Vol. XIII (2007), no 20 - The International Newsletter of Communist ...

The International Newletter of Communist Studies Online XIII (2007), no 20 30
Section III
Projects – Work in progress.
Sean McMeekin, Ankara:
Bolshevik Gold. The Nature of a Forgotten Problem. Report on a book in
progress. 58
In the mid-1990s, a series of sensational reports appeared on the subject of looted Nazi gold
laundered in Switzerland during World War II. Helped along by the war’s fiftieth anniversary,
a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in Washington by the World Jewish Congress, and
nationally televised hearings on Holocaust survivors’ claims against Swiss banks chaired by
U.S. senator Alphonse D’Amato, “Nazi gold” became first-page news. “The greatest theft in
history,” proclaimed the BBC. The New York Times denounced the “Goblins of Zurich.”
Ambitious journalists turned out books with sensational titles like Hitler’s Secret Bankers:
How Switzerland Profited from Nazi Genocide. Without “the considerable efforts of Swiss
bankers,” declared Adam Lebor, “the Second World War could have ended several years
earlier.” 59
Given the stonewalling of Swiss bank directors when faced with intrusive queries by lawyers
and journalists, such heady claims made for good copy. But this was not really a new story.
Nazi looting of central banks in occupied countries, the macabre retrieval of gold jewelry and
teeth from Holocaust victims, incurious Swiss bankers laundering Nazi gold — all these themes
were long familiar to historians. If there was anything novel in the 1990s craze for exposés on
Nazi war booty, it lay in the declassification of U.S. intelligence on Nazi gold movements
gathered by Operation Safehaven during the war. 60
One might expect that this fruitful archival coup would have prompted historians to explore
the theme of gold movements further, say, by examining the role of “neutral” bankers in
58 History’s Greatest Heist. The Looting and Laundering of Russia’s National Patrimony by the
Bolsheviks, 1917-1922. Submitted to Yale University Press, 2006, and currently under review.
59 Adam Lebor, Hitler’s Secret Bankers: How Switzerland Profited from Nazi Genocide (London: Simon
& Schuster Pocket Books, 1999; first published 1997) p. xvii. See also Tom Bower, Nazi Gold. The Full
Story of the Fifty-Year Swiss-Nazi Conspiracy to Steal Billions from Europe’s Jews and Holocaust
Survivors (New York: Harper Collins, 1997). For a sampling of media reactions to the controversy, see
“The greatest theft in history,” BBC online, 1 December 1997; Steve Hurst, “‘Harsh Report’ critical of
Swiss-Nazi gold,” CNN online, 6 May 1997; David E. Sanger, “Goblins of Zurich,” New York Times Sunday
Book Review, 22 June 1997; “Study: Swiss bank stashed gold taken from Nazi camp victims,” CNN
online, 25 May 1998.
60 The best overview of Operation Safehaven is contained in the 1997 U.S. government “Report on
Looted Gold and German Assets,” also known as the “Eizenstat report,” which can be viewed online at
http://www.usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/report/