X. The Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold

A. Establishment and Functions

Pursuant to Part III of the Paris Reparations Agreement, the British, French, and U.S. Governments established the Tripartite Gold Commission (TGC) on September 27, 1946. The Paris Agreement provided explicitly for the restitution of monetary gold to each participating nation in proportion to the losses of such gold it suffered through looting by Germany. At the outset, the Tripartite Gold Commission was co-located in Brussels with the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency (IARA) but was independent of that agency. The TGC was responsible for inviting, reviewing, and adjudicating claims from governments (not individuals) for the restitution of monetary gold looted by Germany or to participate in the distribution of monetary gold found in Germany or in neutral nations. The Commission was responsible for "announcing" the share in the pool of monetary gold available for restitution for each government entitled to participate in the pool, and "in such other ways as shall be decided by the three Governments establishing the Commission, to assist in the distribution of the pool of monetary gold available for restitution." Russell H. Dorr, U.S. representative to the IARA, was the first U.S. representative on the Tripartite Gold Commission, as were Sir Desmond Morton for Britain and Jacques Rueff of France.

B. The Gold Pool

The TGC Gold Pool consisted of monetary gold found by the Allied occupation forces in Germany, payments of monetary gold negotiated by the three Allies with the neutral nations, and lesser amounts collected from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), and various German diplomatic missions. Over the years the Gold Pool was held in accounts opened by the TGC at the Bank of England, the Bank of France, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY). It started with and was based upon the more than $260 million in monetary gold recovered in Germany and maintained at the Foreign Exchange Depository (FED) in Frankfurt in the U.S. Zone of Occupation. The first contribution to come from a neutral occurred on June 6, 1947, when Switzerland transferred 1,659,121 troy ounces (51.5 metric tons) worth $58 million from its account at the FRBNY to the account of the TGC at the FRBNY. The Swiss payment consisted entirely of gold bars that had been refined at the U.S. Treasury and held in the Swiss National Bank account during the war.

In May 1948 the Bank for International Settlements shipped 3,740 kilograms of gold to the Bank of England. In subsequent years additional contributions to the Gold Pool worth more than $22 million were made following Allied negotiations with Sweden, Spain, and Portugal.

C. The First Distribution and Subsequent Payments

The problems of postwar economic recovery that confronted many nations of Europe prompted the Tripartite Gold Commission to make an initial distribution of monetary gold even before assembly of the Gold Pool had been completed. Ten nations (Albania, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, and Yugoslavia) filed claims with the TGC, but the Commission made its preliminary distribution in those cases where the Commission felt the claims had no legal problems and were supported by full, verifiable data. The Commission decided that action on these claims should not be delayed pending the resolution of claims requiring further evidence. The initial distribution did not meet the full claims of the claimant nations. At the time of the initial distribution, the Allies were continuing their negotiations with neutral nations other than Switzerland for the recovery of additional monetary gold for the Gold Pool. For instance, Sweden agreed to return all of the looted monetary gold received from Germany after the total of such gold was determined. Accordingly, the Commission promised further allocations based on claims already accepted and partly made by the initial distribution.

On October 17, 1947, the TGC announced in Brussels the preliminary distribution of 128,468 kilograms of monetary gold ($143.8 million) of which 90,649 kilograms ($101.5 million) went to Belgium, 1,929 kilograms ($2.1 million) to Luxembourg, and 35,980 kilograms ($40.2 million) to the Netherlands. The gold allocated to Belgium was in fact delivered to France in pursuance of a 1944 French-Belgian agreement, and a similar arrangement had been worked out between France and Luxembourg. At the same time the Commission set aside, as it was empowered to do under the Paris Reparations Agreement for nations not represented at the conference, 26,187 kilograms ($29.3 million) for Austria and 3,805 kilograms ($4.2 million) for Italy pending the completion of negotiations regarding their entry into the Gold Pool. Agreements were concluded by the Allies with Austria and Italy for the distribution of looted monetary gold in November and December 1947. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia received partial allocations in 1948. The bulk of the first distribution consisted of looted monetary gold seized in Germany and held at the FED at Frankfurt.

In announcing the first distribution, the Commission emphasized that it was in no way responsible for the restitution of gold looted by the Nazis from the victims of concentration and death camps and that under the Paris Agreement gold of this type recovered in Germany was under the administration of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees to be used in the rehabilitation and resettlement of non-repatriable victims of Germany action.

Subsequent payments to governments awaited the adjudication of the more controversial and complex claims as well as the decisions of individual Allied governments (TGC decisions required unanimity among the three commissioners). Significant payments began again in 1958 and proceeded through 1996, although most quasi-final distributions had been made by 1976. A long delayed payment to Czechoslovakia was made in 1982. The distribution to Albania was further delayed until October 1996. Payments made from 1958 to 1996 accounted for roughly 60 metric tons of gold. Overall, a total of 329 metric tons was distributed to the claimant nations, or $379,161,426. Because claims far exceeded the amount of gold available in the pool, claimant nations received about 65 percent of their recognized claims.

The TGC presently retains control of about 6 metric tons of gold worth approximately $70 million. Of this amount, about 4 metric tons worth approximately $47 million remains stored at the Bank of England, and approximately 2 metric tons of gold worth about $23 million is held in the TGC’s account at the FRBNY. The TGC had planned a final pro-rata distribution of the remaining gold to the claimants and then to wind up its affairs.

D. Disposition of Monetary Gold Looted From the Netherlands

During the Allied-Swiss negotiations in Washington, the issue of the looted Belgian monetary gold was discussed and served as the basis for the 250 million Swiss francs in gold that Switzerland agreed to turn over to the Allied Gold Pool. Although Swiss negotiators during the Washington discussions firmly refused to accept the Allied assertions that Switzerland had received looted gold during World War II from Germany or that the Allies had any international legal right to claim or receive such gold, the Swiss did agree to the formula that they would contribute the 250 million Swiss francs (approximately one-half of the well-documented $128 million in monetary gold looted from Belgium and transferred to Switzerland by Germany) as a contribution to the reconstruction of Europe. Switzerland made this contribution only on condition that all other claims to monetary gold alleged to have been received by Switzerland be waived by the Allies. The discussions in Washington had never touched on the claim that an estimated $161- 168 million worth of Dutch monetary gold had been looted by Germany, some portion of which may have been transferred to Switzerland by Germany.

In the months following the Allied-Swiss Accord in Washington, officials of the Treasury Department added further to the growing amount of information regarding the German transfer of looted Dutch monetary gold to Switzerland. In the early months of the occupation of Germany, Colonel Bernstein, Andrew Karmack, and Donald Curtis had traced and evaluated the records of gold handled by the German Reichsbank, and Curtis had concluded that between $38 and $42 million in Netherlands monetary gold had been shipped from Germany to Switzerland. Treasury officials did not inform the U.S. negotiators in Washington of the information about the Dutch gold. They felt their investigations were incomplete in early 1946 and that State Department negotiators should have concluded an agreement with the Swiss that ensured the opportunity of opening further claims such as that for the Dutch gold.

American Military Government officials completed their review of Reichsbank and Prussian Mint records in early 1946 and concluded that, in addition to the Belgian monetary gold, Switzerland had received shipments of up $135 million in Dutch monetary gold. In July 1947 the Treasury Department submitted to State Department negotiators its findings on looted Dutch gold transferred to German gold accounts in Switzerland during the war. Ongoing Allied negotiations with Portugal were suspended, on the basis of this information, because some of the Dutch gold had been shipped to Portugal during the war. The United States, United Kingdom, and France were so impressed by the new information about the looted Dutch gold that they agreed to ask the Swiss Government to recognize a moral obligation to make restitution to the Netherlands government. Treasury Department requests to the State Department representatives to reopen the Washington agreement of May 1946 in this matter and void the previous undertakings were to no avail.

Despite the waiver in the 1946 Allied-Swiss agreement prohibiting future Allied claims on looted gold in Switzerland, Treasury and State officials planned on September 23, 1947, to present a Dutch claim for looted gold to the Swiss Government. But the U.S. Commissioner on the Tripartite Gold Commission questioned the validity of the Netherlands claim because a portion of the claimed gold might be non-monetary. Treasury, with State’s approval, asked the U.S. Commissioner to delay the invalidation of the Dutch looted gold claim because it would "jeopardize the position of the Allied negotiators at Lisbon and other negotiations such as Switzerland and Sweden." In March 1948 the Allies suggested that perhaps the Netherlands Government should contact the Swiss directly and argue on moral grounds for restitution of their gold. The Netherlands Government, armed with the evidence of the movement of the Dutch gold to Germany and then onward to Switzerland invited the United States, United Kingdom, and France together with Switzerland to meet at The Hague on July 15, 1948. The Swiss Government refused the invitation and insisted that it could not admit any legal obligation to make restitution of looted gold and reaffirmed the finality of the Allied-Swiss Accord of May 1946.

When the Tripartite Gold Commission made its first preliminary distribution of monetary gold from the Allied Gold Pool in November 1947, the Netherlands was the recipient of 202,202 troy ounces. The Commission sought to obtain from the Netherlands, at the time of the distribution, a written waiver of any further claims against the Allies. When the representative of the Netherlands received the preliminary distribution of gold at Frankfurt, he obtained from the Commission and its U.S. member a memorandum interpreting the receipt and waiver in such a way as to satisfy the Netherlands’ desire to retain a legal basis for further claims against Switzerland.

Reports by other governments scheduled for publication soon will discuss further the contents of the TGC Gold Pool.

[return to table of contents]