Allied pressure: Safehaven, blacklists and the Currie mission

Economic warfare against the neutrals

From 1943 onwards, as the military situation turned in favour of the Allies, the pressure on Switzerland shifted from the Axis to the Allied side. The Allies had long used blacklists to punish Swiss firms that traded with Germany. In June 1941, the United States had frozen Swiss assets on its territory, as it froze those of the other continental European countries. The blocked Swiss balances in the United States gave Washington a powerful instrument, which it would use in the negotiations after the war.¹

In May 1944, the American Foreign Economic Administration proposed to the State Department and the Treasury a programme that became known as Safehaven. Its goals were to restrict German economic penetration abroad, to prevent the concealment of German assets in neutral countries, to ensure that these assets remained available for reparations and to prevent Nazi leaders from escaping prosecution by moving their wealth abroad. Switzerland was central to the programme because, in the words of a later CIA study, it carried on business as usual in Nazi Europe and provided the international banking channels through which gold, currencies and commodities moved between countries.² The American intelligence station in Bern under Allen Dulles collected information on German assets in Switzerland, while Samuel Klaus of the Foreign Economic Administration undertook fact-finding missions to the neutral capitals. At the Bretton Woods conference of July 1944, the Allies adopted a resolution calling on neutral countries to prevent the disposal of looted property and the concealment of enemy assets on their territory.³

The Currie mission of 1945

The decisive negotiation took place in Bern in February and March 1945. An Allied delegation led by the American economist Lauchlin Currie, with Dingle Foot for the United Kingdom and Paul Charguéraud for France, arrived in Switzerland on 12 February 1945. On the Swiss side, the negotiations were conducted by Walter Stucki, the former minister in Vichy, with William Rappard as a member of the delegation.⁴ Even before the talks ended, the Federal Council made the most important concession. On 16 February 1945 it froze all German assets in Switzerland.⁵ In the agreement of 8 March 1945, Switzerland undertook in addition to restrict the transit of goods between Germany and northern Italy, to reduce its trade with Germany to a minimum and to limit its gold purchases from the Reichsbank to the amounts needed by the German diplomatic services in Switzerland.

The freeze of 16 February 1945 was carried out by the Swiss Clearing Office in Zurich, which had to register the German assets and administer the blocking. By November 1945 it had received 250,000 reports on German assets with a total value of CHF 1,002 million. Among the account holders were leading figures of the regime, including the former Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht, the foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and the former chancellor Franz von Papen.⁶ The registration of 1945 is, in retrospect, one of the first large-scale exercises in identifying the beneficial owners of assets held in Swiss banks. It was carried out under foreign pressure, for a specific purpose and with results that the Allies considered incomplete. The technique nonetheless foreshadowed later instruments, from the freezing of potentates’ assets to the sanctions regimes that Swiss banks administer today.

Notes

1. HLS, Marc Perrenoud, “Washingtoner Abkommen”, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/017343/. The HLS records that the Americans agreed in 1946 to release the Swiss assets blocked in the United States since 1941. ↩
2. Donald P. Steury, “The OSS and Project SAFEHAVEN”, Studies in Intelligence, Summer 2000, No. 9, https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/oss-project-safehaven.pdf. The programme originated in two memorandums of the Foreign Economic Administration of 5 and 17 May 1944. ↩
3. Eizenstat report (above), pp. xxiii and 17, https://www.swissbankclaims.com/Documents/Doc_5_Eizenstat_Report.pdf: Bretton Woods Resolution VI “called for immediate measures by neutral nations to prevent any disposition, transfer, or concealment of looted gold or other assets” and became the key element of the Safehaven programme directed at the neutral countries. ↩
4. “Currie–Foot mission”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currie-Foot_mission (used for orientation). For Currie, Stucki and Rappard see also Dodis, “The 80 years of the Washington Agreement”, https://www.dodis.ch/en/80-years-washington-agreement. ↩
5. HLS, Marc Perrenoud, “Washingtoner Abkommen”, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/017343/; Parliamentary Services, chronology “Die Schweiz im Zweiten Weltkrieg”, https://www.parlament.ch/centers/documents/de/ch-wk2-chronologie-d.pdf. ↩
6. Guido Koller and Simone Chiquet, “Der Befreiungsschlag nach dem Krieg”, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, https://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/aktuelle-themen/blick-zurueck-der-befreiungsschlag-nach-dem-krieg-ld.84059. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of September 2025.