Heidi and the Matterhorn, chocolate and precision watches – Swiss clichés. In addition, freedom-loving people like Wilhelm Tell and honorable politicians with waistcoats as pure as the mountain air. But in the 1990s the idyll became fragile. At that time it came to light that Switzerland had bought tons of stolen gold from the Nazis during the Second World War – in exchange for hard currency. The Third Reich needed these in order to obtain militarily important raw materials from abroad. The allegedly neutral Alpine republic – a gold panning plant for Hitler’s Germany . And more, according to US...