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Product Description
In the 1930s and 1940s, as Nazi Soldiers Goose-stepped across Europe, thousands of Jews looked to Switzerland for help. A bastion of neutrality, Switzerland seemed the ideal place to entrust with their life savings while they faced Hitler's genocidal fury. But after the war, the survivors and heirs of those Jews who trusted Swiss bankers, lawyers, and insurance companies to safeguard their savings found themselves rebuffed, lied to, or simply ignored. The banks either claimed the accounts did not exist or that ownership could not be proven, or they demanded official death certificates -- something not found in the crematoriums of Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka, or the other death camps.Nazi Gold is the first book to offer compelling evidence that Switzerland's most senior government officials and financial institutions conspired to keep billions in gold, jewelry, cash, and securities from the surviving heirs. Through exclusive interviews with sources in Argentina, England, France, Germany, and Switzerland itself, investigative journalist Tom Bower has unraveled the twisted trail of this conspiracy. Historically accurate and exhaustively researched, Nazi Gold documents this scandal in what is surely one of the most powerful books of the year.
Amazon.com Review
The 1945 Allied victory in Europe ended the 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 tackled a complicated topic.
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