British Economic Warfare and Switzerland

Abstract

Abstract This chapter charts British efforts to limit Swiss–German economic collaboration. It explores how the Ministry of Economic Warfare tried to compel Berne into reducing its exports to Germany through a mixture of blockade quotas, pre-emptive purchasing, and the use of statutory and black list mechanisms, but how these efforts were always limited by an appreciation of the importance of ‘danegeld’ — Swiss manufactured goods — to the British war effort and the priority given to Britain's political relations with the Swiss government. The substantial concessions, granted by Berne following the listing of the Hans Sulzer engineering firm in late 1943, effectively met London's principal desiderata and for the remainder of the war London assumed the role of honest-broker between the Swiss and the Allied governments, and sought to use to position to temper U.S. efforts to impose the Allied ‘Safehaven’ programme on the Swiss authorities in the final months of the war.