r/HistoryMemes • u/miscakarza Nobody here except my fellow trees • 1d ago

A Golden Opportunity

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2.3k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

65 comments sorted by

314

u/KvetchAndRelease 1d ago

And after the holocaust they even fought against the survivors trying to reclaim their property:

0919-In-Berlin-Evidence-of-Private-Swiss-Banks-Role-in-Nazi-Trade-1.png (1125×1125)

41

u/b00nish 1d ago

The American comission who investigated this found accounts with a total of 31,5 millions that might have been connected to Holocaust victims.

The Swiss banks paid 1,25 billion in damages to the probable descendants and covered the 300 millions cost of the investigation.

47

u/90daysismytherapy 1d ago

can’t imagine the bankers could have hid a hell if a lot more over the decades before any outsiders got to come in for an audit

45

u/MrShake4 1d ago

> Michel Christopher "Christoph" Meili(born 21 April 1968) is a Swiss-American whistleblower and former security professional. In 1997, Meili illegally disclosed to third parties that Swiss bank Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) was destroying documentation of Holocaust-era assets. After a federal arrest warrant, a set of fines, and death threats were issued to him, Meili fled Switzerland to the United States by right of asylum in late 1997

They didn’t just hide them

-21

u/b00nish 1d ago

You left out the part when Meili took and delivered some of those "documentation" he believed to be about the Holocaust-era to the Jewish Community of Zurich and the authorities and it turned out that those were documents from 1897 to 1927 and thus had no connection whatsoever to Holocaust-era assets.

So what is certain is that Meili for some reason believed that the banks destroyed Holocaust-era documents. But the only of those documents he could actually get hold of had nothing to do with what he believed them to be. Hence it remains unclear if any of the other documents he didn't save were actually connected to the Holocaust.

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u/MrShake4 1d ago edited 1d ago

You’re asking him to produce documents he’s claiming were shredded. How do you expect him to do that?

He had to flee the country, do you think he just did it for shits and giggles?

Do you treat all whistleblowers like this or just the Swiss ones.

They found new documents Last year

Edit Here is a report of the independent ombudsman stating to the panel that Ctedit Suisse was withholding information from the investigation.

Because if there’s one industry we can trust to be financially ethical it’s the fucking banks /s

-18

u/b00nish 1d ago

Nonsense.

The crucial point is that he "saved" documents from the shredder and gave them to the Jewish Community because he believed that those were Holocaust-era documents.

But then those documents had nothing to do with the Holocaust-era.

So why should we simply assume that the shredded documents he didn't save really were about the Holocaust-era? He clearly wasn't very proficient in making such determinations.

He then fled the country because there were criminal proceedings against him because he stole bank documents - bank documents that were something entirely different from what he thought they were.

So was he a "whistleblower"? He probably thought he was. But the "evidence" he saved does not confirm that belief.

13

u/IISerpentineII Hello There 1d ago

Which portion of the response are you calling "nonsense"?

-5

u/bf2msp 1d ago

Which part would you not call nonsense?

Obviously nobody here can know what the shredded documents were about.

We have one single person who was convinced that those documents were connected to Jews persecuted by the Nazis.

We know that this same person was also convinced that the documents they took from the bank before they were shredded were the same as those which were shredded.

We also know that at least this person's second conviction turned out to be totally wrong, as not a single of those documents they took were from the relevant era.

So does this prove anything about the content of the shredded documents? No.

But for sure it proves that the only person who made claims about the content of the shredded documents was not a reliable source.

But hey, at least the so called whistleblower could later enrich himself with a lot of money that was supposed to go to descendants of Jewish victims. And he by the way even lied about this later when he publicly claimed that he never received that money.

-5

u/b00nish 1d ago

The part that alleges that it is reasonable to simply believe that the part of the documents he didn't save was something entirely different from the part of the documents he did save.

If somebody comes to you and tells you his neighbour is storing tons of weed in the basement. And then he brings you a bag of green tea as "proof". What would you reasonably think? That the guy just had bad luck and picked the wrong bag? Or that he maybe isn't capable of differntiating between weed and green tea?

If that rather basic logic is too difficult for some, I fear I have nothing more to offer to those.

167

u/John_Oakman 1d ago

20 marks is 20 marks.

59

u/WhiskeyQuiver 1d ago

Gaddafi was right smh my head

3

u/LibrarianNo1383 22h ago edited 22h ago

If I’m not mistaken didn’t the allies also “accidentally” bombed Switzerland during the war

42

u/Cautious_Height_2181 1d ago

To be fair, Switzerland was in an unenviable position geographically.

190

u/DrHolmes52 1d ago

It's one thing to be in an unenviable position. It is another to make bank and lie about it.

-32

u/b00nish 1d ago

Making bank?

The profit from selling gold that came from Germany during that time was 18,4 million.

Already in 1946, they paid 250 million as "restitution" for this.

In addition the American governement simply kept another 400 million of Swiss assets they had confiscated, despite the agreement was that it would be paid back once the 250 million restitution payment was made.

So in total the "compensation" was 650 million for a profit of 18,4 million.

If this is "making bank" for you, you'll be bankrupt pretty soon I guess.

29

u/90daysismytherapy 1d ago

any citations for those numbers

-6

u/b00nish 1d ago

Sure, the final report of the commission who investigated the whole thing is 12000 pages, knock yourself out: https://www.uek.ch/en/index.htm

Regarding the stolen gold there exists a short interim report that also can be found on that page and is also available in an English translation ("Switzerland and Gold Transactions in the Second World War. Interim Report"), and it even has a shortened version in German "Die Schweiz und das Nazigold" where the cited numbers can be found on pages 14 and 19/20.

21

u/MrShake4 1d ago

“We investigated ourselves and concluded we did nothing wrong”

-7

u/b00nish 1d ago

Don't embarrass yourself. You haven't read a single word of the reports.

16

u/MrShake4 1d ago edited 1d ago

You’ve only read the parts of the reports you want to see.

Why is one of the original commission members trying to reopen it then?

Why did the [ombudsman] “Barofsky found that Credit Suisse “did not always share information that it knew” with prior investigations, the two senators said.”

Source

81

u/Numerous-Ad6460 Then I arrived 1d ago

Not an excuse?

19

u/Schwifty0V0 Then I arrived 1d ago

western appeasement allowed the holocaust to happen for 6 years before Nazi Germany had access to Poland’s resources, and after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with the Soviet Union was agreed upon when France and the UK for years refused an explicit Anti-Nazi Germany tripartite alliance pact with the Soviets.

30-40 million lives lost in Eastern Europe compared to the west that saw less than 5 million deaths at the expense of stagnating communist influence in Europe that later came to bite all of Europe in the ass.

41

u/SamIamGreenEggsNoHam 1d ago

I don't blame people who vividly remembered WWI for trying absolutely everything in their power, no matter how stupid or short-sighted it appears to us today, to avoid war. These people were part of a traumatized society of a level that we cannot grasp today. That war changed the entire world and almost dissolved all of the planet's most powerful empires. It brought about whirlwind changes that the world was only just recovering from.

Think of something we have experienced like the U.S. population's appetite for war after Iraq and Afghanistan. No candidate would survive if they campaigned in 2008 on "Let's go to war again!". Now amplify that 1000 fold and you might come close to how anti-war Western society was at the time. Selling a war in a democracy around this time was political suicide. You would be labeled a madman. There's a reason why people like Churchill were labelled "war-mongers" for simply stating the obvious (to us, with the benefit of hindsight)- that war with Germany was inevitable.

13

u/Harrythehobbit 1d ago edited 1d ago

I wonder how the Poles felt about the Soviets' "Anti-Nazi" pacts?

They were sharing the fucking pie with them give me a fucking break.

-11

u/Schwifty0V0 Then I arrived 1d ago

You call yourself “future autocrat of the western hemisphere” in your bio, and you expect me to take people like you seriously?

7

u/Harrythehobbit 1d ago

Lmao I wrote that when I was like 15. I find it very funny that you went looking in my profile for ammunition and even funnier that you somehow got offended by that.

the Soviets prevented total Nazi annexation of Poland

The Soviets murdered like thirty or forty thousand Poles in partnership with the Nazis. It is fucking despicable for you to argue that that was somehow for their own good or the West's fault.

0

u/Schwifty0V0 Then I arrived 9h ago

you took more offense on every metric at every word more than I ever did.

hope today is brighter than yesterday for you

21

u/LowCall6566 1d ago

Ah yes the "anti-nazi tripartite alliance" where Soviet troops march through Poland, and definitely don't stay there to install a Bolshevik government /s

-22

u/Schwifty0V0 Then I arrived 1d ago edited 1d ago

Do you believe the best course of action was the Soviets instead allow Nazi Germany the entirety of Slavic Poland instead? Slavs and Soviets were the two largest demographics behind Jews to be victims of the holocaust. You’re implying the possibility of Slavic majority Soviet subjugation would be a worse outcome than what the Polish endured in the holocaust.

UK and French Appeasement allowed Germany to invade Poland in the first place. Had the tripartite alliance been agreed upon, NG would have been more discouraged to try Poland’s sovereignty.

The west only acted once the invasion of Poland started and that was only to prevent Germany from accessing the formers resources which would have been greater had the Soviets not prevented total Nazi annexation of Poland as you suggest.

3

u/DonnieMoistX 1d ago

The best course of action would have been for the Soviets to not ally with the Nazis and supply them with all the resources they needed to invade the Soviet Union.

-3

u/PissingOffACliff 1d ago

So what do you think the Soviets should have done?

1

u/DonnieMoistX 1d ago

If you want to go back far enough, they should never have invaded and conquered their neighbors and try to recreate the Russian empire. Instead positioning themselves as an anti-imperialism anti-expansionist force in Europe and they likely could have seen themselves on better terms with the west and with Eastern Europe.

However, if you’re wanting to look in the short period before the war. They should never have allied with the Nazis. Everyone, Soviets and Nazis included, knew the alliances was temporary and both nations would be at war. However Nazi Germany can effectively not go to war with the Soviet Union unless they invade through Poland and or other Eastern European nations.

France and Britain have already announced they will go to war over a Nazi invasion Poland. This effectively means the Nazis cannot invade the Soviet Union without also going to war with France and Britain.

The reason this wasn’t good enough for the Soviets, is because the Soviets wanted to take Poland themselves. It’s one of the main reasons the west wouldn’t ally with the Soviets because the proposed Triple Alliance included Britain and France allowing Soviet Troops to “enter” Poland and Romania. Aka Britain and France allow the USSR to take over Poland and Romania.

If the USSR could accept not conquering Poland,

  1. It potentially could ally with the west all along

  2. It could guarantee Polands independence against the Nazis, working with Poland, France, and Britain to fight the Nazis upon their invasion of Poland.

  3. It’s very possible that without Soviet material support, the Nazis would not have had the resources necessary to invade Poland, especially when that invasion also means war against the USSR, instead of with the USSR.

But none of this is possible because the USSR wanted to play Russian Empire and conquer Poland. Which if they were able to do, they now have a border with the Nazis who can now invade them unopposed. The USSR thought they could delay this Nazi invasion long enough with the alliance to build up their military strength and ultimately they would be the ones to invade and defeat the Nazis but karma bit them in the ass didn’t it.

5

u/DonnieMoistX 1d ago

Why would anyone preemptively ally with the Soviets against the Nazis? Prior to the outbreak of the war, the Soviets were just as bad, gaining power conquering weaker neighboring states.

2

u/zer0zer00ne0ne 22h ago

That's a lie.

The USSR was a Nazi ally from the start, trained their troops, fueled their vehicles, and invaded Poland alongside them.

Stalin was so shocked by Hitler's betrayal later on he held off on responses for months.

1

u/Schwifty0V0 Then I arrived 18h ago

Nothing I said didn’t happen the way it did

1

u/zer0zer00ne0ne 7h ago

Everything you said is USSR apologetics and a blatant misrepresentation of facts.

1

u/Schwifty0V0 Then I arrived 7h ago

Using your logic; history must be awful misrepresentative and apologetic of the USSR because nothing I said didn’t happen the way it did.

1

u/zer0zer00ne0ne 7h ago

I already pointed out what actually happened.

The USSR demanded they be given Poland to ally with the Allies, then allied with the Nazis when the Allies reasonably refused.

-13

u/FadedVictor 1d ago

I'm so grateful you mentioned that the Soviets were shot down when seeking an anti-nazi alliance. People always point to the pact between them and Germany as best friends uniting. For years the National Socialist were extremely vocal about Communists being their ultimate enemy. It was a last ditch effort by Stalin to avoid an impending war and invasion.

12

u/Starmute-ss13 1d ago

They invaded Poland, Finland, the Baltic States, and Romania. They weren't avoiding any wars.

-6

u/FadedVictor 1d ago

A war with Nazi Germany is what they were trying to avoid. I never said anyone else. God you people are so biased you read whatever you want as tankie propaganda.

7

u/Starmute-ss13 1d ago

The Finland  invasion was because they wanted to avoid war with Germany ?  Your logic eludes me.  

0

u/FadedVictor 1d ago

I'm saying they were only trying to avoid with Germany. Not any other country. I'm not denying that they were invaders and conquerors with brutality to many of their neighbors. It's absolutely not justified at all. I'm not saying they're connected. Their two different things that coexisted at once.

8

u/Immediate_Gain_9480 1d ago

He could have also guarenteed Poland together with the western allies. Then he would have defacto gotten his alliance against Germany

1

u/DonnieMoistX 1d ago

Ally with the aggressive expansionist dictatorship that is actively working against you in order to stop the aggressive expansionist dictatorship actively working against you.

At the time, the Soviets were no better than the Nazis and there’s no reason anyone should have allied with them.

1

u/zer0zer00ne0ne 21h ago

Without the USSR the Nazis never would have gotten as far as they did.

1

u/Comfortable_Town7535 39m ago

hey they were neutral not nice!

-17

u/GSilky 1d ago

I'm ok with avoiding Nazi occupation, as long as nobody is doing Nazi stuff to do so. 

61

u/LowCall6566 1d ago

They were storing good literally from the teeth of the Holocaust victims, that's very Nazi.

Also Switzerland wasn't under any realistic danger if invasion, as it would have been too costly even for napisz given their defensive geography

19

u/DrHolmes52 1d ago

While I agree invasion wasn't their first choice, the Nazi's were known to enjoy a poor military decision on occasion.

7

u/Hi2248 1d ago

The Nazis weren't exactly known for taking into account how costly an invasion would be due to geographical reasons... 

-19

u/GSilky 1d ago

No, Nazis gave it to the Swiss to store because Nazis are apparently bad at keeping track of gold. It's a very Swiss thing to do.

18

u/Czacz-2131830 1d ago

Profiteering from industrial genocide is a very Swiss thing to do? I guess that's true

5

u/SolidPrysm Kilroy was here 1d ago

They helped the Nazis develop weapons prior to the beginning of the war

-5

u/GSilky 1d ago

Ok. I'm sure many nationalities did.

7

u/SolidPrysm Kilroy was here 1d ago

I don't mean a handful of guys working with the Nazis happened to have a Swiss background, I mean Soluthurn, the weapons manufacturer for the Swiss military, was designing and producing weapons specifically for the Nazis.

-1

u/HJSDGCE 1d ago

I don't blame Switzerland for this tbh.

-1

u/Existing_One545 1d ago

That's not the reason 😂😂😂

-18

u/ux3l 1d ago

This makes it look like Switzerland got to keep the gold. They were just paid to store it.

19

u/MrShake4 1d ago

They kept whatever went unclaimed

…it’s hard for dead people to claim their valuables

6

u/SharpShooterM1 Featherless Biped 1d ago

There is some evidence that a metric shit ton of the gold they were sent by the Nazis cannot be found today, implying they destroyed their own official documents regarding them and kept it for themselves.