 «The Manfredis have been financial geniuses for generations. Trust them.»
Heinrich Von Clausen to his son
1988 movie after a 1978 Robert Ludlum
novel, directed by John Frankenheimer with
Michael Caine and Michel Lonsdale.
The movie opens with a phone call from a
Swiss banker to American architect Noel Holcroft (Michael Caine). The banker tells him about
a secret inheritance left at the bank by his father, the nazi general von Clausen, who
commited suicide shortly before his birth in 1945. Billions of dollars. The
architect tells the bank that he wants to have nothing to do with his father or
his money, but finally accepts to fly to Geneva. There, Swiss banker Ernst Manfredi (played by the
amazing Michael Lonsdale) tells him of the terms of the will, whereby the money is to be
used for charity purposes in a bid to atone for the crimes of the
nazi regime. Some rather unsavory people with an interest in the money show up and a string
of murders and pursuits ensues.  The Swiss bank enables a group of
leading nazi generals to transmit to their unborn children the duty and the
means to either atone for their fathers' sins. The Swiss bank is the neutral
executor of the will, operating with secrecy and diligence. Swiss banker Ernst Manfredi performs his duty as executor with an acute awareness
of its historical importance. He really believes in the project devised by his client, Von Clausen, who stole millions from the nazi regime and deposited them with the Manfredis so that his son could try and compensate the victims of Hitler's death camps.
Manfredi was an apprentice at his father's bank when nazi general
Clausen came to entrust his father with this mission, and he took over the
responsibility to see the fulfillment of will of their dead client after his father
had passed on. At the end of the movie, all the sons of the
dead nazi generals meet up in the Swiss bank's boardroom to sign the Covenant and release
the funds. Manfredi starts the proceedings by telling them how important this is to
him personally.
It was the father of the bank's owner and manager who originally opened the
accounts and accepted to carry out the terms of the will remitted to him by the
nazi generals. Thus, in this movie the bank helps to transfer across generations
not only money, but also the master plan of dying men. The other sons of the nazi Generals who made the Covenant
have a very different agenda. Rather than wanting to uphold the terms of the
will, they plan to use the money to support every terrorist group in the world
in the hope that the resulting instability would make possible a restoration of
the nazi regime. Holcroft discovers this and tries to stop the conspiracy. In the novel, their plan is to give the money to the 'Sonnenkinder', a group of nazi children genetically selected at the end of the war and secretly sent to South America to create the seeds of a reborn nazi empire. The banker meets Holcroft on a boat on Lake Geneva, probably to avert
surveillance of the bank. In the novel they meet in a berth on the Geneva-Zurich train:  “He had learned before the announcement that the train for Zurich would leave from track twelve. According to the plan, he was to walk down the ramp to the platform, count seven cars from the rear, and board at the first entrance. Inside, he was to count again, this time five compartments, and knock twice on the fifth door. If everything was in order, he would be admitted by a director of La Grande Banque de Genève, signifying the culmination of twelve weeks of preparations.
Holcroft walked through the gate, down the ramp, and on to the long concrete platform. Four, five, six, seven…. The seventh car had a small blue circle stencilled beneath the window to the left of the open door. It was the symbol of accommodations superior to those in first class: enlarged compartments properly outfitted for conferences in transit or clandestine meetings of a more personal nature. Privacy was guaranteed; once the train was moving, the doors at either end of the car were manned by armed railway guards.”
Such meetings outside the bank are not utterly implausible. Swiss bankers try to accommodate important or famous clients so that they won't be seen entering the bank. For such an important business as the Covenant, it is absolutely plausible that the Swiss banker would have set up a meeting in a public place such as a train or a boat, provided nobody could listen in.The bank in the movie looks like a traditional Geneva
hundred-year-old private bank although we do not think these were shot in Switzerland and certainly not in a Swiss bank. Manfredi receives the signatories of the Covenant in a large conference room with his desk at the end and portraits of himself, his father and grandfather behind him. A tacky acrylic logo of 'La Grande Banque de Genève' sits on the desk. We also see Manfredi entering a rather modern and spiritless safe deposit vault to retrieve the Covenant from the nazi box. Reality check
This is a work of fiction and such events have never taken place. The nazi regime was constantly cash strapped and did not have
billions in gold safely stashed abroad, far from it. It is highly unlikely that
at the end of WWII any Swiss banks would have or even could have accepted
billions from nazi generals to hide. After the Wolfschanze conspiracy, a plot to assassinate Hitler, all nazi generals were under intense scrutiny by the Gestapo and it's quite impossible they would have been able to divert millions from the strained German war effort. The part about the covenant is rather
realistic. You cannot hide 780 million dollars at the bottom of a lake and specify how the money is to be used. Holcroft understands this well:  “What was only partially communicated, however, was the brilliance of the plan itself. Brilliant in its simplicity, extraordinary in its use of time and the laws of finance to achieve both execution and protection. For the three men understood that sums of the magnitude they had stolen could not be sunk in a lake or buried in vaults. The hundreds of millions had to exist in the financial marketplace, not subject to discontinued currency or to brokers who would have to convert and sell elusive assets.
Hard money had to be deposited, the responsibility for its security given to one of the world’s most revered institutions, La Grande Banque de Genève. Such an institution would not – could not – permit abuses where liquidity was concerned; it was an international economic rock. All the conditions of its contract with is depositors would be observed. Everything was to be legal in the eyes of Swiss law. Covert – as was the custom of the trade – but ironbound with respect to existing legalities, and thus current with the times. The intent of the contract – the document – could not be corrupted; the objectives would be followed to the letter.
”
It would be quite possible to set up a
family foundation and nominate the banker as its director, with instructions of
releasing the money to a specific individual when he reaches a certain age. The
bank would never have accepted to manage a foundation with an immoral purpose
such as the restoration of the nazi empire, and Manfredi tries to make sure the
money follows the original intention of benefiting the victims of the
death camps. The people who wish to use the money to restore the Nazi empire need Holcroft to sign the will in order for the money to be unlocked. The bank officers must decide if each of the oldest sons of the dead nazi generals are worthy of being entrusted with the task. Should they
not be, they have to consider their younger siblings. If none of the children of the original clients are capable, in the bankers' eyes, of fulfilling the task, the bank has to wait another generation. Noel Holcroft has been explicitly designated in the Covenant as the official face of this project because of his American citizenship and new name would better hide the origin of this new charity.  “THE LEGITIMATE SON OF HEINRICH CLAUSEN IS NOW KNOWN AS NOEL HOLCROFT, A CHILD, LIVING WITH HIS MOTHER AND STEPFATHER IN AMERICA. AT THE SPECIFIC DATE CHOSEN BY THE DIRECTORS OF LA GRANDE BANQUE DE GENEVE – NOT TO BE LESS THAN THIRTY YEARS, NOR MORE THAN THIRTY – FIVE – SAID LEGITIMATE SON OF HEINRICH CLAUSEN IS TO BE CONTACTED AND HIS RESPONSABILITIES MADE KNOWN TO HIM. HE IS TO REACH HIS COINHERITORS AND ACTIVATE THE ACCOUNT UNDER THE CONDITIONS SET FORTH. HE SHALL BE THE CONDUIT THROUGH WHICH THE FUNDS ARE TO BE DISPENSED TO THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST, THEIR FAMILIES AND SURVIVING ISSUE…”
The three Germans gave their reasons for the selection of Clausen’s son as the conduit. The child had entered into a family of wealth and consequence… an American family, above suspicion. All traces of his mother’s first marriage and flight from Germany had been obscured by the devoted Richard Holcroft. It was understood that in the pursuit of this obscurity a death certificate had been issued in London for an infant male named Clausen, dated February 17, 1942, and a subsequent birth certificate filed in New York City for the male child Holcroft. The additional years would further obscure events to the point of obliteration. The infant male Clausen would someday become the man Holcroft, with no visible relationship to his origins. Yet those origins could not be denied, and, therefore, he was the perfect choice, satisfying both the demands and the objectives of the document.
The bankers are very keen on respecting the spirit of the project (using funds stolen from the nazi regime to help out victims of the nazi death camps) but they are not fools and understand that once they unfreeze the money they won't have a say in how it is used. A provision in the Covenant says that the other children of the Nazi generals
(Kessler and Von Tiebolt) must be designated co-heirs of the function so that in
case one dies, the others would be free to bequeath the money to anybody they
please. In the novel Manfredi says: “As I’m sure you’re aware, with an account of this magnitude and the objectives contained therein, La Grande Banque de Genève cannot legally assume responsibility for disbursements once the funds are released and are no longer under our control. The document is specific as to the burden of that responsibility. It is equally divided among the three participants. Therefore, the law requires that each of you assign all rights and privileges to your coinheritors-in-trust in the event you predecease them. These rights and privileges, however, do not affect the individual bequests; they are to be distributed to your estates in the event of your death.”
Their plan is to kill Holcroft as soon as he signs the will, then send
the money to 'La Banque du Livre' in Zurich and use it for their dark purpose. It would have been easy to kill Holcroft anytime during his lifetime, but by doing so the bank would freeze the Covenant's funds for one more generation.
In the movie, Holcroft will stop them by calling for a presse conference at the
bank and exposing their plans and organisation. The movie has been shot in various locations in Austria. The beautiful
initial scene on Lake Geneva was shot in the Austrian city of Lindau on
the Bodensee, on the border with Switzerland and Germany. It is not clear why
they did not shoot on Lake Geneva which would have provided an even more
stunning background of the snow-capped Alps rather than the flat German plain.
The bank building has not been identified, but it could be in any Swiss or even
American city. The same applies to the interiors. |
