The Washington Agreement of 1946 and the settlement of 1952

The negotiations in Washington

The Currie agreement resolved some of the disputes but left the most important ones open. The Allies continued to demand the surrender of German assets in Switzerland as part of the reparations due from Germany, as well as the restitution of the looted gold that the SNB had bought. They also maintained the blacklists and the freeze of Swiss assets in the United States. In March 1946, a Swiss delegation under Walter Stucki began negotiations in Washington with representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom and France.¹ Federal Councillor Max Petitpierre, head of the Federal Political Department, directed the Swiss position from Bern, and William Rappard again served as adviser to the delegation.²

The positions at the opening of the talks were far apart. The American State Department and Treasury presented a claim of 200 million dollars for the looted gold. The Swiss delegation denied any legal obligation, arguing that the SNB had bought the gold in good faith and that the Allies had no right to German assets situated in a neutral country. It also resisted the Allied demand for a full disclosure of German accounts. The Swiss banks warned the government that the disclosure of customer information would deal a death blow to their reputation for discretion and cause foreign capital to flee the country.³ Here, in the setting of an international negotiation, the argument appeared that would accompany Swiss banking secrecy for the next sixty years: that the credibility of the financial centre depended on its refusal to open its books to foreign governments.

The terms of the agreement

The agreement was signed on 25 May 1946. Switzerland undertook to pay CHF 250 million in gold to the Allies for the reconstruction of Europe. In return, the Allies renounced all further claims against the Swiss National Bank in connection with the gold it had acquired from Germany during the war. Switzerland further undertook to register the German assets blocked since 16 February 1945 and to liquidate the assets of Germans living in Germany, with half of the proceeds going to Swiss claimants and half to the Allies for the reconstruction of Europe. The Allies agreed to lift their blacklists. For its part, the United States agreed to release the Swiss assets blocked since 1941.⁴

Measured against the opening demands, the result was a considerable success for Switzerland. The sum of CHF 250 million corresponded to 58.1 million dollars in gold. American officials had estimated that Switzerland held between 185 and 289 million dollars’ worth of looted gold, while the State Department and Treasury had opened the negotiations with a claim of 200 million dollars.⁵ Rappard called the agreement a “diplomatic miracle”, because the Western victors had abandoned a large part of their demands. The historical encyclopaedia explains this outcome by the industrial and financial support that Switzerland was able to offer France and the United Kingdom in the post-war period, which moderated their demands, and by the beginning of the Cold War, which reduced Western pressure on a neutral country with a sound currency and intact industry. The agreement allowed Switzerland to overcome its international isolation.⁶

A secret annex on the assets of victims

The agreement contained a provision that remained unpublished in 1946. In a confidential letter that formed part of the settlement, Switzerland agreed to examine “with goodwill” the question of assets in Switzerland whose owners had been victims of Nazi persecution and had died without heirs. This commitment met with the resistance of the banks, which defended banking secrecy. Apart from a federal decree adopted by Parliament in 1962, no thorough investigation followed until the end of the Cold War.⁷ The unfulfilled promise of 1946 is one of the roots of the crisis of the 1990s, which chapter F.VI examines in detail.

Implementation and the settlement of 1952

The implementation of the Washington Agreement proved long, complicated and incomplete. The liquidation of German assets required the Swiss authorities to identify the owners, to value the assets and to determine which Germans lived in Germany. The Swiss Clearing Office in Zurich bore the main administrative burden, which explains why its staff peaked at 820 in 1949. The Commission’s study of private law concluded that the Washington Agreement was not implemented according to its content.⁸ The Swiss side had never been enthusiastic about the liquidation, which it regarded as an interference with private property that had no basis in international law. Once the Federal Republic of Germany had been founded, Bern preferred a settlement with Bonn to a liquidation for the benefit of the Allies.

The solution came in three interrelated agreements between Switzerland and the Federal Republic signed on 26 August 1952. The agreement on German assets gave the owners of German assets frozen in Switzerland the possibility of regaining free disposal of them. Switzerland undertook to release the assets against payment of a lump sum of CHF 121.5 million by the Federal Republic, which the owners had to refinance by contributions that generally amounted to about one third of the value of the assets released.⁹ Another of the agreements settled the claims arising from the wartime clearing. Under it, the Federal Republic paid Switzerland CHF 650 million, of which Switzerland had to invest CHF 200 million in Germany.¹⁰ Part of the lump sum for the German assets went to the Allies in settlement of their claims under the Washington Agreement.¹¹

The settlement of 1952 closed the post-war chapter from the Swiss government’s point of view. Most German assets went back to their owners, while the Allies received a fraction of what they had expected and the Swiss clearing claims were partly repaid. The victims of Nazi persecution, whose assets had been the subject of the confidential letter of 1946, were not part of the settlement. Their claims remained with the banks and insurers that held the assets. That imbalance would return to haunt the financial centre forty years later.

Notes

1. HLS, Marc Perrenoud, “Washingtoner Abkommen”, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/017343/. ↩
2. Dodis, “The 80 years of the Washington Agreement”, https://www.dodis.ch/en/80-years-washington-agreement. ↩
3. Dodis, “The 80 years of the Washington Agreement”, https://www.dodis.ch/en/80-years-washington-agreement. On the opening Allied claim see Slany/Eizenstat, U.S. and Allied Efforts To Recover and Restore Gold, May 1997, https://www.swissbankclaims.com/Documents/Doc_5_Eizenstat_Report.pdf. ↩
4. HLS, Marc Perrenoud, “Washingtoner Abkommen”, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/017343/. The HLS article states that the proceeds of the liquidation were to be divided equally between Swiss war victims and the reconstruction of Europe. ↩
5. Slany/Eizenstat, U.S. and Allied Efforts To Recover and Restore Gold and Other Assets Stolen or Hidden by Germany During World War II, May 1997, https://www.swissbankclaims.com/Documents/Doc_5_Eizenstat_Report.pdf. ↩
6. HLS, Marc Perrenoud, “Washingtoner Abkommen”, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/017343/. ↩
7. HLS, Marc Perrenoud, “Washingtoner Abkommen”, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/017343/. See also Dodis, “The 80 years of the Washington Agreement”, https://www.dodis.ch/en/80-years-washington-agreement. ↩
8. UEK publications vol. 19, summary, https://www.uek.ch/de/schlussbericht/Publikationen/Zusammenfassungenpdf/19d.pdf (contribution by Frank Vischer); HLS, Martin Meier, “Schweizerische Verrechnungsstelle”, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/047125/. ↩
9. German Federal Constitutional Court, judgment of 21 March 1957, BVerfGE 6, 290 (German Assets in Switzerland), English translation, University of Texas School of Law, Foreign Law Translations, https://law.utexas.edu/transnational/foreign-law-translations/german/case.php?id=598. The court upheld the German legislation implementing the agreement. ↩
10. HLS, Jean-Jacques Langendorf and Alfred Cattani, “Deutschland”, section on the period after 1945, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/articles/003352/2015-10-29/. The agreements entered into force in 1953. ↩
11. Eizenstat report (above), pp. xxviii–xxix, https://www.swissbankclaims.com/Documents/Doc_5_Eizenstat_Report.pdf: “An Allied-Swiss agreement was finally reached in August 1952, which called for a lump-sum settlement of 121.5 million Swiss francs ($28 million)” for liquidated German assets in Switzerland. After deduction of the advance of CHF 20 million paid to the International Refugee Organization in 1948, the payment amounted to CHF 101.5 million. ↩

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.