I am wondering what Switzerland’s relationship with Nazi Germany was like during the war. The many stories you hear about the golden teeth of murdered Jews being found in Swiss vaults and Hitler’s view of them as lesser Germans is very interesting.
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I don’t know if it’s true, but I think I’ve seen a documentary once, saying that Swiss people hated the Germans, many of themselves had guns stockpiled in their houses, even at that time, in case of war (Not only in that war, but Swiss law actually allow Swiss people to have guns in their houses for that particular reason). They constructed bunkers and pillboxes, inside rocky mountains and fortified their borders with Germany, just in case. But business, is still business and Swiss bankers, allowed Nazis to deposit many stuff in their vaults.
Let the TGA confirm or deny those. They are the experts afterall.
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An interesting little tidbit here is that the Swiss Nazi party (NSDAP-AO, which also functioned as the organization for Nazis abroad) was led by Wilhelm Gustloff, a German born who worked for the Swiss government.
He was shot and killed in 1936 by a Jewish man named David Frankfurter, who had been incensed at Gustloff’s antisemitic propaganda. Gustloff was given a state funeral in Germany.
The KDF cruise ship Wilhelm Gustloff was named after him, and it was sunk by a Soviet submarine early 1945 with possibly the greatest loss of life in any maritime disaster ever (estimated 9k deaths).
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