied Commission official.
Italian ``epuration'' (purge) officials are not
investigating a report that Mussolini himself hid some loot
in the United States.
Mussolini's family, including children and grandchildren,
his mistress, Clara Petacci and all of her family, comprise
sixteen names of 267 whose estates in liberated Italy have
thus far been sequestered. Not all of the 267 are Fascist
leaders. Some are simply profiteers and war contract
swindlers.
Swiss Bankers and German Capital
Three members of the Swiss delegation of the International
Business Conference, held at Rye, N.Y., in November 1944,
made several attempts to induce the U.S. Treasury Department
to rescind its ruling that the true ownership of all funds
deposited by Swiss banks in this country be revealed within
one year after hostilities cease in Europe. The Swiss banking
system in which numbers designate accounts instead of names,
makes it enormously difficult to trace secret or hidden
funds.
According to sources having connections in Geneva and
Buenos Aires, the reason for Swiss bankers; anxiety to evade
disclosure of their clients, names is the fact that Swiss
banks have for several years been aiding in the transfer of
immense fortunes of Nazi leaders and their European
collaborators to the United States, Spain, Argentina, and
Brazil.
The Swiss Committee, headed by Edmond Barbey of Lombard,
Odier et Cie., includes Andre Fatio of Ferrier, Lullin, and
F.H. Bates, all representing the Union de Bancs Suisses (The
Swiss Banking Association). They are basing their plea on the
Swiss banking tradition of absolute secrecy concerning their
clients' accounts--or even of the fact that the account
exists.
At present Swiss funds deposited in the United States
anonymously are blocked by the Treasury Department which
promises to release them upon definite proof that they do not
belong to enemy aliens or war criminals.
The chairman of the Swiss delegation to the International
Business Conference was Hans Sulzer of Gebrueder Sulzer in
Geneva (and a branch in Frankfort-on-Main, Germany), who was
on the British blacklist. (Charged with supplying Diesel
engines for Nazi submarines, Sulzer hotly replied, ``They
were not for submarines!).
In allowing men like Sulzer and their bankers the cloak of
diplomatic immunity, the Swiss government has, probably
unwittingly, enabled German leaders like Goering, Goebbels,
and von Ribbentrop to spirit huge funds abroad. For centuries
Swiss banks have been confidants of men who want to keep
their financial transactions secret. A banker is forbidden by
the Swiss constitution from disclosing his clients'
maneuvers. He would rather go to jail than do so.
The Swiss Banking Association is therefore doubly anxious
to induce the United States to refrain from insisting on
postwar disclosure of the names of its depositors here.
Besides being forced to confess their relations with war
criminals, they will have lost the advantage of secrecy which
has enabled them to vie in world influence with the greatest
banks.
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