The Swiss, The Gold And The Dead: How Swiss Bankers Helped Finance the Nazi War Machine
At what price neutrality? For the 50 years following World War II, Switzerland  has maintained that whatever collaboration it may have engaged in with Nazi Germany  was undertaken in hopes of avoiding invasion. Recently, however, foreign governments  and the families of Holocaust victims have begun to take an interest in the fate of the  many millions of dollars' worth of Jewish gold, works of art, and money that disappeared  into numbered Swiss bank accounts during the war, never to be seen again. InThe  Swiss, the Gold, and the Dead, Swiss professor and parliamentarian Jean Ziegler  provides a provocative, damning portrait of the Swiss banking community and his fellow  countrymen. According to Ziegler, the global financial power that Switzerland now  wields is the direct result of the Nazi plunder laundered in Swiss banks, a result that the  Swiss people have accepted without guilt or question. It's not surprising that Ziegler's  book is controversial in his own country; the Swiss people are understandably reluctant to  accept the complicity of their government in funding Hitler's war effort. Whatisdisturbing is the Swiss government's continued attempts to obstruct open discussion of  the past.The Swiss, the Gold, and the Deadwill certainly make official denials a  little bit harder to swallow.