The award-winning author of Target Switzerland uses “a wide breadth of research to attempt to answer why Switzerland escaped the Nazi onslaught” (Daly History Blog). While surrounded by the Axis powers in World War II, Switzerland remained democratic and, unlike most of Europe, never succumbed to the siren songs and threats of the Nazi goliath. This book tells the story with emphasis on two voices rarely heard. One voice is that of scores of Swiss who lived in those dark years, told through oral history. They mobilized to defend the country, labored on the farms, and helped refugees. The other voice is that of Nazi Intelligence, those who spied on the Swiss and planned subversion and invasion. Exhaustive documents from the German military archives reveals a chilling rendition of attack plans which would be dissuaded in part by Switzerland’s armed populace and Alpine defenses. Laced with unique maps and photos, the book reveals how the Swiss mobilized an active “spiritual defense” of their country—including the use of the press and cabaret as weapons against totalitarianism—and explores the role of women in the military and economy, the role of Jewish officers in the highest levels of the Swiss army, and the role of Switzerland itself as America’s window on the Reich. “Halbrook succeeds not only in achieving a thorough analysis of Switzerland’s armed neutrality, but also in revealing through their own voices the willingness of ordinary citizens to accept total war in order to preserve their freedom.”—Swiss American Historical Society Review

Award-winning journalist Isabel Vincent unravels the labyrinthine story behind the headlines by taking us through the life of survivor Renée Appel, who found refuge in Canada. With her, we come to understand what it means to wait for justice: how, on the eve of war, desperate men and women entrusted their life savings to Swiss banks; how Nazis laundered gold looted from Jewish families; how the demands of international business, Swiss bank secrecy, and greed kept the truth hidden for over half a century and still prevent restitution from being made. Hitler's Silent Partners is a rigorous and often heartbreaking look at statistics seldom given a human face.

Hitler's Secret Bankers was the first book to disclose the extensive collaboration among Swiss banks, the Swiss government, and the Third Reich before and during World War II. Switzerland, supposedly neutral in the war, seemed a safe haven to desperate Jews who entrusted their wealth to its banks, believing that even if they died their families would inherit it. For more than fifty years, this money has provided free working capital for the banks. In addition to the dispute over dormant accounts, Swiss banks provided the Nazi war machine with foreign currency, which paid for vital war materiel such as chrome and aluminum.

Countless books have been written on the military history of World War II, however astonishingly little information has appeared about the one country that stared the Nazis down and refused to become an accomplice to the horrors of the Third Reich. This book provides an objective, year-by-year account of Switzerland's military role in World War II, including her defensive strategies, details of Nazi invasion plans, and Switzerland's moral, material and humanitarian links to the Allies. Swiss neutrality in World War II has been criticized in recent years, but the country was entirely surrounded by Axis powers and managed, as revealed here, to render considerable assistance to the Allies.

This work reveals the role played by the Swiss banks and the Swiss government in exploiting World War II and the Holocaust to their financial advantage; a role which included helping the Nazis to hide and sell their loot siezed from occupied Europe, and stealing the deposits made in those banks by Jewish individuals and organizations. The book is supported by leading campaigners such as Senator d`Amato, Chairman of the US Banking Centre and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

A sharp and passionate expose' that demolishes the myth of Swiss neutrality in World War II, showing how Switzerland laundered gold looted from the banks of Nazi-occupied Europe and from the bodies of concentration camp victims. Maps.

Treasury Department - Sam Klaus, Orvis Schmidt, James Mann, and Seymour Rubin, to name a few - who struggled tirelessly for many years following World War II, with little support from the British and French, to get the Swiss to release the deposits to the rightful owners or their heirs.