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During the war, Portugal was the second largest recipient of Nazi gold, after Switzerland. Initially the Nazi trade with Portugal was in hard currency, but in 1941 the Central Bank of Portugal established that much of this was counterfeit and Portuguese leader António de Oliveira Salazar demanded all further payments in gold. [22]
In World War II, Switzerland, and to a lesser extent Sweden and the United States, performed these roles for both sides. When the US entered the war in late 1941, Switzerland took over its mandates. In terms of major roles Swiss diplomats had the mandate to protect Germany's interest in Britain, the United States, Yugoslavia, Turkey, and Dutch ...
There is controversy over the role of the Swiss National Bank in the transfer of Nazi gold during World War II. The SNB was the largest gold distribution centre in continental Europe before the war. A study by the U.S. Department of State in 1997 notes that the bank "must have known that some portion of the gold it was receiving from the ...
In 1949, Switzerland signed a treaty with then-communist Poland to trade Swiss bank accounts held by Polish depositors, from whom nothing had been heard from since before World War II. This was in return for compensation for the nationalization of Swiss-owned assets in Poland with the emergence of Communist rule. [ 12 ]
Rundell, Walter (1961). "Currency Control by the United States Army in World War II: Foundation for Failure". Pacific Historical Review. 30 (4): 381– 399. doi:10.2307/3636424. JSTOR 3636424. Walsh, Brian (June 2024). The "Rape" of Japan: The Myth of Mass Sexual Violence During the Allied Occupation. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1682479308.
During the Second World War, Switzerland was the hub of European gold trade. 77% of the German gold shipments abroad were arranged through it. Between 1940 and 1945, the German state bank sold gold valued 101.2 million Swiss francs to Swiss commercial banks and 1,231.1 million francs through the Swiss National Bank (SNB).
During World War Two, the Swiss franc was the only remaining major freely convertible currency in the world, and both the Allies and the Germans sold large amounts of gold to the Swiss National Bank. Between 1940 and 1945, the German Reichsbank sold 1.3 billion francs worth of gold to Swiss Banks in exchange for Swiss francs and other foreign ...
UBS, with consent from the Swiss government, froze the account containing Hitler's assets indefinitely, and clipped the Reichsmarks, stripping the currency of value. [16] During World War II, UBS also maintained accounts for hundreds of German Jewish businesspeople and households. [15]