Nazi Gold: The Full Story of the Fifty-Year Swiss-Nazi Conspiracy to Steal Billions from Europe's Jews and Holocaust Survivors

The 1945 Allied victory in Europe ended the military and political might of the Third Reich, but its financial power lives on in the secret vaults and numbered accounts of Swiss banks. In Nazi Gold, author Tom Bower uncovers the sordid lengths to which Swiss bankers went after the war to protect the plundered wealth hidden in their coffers. Switzerland's excuse for even accepting Nazi gold is a plausible one: in order to maintain their status as a neutral country, they were forced to deal equally with all sides. This does not, however, explain their postwar reluctance to return hundreds of millions of dollars of stolen wealth to central European banks or even to Holocaust victims as a means of restitution.

In this well-researched book, Tom Bower revisits the years following the war's end, focusing on the unholy alliance between Swiss bankers and Nazi sympathizers. He leaves no doubt as to the bankers' motives for maintaining secrecy: they were setting a precedent for potential customers in need of safe refuge for other looted fortunes. Finally, he chronicles the United States' overwhelmingly ineffective attempts to force the Swiss to disgorge the Nazi millions. Nazi Gold is certain to raise the hackles of the Swiss banking industry, but Tom Bower has bravely tackled a complicated topic.