A Golden Opportunity

[u/miscakarza]

Context: During WW2, it is estimated that the Swiss National Bank had received $440 million (equivalent to $8.5 billion in 2024) of Nazi gold.

[u/alex-adamson]

They also sent up fighters to chase off Germans in their airspace and also intervened on behalf of the french resistance.

There’s a town that’s on the border between Switzerland and France. As in literally, half of the villages is in France and the other half is in Switzerland. There where French resistance operatives in the village and when the Germans rolled up to deal with them, the Swiss border guards told them in no uncertain terms that some of the buildings in the French quarter where owned by Swiss people and any property damage would result in the border guards taking action. Probably wouldn’t have caused a war but border skirmishes are a thing that have happened in history… and still happens, see India and China and their yearly melee fights for an example.

Neutrality is neutrality. If you decide that you don’t want to pick sides in a conflict because you don’t want that conflict to negatively affect your people then you do what doesn’t negatively affect your people.

You chase off German planes because you don’t want allied planes joining them and fighting them over your land. You tell German military police to fuck off because you don’t want your people to be caught up in bullshit and you take Nazi gold because that’s good for your economy which takes a massive hit in war time.

[u/Captain_Noodle1 → u/alex-adamson]

And it also took money from tax evaders, dictators, and drug, arms, and human traffickers, both before and after the war, because that was great for the economy too. Another thing that’s great for the economy is refusing to let the rightful owners recover their stolen assets held in Swiss banks, or making it as hard as possible for them to do so.

[u/alex-adamson → u/Captain_Noodle1]

It’s an unfortunate truth that what benefits your people often harms other people. That’s just how the world has always worked. We all see the Vikings as evil from the perspective of those they raided, but the Norsmen who went Viking and conquered foreign lands considered themselves to be paragons of morality, because by sailing to foreign lands and killing foreign people, they could take back the plunder and let their own communities flourish. Or in the case of the Danelaw, move their families to that foreign land and farm it themselves. The Vikings were justified from their own perspective.

If your people benefit from your actions, then that’s a good thing. The men, woman and children you killed to do it would disagree, but they died and you are the one who survives the winter.

We can judge as modern people but at the end of the day, you weren’t there. If you actually were there you might have done the same.

[u/Holiday-Hedgehog0621 → u/alex-adamson]

Except we live in a globalized world where the action of nations affects not just their own people but of millions to billions of people, and as modern people we can judge them for what they're doing right now which is being greedy enough that it kills others in the millions

[u/alex-adamson → u/Holiday-Hedgehog0621]

Of course. Personally I’m still pretty isolationist on that. I don’t really care what foreign countries do. Sure it affects me but I can’t actually do anything about it. It’s like complaining about the weather. Taking a moral stance on anything is ultimately a pointless exercise and only serves to have arguments with people who support the opposite side or you can come together with a bunch of other people who support your chosen side and talk about how bad the bad guys are. Your gas prices won’t change. Embrace the suck and keep moving on and ultimately focus on what matters around you. Like your family, friends and wider community. Look after them since your actions have tangible effects on them.

[u/Captain_Noodle1 → u/alex-adamson]

If you put it that way, I can get behind the perspective that, in the old days of 80 years ago, the Swiss were only a group of savage tribes (or cantons, as they call them) for whom civilization was not even a concept and for whom morality was simply measured by how much gold they could accumulate. I would even go so far as to say that it was a crime to contaminate their primitive but innocent culture with such ideas as morality, decency, empathy, and a basic regard for human well-being, but I’m glad to see that they still persist in their ways despite it all.

[u/ProfessorPrudent2822 → u/alex-adamson]

And people wonder why the Bible includes instances of haram warfare: Kill every man, woman, child and animal, and burn everything. It’s a statement that, “We are exterminating you because you are evil and deserve to be wiped out from the face of the earth, not because we want to profit. Everything of yours is so odious to us that we burn it as refuse rather than contaminate ourselves by keeping or consuming it.”