Alan M. Schom

Representatives of Swiss banks finally agreed on Aug. 12 to pay $1.25 billion to victims of the Nazi era who claimed their assets had been held illegally by the institutions for decades. The banks had been under rigorous pressure from Jewish groups and were facing mounting economic sanctions. If a settlement had not been reached by Sept. 1, New York City and New York state comptrollers would have barred short-term investments with Swiss banks and stopped Swiss investment firms from selling state and city debt. California state Treasurer Matt Fong had ordered his staff not to do business with Swiss banks. And New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman had ordered state pension funds to stop making any new investments in Swiss banks.

Though the economic sanctions certainly ratcheted up the situation, what fueled the flames--or some would say led the charge--was the work of Alan Morris Schom, a 61-year-old historian who produced two controversial reports questioning Switzerland’s claims of neutrality during World War II. His research revealed that the Swiss government ran forced labor camps filled with Jews who had sought safe harbor in the neutral country, and also pandered to home-grown Nazi groups.

The fallout from his reports prompted a swift, angry response from the Swiss government, which, among other things, set up a special Web site to answer Schom’s accusations.

In his first report, published last January, the UC Berkeley-educated Schom wrote that the Swiss imposed a special refugee tax on wealthy Jews seeking asylum from Hitler. His most recent report found Switzerland to be heavily infiltrated with Nazi and pro-Nazi groups from 1930 to 1945.

Since 1995, researchers have mined newly declassified World War II archives to build a case that the Swiss stole assets from Adolf Hitler’s victims and served as the main banker for the Third Reich. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker and the World Jewish Congress are among the many now involved with examining Switzerland’s past records.

The American-born Schom, author of five books, including a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte, says he is fluent in “never enough” languages--he refuses to say just how many, but “someone cannot be a professor of modern European history without speaking three or four.” He lives in Monteaux, France, and also has a residence in Beverly Hills. He is divorced and has two grown daughters and two grandchildren.

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Question: As a historian, how do you explain the silence that existed for 50 years?

Answer: Switzerland is a very strange place. To understand what happened in Switzerland, you need to understand that it is chiefly a Germanic society. There was a complete blackout on all events in 1942 in Switzerland.

Q: But how do you explain the 50-year silence? It goes beyond just the Swiss government. What about the people?

A: It’s a very complex thing. I spent over 35 years as a historian, and I’ve never seen such an obedient troop . . . a flock of sheep. It’s a paternalistic society, and the society was almost 70% Germanic. In the Germanic mind, everyone listens to the father. The people did what they were told. And regardless of what you read or hear from Swiss officials now, it was well-known that the government was very pro-Nazi. Swiss newspapers throughout World War II were filled with pro-Nazi articles. At best they were neutral about the United States--although usually they were anti-American. They denounced Roosevelt. They denounced Churchill. They denounced the American Army. And they supported Hitler. They supported the Third Reich. They supported the German victories with big headlines.

Q: How would you answer those who say: “This was war, and Switzerland was doing what it had to to survive”? Are the Swiss guilty of nothing more than cowardice?

A: I went back to 1918 in my report. What I discovered was that the Swiss were very pro-German in the folkish sense of the word. Anything that was Germanic, they associated themselves with. They supported themselves since the early 1920s with Hitler.

Q: Do you think there was genuine anti-Semitism among the Swiss people, or was it just the government?

A: The Swiss people certainly associated themselves with the Germans well before the war. My report includes the major anti-Semitic groups but certainly not all of them. There were lots of smaller ones, too, and they definitely associated themselves with German culture. . . . Not just against Jews; they were against communists. They were against any foreigners. They were only for the Germans. The Swiss were pro-German at least 10 years before the war. They were not forced into this. They . . . were already providing roughly 50% of their exports to the Germans before the war, and by 1942 they were providing 97%. Leaders of Swiss society attended German universities--90% of them did, at one stage or other. I found only one or two who actually attended Oxford or an American university for even six months. They did not send or offer to send a single soldier to aid the Americans. They did not offer any sort of financial help to Americans. They offered no medical help to Americans, and they offered all this to the Germans.

Q: So are you saying that the idea that the Swiss were neutral is just a myth?

A: Yes. It came as a terrible shock to them that the Germans were losing the war by 1943.

Q: The Swiss government’s reaction to your work has been anger. Swiss leaders question why people who survived the war because of their efforts would now sue them--their saviors.

A: They’re angry because I revealed what even the Swiss people did not know. My report is not against the Swiss people; it is against the Swiss government. The Federal Council and one government after another . . . covered up their role during the war. There’s not a single history book, not even one written in German or French, that tells the truth about the Swiss during World War II. . . . They associated their war aims with the [German] war aims: the suppression of communist Russia and the Jews. This was the official policy of the Swiss government. They maintained their secrecy on the anti-Jewish policy until I discovered these documents, . . . the official transcripts of secret meetings by the Swiss minister of justice, Eduard von Steiger.

Q: Could Von Steiger have been acting alone when he met with the pro-Nazi group, the Fatherland Assn.?

A: Oh no, absolutely not. He was very popular . . . a member of the Federal Council from 1941 to 1951. He had to be elected by the entire Swiss Parliament. In 1945 he was rewarded for his anti-Semitic and pro-German policy during the war by getting elected president of Switzerland. In 1951 they were still so happy with his anti-Semitism and pro-Nazi stance during the war that he was reelected.

Q: Simon Wiesenthal, the man for whom the center that commissioned your work is named, had originally distanced himself from your most recent report. He said you have painted a distorted picture of World War II Switzerland. He also called you a “hobby historian.” Historian Jacques Picard’s criticism of your work is equally biting. Your response?

A: Picard has no idea what I study. He is a Swiss Jew. He’s in a delicate position. He doesn’t want to appear that he’s a Jew and not a good Swiss. Several things about Wiesenthal: . . . First of all, what the Swiss did not quote was how highly he praised my reports on the secret meetings and [how] absolutely astonished [he was to learn] about them.

Now, as for the rest, you must remember that Wiesenthal has no degree in history. He has never studied history at a university. He has no idea about historical [research] methodology.

Nevertheless, I wrote him a letter because his criticisms disturbed me so, and he responded: “If you have been offended by statements printed in the Swiss press--whom I provided with no written statements and who quoted me without asking if the quotations were correct or as I had intended them--I am sorry, because you invested a great deal of work in this report. I only believe that the timing of the publication was poorly chosen.”

Q: What role would you say your research had in the settlement with the banks?

A: My reports were just one of the many activities that led to this agreement. There were the economic sanctions and the fine work of the Bergier Commission. There was much, much pressure on the Swiss to settle this thing. Reports such as mine proved extremely painful to them and attracted too much criticism and attention to things they want to leave hidden. It was in their best interests to come to a speedy conclusion and a settlement with all these groups.

The Bergier Commission . . . said something like 79% of all looted gold went through Switzerland. The Swiss denied that there was any discrimination; what my report establishes was that there was very close collaboration with the Nazi government years and years before they were forced to do so.

But, more importantly, I discovered these three secret meetings, official meetings held in the justice minister’s office . . . in which [Von Steiger] states categorically that the Swiss policy was to discriminate against Jews, to keep Jews out. Now, we’re looking at the ramifications of this. This is the first time since the end of the war that we finally have legal proof that this was indeed their policy--a policy that they have denied and they continue to deny to this very day.

This will literally change Swiss history. The Swiss history has not been written; they’ve refused to write it because they have everything to hide. This will now establish historically once and for all that they had this policy.

I said in my report that Switzerland was saturated with Nazi groups. And that is true. Every town, every village, every city had extremist societies in them. The vast majority of the people did not belong to them, but they were represented officially. [My research] uncovered pictures of them holding mass meetings in the City Hall of Zurich in the end of 1941. We show them in the major concert hall of Zurich in 1941. We show them in the stadium of Zurich, marching--several hundred of them--in uniform with large swastikas in 1941.

Q: The Holocaust was clearly one of mankind’s darkest hours. But it was 50 years ago; why should we care now? Why not just let it go?

A: As a historian, I consider it entirely appropriate to study an event 50 years after it concludes. [After 50 years,] most of the memoirs have been published. Private and public memoirs and autobiographies have begun to appear. Purely from the documentary viewpoint, we cannot really begin before then. Getting away from the documentary aspect of it, the real Swiss history during World War II [still] has not been written. What’s out there is a pack of lies. The people who stole Jewish property still exist. And in Swiss society, the Swiss people are brought up thinking they were all wonderful people, that they supported the Allies during World War II. No one knows the truth, and until the truth [emerges], people who stole Jewish property can walk around proudly.

. . . The official role of the Swiss government was to make money and to collaborate with the Germans during World War II, and they refused to print this in the [history] books. This has all been suppressed.

Q: Do you think this suppression was connected to the survivors’ lawsuits against them?

A: For one, they want the historical record to read like a fairy tale. Second, it is about these gigantic lawsuits for all the money they have stolen. The Swiss are guilty of mass robbery by the federal government. The country has been supporting a cover-up of the mass robbery by the Swiss government, by the Swiss banks, by the Swiss insurance companies. And they want this all kept hidden, because if we announce the names of everyone involved, it will be some of the best names in Switzerland. A large number of very influential Swiss families are going to discover that their families were associated with the robbery of Jews during World War II.