World War II: A chronology
Nazi gold
On 3 February 1945, 937 B-17 bombers of the US 8th Air Force dropped nearly 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin, causing the near demolition of the Reichsbank, including its presses for printing currency.
Following the raid, Walter Funk, president of the Reichsbank, decided to send most of the gold reserves, worth some $238 million, and a large quantity of the monetary reserves to Wintershal AG's Kaiseroda potassium mine at the village of Merkers, about 200 miles south-west of Berlin, for safekeeping.
Gold and art
Just before noon on 4 April, Merkers fell to part of the US Third
Army, commanded by Lieutenant General George Patton. In the following
days, military intelligence interviewed French displaced persons who had
worked in the mine. They told them that this was where the German gold
reserve and valuable artworks had been deposited several weeks before.
Local civilians and displaced persons had been used to unload and store
the treasure in the mine.
At the mine were Werner Veick, the head cashier of the Reichsbank's foreign notes department, and Dr Paul Ortwin Rave, curator of the German State Museum and assistant director of the National Galleries in Berlin. Rave told the Americans that he was in Merkers to care for paintings stored in the mine – between 20 and 31 March, the Germans had transported a quarter of the major holdings of 14 of the principal Prussian state museums there. Veick said that the gold in the mine constituted the entire reserve of the Reichsbank in Berlin.
Confiscated by the SS
However, part of the loot hidden in the mine was property that had
been confiscated by the SS from concentration camp victims. It consisted
of all kinds of gold and silver items, ranging from dental work to cigarette
cases, diamonds, gold and silver coins, foreign currencies, and gold and
silver bars.
When the entire hoard was tallied, the inventory indicated that there were 8,198 bars of gold bullion; 55 boxes of crated gold bullion; hundreds of bags of gold items; over 1,300 bags of gold Reichsmarks, British gold pounds, and French gold francs; 711 bags of American $20 gold pieces; hundreds of bags of gold and silver coins and of foreign currency; nine bags of valuable coins; 2.76 billion Reichsmarks in notes; 20 loose silver bars; 40 bags containing silver bars; 63 boxes and 55 bags of silver plate; 1 bag containing six platinum bars; and 110 bags of valuables from various countries. The chief of staff of General Dwight D Eisenhower, the Allied commander, would later estimate that the value of the gold, silver, and currency was over $520 million.
Patton, Eisenhower and Bradley
On 12 April, the mine and its treasure were visited by Patton, Eisenhower
and General Omar Bradley, commander of the US 12th Army Group. As the
lift descended into the mine at ever-accelerating speed down a pitch-black
shaft, Patton commented that, if the cable snapped, 'promotions in the
United States Army would be considerably stimulated.'
Later that evening, Bradley, Eisenhower, and Patton had dinner together. Bradley and Eisenhower wondered why, when word had first reached Patton about the gold discovery, he had ordered any news of the discovery to be censored. 'But why keep it a secret, George?' Bradley asked. 'What would you have done with all that money?'
Patton said that his soldiers had been of two minds. One view was that the gold should be cut into medallions, 'one for every sonofabitch in the Third Army.' The other view was that the Third Army should hide the loot until peacetime when military appropriations would be tight and then dig it up to buy new weapons.
Reconnaissance
Colonel Bernard B Bernstein, deputy chief of the Financial Branch
of G-5 Division of Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF),
had been put in charge of the Merkers treasure hoard. On April 14, he
began to try to get someone to support his plan for a full-scale reconnaissance
of Germany for other caches of loot, but no real help was forthcoming.
Despite this, Bernstein, with a small reconnaissance party, left Frankfurt
in Jeeps on 19 April in search of more hidden Reich treasure.
During the next two weeks, his teams covered 1,900 miles, checking Reichsbanks all over American-occupied Germany and following up every lead regarding the whereabouts of gold. Of all the places visited by the reconnaissance parties, only three actually yielded recoveries of Reichsbank gold, to the tune of $3 million.
Desperate decision
However, this wasn't the end of the story ...
In April 1945, with the Allies advancing from the west and the Red Army only 55 miles east, the circle was closing tightly around Berlin. Deep in the vaults of the Reichsbank, Nazi officials came to a desperate decision: all the remaining contents of the Reichsbank was to be transported to the Oberbayern in southern Bavaria. It was to this naturally fortified Nazi stronghold in the Alps that the regime planned to retreat, regroup and gather strength.
Transport was quickly arranged and, within days, more than nine tons of gold, hundreds of sacks of foreign currency, crates of unstamped coins and other treasures quietly left the devastated city, headed for the mountains. It was accompanied by Georg Netzeband, a high-ranking Reichsbank official.
Above the lake
After many detours and some danger, the convoy reached its destination.
Here, under the cover of night, soldiers of the German Alpine Regiment
carried 730 gold bars and 164 sacks and crates full of gold coins and
US currency up into the mountains above the lake known as Walchensee.
The value of this loot today would be more than £100 million.
At least part of the fate of the hoard can be traced through the careful report made by Netzeband. He was horrified to realise that no one – and particularly not the local commanding officer Colonel Franz Pfeiffer – would give him a receipt for the gold and other valuables.
Precious metals
The 16,000 troops of the US 10th Armored 'Tiger' Division were assigned
100 square miles of occupation in southern Bavaria, with their headquarters
in Garmisch. This area was where the bulk of the remaining Nazi treasure
from the Reichsbank was hidden. Key officers of the division were involved
in the digging up of hundreds of tons of Nazi gold, currencies, diamonds
and other valuables.
During May and June 1945, US soldiers found Reichsbank gold valued at about $11 million. Altogether the Americans reckoned that they recovered 98.6% of the $255.96 million worth of gold shown on the closing balances of the Precious Metals Department of the Berlin Reichsbank. But that still meant that gold worth more than $3 million (at 1945 prices) was still missing. Where was it?
It is believed that at least some of the gold was dug up by a few of those who had originally buried it at Walchensee. Franz Pfeiffer certainly is suspected of being one of these gold 'liberators'. He left Germany and spent the rest of his life in Argentina.
Treasure hunters
The Guinness Book of Records listed the disappearance of the
Third Reich's treasure as 'the largest robbery in the history of the world'.
This intriguing note turned English historian Ian Sayer into an obsessive
hunter. 'The search for the Reichsbank treasure is replete with dead ends
and wrong turns,' says Sayer, who in 1983 helped to expose the faked Hitler
diaries.
After 26 years of intensive research, Sayer claimed that he was able to unveil the secrets surrounding the hidden Nazi gold. In October 2000, armed with new documents, he and a group of German treasure hunters headed into what had been the Nazis' 'alpine fortress'. There, at an altitude of 1,600 metres (5,250 feet) and using state-of-the-art technical equipment, they tried to recover the missing gold. Unfortunately, the difficult terrain and wide area where the gold could be hidden defeated them – this time.
Out of business
An international Nazi Gold conference was held in London in December
1997. At this, several countries agreed to relinquish their claims to
a share of the remaining 5.5 metric tons (worth about $60 million) still
held by the Tripartite Gold Commission (TGC), which had been trying to
sort out the fate of the gold for decades. Instead, these countries agreed
to donate the gold to a Nazi Persecution Relief Fund to help survivors
of the Holocaust.
Over the next eight months, almost all of the remaining claimant nations similarly agreed to this. Early in September 1998, at a ceremony held in Paris, the TGC announced that its task was completed and that it was going out of business.
Find out more
Websites
Nazi Gold: The Merkers mine treasure
www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1999/
spring/nazi-gold-merkers-mine-treasure.html
Long article by Greg Bradsher from the US National Archive about the biggest
seizure of Nazi gold at the end of the war.
Nazi gold and the US 10th Armored Division in Europe during WWII
www.419th.com/news/nazi_gold.html
Article by military historian Les Nichols on the Americans' involvement
in capturing the Nazi treasure in Bavaria.
The greatest theft in history
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/
1997/nazi_gold/35981.stm
BBC News article from 1997 giving an overview of the issues surrounding
the gold, money and other assets recovered from the Nazis.
Hitler’s lake
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/11/21/
60II/main251320.shtml
Television news report about Lake Toplitz in Austria where it is believed
the Nazis also dumped crates of gold and other riches.
Treasure hunting in the Toplitzsee
www.toplitzsee.at/e_schatz.htm
Part of a travel guide to the area in Austria where more Nazi treasure
was hidden at the end of World War II.
Books
Nazi Gold: The story of the world's greatest robbery – and its
aftermath by Ian Sayers and Douglas Botting (Book Sales, 1985). Out
of print; may be available from libraries or second-hand bookshops.
The story of the theft of the German national gold and foreign currency
reserves worth some £2.5 billion, which disappeared in transit following
the Nazi collapse in 1945. It is also the story of a cover-up that threatened
to involve the US Army in Germany, the Pentagon and the US Department
of the Army in a scandal.
London Conference on Nazi Gold: Lancaster House, 2-4 December 1997
(Foreign and Commonwealth Office/Stationery Office, 1998) £25
This conference was attended by delegations from 41 countries and six
international non-governmental organisations, between them representing
surviving victims of Nazi persecution worldwide. This report examines
the origin of the gold and what happened to it.
Hitler's Gold: The story of the Nazi war loot by Arthur L Smith
Jr (Berg, 1996) £14.99
The Germans gained access to about $625 million in monetary gold, only
about half of which was recovered by American forces in April 1945 from
a mine in central Germany. The recovered gold soon became a pawn in the
Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union and has
remained a controversial issue in international politics for years, one
not completely resolved to this day.
Nazi Gold: The full story of the 50-year Swiss-Nazi conspiracy to
steal billions from Europe's Jews and Holocaust survivors by Tom Bower
(HarperCollins, 1999). Out of print; may be available from libraries and
second-hand bookshops.
Reveals how Swiss government officials and banks conspired to keep billions
in gold and other valuables from their rightful heirs.
Interrogations: The Nazi élite in Allied hands, 1945 by
Richard Overy (Allen Lane/The Penguin Press, 2002) £25
The leaders of Hitler's Reich were seized as war criminals and thrown
into makeshift camps. This book tells the story of these prisoners as
they and their captors came to terms with the reality of the bloodiest
war in human history. More than 30 interrogations are reproduced to capture
the full flavour of the bizarre, psychologically charged response of men
in a tough prison regime who not long before had enjoyed all the privileges
and esteem of high office.
