As for soft power, little constituency services such as those the U.S. Democratic Party performed for Edgar Bronfman and the World Jewish Congress taught a destructive lesson: the U.S. government’s talk of righteousness is less a banner that the American people can follow than a fig leaf for special interests.
What, then, can be said of a foreign policy that insults a lot and injures a little, that advertises its impotence by speaking loudly while whittling down its military stick? Quite simply that it teaches its people the wrong lessons, and that American policy-makers themselves are in need of many lessons. May God administer them gently.
Notes
Preface
1 According to the Federal Election Commission, Edgar Bronfman donated $595,000 to the Democratic National Committee during the 1995–1996 election cycle. During that cycle Bronfman family members gave a total of $1,262,000, placing the family first among all Democratic personal donors.
2 David C. Hendrickson, “The Recovery of Internationalism,” Foreign Affairs, September–October 1994, p. 26.
3 Samuel P. Huntington, “The Erosion of American National Interests,” Foreign Affairs, September–October 1997, p. 49.
4 Jane Perlez, “Conflict in the Balkans: Serbian Strategy,” New York Times, March 29, 1999, p. A1.
Chapter 1
1 Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to the Pseudo Event in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).
2 Hearings before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, May 14, 1997.
3 Hearings before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, April 23, 1996. Note that in 1951 Senator Joseph McCarthy began his campaign of defamation with a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, in which he claimed: “I have in my hand a list. . . .” The less the senator has to go on, the more he needs the pretense that he has documentary proof of something new. D’Amato, like McCarthy, had nothing new.
4 Hearings before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, April 23, 1996.
5 See Alexander Hamilton’s memorandum on the 1790 Nootka crisis. The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 7, Harold C. Synett, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), pp. 36–57. The technique of inspiring stories and then citing them as evidence for one’s claim to get further press attention is fundamental to pseudo events.
6 How much proof of ownership should be required to gain access to a bank account is everywhere determined by law. Swiss laws on the subject are among the most restrictive in the world. These laws have caused difficulties for people who possessed far more information than Mrs. Beer did. See the case of Estelle Sapir, in “Big Swiss Bank Settles with Daughter of Nazi Victim,” New York Times, May 5, 1998, p. A31.
7 Hearings before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, April 23, 1996.
8 Hearings before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, May 15, 1997.
9 “U.S. and Allied Efforts to Recover and Restore Gold and Other Assets Stolen or Hidden by Germany During World War II,” preliminary study coordinated by Stuart E. Eizenstat, Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of State, May 1997, p. iv.
10 Ibid., vi.
11 Ibid., viii–ix.
12 See, for example, Peter T. White and Steve Raymer, “A Little Humanity: The International Committee of the Red Cross,” National Geographic, November 1986. See also William H. Nicholas and Willard Culver, “Switzerland Guards the Roof of Europe,” National Geographic, August 1950.
13 Hearings before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, April 23, 1996.
14 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, translated and edited by Angelo M. Codevilla (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 46–47.
15 See J. Murray Luck, ed., Modern Switzerland (Palo Alto, CA: Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship, 1978). See also Rolf Kieser and Kurt R. Spillman, eds., The New Switzerland: Problems and Policies (Palo Alto, CA: Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship, 1996).
16 Of the many tributes to Churchill’s statesmanship, none is more instructive than the one delivered by Professor Leo Strauss on the occasion of Sir Winston’s death. “The tyrant stood at the height of his power. None dared defy him.” Professor Strauss’s point was that Churchill showed who he was in the summer of 1940 by defying Hitler when the führer was most powerful. Those who sport anti-Nazism a half century after Hitler’s death are in a category different from Churchill’s.
17 One can get a hint of how the overwhelming majority of democratic statesmen would have behaved had Nazi victories continued from Robert Harris’s novel Fatherland (New York: Random House, 1992).
18 Winston Churchill, The Second World War (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), vol. VI, p. 616.
19 David L. Gordon and Royden Dangerfield, The Hidden Weapon: The Story of Economic Warfare (New York: Harper, 1947), p. 75.
20 Amos Elon, “Switzerland’s Lasting Demon,” New York Times Magazine , April 12, 1998, p. 43.
21 Une Suisse Sans Armée (Zurich), especially #26, Summer 1995.
22 See J. Fink, Die Schweitz aus der Sicht des Dritten Reiches 1933–1945 (Zurich, 1985) and H.R. Kurz, Operationsplannung Schweitz (Thoune, 1974).
23 Alexander Hamilton, “Pacificus No. III,” The Papers of Alexander Hamilton , vol. 15.
24 Note the classic refutation of the vulgar notion that “money is the sinew of war” in Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses, Book II, Chapter 10. In essence Machiavelli teaches that power makes money, not the other way around.
Chapter 2
1 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses, Book II, Ch. 27. Machiavelli illustrates the consequences of putting one’s country wholly at the mercy of an aroused, victorious enemy. In particular, Machiavelli recalls the strategic error of the Florentine Republic in 1512. Even though the much superior Spanish army had offered Florence the chance to retain its republican form of government in exchange for concessions, Florence chose to fight, using the small army that Machiavelli himself had organized. Florence lost, the republic died, and Machiavelli spent the next six months in jail. His advice here is much like that of a good attorney: measure your case and then settle!
2 Kurt von Schuschnigg, The Brutal Takeover (New York: Atheneum, 1971).
3 Hans Ulrich Jost, Nouvelle Histoire de la Suisse et des Suisses (Lausanne, 1974), p. 157.
4 See Edgar Bonjour, Histoire de la Neutralité Suisse, vols. IV, VI (Neuchatel, 1970); Daniel Bourgeois, Le Troisième Reich et la Suisse (Neuchatel, 1974); Jon Kimche, Spying for Peace: General Guisan and Swiss Neutrality (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1961).
5 General Henri Guisan, Rapport du General Guisan à l’Assemblée Fédérale Sur le Service Actif 1939–1945 (Bern, 1946), p. 5.
6 Quoted in E. Bucher, “Die Schweitz im Sommer 1940,” Revue Suisse d’Histoire, 1979, pp. 356–398.
7 Quoted in Philippe Marguerat, La Suisse Face au IIIème Reich (Lausanne, 1991), p. 59.
8 Adriano Pennacini, ed., Cesare Opera Omnia (Turin, Paris: Einaudi, Gallimard Pleiade, 1993); De Bellum Galiae, Book I, Ch. 1, p. 6.
9 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, Angelo Codevilla, ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), Ch. 26. In his larger work, the Discourses, Machiavelli qualified that praise considerably. His main military point in the Discourses is that no arm or mode of warfare is inherently superior to another, and that any set of means must be used according to circumstances. At any rate, in 1515 the Swiss suffered a serious defeat at the hands of the French at the Battle of Marignano. Thereafter, Swiss influence in European affairs declined. See George Soloveitchik, Switzerland in Perspective (London: Oxford University Press, 1954).
10 Guisan, Rapport, 196.
11 Army Order 10067, June 3, 1940.
12 Winston Churchill, The Second World War (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), vol. II, p. 122.
13 W. Roesch, Bedrohte Schweitz (Frauenfeld, 1986); W. Roesch, “Plans d’Attaque Allemands Contre la
Suisse du Second Semestre de 1940,” Sup-primer l’Armée (Frauenfeld, 1988), pp. 55–66.
14 On Termopylae, see Herodotus. On Demosthenes’ brilliant tactics at Pylos, see Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Book V.
15 Guisan, Rapport, 39.
16 Some modern Swiss writers (see, for example, Philippe Marguerat, La Suisse Face au IIIème Reich [Lausanne, Editions 24 Heures]) compare the Swiss decision to forsake defense for deterrence to the U.S. decision in the 1960s to leave America defenseless against nuclear weapons. They cite Thomas Schelling’s The Strategy of Conflict (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966) as the classic explanation of why maintaining peace depends on accepting unacceptable consequences for one’s own side in case of war. But this line of argument confuses the Swiss predicament in World War II, when defense was impossible, with the U.S. situation of the 1960s, when officials rejected options for defense and chose vulnerability on purely ideological grounds.
17 Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Book II. Thucydides was a favorite of Colonel Max Gonard, one of General Guisan’s favorite thinkers.
18 Guisan, Rapport, 36–40.
19 The precise figures are found in Jakob Huber, Rapport du Chef de l’Etat Major de l’ Armée (Bern, 1946), pp. 112–142.
20 Guisan, Rapport, 87–92.
21 Ibid., 87.
22 Huber, 251–255.
23 Ibid., 525.
24 Jost, 164.
25 Consider: “Treason doth never prosper; what’s the reason? / For if it prosper, none dare call it treason” (Sir John Harrington, “Of Treason,” Epigrams).
26 See, for example, Machiavelli, The Prince, Ch. 17: “When need is far away [men] offer you their blood, their goods, their lives, their children; but when need closes in, they revolt.”
27 The original sources on subversion in Switzerland during the war are the reports of the Federal Council of December 26, 1945 (FF1946, I, 1), the report of the Federal Council of May 17, 1946 (FF II, 165), and the report of the Federal Council of May 21, 1946 (FII 203). These are summarized in Albert Picot, L’Activité Antidemocratique Contre la Suisse Pendant la Guerre (National Council, October 9, 1946). The best historical summary of the fight for public opinion in Switzerland is Andre Lasserre, La Suisse des Années Sombres (Lausanne, 1989).
28 The assassin, a young Jew named David Frankfurter, was released after the war and made a career in the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
29 By the same token, after listening to Wehrmacht General Franz Halder’s description of how German armies had sliced through Poland, Swiss Army Chief of Staff Jakob Huber crushed his cheap cigar and remarked, “Here, nobody will pass.” Of course this brave tone vanished after June 1940.
30 This was revealed in a parliamentary inquest after the war. See M. André Picot, Les Menées Hitleriennes, Séance du Conseil National du 9 Octobre 1946, Bulletin Sténographique des Chambres Fédérales (Bern, 1946), p. 4.
31 Major de Vallière, quoted in Lasserre, La Suisse des Années Sombres, p. 6.
32 See, for example, a speech he delivered in 1935: “They hate [the army] because it is the obstacle, the wall against which the Bolshevik wave of 1918 broke. Because to utopian dreams it opposes its fidelity, its solidarity, its spirit of brotherhood, and if necessary its force. Because of all the products of our soil it is the one with the deepest roots” (Lasserre, 36).
33 Plan de Causerie #22 (Archive Armée et Foyer Bern, Bibliotheque Militaire Nationale).
Chapter 3
1 This theme is fully developed in Paul Seabury and Angelo Codevilla, War Ends and Means (New York: Basic Books, 1989), Ch. 1.
2 Feuille Fédérale, 1935, vol. II, p. 561. We translate correctly the phrase “under observation of the Federal Assembly and public opinion.” However, in French, Italian, and German, the words for “observe” retain an etymological but practically vestigial implication of “control.” No. Public opinion and parliament retained only the right to look on, and applaud or complain.
3 Documents Diplomatiques Suisses, vol. VIII, p. 349.
4 See Andre Lasserre, Frontières et Camps (Lausanne: Payot, 1995), pp. 28, 29.
5 Lasserre, Frontières, 42.
6 Quoted in Lasserre, Frontières, 55, 56.
7 Karl Barth, Eine Schweitzer Stimme 1938–1945 (Zollikon, 1946).
8 Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942–1945 (New York: Random House, 2000).
9 Quoted in Alfred Hasler, The Lifeboat Is Full (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1969), p. 81.
10 The authoritative account of this key episode is in Karl Ludwig, “La Politique Pratiquée par la Suisse à l’Egard des Réfugiés au Cours des Années 1933–1955 (Bern, 1957). See also Lasserre, Frontières, 167–168.
11 This is a lesson that a variety of American institutions, especially school districts and businesses, had to learn painfully in the 1990s in the wake of court decisions regarding “sexual harassment.” Having recognized the principle that such an offense exists, and not having stopped any given behavior, they became liable to the charge that such behavior falls under the prohibited category and that they approved of it.
12 Georg Kreis, Zensur und Selbstzensur Die Schwitzerische Presspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, Frauenfeld: Huber, 1973), p. 154. See also Edgar Bonjour, Histoire de la Neutralité Suisse, vol. V, pp. 155–191.
13 Memorandum Rezzonico E2001 (E) 1/5 Archives Fédérales, Bern. See also Georg Kreis, Juli 1940 (Zurich).
14 Denis de Rougemont, “A Cette Heure où Paris. . .,” Gazette de Lausanne , June 17, 1940.
15 Manifeste du Mouvement National Suisse, September 20, 1940 (Bern, Archives Nationales).
Chapter 4
1 “Ubersicht des Spezialhandels nach Landern 1927–1950,” OZD Schweizerische Handelsstatistik (Bern, 1955).
2 André Allisson, Exportation du Matériel de Guerre 1938–1941 (Université de Neuchatel Institut d’Histoire, May 1976).
3 Archives Fédérales Suisses, Les Accords Germano Suisses de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (Bern, 1997), p. 915. See also Historische Statistik der Schweitz, Ritzman/Siegenthaler S,675, Jaresberichte der OZD.
4 Les Accords Germano Suisses de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, 914.
5 Royden and Dangerfield, 81–84.
6 Quoted in Marguerat, La Suisse Face au IIIème Reich, 110.
7 Werner Rings, L’Or des Nazis (Lausanne: Payot, 1985), pp. 97–98.
8 Ibid., 93.
9 Letter of Per Jacobson to Eugen Weber, president of the Swiss National Bank, November 25, 1940, quoted in K. Urner, “E Pohl und die Schweit-erische Nationalbank,” Schweitzer Monatshefte, 1985, pp. 623–631.
10 Rings, 41–43.
11 The balances of the major banks are quoted at some length in the Bergier Commission Report, Bern, 1998, pp. 158–164.
12 Ibid.
13 Union Bank of Switzerland Annual Report, 1042, p. 9, quoted in Bergier Commission Report, 157.
14 Swiss National Bank archives, meeting of February 29, 1940, #164, p. 71, quoted in Bergier Commission Report, 64.
15 Bergier Commission Report, 64–68.
16 Quoted in Bergier Commission Report, 32.
17 Thomas McKittrick, an American official of the Bank of International Settlements, estimated in 1946 that the Reichsbank’s gold stock prior to the acquisition of gold from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg amounted to 2.1 billion Swiss francs (Marguerat, 143).
18 Gordon and Dangerfield, 169.
19 Eizenstat report, 196.
20 For a thorough exploration of this myth see Chapter 2 of Nicholas Faith, Safety in Numbers (New York: Viking, 1982).
Chapter 5
1 See, for example, Nathaniel C. Nash, “Swiss Raise Hopes of Tracing Lost War Deposits,” New York Times, August 3, 1995, p. A3.
2 Edgar Bronfman, The Making of a Jew (New York: Putnam, 1996).
3 Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2000, p. A22.
4 Leslie Wayne, “Trial Lawyers Pour Money Into Democrats’ Chests,”
New York Times, March 23, 2000, p. A1.
5 New York Times, News of the Week in Review, March 25, 2000.
6 This is the position of, among others, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. See “Don’t Democrats Believe in Democracy?” Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2000, p. A22.
7 Alan Feuer, “2 Brooklyn Lawyers Outline a Court Patronage System,” New York Times, January 5, 2000.
8 Stuart Eizenstat, Letter to the Editor, Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2000, p. A33.
9 John Auters et al., “Banks Pay a High Price for Putting the Past Behind Them,” Financial Times, September 9, 1998, p. 4.
10 Author’s interview with Richard Capone, January 18, 1999.
11 John J. Goldman, “Holocaust Survivors Urge OK of Bank Claim Deal,” Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1998, p. 14.
12 Marilyn Henry, “Swiss Holocaust Agreement Finalized. . . .” Jerusalem Post, January 24, 1999, p. 4.
13 Barry Miller, “Jewish Groups Fight Over Spoils of Swiss Case,” New York Times, November 29, 1998, p. 1.
14 Charles Krauthammer, “Stop the Holocaust Treasure Hunter” Jerusalem Post, December 7, 1998, p. 8.
15 Volcker report, pp. 12–13.
16 Ibid., 20–21.
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