How Swiss Gold Ended Up Buried Inside the Bernese Alps During World War II

A previously undocumented chapter of Swiss financial history has come to light: as World War II approached in 1939, the Swiss National Bank quietly moved a large share of its gold reserves into a converted military ammunition depot carved into the Bernese Alps, according to new research published in the Journal of Contemporary History.

Historian Ludo Groen of ETH Zurich, who led the archival study, found that the depot was adapted that year specifically to house the bank’s domestic gold holdings. The underground site offered a combination of protection and secrecy the bank’s city vaults in Zurich and Bern simply could not provide as tensions across Europe rose.

What began as an emergency evacuation site, meant only for use if Switzerland came under attack, evolved into something far more permanent. As the war dragged on and gold bar holdings grew rapidly, the Alpine facility took on the role of a full-time storage centre, absorbing reserves that had outgrown the urban vaults.

The discovery upends a long-standing assumption that Swiss gold sat almost entirely beneath its major banking centres. Archival records instead show the bank built an entire supporting infrastructure around the mountain vault — including security arrangements, transport routes and administrative systems — to manage a rapidly swelling stockpile.

The mountains had already anchored Switzerland’s defence strategy through its ‘National Redoubt’ concept, and the study shows the country’s financial planning became woven into that same defensive network. By decentralising its gold into the Alps, Switzerland reduced the risks of keeping reserves concentrated in dense cities, offering historians a clearer picture of how the country safeguarded its wealth while staying neutral through the war.