"Robin Jaspert: Credit Suisse is currently under renewed investigation for systemically laundering money for the Nazis during the Third Reich and for covering up traces of that until today. Is anyone else in the same boat?
Zachary Gallant: The only thing that makes Credit Suisse special is how hard it tried to cover up its guilt. In general, you can be a Nazi collaborator and a Nazi profiteer and live a happy, powerful, profitable life thereafter. So can your children, and so can all of the managers of your company.
It feels like this is a lot of manufactured fury about Credit Suisse, when in fact it’s so deeply systemic that most people have not thought it worth the cover up. You just have to shut up and move on — you won’t be bothered. And even if, someday, you will be bothered, you’ll commission a historian, paid with money from your company or family or foundation, and you’ll release their findings together, and you’ll do a big celebration of how you’ve overcome your past. Then you can move on again like nothing happened.
Robin Jaspert: Can you give an example?
Zachary Gallant: I would have a difficult time picking an example, as you have the Aufarbeitung (“reprocessing”) work of really almost any German company to choose from. Professors are paid to go into the archives, and then they release a book at a press conference together with the leaders of the company and talk about how this historical responsibility is so important. It’s all tears and balloons: “Look at us. We’re so great. We did it.” We could be talking about nearly any company in the German automobile industry or really any chemical or steel company. Just about all the biggest companies in Germany have followed this pattern, without ever having to do the work that Credit Suisse put in for a cover-up."
https://jacobin.com/2025/02/credit-suisse-afd-nazi-germany/
