Gold Reserves and Their Relevance in War Times (Example From WW II)
Preserving the gold reserves is of intrinsic value to nations and therefore highly relevant in contexts of crisis and war. A typical example is a secret memorandum by the Chief of staff from October 1939, at the beginning of World War II. The military and the Secret Service laid out “measures to be taken in the event of an invasion of Holland and Belgium by Germany” and presented them to the War Cabinet:
- “It will be for the Treasury in collaboration with the Bank of England, and the Foreign Office, to examine the possible means of getting the bullion and negotiable securities into the same place of safety. The transport of many hundreds of tons of bullion presents a difficult problem and the loading would take a long time. The ideal would of course be to have the gold transferred to this country or to the United States of America. The gold reserves of Belgium and Holland amount to about £ 70 million and £ 110 million respectively. Note: H. M. Treasury has particularly requested that this information, which is highly confidential should in no circumstances be divulged. The total weight of this bullion amounts to about 1800 tons and its evacuation would be a matter of the utmost importance would present a considerable problem if it had to be undertaken in a hurry when transport facilities were disorganised. At present this gold is believed to be stored at Brussels and The Hague respectively, neither of which is very well placed for its rapid evacuation in an emergency.”
The Belgian government rushed to get the gold out of the country into a safe place: Dakar. After the Germans had occupied Belgium and France in 1940 they demanded the gold reserve back. French officials took care of the transport and in 1941 handed almost 5,000 boxes with 221 tons of gold over to officials of the German Reichsbank.
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Famous quotes containing the words gold, reserves, relevance, war and/or times:
“Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are cheques drawn on insufficient funds.”
—René Daumal (1908–1944)
“...I want to see a film, they send the Israeli army reserves to escort me! What kind of life is this?”
—Golda Meir (1898–1978)
“The most striking fault in work by young or beginning novelists, submitted for criticism, is irrelevance—due either to infatuation or indecision. To direct such an author’s attention to the imperative of relevance is certainly the most useful—and possibly the only—help that can be given.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place. Where there is no common Power, there is no Law; where no Law, no Injustice. Force, and Fraud, are in war the two Cardinal virtues.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)