Why was Switzerland's neutrality respected during WWII if there was so much gold to be stolen there?
104943
The only forces capable of attacking Switzerland were the Axis, but it would be too costly. Switzerland would be strongly defended, and the Swiss were very accommodating to the axis for most of the war, plus it was more useful to have a nearby (semi) trustworthy neutral country.\n\nWhere do you think the Nazi highups banked their ill gotten gains?
265273
Basically because Germany invaded Paris (France) without permission, and then Spain got involved as they were allies. Poland triedto stay neutral but this just aggrivated the situation, leading to a full blown war.
473160
I don't think it was inevitable. Versialles always gets blamed-- but they couldv'e renegotiated it. Hitler had a lot to do with it-- maybe it was inevitable that the treaty terms made Germans angry, but that doesn't mean they'd definitely go to war over it.
425170
If you talk of planes, armies, food, clothes, and tents  for these armies, bullets, fuel, weapons, telecommunications - I doubt if you can talk cents.  It always involves billions of dollars!  This does not include yet the consequences of war - construction contracts for rehabilitation after a war, trade concessions in exchange for peace pacts, oil reserves.... it is ugly business at the expense of lives and sovereignty.
175023
1) The US government, despite its pledge of neutrality, extended a large amount of credit to Great Britain starting in 1940; the British used it to buy everything from guns and ammunition to merchant ships.  US merchant ships carried cargo to England before we were involved in the war (US merchant ships were also supplying Nazi Germany, but on a much smaller scale).  President Roosevelt persuaded Congress to approve the "Lend-Lease" program, in which we gave Britain about 100 old US Navy destroyers in exchange for leases on British territory in the Western Hemisphere.\n\n2) Hitler marched his troops into the Rhine, the Sudetenland, the rest of Czechoslovakia, and Austria over the protests of Britain, France, and the US.  On Sept. 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, thereby starting WW2 in Europe.  The Poles fought valiantly against Hitler's forces; when they took refuge behind the Vistula River, and it seemed they could hold on until the arrival of the British and French, Stalin entered the war and invaded Poland from the east.  About 2 weeks later it was all over for the Poles.\nStalin also invaded Finland on the flimsy pretext of protecting his northern frontier.  The Finns, although outnumbered and outgunned, held off the Soviets for several months.\nJapan annexed Korea in 1910.  The militarists of Japan also invaded Manchuria (China) in 1933, trying to create what they called the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."  In their delirious minds, they thought that Asia would thrive if all of it was under their rule.  The rest of Asia disagreed.  Japanese brutality in Manchuria caused the US to enact a trade embargo against Japan.  The Japanese used the embargo as an excuse for the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, thereby precipitating America's entry into WW2.\n\n3) WW2 is thought of as "the good war" because in modern times, the difference between dictatorship and freedom was never so stark.  On one side were the Axis powers, odious dictatorships all, engaging in sneak attacks, breaking every treaty they signed, and trampling on the freedoms of the sovereign nations they invaded (not to mention those of their own people).  Arrayed against them were the Allies, consisting (mostly) of the democratically-run, freedom-loving nations of the world.  Hitler and Tojo thought that "Deutschland über Alles" and "Dai Nippon" would rule the world through their "Übermensch" and "Bushido" warriors.  But both of them underestimated the fury of aroused democracies.  To paraphrase Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack: "I fear that all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."  He was right.\nThe Soviets' entry on the Allied side of the war complicated the moral equation a bit.  They had a history of engineering mass repression, purges, and widespread starvation against their own people ever since the Bolshevik triumph in the Russian Revolution of 1918.  Stalin was quite happy to help Hitler carve up eastern Europe when it suited his purposes.  And the Soviets, despite warnings that the Nazis were preparing to invade Russia, supplied the Nazis with much-needed food and fuel right up to the day of the Nazi invasion in 1940.
296421
I have very bad news for you:\n\nIn 1971 the President of the United States of America Richard Nixon decided to suspend the convertability convertibility from dollars to gold.\n\nIn 1968 an ounce of Gold was worth exactly $35\n\nIn 1971 the United States of America had a reserve deficit of $56 Billion dollars; as well, it had depleted most of its non-gold reserves and had only 22% gold coverage of foreign reserves. In short, the dollar was tremendously overvalued with respect to gold.\n\nIn 1971 more and more dollars were being printed in Washington, then being pumped overseas, to pay for the government's military expenditures and private investments. In the first six months of 1971, assets for $22 billion fled the United States\n\nIn 1971, the United States government abandoned the gold standard, so that the US dollar was no longer a fixed currency, and most of the world's currencies followed suit.\n\nAll this means the United States of America Goverment can print any amount of Dollars and it does not have to back the value with Gold or with anything else.\n\nIn other words. The dollar is just a piece of paper.\n\nThe only thing backing the Dollar is the PROMISE of the United States of America Goverment to pay back someday with the taxes it collects. This is of course impossible because the money collected is less than the money spend. In other words. The United States of America Goverment is unprofitable.\n\nHowever, they just keep printing more and more money and they just selling more and more dollars.\n\nIt's like a MasterCard with Unlimited Credit and they just keep buying and buying things and they don't worry about the increasing debt because they know MasterCard is never going to cancel the Credit Line.\n\nIf you want to know how much money the United States of America Goverment owes to the rest of the world just check the link below
336186
None really. In theory there is some gold in Fort Knox and every time money is printed it's secured by the gold. In truth, the treasury can do whatever they want. They have a theoretical endless amount of money. Of course, if they print/use too much money - they'll cause inflation that that in turn will lower the purchasing power of that money so the government should be cautious about that.
373582
WWII was thought of Germany's "revenge" or rebirth after the shame it was brought due to the Treaty of Versailles. Germany was made to pay the countries it affected after the war and limit the number of military troops. Germany was not present during the discussion of the treaty and it felt wronged. Hitler used this is a spin to bring the Germans to rally behind him. WWI is actually considered the "unfinished war" and WWII was just a continuation.
670116
Funny, I was taught in school that we went to save the millions of innocent people who were being slaughtered by the SS.  In retrospect, that couldn't have been right.\n\n After all, FDR was a Dumocrat and from what I've seen lately, they don't care about thousands of innocent people being slaughtered, so why would they care about millions?\n\nHmm, maybe we went to save the collective *sses of the rest of western Europe... no, that couldn't be it, either. If we had done that, they might be grateful enough about it to not be calling us "hateful warmongers who can't mind our own business" now.\n\nI guess I just don't know the answer to this one. If FDR had been a Republican, the answer would have been easy- We would have entered it years earlier, as soon as Hitler started violating all the points of the treaty following WWI (ahem, Saddam, Gulf War). \n\nTherefore, we would have kicked his *ss BEFORE the mass genocide of Jews, Russians, crippled, and homosexuals.
622354
Hi,\n\nOnly five European nations were capable of sustaining a policy of neutrality throughout the entire war, even though 20 nations had held a policy of neutrality in September 1939. Those 5 nations were: Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Switzerland. However, this neutrality is sometimes disputed because some of those nations, like Spain worked for the axis on a way or another. Nevertheless, they never were engaged on military actions officially, and then are considered neutral during the conflict.\n\nHope this helps.
117615
C'mon... the Swiss were never neutral.  They have always picked a side.  In WWII they picked the Germans.  Just cuz they didn't pick up arms doesn't mean that they didn't pick sides.  Anyway... when was the last time the Swiss sucessfully prosecuted a war?  I think it was about the same time as France or New Guinnea.  In other news... Swiss Miss Instant Hot Chocolate warms the hearts of children around the world.
386313
Lichtenstein\n\n\nBordered by Switzerland and Austria, both of which are land locked.
690471
No it was not.  It singled out Germany for punitive measures and not the Austro-Hungarian Empire for such measures.  It so financially was hard for Germany and led to WWII.
139891
I like the first answer!\n\nHowever, I'll give in and give a bit more information.\n\nLook at Germany after WWI.  They were devastated, morally and economically.  They were supposed to pay gigantic reparations which realistically they could never pay.  Thus, they fell into a huge depression and were quite vulnerable to anyone who promised to "save" them.  A little wimpy untalented artist named hitler used incredible propaganda to bolster himself and his disgusting ideas.
531233
nah. it's a vault in the US where we stash our gold bricks. that is why our currency has so much value
106783
After Germany's defeat in world war one, then the great depression hit the world. As people lost a lot of money in the stock market, many went bankcrupt. In many countries, those least affected were the money lenders, who most people turned to sell their jewellery and expensive paintings and furniture - just to buy bread and potatos. The money lenders were mainly Jews.\n\nIn Russia, at this time the Czar (king of the country) would routinely arrest the jews and made them suffer just becuse they were rich - this was just to get at their riches. These were called pogroms - another word would be rape and ethnic cleansing...\n\nOf course - I am not arguing whether these riches were made honestly or not, but often people are jealous of others who are doing well while you seem to be losing everything. I guess it human nature...\n\nIn Germany, after the war, things were really bad, they had to pay compensation to many countries for the war damage (called war reparations). This cost so much that the economy was doing really badly. The Germans felt that they were superior than everyone (scientifically and culturally) and hated the fact that they had to pay so much money to other countries.\n\nHitler came onto the scene - with forceful speeches about what a great country Germany was, without focussing on why they were really defeated in the first war, they claimed that - "since we are superior than everone we must have lost the war because we were sabotaged from within our borders - who did this evil thing - must be the jews - they anyway have strange customs and are so rich..." etc\n\nSo once they had a scapegoat, it helped unify the nationalist and made them begin the war mchinery. the rearming of Germany actually reduced unemployment - so actually people were feeling things were getting better.\n\nThen once Germany was war-ready, they launched the war...the rest is word war II and the holocaust...\n\nThe holocaust was a product of a bureaucratic tragedy that emerged from the discussion of the "final solution" as more and more jews were arrested in occupied countries. The Aryan story was just an attempt to unify the Germanic people and nordi people against everyone else, when in fact the slavs and present day Indians are more Aryan than the Germanic peoples, since Aryan people first emerged from the Central Asian steppes (near Mongolia).\n\nInterestingly Hitler's grand mother was a jew. So its quite clear that Hitler was quite insane. I mean its like klling your own family.
283622
Most European nations were over run by the Nazis in WW2 and the French were at the front line on Hitler's plans to invade England. Some nations stayed nuetral, however Hitler was intent on not only conquering these nations, but plundering them as well.