December 31, 2008 • 12 mins
Several treasure hunters think they might have found Nazi gold. Learn about the history of Nazi gold, the role of Swiss banks and much more in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candid Gibson, joined by step writer Jane McGrath.
Hey there, candas Jane. Have you ever wanted to go
out and search for very treasure? Yeah? When I was
(00:22):
a kid, definitely detector. No I didn't find any. Were
you one of those cool people on the beach with
the thin oxide from the detect that's even less cool
that you wanted to be one of those people. I
still kind of feel sad when I see these people
even today. I feel like that was a fad and
it shall have passed. I mean, searching on the beach
for shark teeth will never be uncool or ever go
(00:43):
out of style. But it's the metal detector. Although I
don't know with a recession now, people might be that
hardhead up. That's true, we'll save. But the coolest thing
about searching for buried treasure is the prospect of keeping
what you find. But right now there's actually a scandal
with very treasure being waged in the world, and the
question on everyone's minds is if you have an ethical
(01:05):
obligation to return it and you don't who's going to
make you. That's true, and it gets into the question
of international diplomacy and laws, especially when it when it
comes to things like past wars and heinous crimes that
have been done in order to obtain the treasure. And
we know from the Geneva Convention that if you take
something valuable from a nation, that's a cultural artifact or
(01:30):
something of great monetary worth, you have to return it.
It's written there in black and white. But when you
take something from individuals, it's a little bit stickier because
then who does the restitution power fall to the country
in which the treasure is discovered, the people to whom
it is owed. And to be a little bit less vague,
(01:52):
what we're talking about specifically is Nazi gold. And this
is a really cool story I actually didn't know about
until recently, about how um if you remember or back
in history class, uh Germany UM, right before World War Two,
was actually suffering from a depression. They their economy was
not doing very well, and so in order to fund
their plans for war, obviously they wanted to invade Poland
(02:14):
and everywhere else. They needed money to do this. They
actually ended up plundering the gold supply of of other countries.
They took about four hundred million from nations proper and
one hundred forty million in gold from individuals. And to
make matters worse, the gold they got from individuals was
primarily from Jewish people who had been sent to concentration camp,
(02:34):
so they got into their safety deposit boxes their homes,
and even at the camps themselves, they would go into
their mouths and take gold fillings from their teeth. Yeah,
it's really horrifying to hear the stories of people watching.
They remember people Nazis uh ordering that they take the
gold fillings out, or taking them out after after death
and crying them out. It's really yeah. So for a
(02:54):
time this gold was stored in the Reich Bank, which
was the storage bank of the Third Reich. Then in
there was a bombing raid and the Nazi decided that
it wasn't safe there anymore, so they moved it to
a potassium mine about two miles from Berlin. That's right,
And this wasn't too hard to find they did. They
did try to hide it very well, but um Americans
were able to find out where it was and relatively
(03:16):
quickly recovered. And this was part of an operation called
Operations Sunset, and I think that's when Hitler realized, oh, hey,
I think we're gonna lose the war. Let's take all
of our valuable art and gold and money and stash it.
They did, and the German Alps. But when we the
Allies at least found this gold um, we eventually realized
(03:37):
that it wasn't all of it. A lot of it
was still missing, and even to this day it still is.
And not just the gold from individuals and not just
the gold from different nations treasuries than perhaps missed famously
the Amber Room, which, for those of you who aren't familiar,
this was a room from Russia's Catherine Palace and it
was just beautiful. It was called the Eighth Wonder of
the World. It was solid gold panels and they were
(03:59):
elaborately carved with filigree and just gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous, and
Germany came in and took them and they were last
seen in an art exhibition, and then they vanished for
all intents and purposes. And some people think that the
Allied bombs ultimately destroyed them, but some people think that
you can still find the Amber Room somewhere, and this
(04:19):
is the case with the Amber Room, would be very
clear cut. If it were actually found today, it would
go to um Russia because it counts as a cultural
artifact basically as per the Geneva Convention. But as for
the individual gold, that's what's up for grabs. And there's
a couple of key players who came about really recently,
as recently as February two thousand eight, because just prior
(04:43):
eight years prior, rather in two thousand some German treasure
hunters that that they had found the gold and the
German Alps, but because the terrain is so rocky and
rough there, they couldn't get their hands on it, that's right,
and they just gave up because it was much too hard. Well,
enter the mirror of this little bity town called Deutsch Noydoff,
and his name is Heinz Peter Haustein, and he thought
(05:04):
that he knew where he could get his hands on
the gold. That's where he thought it was, in a
nearby area known as Deutge Catherineenberg and um So in
two thousand and eight, actually the excitement got to a
fever pitch because this other fellow um named Christian Heinisch.
I believe it's pronounced um. He was the son of
a German soldier and he found his father's journal and
(05:25):
he believes that it indicates where the gold is, and
that's where you know, that's where they believe it is.
He went Hunish went so far as to say that
they were actual coordinates and his father's journal that pointed
him to the same spot. So you have to imagine
the favor pitch because here's the mayor uh Haustein and
here's this other guy, Hannish, and all of a sudden
they're both in the same place pointing for gold, and
they say it's there, So we assume that it really
(05:47):
must be there. So they hire the help of some
geophysicists depend point exactly where it is because they know
that it could very well be booby trapped by the Nazis,
and they get an electromagnetic metal detector, probably more powerful
than the ones on the beach from well, I mean,
now we're sad than mine and when the money, when
the economy gets really rough. But they think that the
(06:08):
gold is about sixty ft below the mountains East German
mountain side, and they started digging, but then they stopped,
that's right, and they actually they believe they are about
two tons there. So the question is like, why did
they stop And the answer is, um, because they believe
it's actually booby tripped. I mean, they knew. The Nazis
were not dumb, and Um, it's quite possible that they
(06:29):
could have left explosives where they hid the gold. If so,
if they weren't careful when they start digging, um, you know,
some disaster could happen. So at what expense go after
this gold? And that's actually a very complicated answer, and
I'm gonna throw some numbers at you, guys. Um, since
ninety six, the gold has been recovered from the Nazis
(06:52):
hiding places, has been redistributed to the countries from him
it was taken. And then there's this commission called the
Triparteche Commission. This is Britain, France and the United States
and they're the ones dolling it out and making sure
that it goes to the countries that lost it and
more specifically, hopefully eventually to the individuals from him it
was taken, or at least their descendants exactly. But there's
(07:15):
five and a half tons that haven't yet been returned.
And here's where things start to get fishy. The archives
of this commission have been closed and the Vaticans have
to so we're not really sure what's going on with
this gold. And there's accusations that maybe the Vatican was
laundering gold that was stolen by Croatia. And there's some
(07:36):
countries for sure that are refusing to return gold that
they have. And here is where it gets really really
dark and twisted. Switzerland, which for all intents and purposes
we've always heard was a neutral country, has been accused
of playing a really really menacing role in all of this.
That's right, And like speaking of treasure hunting, I mean
(07:59):
since world we're two, actually plenty of people have been
doing hunting in Swiss banks. If you can imagine, Um,
that's where a lot of the Nazi gold ended up.
And to explain why, um Hitler when he first plundered
this gold, he needed to be able to turn it
into usable currency. And uh so he actually chose Swiss
banks to do this in because they had very secure laws,
(08:20):
like secrecy laws, and and they were a neutral country
and they promised, you know, very secure money. So he
exchanged his gold for for their currency, and that's why
he was able to fund a lot of his a
lot of his military maneuvers. So basically one stack. Once
that UM says that they shipped six billion dollars into
the end UH sixty billion in today's money actually in
(08:42):
assets through Switzerland, and UH. It kind of calls into
question how neutral Switzerland was in the war, if they
were able to comply with the Nazis so much. There's
even talk that Switzerland agreed to a few things in return,
such as agreeing not to give Jews refuge when they
were fleeing from the Nanties and letting trains full of
(09:03):
Jews going to concentration camps through Switzerland, and that, as
far as I know, is is up for debate. I
don't think scholars are really sure whether these trains carrying
prisoners to concentration camps passed through. But we do know
for a fact the trains taking people to slave labor
camps for the Germans, those definitely went through, that's right,
and so it's caused a lot of problems. Actually, one
(09:24):
interesting development is that investigations into some Swiss coins have
actually found some evidence of mercury in them, and it's
really interesting because this suggests possibly that that gold actually
came originally from the fillings from some of the Jews
and the concentration camps. If you remember Candice mentioned UH
that they stole fillings from the Jews teeth and that
(09:47):
in Soviet a presence of mercury would suggest that that's
originally where the gold came from. It's just so wild
to think about. And of course we have people today
who are saying that ultimately who needs restitution are the
um the families of Holocaust victims or the Holocaust survivors.
Their families are due restitution for this, and by the
(10:08):
Swiss at least agreed to UH one point to five
I think billion dollars in reparations for Jewish survivors and descendants.
And then Washington actually held a conference on Holocaust era assets.
And it's not just gold, it's art, it's silver, it's
other forms of wealth that's missing. And I think that
they've tried to put a ballpark number on this anywhere
(10:30):
from seventy million, of which less than twenty million has
been recovered, and that doesn't necessarily mean returned, it means recovered.
And the nations in which this gold and wealth is
sometimes found are hesitant to redistribute it because they're not
sure what parties should go to, or they're not quite
true how to manage it. But something that really struck
(10:52):
me as powerful when I was reading about Nazi Golden
reparations Ben Meade, who was a Holocaust survivor advocate and
who actually form the Alliance of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. He
said about the Holocaust and about the situation not too
gold that the biggest murder of the century was also
the biggest robbery in history. It's true considering, and it
(11:14):
really is. And I've never thought about it like that before,
because you know, you think about these German treasure hunters
and it seems very Indiana Jones to an extent. But
then you think that in the end, all this money,
you know, it's it's a moot point. Who gets to
keep it? To me, it seems that it should go,
you know, in terms of reparations families. But we shall,
we shall have to hang on and see what happens.
(11:36):
And we know that as of late February how Stein
told Hanish to get out of dortsch Off, so they
had a little you know, about where to dig. How
much further to dig. So to date, if the gold
really is there in the Amber room too, it hasn't
been recovered, so we'll have to I don't think I'm
going to go digging, considering there might be movie trips
(11:58):
now and there is a love replica of the Amber rooms.
Or even if it's not the real thing, you can
you can still see you know what it would have
looked like, and whether or not it exists is a
mystery for the ancients or for the next brave adventurer.
So if you want to learn more about World War Two,
the Nazis and the Allied forces, you can read can
Treasure Hunters have Discovered Nazi Gold on how staff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(12:24):
Does it how stuff works dot com. Let us know
what you think. Send an email to podcast at how
stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candid Gibson, joined by step writer Jane McGrath.
Hey there, candas Jane. Have you ever wanted to go
out and search for very treasure? Yeah? When I was
(00:22):
a kid, definitely detector. No I didn't find any. Were
you one of those cool people on the beach with
the thin oxide from the detect that's even less cool
that you wanted to be one of those people. I
still kind of feel sad when I see these people
even today. I feel like that was a fad and
it shall have passed. I mean, searching on the beach
for shark teeth will never be uncool or ever go
(00:43):
out of style. But it's the metal detector. Although I
don't know with a recession now, people might be that
hardhead up. That's true, we'll save. But the coolest thing
about searching for buried treasure is the prospect of keeping
what you find. But right now there's actually a scandal
with very treasure being waged in the world, and the
question on everyone's minds is if you have an ethical
(01:05):
obligation to return it and you don't who's going to
make you. That's true, and it gets into the question
of international diplomacy and laws, especially when it when it
comes to things like past wars and heinous crimes that
have been done in order to obtain the treasure. And
we know from the Geneva Convention that if you take
something valuable from a nation, that's a cultural artifact or
(01:30):
something of great monetary worth, you have to return it.
It's written there in black and white. But when you
take something from individuals, it's a little bit stickier because
then who does the restitution power fall to the country
in which the treasure is discovered, the people to whom
it is owed. And to be a little bit less vague,
(01:52):
what we're talking about specifically is Nazi gold. And this
is a really cool story I actually didn't know about
until recently, about how um if you remember or back
in history class, uh Germany UM, right before World War Two,
was actually suffering from a depression. They their economy was
not doing very well, and so in order to fund
their plans for war, obviously they wanted to invade Poland
(02:14):
and everywhere else. They needed money to do this. They
actually ended up plundering the gold supply of of other countries.
They took about four hundred million from nations proper and
one hundred forty million in gold from individuals. And to
make matters worse, the gold they got from individuals was
primarily from Jewish people who had been sent to concentration camp,
(02:34):
so they got into their safety deposit boxes their homes,
and even at the camps themselves, they would go into
their mouths and take gold fillings from their teeth. Yeah,
it's really horrifying to hear the stories of people watching.
They remember people Nazis uh ordering that they take the
gold fillings out, or taking them out after after death
and crying them out. It's really yeah. So for a
(02:54):
time this gold was stored in the Reich Bank, which
was the storage bank of the Third Reich. Then in
there was a bombing raid and the Nazi decided that
it wasn't safe there anymore, so they moved it to
a potassium mine about two miles from Berlin. That's right,
And this wasn't too hard to find they did. They
did try to hide it very well, but um Americans
were able to find out where it was and relatively
(03:16):
quickly recovered. And this was part of an operation called
Operations Sunset, and I think that's when Hitler realized, oh, hey,
I think we're gonna lose the war. Let's take all
of our valuable art and gold and money and stash it.
They did, and the German Alps. But when we the
Allies at least found this gold um, we eventually realized
(03:37):
that it wasn't all of it. A lot of it
was still missing, and even to this day it still is.
And not just the gold from individuals and not just
the gold from different nations treasuries than perhaps missed famously
the Amber Room, which, for those of you who aren't familiar,
this was a room from Russia's Catherine Palace and it
was just beautiful. It was called the Eighth Wonder of
the World. It was solid gold panels and they were
(03:59):
elaborately carved with filigree and just gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous, and
Germany came in and took them and they were last
seen in an art exhibition, and then they vanished for
all intents and purposes. And some people think that the
Allied bombs ultimately destroyed them, but some people think that
you can still find the Amber Room somewhere, and this
(04:19):
is the case with the Amber Room, would be very
clear cut. If it were actually found today, it would
go to um Russia because it counts as a cultural
artifact basically as per the Geneva Convention. But as for
the individual gold, that's what's up for grabs. And there's
a couple of key players who came about really recently,
as recently as February two thousand eight, because just prior
(04:43):
eight years prior, rather in two thousand some German treasure
hunters that that they had found the gold and the
German Alps, but because the terrain is so rocky and
rough there, they couldn't get their hands on it, that's right,
and they just gave up because it was much too hard. Well,
enter the mirror of this little bity town called Deutsch Noydoff,
and his name is Heinz Peter Haustein, and he thought
(05:04):
that he knew where he could get his hands on
the gold. That's where he thought it was, in a
nearby area known as Deutge Catherineenberg and um So in
two thousand and eight, actually the excitement got to a
fever pitch because this other fellow um named Christian Heinisch.
I believe it's pronounced um. He was the son of
a German soldier and he found his father's journal and
(05:25):
he believes that it indicates where the gold is, and
that's where you know, that's where they believe it is.
He went Hunish went so far as to say that
they were actual coordinates and his father's journal that pointed
him to the same spot. So you have to imagine
the favor pitch because here's the mayor uh Haustein and
here's this other guy, Hannish, and all of a sudden
they're both in the same place pointing for gold, and
they say it's there, So we assume that it really
(05:47):
must be there. So they hire the help of some
geophysicists depend point exactly where it is because they know
that it could very well be booby trapped by the Nazis,
and they get an electromagnetic metal detector, probably more powerful
than the ones on the beach from well, I mean,
now we're sad than mine and when the money, when
the economy gets really rough. But they think that the
(06:08):
gold is about sixty ft below the mountains East German
mountain side, and they started digging, but then they stopped,
that's right, and they actually they believe they are about
two tons there. So the question is like, why did
they stop And the answer is, um, because they believe
it's actually booby tripped. I mean, they knew. The Nazis
were not dumb, and Um, it's quite possible that they
(06:29):
could have left explosives where they hid the gold. If so,
if they weren't careful when they start digging, um, you know,
some disaster could happen. So at what expense go after
this gold? And that's actually a very complicated answer, and
I'm gonna throw some numbers at you, guys. Um, since
ninety six, the gold has been recovered from the Nazis
(06:52):
hiding places, has been redistributed to the countries from him
it was taken. And then there's this commission called the
Triparteche Commission. This is Britain, France and the United States
and they're the ones dolling it out and making sure
that it goes to the countries that lost it and
more specifically, hopefully eventually to the individuals from him it
was taken, or at least their descendants exactly. But there's
(07:15):
five and a half tons that haven't yet been returned.
And here's where things start to get fishy. The archives
of this commission have been closed and the Vaticans have
to so we're not really sure what's going on with
this gold. And there's accusations that maybe the Vatican was
laundering gold that was stolen by Croatia. And there's some
(07:36):
countries for sure that are refusing to return gold that
they have. And here is where it gets really really
dark and twisted. Switzerland, which for all intents and purposes
we've always heard was a neutral country, has been accused
of playing a really really menacing role in all of this.
That's right, And like speaking of treasure hunting, I mean
(07:59):
since world we're two, actually plenty of people have been
doing hunting in Swiss banks. If you can imagine, Um,
that's where a lot of the Nazi gold ended up.
And to explain why, um Hitler when he first plundered
this gold, he needed to be able to turn it
into usable currency. And uh so he actually chose Swiss
banks to do this in because they had very secure laws,
(08:20):
like secrecy laws, and and they were a neutral country
and they promised, you know, very secure money. So he
exchanged his gold for for their currency, and that's why
he was able to fund a lot of his a
lot of his military maneuvers. So basically one stack. Once
that UM says that they shipped six billion dollars into
the end UH sixty billion in today's money actually in
(08:42):
assets through Switzerland, and UH. It kind of calls into
question how neutral Switzerland was in the war, if they
were able to comply with the Nazis so much. There's
even talk that Switzerland agreed to a few things in return,
such as agreeing not to give Jews refuge when they
were fleeing from the Nanties and letting trains full of
(09:03):
Jews going to concentration camps through Switzerland, and that, as
far as I know, is is up for debate. I
don't think scholars are really sure whether these trains carrying
prisoners to concentration camps passed through. But we do know
for a fact the trains taking people to slave labor
camps for the Germans, those definitely went through, that's right,
and so it's caused a lot of problems. Actually, one
(09:24):
interesting development is that investigations into some Swiss coins have
actually found some evidence of mercury in them, and it's
really interesting because this suggests possibly that that gold actually
came originally from the fillings from some of the Jews
and the concentration camps. If you remember Candice mentioned UH
that they stole fillings from the Jews teeth and that
(09:47):
in Soviet a presence of mercury would suggest that that's
originally where the gold came from. It's just so wild
to think about. And of course we have people today
who are saying that ultimately who needs restitution are the
um the families of Holocaust victims or the Holocaust survivors.
Their families are due restitution for this, and by the
(10:08):
Swiss at least agreed to UH one point to five
I think billion dollars in reparations for Jewish survivors and descendants.
And then Washington actually held a conference on Holocaust era assets.
And it's not just gold, it's art, it's silver, it's
other forms of wealth that's missing. And I think that
they've tried to put a ballpark number on this anywhere
(10:30):
from seventy million, of which less than twenty million has
been recovered, and that doesn't necessarily mean returned, it means recovered.
And the nations in which this gold and wealth is
sometimes found are hesitant to redistribute it because they're not
sure what parties should go to, or they're not quite
true how to manage it. But something that really struck
(10:52):
me as powerful when I was reading about Nazi Golden
reparations Ben Meade, who was a Holocaust survivor advocate and
who actually form the Alliance of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. He
said about the Holocaust and about the situation not too
gold that the biggest murder of the century was also
the biggest robbery in history. It's true considering, and it
(11:14):
really is. And I've never thought about it like that before,
because you know, you think about these German treasure hunters
and it seems very Indiana Jones to an extent. But
then you think that in the end, all this money,
you know, it's it's a moot point. Who gets to
keep it? To me, it seems that it should go,
you know, in terms of reparations families. But we shall,
we shall have to hang on and see what happens.
(11:36):
And we know that as of late February how Stein
told Hanish to get out of dortsch Off, so they
had a little you know, about where to dig. How
much further to dig. So to date, if the gold
really is there in the Amber room too, it hasn't
been recovered, so we'll have to I don't think I'm
going to go digging, considering there might be movie trips
(11:58):
now and there is a love replica of the Amber rooms.
Or even if it's not the real thing, you can
you can still see you know what it would have
looked like, and whether or not it exists is a
mystery for the ancients or for the next brave adventurer.
So if you want to learn more about World War Two,
the Nazis and the Allied forces, you can read can
Treasure Hunters have Discovered Nazi Gold on how staff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(12:24):
Does it how stuff works dot com. Let us know
what you think. Send an email to podcast at how
stuff works dot com.
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