October 23, 2019 • 50 mins
Toward the end of World War II, German forces realized they were in an unsustainable situation, on the losing side of a war rapidly drawing to a close. In an effort to prop up their wartime economy, the Nazi party stole and fenced tons of gold and other valuables -- and, depending on who you ask, some of that gold remains hidden away and forgotten in the modern day. Join the guys as they delve into the abiding rumors of hidden nazi treasure, as well as the Nazi banking conspiracies that may still be at work in the modern day.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, Welcome
(00:24):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is Null. They call me Ben. We are joined, as
always in spirit with our super producer Paul Mission Controlled decond.
Today we are joined in person with our super producer
Seth Johnson, who you may recognize from earlier episodes. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. We're we're diving
(00:47):
back into the storied world depicted in action and venture
films from the seventies and the eighties and the nineties.
You know the kind of national treasure Indiana Jones three
keen sort of vibe, you're going to steal a declaration
of independence now, well and well kind of. I mean,
they're gonna steal all kinds of treasure from countries across Europe.
(01:11):
Wealth is an independence of sorts, right, we were we're
talking off air about our various lottery plans. Uh. I
don't know if I ever shared it with you at
my My list of pranks to pull is an eccentric billionaire.
It's a Google doc. Yeah, it's an old one. Yeah,
but I keep it just you know, if something occurs,
(01:32):
it's good to have sort of a vision board of sorts.
And it's also a good idea to give Google heads up.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, you know the love, the love
what I have in store for the planet. So we
are talking about treasure literal tons of gold stolen during
wartime and hidden away. This story takes place in World
(01:53):
War Two, but it's it's not unique because we know
that the chaos left in the wake of global conflicts
is for many people an opportunity. What's that old line,
chaos is a ladder. I believe that was from Game
of Thrones. Perhaps maybe it's a little Finger. So little
(02:14):
Finger was not commenting on the Nazi regime, but for
members of the Nazi regime, that statement holds true. Here
are the facts. First. First things first, the Nazi Party
stole not a ton of stuff. They stole tons and
tons of things, thousands of tons, millions of tons of stuff.
(02:34):
And it's common knowledge that they looted numerous groups. They
took the assets of victims of the holocaust of citizens
and repressed countries. They looted entire banks of countries when
they occupied them. Well, yeah, and you can you can
kind of begin to understand the pattern. When you have
an invading army that goes into one place that is
(02:55):
not controlled by you or your government, then you essentially
are vic torrious militarily than the spoils, unfortunately go to you,
and then you use those two then fund the next
one that you enter, and it really is like this
huge series of bank heists um that we can kind
of see painted across Europe during World War Two. And
(03:17):
you know, one thing I noticed is that none of
the invading or occupying forces ever took the money that
they had and put it towards supporting people. It was
always just as you said, to further fund expansionist ambitions.
We know that Germany when it was under control of
the Nazi Party had a real dilemma of physical limit
(03:42):
to the amount of resources that they could generate within
their own domain. So they had to they had to
get liquidity, they had to get wealth. They were able
to get a bunch of gold, and they needed help
swapping that gold for currency that they could then use
to acquire this stuff they needed but didn't have, like
(04:02):
high quality iron oil, tungsten, other materials like that. And
so they went to the neutral powers, the neutral countries
in this conflict, like Switzerland, that's going to be one
of the stars of our show today, and they asked
Swiss banks and Swiss institutions to help them transfer gold,
transfer currencies and commodities between nations because even though there
(04:27):
was a war going on, businesses kept running, right, banks
were still in play very much so likely profiting from
said war in some ways. Absolutely IBM as well. It
wasn't just banks, oh oh absolutely, But then you know,
you see this as a the new system that is
created for for their money necessities, the right the Third Reich,
(04:52):
and it kind of works for a time. But then
as the well, it's not they didn't know the war
was coming to a close. But as things weren't going
so well for the access powers, and as the Allied
powers are gaining more and more allies and gaining more
and more support, uh, it's harder and harder for the
(05:13):
Nazi Party to use a lot of these third party
neutral countries to do a lot of this fencing essentially
exactly yes, And I love that you're using the phrase fencing,
because this system was uh system of laundering resources and
fencing stolen goods. By the writing was on the wall, businesses, governments,
(05:34):
access and Allied powers alike knew that the war was
not going to keep going, and Germany became more and
more reliant on institutions in Switzerland because other neutral parties
started to acquiesce to Allied demands and they said, look,
we we've got to put some distance between you. We
(05:55):
can't we can't accept gold and coins right now, our
species as they're called, we also are going to be
less and less likely to accept reich marks. And now
Germany has the option of paying with foreign currency. But
it turns out that years of belligerents and militarism often
(06:17):
don't leave governments with a lot of foreign currency because
they burned a lot of bridges literally to the ground.
So these banks essentially became clearing houses for stolen German
gold from numerous occupied countries that could then be converted
to a less objectionable form of currency and medium, if
(06:37):
you will. UM Diplomatic cables from the time support this.
For example, UH, the fact that the Swiss National Bank
actually helped the German Reich's bunk convert and estimated fifteen
million in stolen Dutch gold um and they didn't ask
any questions. That's the craziest part. No, they asked my
(06:59):
bank questions, guests, question if I deposit more than five
thousand dollars, you know, like how it's in you know
what I mean, like it's it's insane. The level of
brazen crookedness in this situation here right, Well, yeah, but
it's from an objective stance, it's really messed up. Because
if you are a banking institution and your primary goals
(07:22):
are the primary goals of controlling as much money as
possible to be able to pump out more money and loan,
so then take more money in and you get an
offer of fifteen million dollars to be deposited, depending on
where it's coming from, maybe it doesn't matter so much
at least I don't know if that's really looking at
(07:43):
a cold way and it's it sucks. There's also plausible deniability.
Exactly who knows I I yeah, well we do know
kind of with the through the cables, but the exact
way in which the Swiss Bank was approached with the
money right right where they approached via a proxy or something.
(08:03):
That's why that's why the Swiss National Bank example is
important because it was the actual German state actor bank
that was interactive with them directly. This this is strange
because sure one could say that, Let's say I'm the
head of a Swiss bank. One could say, well, I
(08:23):
see so many transactions all the time. We move a
lot of a lot of money around the world. We
work in volume. Baby, I can't be lying item checking
every single Nazi gold request. Yeah, I mean I I
don't know if Swiss bankers are that casual at that time,
but we do know this was a very common practice.
(08:44):
According to the CIA, German efforts to acquire foreign currency
and converted to war materials became increasingly clandestine as the
Allied forces were encroaching and as the war was turning
in their favor. It makes total sense, right, and it
matches right up with our Ratlines episode, where like you said,
(09:04):
as they're seeing the writing on the wall, they're gonna
try and secret away this money, just as they secreted
away themselves and the important officers and scientists and things. Um.
They wanted to be able to control it later. Perhaps, yes,
that was the that was the idea, and that's what
the Allied forces believed was happening. For Germany, a lot
(09:25):
of problems cropped up very quickly. They had these long
term exchange agreements, Right, we'll give you x amount of
whatever over why amounts of years, and in return you'll
give us oil or iron gas, etcetera. Now those are impossible.
Neutral countries will no longer do them because they're like,
why would I agree to do something with you for
(09:46):
five years? It's uh, it's not looking good for you,
you know. And now the neutral parties will only work
with Germany on what they called a cash and carry basis,
one off, short term transaction. Still for Germany it's better
than nothing, but the way in which they interacted changed
(10:06):
to they started to want more proxies, more private entities
to deal with them. So we could say, for instance, so, well,
wasn't the government of Switzerland's absolutely, or it wasn't even
this major bank. It was like a smaller part of
this bank, a subsidiary of some sort. Right, And this
(10:26):
gives Allied observers and pause, and they start to believe
that there is a conspiracy. They think perhaps the German
forces are pretending to fall, pretending to surrender, and that
they will reaggregate all this stuff they have stolen and
they will launch a fourth Reich into two listeners who
(10:49):
have been here for a while. That may remind you
of the long game deception ideas that were born out
of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union.
Um kind of you could kind of apply the same deals.
At least that's what the CIA was believed exactly, and
that's why the Unity Kingdom and the United States launched
(11:10):
Operation safe Haven, which will will explore a little bit further,
but for now just know it exists, and Operations safe
Haven and other endeavors were somewhat successful. We found some
of the stolen treasure, We recovered some of the gold
in in December. When Allied forces created safe Haven, they
(11:35):
wanted to they didn't want to take it for themselves,
at least the way it was stated. Instead, what they
were trying to do was find the hidie holes, the
bolt holes of treasure hidden away by German forces in
neutral countries, and then they would take that money and
they would move these funds to what they called safe havens.
(11:56):
These would be British or American humanitarian organization it's most
often uh, And this was meant to sure assist those
organizations in their humanitarian endeavors, but it was also meant
to disperse Nazi wealth, to leave no financial stone standing
upon another financial stone. They wanted to cripple any further
(12:19):
attempts to resurrect the regime and the you know, there
are some people listening saying, oh, you know, the language
that's used in creating something like operations safe haven, even
the term safe haven when it's being transferred to a
country with such a large military force that is kind
of going through and then dominating, right, and then saying well,
we're gonna take all this stuff. We're gonna put it over,
(12:42):
you know, in places that we control, but it's gonna
be safe there. You guys are cool. Everything's fine, it
goes to a good cause. Yeah, everything's great. It's not
the same thing as what the Nazis just did and
took it all and then you know, hit it away
for their own purposes. We promise it's fine. It's called
a safe haven, right, you know, And you can just
see the parallels there. Depending on how you feel about
(13:04):
the operations of the United States government anyway, just putting
that out, I think that's an excellent point. And there's
a massive hole in this story because you see, despite
the efforts of the Allies, no one was able to
locate all of the stolen gold, all of the stolen
art and other assets looted from Germany's victims. In fact,
in nineteen sixty six, the British Foreign Office reported that
(13:28):
of all the gold stolen from occupied lands victims of
the Holocaust, war casualties and so on, only one tenth
of it. Only ten percent had ever been located and returned.
So our question today is where did the rest of
the treasure go? And we'll get to that right after
a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
(13:57):
So since pretty much right after the close of World
War Two, even a little bit before the war ended,
there were multiple rumors and conspiracy theories about Nazi gold,
and they popped in and out of official reports and
your favorite mainstream news and your your favorite investigative documentaries
and stuff. Ever since they still they still come out today.
(14:18):
I'm the History Channel loves it. Yeah, I was gonna say,
I'm fairly certain that you can turn on the History
Channel on this weekend and I don't know, have a
thirty chance of of running into a Nazi gold story.
Oh yeah, I mean I literally watched a clip from
a show called Codes and Conspiracies where it was a
clip about one of the things we're gonna talk about today,
and it wasn't that long ago when it came out.
(14:41):
And here's the thing about it. These rumors and these um,
these stories, these alleged locations of this lost treasure. They
may vary implausibility, but it's so fascinating to people because
there are proven cases of this stuff being discovered, and
there are also cases where the stuff seems to you
almost have been discovered and then disappeared from the news. Yeah,
(15:05):
and that's when you get into real suspicion about things
like operations safe Haven, where you're where you're just like, man,
nine of the stuff is still out there. We don't,
are we sure? We're like yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.
Oh man, um, should we talk about some examples? Sure?
(15:25):
So how about the S S. Menden Right, Yeah, the
German cargo ship scuttled near Iceland during the early days
of World War Two. So this is before the close
it was suspected to contain this huge trove of Nazi gold.
How about we we cite one of our favorite sources,
Fox News. I put, I know, I know in the
notes it's it's a good it's a good article. Are
(15:47):
you well, you know they're not all whatever. Uh So,
this merchant vessel hundred and twenty nautical miles south of
Iceland is in the international spotlight after um the chest
with around four tons of Nazi gold was discovered in
the wreckage four tons of nazig four tons of Nazi go.
Does that mean, like in the movies, is the Nazi
(16:08):
gold have swastikas on it stamped? Yeah? Maybe unclear? I
mean you would certainly know if you found it that way. Well, also,
it depends on the provenance of the gold. If they
stole it from another country, probably have that stant what
I was thinking exactly? Um So this hall was valued
at around a hundred million pounds, which, as we know
(16:31):
is is more than than dollars. I think this is
a story fromen and they estimated as million exactly. Uh
and yeah, okay, here's the official story of what happened
on September ninety nine, the ship was intercepted by two
British cruisers and the captain of the men didn't had
(16:53):
specific orders for this situation, which was do not be
captured or do not let the cargo be captured, so
he sank the ship on purpose with everything aboard, and
the shipwreck was discovered a rediscovered i should say, in
spring of ten. And then things get a little fuzzy
(17:14):
because they had to get permission from the authorities in
Iceland to investigate the wreckage and they conduct they eventually
in were able to search it for about three days,
and then after that operation, the search team, a UK
based company called Advanced Marine Services, said to Iceland that
(17:35):
no items of value were found. Of course, again that's
the official story, and there are going to be a
lot of people who just won't believe those folks, regardless
of the facts. So this this one is interesting because
now we have to ask ourselves, did somebody take the
safe or the chest before the official search? Why was
the search so stymied by bureaucratic red tape? You know,
(18:00):
I know, it makes you think maybe there's a small
group of rogue treasure hunters out there that got there first,
or York or York, or maybe she's you know what,
I don't want to pigeonholer. I'm going to get the treasure.
I like the gould. We'll go deep into the water
and fine the heathen jimsy. They will be guarded by
(18:22):
the King of to see. Yeah, that sounds like York. Yeah.
So what we're going to see is we explore some
more of these examples. Is that, like a lot of
conspiracy theories or rumors or speculation, there's a categorical thing
at play. Certain tropes pop up over and over the golds,
usually said to be hidden in banks held by the Vatican,
(18:43):
of course, or lost in some place that's difficult to access,
like a sunken vessel at the bottom of the ocean,
or a mine for instance, that was then collapsed on purpose,
or something where it's very very difficult, if not impossible,
to to get there. So so let's you you mentioned
the v word. Let's uh, let's let's talk about the
(19:06):
Vatican and why they perhaps are a viable suspect for
where some of this treasure ended up. Okay, Yeah, So
the U. S. State Department back in nineteen forty six,
shortly after the Wars closed receives this top secret report
from an agent named Emerson Bigelow, and Emerson says, I
(19:29):
have heard from the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA,
that there is something rotten going on with the Vatican
and Nazi gold from World War two, or Nazi finances
at least. And this this report is later called the
Bigelow Report. Sometimes you'll hear it called the Bigelow Memo.
(19:52):
It wasn't declassified until decades later, in nineteen nine six,
and it it wasn't released until even Here's what the report says.
It says back in the Vatican took three d fifty
million Swiss francs worth of Nazi gold for quote unquote safekeeping.
(20:12):
And of that, hundred and fifty million Swiss francs have
been impounded by British authorities at the Austro Swiss border.
So where where did all this stuff go? What is
safe keeping? What is the safe haven? Right? According to Bigelow,
the safe haven here is a numbered Swiss bank account
and controlled by the Vatican. And that and Bigelow goes
(20:36):
on to say that more than two d million Swiss
francs worth of gold coins are transferred to Vatican City
or to the Vatican Bank, which is known as the
Institute for Works of Religion, with the assistance of the clergy.
And then it goes on to state that perhaps, or
it's believed at least that then this money was funneled
(20:59):
to play races like Argentina and Brazil. Where again it's
the same thing where we where we looked at in
our rat rat Lines episode where the Vatican was assisting people,
or at least was alleged to be assisting people and
found to be assisting people a few times um Nazis
in particular to get to places like Argentina and Brazil. Yeah,
(21:21):
and you know, we were careful in that episode to
say this doesn't mean the Vatican overall was doing it. It
It could be factions within this very large organization, but
representatives of the Vatican at the very least helped. We
should note that even today the Vatican Bank denies this.
They say there's no basis in reality to the report
(21:43):
to the Big Low memo. So it goes down to
you know who you who you trust to safe keep
to safe keep? Who do you trust to safe keep? Uh,
there's a there's a weird situation going on in Bavaria
that we found via the Sun, and the Sun is
the Sun is not a source that I would quote
(22:05):
if I were writing a high school or college paper.
But they've got that kind of uh, tabloid vibes. Sometimes
it's like gone par with the mail yep exactly. But
there's there's a great story that they tell him about
a treasure hunter named Hans Gluck. Hans Gluke is what
(22:26):
is glu mean? Luck? J cool? Well, Hans Luck. Then
Hans Gluke uh seventy six back in and he'd been
searching for this trove of gold, diamonds, artwork and for
some reason, rare postage stamps which are still a big
(22:47):
thing for twenty years. He has based on an old
map that he found, Uh, he has he has become
certain that he's pinpointed this Nazi treasure that was lost
on a train. Here's here's what happened, according to him
and according to the Sun. During the close of the war,
(23:10):
Heinrich Himler greenlit this bank heist, like you said, man,
he he greenlit an inside job bank heist. And he
told his deputy, a fellow named Ernst Kultan Bruner, to
empty the Berlin Reichs Bank of Loot and put it
all on a train and send it to the Alps.
And they thought, you know, after the wars officially declared over,
(23:33):
will still be able to fight, will be funded by
this treasure, will essentially be guerrillas, you know, move in
the night, will hide behind the trees, will will disrupt
into me UH supply lines and so on. And they
wanted to have the train cross the border into Austria
and then they would store all this stuff from the
train an assault mine. But the Russians were advancing, the
(23:57):
Allied aircraft were just cloppering place. So the train hid
in a tunnel for three days and the s s
there had a had a functioning radio post nearby in
the forest, at a place called Iraq A R R
A C H. And according to Hans Gluke, this is
where the treasure ultimately ended up. We we know that
(24:22):
at some point the train was you know, stuck in
that tunnel, right. We don't know what happened to the
treasure after it. We do know that Soviet troops were
able to intercept a report from that Nazi radio post,
and the report simply read in German something like command executed,
transport of guards, taken over stored in b S C. H.
(24:43):
W asked for further instructions. It all hinges. I want
that abbreviation means it well. And and you know that
if you go through and you read that whole story
on the Sun, it's one of it. Like Ben said,
it's one of those that feels a little far fetched.
But again, anytime there are seeds of truth within something
like this, I don't think you can allow dismiss it, right,
(25:06):
I mean, just I would recommend hey go over to
the Sun check out Golden nine an E I N
which just means gold now, and it says treasure hunter
finds five hundred million dollars worth of gold Nazi gold
in a Bavarian forest, but landowner won't let him dig
it up, right right, Just a little more about the story,
do you know it is? We do know that there
(25:26):
was some treasure in play because the guy who mentioned
Carlton Bruner, he gets away for a time. He goes
to Austria where he's from, and he's not arrested until
May twelve. But in the garden at his house, like buried,
I think, in a beat patch, they find seventy six
(25:47):
ms of gold in six gold bars. And that's that's
clearly a case of like how much can I physically
carry with me when cash and carry? Yes, just so,
And Carlton Brunner was found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg.
He was executing October sixteenth. He never told anybody where
the loot went. But Gluke was contacted by an old
(26:12):
man with a strange tale about an s S officer
shipped to Siberia who had sewn a map of sorts
into the lining of his coat. And this is what
led Gluke off on his merry adventure, his frustrating chase.
Right now, as you can tell from the title, that
match has read as far as we can see, the
(26:36):
excavation or the search is still being held up because
the person who owns the property says, you know, hey,
I'm maybe I'll find it, or Hans Gluke is accusing
them of that, yeah, yeah, and just so. I mean,
it's so interesting the way this kind of thing plays out.
It feels like the watch story from Pulpture, where it's
(26:59):
this thing, this map in this case instead of a watch.
And and again there are no um cavities involved necessarily
other than the cavity in the coat, I guess. But
but it's an important thing that got passed down and
passed down because you know, it went from this guy
who was important enough that he knew he was going
to get killed as soon as he entered a camp,
gave it to another pow and like in hopes that
(27:22):
it would make it back somewhere to someone. Um. And
now it went to this other guy and now he's
searching for the treasure, but it's on this other person's
land and he just can't go in there and you know,
dig up things willy nilly, or even follow the map
to exactly where it is because he wouldn't be able
to dig it up because he wouldn't own it. It
would be a great plot for a film, right, Yeah.
(27:45):
And we have more examples ahead, including some that are
a little closer to home. After a word from our sponsors,
let's talk about Lake Toplets. A lake Toplets. It's a
fun name, right, It's also the source of a World
(28:05):
War two legend. According to this story, the Nazi Party
dumped billions of dollars worth of stolen gold somewhere around
to the tune of five point six billion dollars worth
into an isolated lake, Lake Toplets in the forest in
the Alps. Yeah, and history dot com reports that in
the forties, uh, the Nazis actually use this lake as
(28:29):
a testing site for naval equipment and the mountains around
it as uh series of strongholds, well more, I guess
retreats kind of you could say, for their military officers.
Than In fifty nine, investigators found seven hundred million pounds
worth of counterfeit bank notes that Hitler actually had a
(28:51):
pretty sinister plan to use to sabotage Britain's economy. And
what way do you think ben um flooded with exact
and then the cash would be worthless if the notes
are good enough, there's no way to discern the fake
ones from the real ones. Yeah, one of those conspiracy
theories people are always talking about China, Like China could
(29:12):
do that devalue our currency by flooding because they've like
stockpiled all this American currency and they could like affect
our economy by like flooding us with with cash. Yeah,
but that's a different kind of thing in in this case,
imagine the chaos of seven hundred million dollars just being
at play now that you know is counterfeit. You don't
(29:32):
even know how much is is out there, Like if
you're on the Allied side or the United States side,
you would have no idea how much is actually in
the system, but you would know that, Oh my god,
a great portion of the exchanges that are occurring within
our economy right now are happening with phony money, and
now every single transaction is going to have the question,
(29:53):
especially given how fragile the British economy is at the time,
because you know, London had been bombed left to write UH,
and it was definitely in a recovery period. The interesting
thing about what you said, no regarding UH, the the
idea of currency devaluing, it's another theory could happen. UH.
(30:15):
The only difference would be that the assets the government
of China would hold in that situation would be real
and not counterfeit. The best counterfeit notes, though US notes,
are from that part of the world. There the North
Korean supernotes. According to the Treasury Department, the way you
can tell a North Korean supernoe from a real one
dollar bill is that the supernoe looks better. It's like
(30:36):
a better bill. We did a story of ridiculous history
about this very thing where there was a very crafty gentleman.
It was in Spain, I believe, I can't remember now.
He figured out a way to counterfeit money and then
did flood it, and he actually single handedly kind of
wrecked the economy of Portugal. Is where it was. Yeah, yeah,
he's the Portuguese bank note crisis. And actually our show
(31:01):
for that is the top resultant Google when I searched
for it by school. It was Artur Alves Reyes who
was the mastermind behind this, but a very similar scheme. Right,
It wasn't he wasn't trying to wreak havoc. It just
kind of was a byproduct of his greed, and he
uh basically single handedly toppled the banking system of Portugal.
And this this had nothing on what Hitler had planned, right,
(31:27):
and we have to wonder how this would have played out.
So there was some kind of treasure found already, like Toplets,
and that was uh seven million pounds worth of counterfeit notes.
As for the other stuff, as for billions of dollars
of gold that has yet to be found today, however,
we do have a case of some of this Nazi
(31:50):
gold actually being found. It was a real thing, a
real conspiracy to hide it. Oh yes, And this takes
us back to Operation safe Haven as it was, uh
as it was not really beginning, but it was in
full play here and there were a group of it's
actually a really large number of the United States Army,
(32:10):
the third Army, ninety Infantry Division. They're in Mrkers, Germany, Okay,
and it's it's as the war is ending. They're kind
of doing clean up. They're trying to find gold during
Operations safe Haven, as we mentioned before. And it's April five,
nineteen and some military police from from this division they
(32:32):
come upon two refugees essentially, they're they're called displaced persons.
They're from France. According to uh A h C. They
were two female French citizens who were displaced. And there's
a large amount of gold that had been transferred and
been moved out and then moved near Merkers somewhere. But
(32:55):
nobody could you know, verify any of these they're just rumors, right.
They just knew that they were frequently trucks that were
loaded with some sort of precious object in these trucks
were coming continually during the night. Yeah, and they were
going to a very specific place and it was this
mine near Merkers. It was a potassium mind of all things.
(33:17):
And these women, these two displaced persons where France said, yeah, oh,
do you guys know about that mine? Right with all
that gold in it? Right? You guys know about that?
And that's all it took. Really they decided, okay, we're
gonna go check this out. And uh, they they found
their way by the way, General Eisenhower in General Patton
were a part of this little mission to go down
(33:39):
into the mine and try and see what's down there. Yeah,
and Patton has Patton has his own crazy scheme that
we can maybe mentioned at the end here. But what
do they find when they when they go into the mine, Well,
a whole crap ton of gold, seven thousand sacks of
gold bully to be precise, um in an underground area
(34:03):
that was around seventy deep a hundred and fifty feet
wide um. And the mine also had ninety eight million
francs French francs uh and um. The there's also a
ton of gold coin that was recovered down they're separate
and this absolute smorgess Borg of currency. Um wasn't even
(34:24):
the most alarming thing that they found down there. They
also found luggage with gold fillings that had been extracted
from Yeah, you guessed, at concentration camp detainees. And you
can actually see some film that was taken around or
of that time of what they found. There, a lot
(34:44):
of still photographs, some like I said, film and it
I don't even know how to describe it unless you
Unless you see it, you won't understand such a large
container of the gold from human beings. Mouthed, yeah, and
this this was a real thing. I think a lot
(35:05):
of people when they first learned of this at the
close of World War Two, I think a lot of
people thought maybe it was propaganda, or maybe it was
an unnecessary exaggeration. But it was not propaganda. It was
not an exaggeration. They were taking people's wedding rings, their watches,
they were literally taking metal out of people's teeth. And
(35:28):
this plunder, this Nazi gold story. We usually see reports
of it being scrolled away somewhere in Europe, right in
a mine or in a Swiss bank, or in the Vatican,
or we see it maybe as you said, Matt, being
wired or transported somehow to South America, which also is
very plausible, but we don't often talk about the plunder
(35:52):
closer to home. The United States is also guilty of
these types of nefarious clandestine activities. In The New York
Times reported this this following claim quote. In nineteen fifty,
the Federal Reserve Bank of New York melted down hundreds
of gold bars, burying the swastika imprint and recast them
(36:15):
with a pristine stamp bearing the words United States Assay Office.
At the time, according to memos from the FED, the U. S.
Treasury knew that a lot of the gold, worth about
twenty three million at the time, had been stolen from
the Netherlands in Belgium when they were invaded by Germany.
Operation Right. But this is like, you know this nineteen fifty,
(36:37):
Uncle Sam is not really asking questions, Just like the
Swiss banks, just like the the other collaborating forces that
we publicly despised, the US is just taking the money
and running. The rationale here is that Uncle Sam is
primarily concerned with rebuilding Europe at this time, rather than
(36:57):
investigating the ethical injuries in the providence of this stolen loop.
But back to New York Times. At the request of
the National City Bank, which later became City Bank, the
Treasury Department authorized the reissue of the gold, and that was,
according to this reporter, a polite phrase for purifying it
and wiping out the German markings so the gold could
(37:19):
be used as collateral for a transaction between Spain and
the I T. T Corporation that we're trying to build
a telephone system. But here's the other problems. It gets
more uncomfortable, Yeah, boy does it. Ever, the Germans meant
was known for taking gold that German troops stole from
(37:40):
central banks all over Europe and then melted them down.
Together with those more grizzly examples of plunder, the tooth fillings, UM,
things like wedding rings and other jewelry that was looted
from um people who were in turn in those concentration
camps and the death camps victims. Germany's goal was to
(38:02):
put these lifted items into a form that was a
lot harder to trace and then could be laundered through
the Swiss National Bank. Yeah. Yeah, and um, it's hard
to really know how much of the kind of gold
that we're talking about that came from victims from concentration
camps actually made it into each individual gold bullion bar
(38:26):
or each each coin that was then minted in Germany.
But we do know it happened, and we do know
that kind of gold was also just anecdotally smelted down
to create fillings for SS officers. That was a real
thing that occurred. Hitler's own dentist, the guy that he used,
(38:48):
would do that. Uh. And of course it's not proven. Uh,
there are rumors all over the place that specifically gold
from other people's mouths ended up in Hitler's mouth. Blah
blah blah. But but just the feeling that you're probably
getting just from knowing some of that, that perhaps this
(39:08):
gold that the United States melted down and purified was
actually from victims from concentration camps. Perhaps perhaps right. We'll
also have to note that the purification process, the re
smelting conducted by the government, likely wiped out all traces
of what historians call hate this euphemism, but that's this's
(39:30):
the euphemism people use non monetary gold. M uh, you know,
because it's gold that was never meant to be currency.
But if we think about it, that means that the
US had literally taken blood, money, gold ripped from people's mouths,
and there are there, there are more. I know a
lot of us listening today are saying, guys, you have
(39:52):
to talk about the Nazi gold train. So quick mention
of that. There's a local legend in Poland that a
train laden with gold had disappeared in May of nineteen.
Now the area is part of Poland, but previously when
this took place, it was southeast Germany people who searched
(40:13):
for the train. Ever since World War Two, no evidence
of a train has been found. You'll hear historians say
that the train never existed. And in two thousand fifteen
it was back in the news because people thought that
they had discovered the location of the train in the
course that searched. It turned out they had discovered something.
It was a cavity in the rock filled by a
(40:35):
natural ice formation. So no train that we know of.
Maybe there's a mythical train made of gold. This time
it was not just a train that had gold in
it or was carrying gold. Maybe there's a mythical golden
train out there somewhere that will learn about. It's called
the Hogwarts Express. Reference um yeah, this is some disturbing stuff.
(40:58):
Well let's okay, let's get down too. Just when we're
thinking about all of this. You know, we just mentioned
blood money, the concept of that very real sense of
blood money. But when you're thinking about wars and profiting
from having physical conflicts like that with other countries or
(41:19):
other places, with other people, and then gaining from that
all those altercations and those deaths and and the blood
that is spilled, um, this kind of thing like maybe
maybe we forget because we're so inundated in like our culture,
in particular in the United States of war movies a
(41:41):
lot of times that are to a great extent glorified,
like the the concept of fighting a good fight, fighting
for good, fighting the right side. Um. But but really,
just anytime there's war and profit generated, it should feel
for everyone on every side like an icky thing. I think. Well,
here's the crazy thing, man. I mean, I I distinctly remember,
(42:03):
you know, after nine eleven the idea of we're going
to war being a big deal in my mind and
thinking it was going to have some effect on my
day to day life. But we've been at war for
so long as a country that it's sort of your
sort of numb to it, and you don't really we
were so isolated from it in our daily lives that
it's very difficult unless you have military and your family
(42:25):
to have a real ramification of these conflicts, which, if
I would argue, I think many would most would agree
are largely for profit. The notion of staying in a
perpetual state of war feeds that machine. You know, well,
let's get let's just get to Afghanistan. And what we
learned in previous episodes about the poppy fields. Oh yes,
(42:45):
poppy production, which was waning under the Taliban, exploded under
US under US supervision during coalition control, right right, The
idea of being it's the best cash cross up. US
soldiers were tasked with protecting the opium the poppy fields. Rather,
(43:05):
let's were the oil fields in the rock? Sorry, I
don't know. I mean we we keep seeing it, at
least from the United States side, Well sure, from every side.
You know that it goes into US Medley Butler's idea
of war as a racket, economic confessions of an economic
hit man, the concept that war maybe an economic necessity
(43:28):
for certain types of governments or societies, and this money
goes missing. All of the time, we've barely touched on
things like we didn't talk about the Amber room, right,
that's missing too. We didn't talk about Himmler's ninety three
million dollars worth of silver. We didn't talk about Lake Vultian.
(43:48):
Apparently Germans hit a hundred million in gold there too.
There are laundry list of hidden or stolen gold and valuables,
and that kind of practice didn't stop when the Nazi
party collapsed. There was a palette with what a billion
dollars that just went missing in the Middle East. Uh,
(44:10):
don't don't talk about that. I'm just kidding. We did.
Didn't we do a whole episode on that, or at
least I know we talked about it. We did. We
did talk about it. And we've always known that war
and profit are inextricably intertwined. We know things continue to disappear. Uh,
this this is just by the way, when we say
money continues to disappear, we're just talking about the money
(44:32):
that people lost. We're not talking about the money that
never really existed due to black budgets and off the
book spending. Oh my god. And you know not to mention,
by the way, all the arms deals that occur across
the globe from one country to another. Good point. I
mean that, I mean, you want to talk about blood money,
it's right there, that's true. That's as true blood money,
(44:53):
blood money that's gonna be cashed out. And some people
will argue this is just uh, an un pleasant, necessary
piece of the global financial system. And some people would
respond to that argument by saying, well, why don't we
make another system for some people? Problem is that there's
not a problem. Business is very very good. Yeah, uh,
(45:16):
you know, I just just there's an anecdote. But I
just watched Fight Club for the first time in a
long time and had a discussion about it and that
feeling of why not just make a new system? Right? Um?
In that movie there are depictions of people wanting to
make a new system, But that concept of tearing one
(45:38):
down to create a new one is pretty terrifying. Um,
at least now that I'm in my mid thirties, I
probably been. They've already been, like, you know, paying into
the current system for so many years. Now I can't
start over. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's weird the
way that kind of feeling happens. But I would be
right there with you, that that feeling is pretty pervasive
(45:59):
of thing needs to change because the system is not
functioning properly or ump for ump for umph. Something must
be done, but no one agrees what we want to
hear from you. What do you think how much truth
is there to these different claims of hidden Nazi treasure?
Is there more of this treasure somewhere out there in
this wide world of ours? The answer I think is yes.
(46:22):
And I also, I'm going to go a step further
pure speculation. I think not only is some of that
stolen stuff still out there, it is accounted for by
people who have just held onto it or profited from it,
and they're not going to come forward because why would you.
You're a war criminal at that point. Well in decades
have passed by this point that maybe it's not even known,
(46:46):
like by current heads of banks or you know, board
members or something. If this stuff is secreted away somewhere
in a vault, maybe it's not known what it is
because maybe it was smelted down, just like the United
States allectually did. I don't know. I think you're right, then,
I think you're right. Last thing, just for an example,
(47:06):
I've got to mention this because it was so bizarre
to learn about this. George Patton, who we mentioned earlier,
had a plan to use Nazi gold to fund the
US military after the after the war. Patton, after discovering
that a salt mine treasure, he sat down with some
army generals later that night and they said, okay, how
(47:28):
do we handle this? And Patton's first suggestion off the top,
he was coming in hot man. He said, let's distribute
the gold to the boys. He wanted quote uh, some
gold for every son of in the third Army. And
they said, no, you can't do that. We have to
we have to follow some sort of law. And then
he said, okay, well, if we can't just give it
away to the boys, let's keep it a secret from
(47:50):
the Congress and from the generals who aren't cool. It
didn't work. I love that he used the phrase generals
who aren't cool. Yeah, that's that That part might be paraphrasing.
But we know that there's still we know there's still
stuff that's being discovered. There was one point eight billion
(48:12):
dollars worth of art discovered in a Munich apartment in
two thousand and twelve. People are still finding things that
was not very long ago. So what do you think
about all of this stuff? If you do, you have
other examples that we should talk about their noteworthy let
us know. You can find us on Facebook or Twitter
where we are a conspiracy stuff. We are conspiracy stuff
(48:34):
show on Instagram. If you want to check us out individually,
you can find me at how Now Noel Brown? I think, Maddie,
you got one now, don't you? Yeah? I do. But
you're gonna have to go back through the the archives
and find that one time that we said it like that. Huh?
How much you've been? I am going to be on
(48:56):
a number of strange excursions over the next few weeks.
Hopefully I will make it back safe and sound. You
can find what I'm up to where I'm getting kicked
into or kicked out of on Instagram at Ben Bowling,
or you can find terrible one liners and hot takes
on Twitter at Ben Bowlen H. S W. If you
(49:18):
don't really care for the social meds, we of all
people get it. We have a number you can call.
We are one eight three three st d W I
t K. Leave a message, just tell us what you
think and you might get on the air. It's a
nice little jingle you got there, Yeah, there, there you go.
So you give us a call, well we'll hear it
and it'll be fun. Hey. If you don't want to
(49:39):
do any of that stuff, you can also send us
a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i
heart radio dot com. M Stuff they Don't Want You
(50:02):
to Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
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your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, Welcome
(00:24):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is Null. They call me Ben. We are joined, as
always in spirit with our super producer Paul Mission Controlled decond.
Today we are joined in person with our super producer
Seth Johnson, who you may recognize from earlier episodes. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. We're we're diving
(00:47):
back into the storied world depicted in action and venture
films from the seventies and the eighties and the nineties.
You know the kind of national treasure Indiana Jones three
keen sort of vibe, you're going to steal a declaration
of independence now, well and well kind of. I mean,
they're gonna steal all kinds of treasure from countries across Europe.
(01:11):
Wealth is an independence of sorts, right, we were we're
talking off air about our various lottery plans. Uh. I
don't know if I ever shared it with you at
my My list of pranks to pull is an eccentric billionaire.
It's a Google doc. Yeah, it's an old one. Yeah,
but I keep it just you know, if something occurs,
(01:32):
it's good to have sort of a vision board of sorts.
And it's also a good idea to give Google heads up.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, you know the love, the love
what I have in store for the planet. So we
are talking about treasure literal tons of gold stolen during
wartime and hidden away. This story takes place in World
(01:53):
War Two, but it's it's not unique because we know
that the chaos left in the wake of global conflicts
is for many people an opportunity. What's that old line,
chaos is a ladder. I believe that was from Game
of Thrones. Perhaps maybe it's a little Finger. So little
(02:14):
Finger was not commenting on the Nazi regime, but for
members of the Nazi regime, that statement holds true. Here
are the facts. First. First things first, the Nazi Party
stole not a ton of stuff. They stole tons and
tons of things, thousands of tons, millions of tons of stuff.
(02:34):
And it's common knowledge that they looted numerous groups. They
took the assets of victims of the holocaust of citizens
and repressed countries. They looted entire banks of countries when
they occupied them. Well, yeah, and you can you can
kind of begin to understand the pattern. When you have
an invading army that goes into one place that is
(02:55):
not controlled by you or your government, then you essentially
are vic torrious militarily than the spoils, unfortunately go to you,
and then you use those two then fund the next
one that you enter, and it really is like this
huge series of bank heists um that we can kind
of see painted across Europe during World War Two. And
(03:17):
you know, one thing I noticed is that none of
the invading or occupying forces ever took the money that
they had and put it towards supporting people. It was
always just as you said, to further fund expansionist ambitions.
We know that Germany when it was under control of
the Nazi Party had a real dilemma of physical limit
(03:42):
to the amount of resources that they could generate within
their own domain. So they had to they had to
get liquidity, they had to get wealth. They were able
to get a bunch of gold, and they needed help
swapping that gold for currency that they could then use
to acquire this stuff they needed but didn't have, like
(04:02):
high quality iron oil, tungsten, other materials like that. And
so they went to the neutral powers, the neutral countries
in this conflict, like Switzerland, that's going to be one
of the stars of our show today, and they asked
Swiss banks and Swiss institutions to help them transfer gold,
transfer currencies and commodities between nations because even though there
(04:27):
was a war going on, businesses kept running, right, banks
were still in play very much so likely profiting from
said war in some ways. Absolutely IBM as well. It
wasn't just banks, oh oh absolutely, But then you know,
you see this as a the new system that is
created for for their money necessities, the right the Third Reich,
(04:52):
and it kind of works for a time. But then
as the well, it's not they didn't know the war
was coming to a close. But as things weren't going
so well for the access powers, and as the Allied
powers are gaining more and more allies and gaining more
and more support, uh, it's harder and harder for the
(05:13):
Nazi Party to use a lot of these third party
neutral countries to do a lot of this fencing essentially
exactly yes, And I love that you're using the phrase fencing,
because this system was uh system of laundering resources and
fencing stolen goods. By the writing was on the wall, businesses, governments,
(05:34):
access and Allied powers alike knew that the war was
not going to keep going, and Germany became more and
more reliant on institutions in Switzerland because other neutral parties
started to acquiesce to Allied demands and they said, look,
we we've got to put some distance between you. We
(05:55):
can't we can't accept gold and coins right now, our
species as they're called, we also are going to be
less and less likely to accept reich marks. And now
Germany has the option of paying with foreign currency. But
it turns out that years of belligerents and militarism often
(06:17):
don't leave governments with a lot of foreign currency because
they burned a lot of bridges literally to the ground.
So these banks essentially became clearing houses for stolen German
gold from numerous occupied countries that could then be converted
to a less objectionable form of currency and medium, if
(06:37):
you will. UM Diplomatic cables from the time support this.
For example, UH, the fact that the Swiss National Bank
actually helped the German Reich's bunk convert and estimated fifteen
million in stolen Dutch gold um and they didn't ask
any questions. That's the craziest part. No, they asked my
(06:59):
bank questions, guests, question if I deposit more than five
thousand dollars, you know, like how it's in you know
what I mean, like it's it's insane. The level of
brazen crookedness in this situation here right, Well, yeah, but
it's from an objective stance, it's really messed up. Because
if you are a banking institution and your primary goals
(07:22):
are the primary goals of controlling as much money as
possible to be able to pump out more money and loan,
so then take more money in and you get an
offer of fifteen million dollars to be deposited, depending on
where it's coming from, maybe it doesn't matter so much
at least I don't know if that's really looking at
(07:43):
a cold way and it's it sucks. There's also plausible deniability.
Exactly who knows I I yeah, well we do know
kind of with the through the cables, but the exact
way in which the Swiss Bank was approached with the
money right right where they approached via a proxy or something.
(08:03):
That's why that's why the Swiss National Bank example is
important because it was the actual German state actor bank
that was interactive with them directly. This this is strange
because sure one could say that, Let's say I'm the
head of a Swiss bank. One could say, well, I
(08:23):
see so many transactions all the time. We move a
lot of a lot of money around the world. We
work in volume. Baby, I can't be lying item checking
every single Nazi gold request. Yeah, I mean I I
don't know if Swiss bankers are that casual at that time,
but we do know this was a very common practice.
(08:44):
According to the CIA, German efforts to acquire foreign currency
and converted to war materials became increasingly clandestine as the
Allied forces were encroaching and as the war was turning
in their favor. It makes total sense, right, and it
matches right up with our Ratlines episode, where like you said,
(09:04):
as they're seeing the writing on the wall, they're gonna
try and secret away this money, just as they secreted
away themselves and the important officers and scientists and things. Um.
They wanted to be able to control it later. Perhaps, yes,
that was the that was the idea, and that's what
the Allied forces believed was happening. For Germany, a lot
(09:25):
of problems cropped up very quickly. They had these long
term exchange agreements, Right, we'll give you x amount of
whatever over why amounts of years, and in return you'll
give us oil or iron gas, etcetera. Now those are impossible.
Neutral countries will no longer do them because they're like,
why would I agree to do something with you for
(09:46):
five years? It's uh, it's not looking good for you,
you know. And now the neutral parties will only work
with Germany on what they called a cash and carry basis,
one off, short term transaction. Still for Germany it's better
than nothing, but the way in which they interacted changed
(10:06):
to they started to want more proxies, more private entities
to deal with them. So we could say, for instance, so, well,
wasn't the government of Switzerland's absolutely, or it wasn't even
this major bank. It was like a smaller part of
this bank, a subsidiary of some sort. Right, And this
(10:26):
gives Allied observers and pause, and they start to believe
that there is a conspiracy. They think perhaps the German
forces are pretending to fall, pretending to surrender, and that
they will reaggregate all this stuff they have stolen and
they will launch a fourth Reich into two listeners who
(10:49):
have been here for a while. That may remind you
of the long game deception ideas that were born out
of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union.
Um kind of you could kind of apply the same deals.
At least that's what the CIA was believed exactly, and
that's why the Unity Kingdom and the United States launched
(11:10):
Operation safe Haven, which will will explore a little bit further,
but for now just know it exists, and Operations safe
Haven and other endeavors were somewhat successful. We found some
of the stolen treasure, We recovered some of the gold
in in December. When Allied forces created safe Haven, they
(11:35):
wanted to they didn't want to take it for themselves,
at least the way it was stated. Instead, what they
were trying to do was find the hidie holes, the
bolt holes of treasure hidden away by German forces in
neutral countries, and then they would take that money and
they would move these funds to what they called safe havens.
(11:56):
These would be British or American humanitarian organization it's most
often uh, And this was meant to sure assist those
organizations in their humanitarian endeavors, but it was also meant
to disperse Nazi wealth, to leave no financial stone standing
upon another financial stone. They wanted to cripple any further
(12:19):
attempts to resurrect the regime and the you know, there
are some people listening saying, oh, you know, the language
that's used in creating something like operations safe haven, even
the term safe haven when it's being transferred to a
country with such a large military force that is kind
of going through and then dominating, right, and then saying well,
we're gonna take all this stuff. We're gonna put it over,
(12:42):
you know, in places that we control, but it's gonna
be safe there. You guys are cool. Everything's fine, it
goes to a good cause. Yeah, everything's great. It's not
the same thing as what the Nazis just did and
took it all and then you know, hit it away
for their own purposes. We promise it's fine. It's called
a safe haven, right, you know, And you can just
see the parallels there. Depending on how you feel about
(13:04):
the operations of the United States government anyway, just putting
that out, I think that's an excellent point. And there's
a massive hole in this story because you see, despite
the efforts of the Allies, no one was able to
locate all of the stolen gold, all of the stolen
art and other assets looted from Germany's victims. In fact,
in nineteen sixty six, the British Foreign Office reported that
(13:28):
of all the gold stolen from occupied lands victims of
the Holocaust, war casualties and so on, only one tenth
of it. Only ten percent had ever been located and returned.
So our question today is where did the rest of
the treasure go? And we'll get to that right after
a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
(13:57):
So since pretty much right after the close of World
War Two, even a little bit before the war ended,
there were multiple rumors and conspiracy theories about Nazi gold,
and they popped in and out of official reports and
your favorite mainstream news and your your favorite investigative documentaries
and stuff. Ever since they still they still come out today.
(14:18):
I'm the History Channel loves it. Yeah, I was gonna say,
I'm fairly certain that you can turn on the History
Channel on this weekend and I don't know, have a
thirty chance of of running into a Nazi gold story.
Oh yeah, I mean I literally watched a clip from
a show called Codes and Conspiracies where it was a
clip about one of the things we're gonna talk about today,
and it wasn't that long ago when it came out.
(14:41):
And here's the thing about it. These rumors and these um,
these stories, these alleged locations of this lost treasure. They
may vary implausibility, but it's so fascinating to people because
there are proven cases of this stuff being discovered, and
there are also cases where the stuff seems to you
almost have been discovered and then disappeared from the news. Yeah,
(15:05):
and that's when you get into real suspicion about things
like operations safe Haven, where you're where you're just like, man,
nine of the stuff is still out there. We don't,
are we sure? We're like yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.
Oh man, um, should we talk about some examples? Sure?
(15:25):
So how about the S S. Menden Right, Yeah, the
German cargo ship scuttled near Iceland during the early days
of World War Two. So this is before the close
it was suspected to contain this huge trove of Nazi gold.
How about we we cite one of our favorite sources,
Fox News. I put, I know, I know in the
notes it's it's a good it's a good article. Are
(15:47):
you well, you know they're not all whatever. Uh So,
this merchant vessel hundred and twenty nautical miles south of
Iceland is in the international spotlight after um the chest
with around four tons of Nazi gold was discovered in
the wreckage four tons of nazig four tons of Nazi go.
Does that mean, like in the movies, is the Nazi
(16:08):
gold have swastikas on it stamped? Yeah? Maybe unclear? I
mean you would certainly know if you found it that way. Well, also,
it depends on the provenance of the gold. If they
stole it from another country, probably have that stant what
I was thinking exactly? Um So this hall was valued
at around a hundred million pounds, which, as we know
(16:31):
is is more than than dollars. I think this is
a story fromen and they estimated as million exactly. Uh
and yeah, okay, here's the official story of what happened
on September ninety nine, the ship was intercepted by two
British cruisers and the captain of the men didn't had
(16:53):
specific orders for this situation, which was do not be
captured or do not let the cargo be captured, so
he sank the ship on purpose with everything aboard, and
the shipwreck was discovered a rediscovered i should say, in
spring of ten. And then things get a little fuzzy
(17:14):
because they had to get permission from the authorities in
Iceland to investigate the wreckage and they conduct they eventually
in were able to search it for about three days,
and then after that operation, the search team, a UK
based company called Advanced Marine Services, said to Iceland that
(17:35):
no items of value were found. Of course, again that's
the official story, and there are going to be a
lot of people who just won't believe those folks, regardless
of the facts. So this this one is interesting because
now we have to ask ourselves, did somebody take the
safe or the chest before the official search? Why was
the search so stymied by bureaucratic red tape? You know,
(18:00):
I know, it makes you think maybe there's a small
group of rogue treasure hunters out there that got there first,
or York or York, or maybe she's you know what,
I don't want to pigeonholer. I'm going to get the treasure.
I like the gould. We'll go deep into the water
and fine the heathen jimsy. They will be guarded by
(18:22):
the King of to see. Yeah, that sounds like York. Yeah.
So what we're going to see is we explore some
more of these examples. Is that, like a lot of
conspiracy theories or rumors or speculation, there's a categorical thing
at play. Certain tropes pop up over and over the golds,
usually said to be hidden in banks held by the Vatican,
(18:43):
of course, or lost in some place that's difficult to access,
like a sunken vessel at the bottom of the ocean,
or a mine for instance, that was then collapsed on purpose,
or something where it's very very difficult, if not impossible,
to to get there. So so let's you you mentioned
the v word. Let's uh, let's let's talk about the
(19:06):
Vatican and why they perhaps are a viable suspect for
where some of this treasure ended up. Okay, Yeah, So
the U. S. State Department back in nineteen forty six,
shortly after the Wars closed receives this top secret report
from an agent named Emerson Bigelow, and Emerson says, I
(19:29):
have heard from the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA,
that there is something rotten going on with the Vatican
and Nazi gold from World War two, or Nazi finances
at least. And this this report is later called the
Bigelow Report. Sometimes you'll hear it called the Bigelow Memo.
(19:52):
It wasn't declassified until decades later, in nineteen nine six,
and it it wasn't released until even Here's what the report says.
It says back in the Vatican took three d fifty
million Swiss francs worth of Nazi gold for quote unquote safekeeping.
(20:12):
And of that, hundred and fifty million Swiss francs have
been impounded by British authorities at the Austro Swiss border.
So where where did all this stuff go? What is
safe keeping? What is the safe haven? Right? According to Bigelow,
the safe haven here is a numbered Swiss bank account
and controlled by the Vatican. And that and Bigelow goes
(20:36):
on to say that more than two d million Swiss
francs worth of gold coins are transferred to Vatican City
or to the Vatican Bank, which is known as the
Institute for Works of Religion, with the assistance of the clergy.
And then it goes on to state that perhaps, or
it's believed at least that then this money was funneled
(20:59):
to play races like Argentina and Brazil. Where again it's
the same thing where we where we looked at in
our rat rat Lines episode where the Vatican was assisting people,
or at least was alleged to be assisting people and
found to be assisting people a few times um Nazis
in particular to get to places like Argentina and Brazil. Yeah,
(21:21):
and you know, we were careful in that episode to
say this doesn't mean the Vatican overall was doing it. It
It could be factions within this very large organization, but
representatives of the Vatican at the very least helped. We
should note that even today the Vatican Bank denies this.
They say there's no basis in reality to the report
(21:43):
to the Big Low memo. So it goes down to
you know who you who you trust to safe keep
to safe keep? Who do you trust to safe keep? Uh,
there's a there's a weird situation going on in Bavaria
that we found via the Sun, and the Sun is
the Sun is not a source that I would quote
(22:05):
if I were writing a high school or college paper.
But they've got that kind of uh, tabloid vibes. Sometimes
it's like gone par with the mail yep exactly. But
there's there's a great story that they tell him about
a treasure hunter named Hans Gluck. Hans Gluke is what
(22:26):
is glu mean? Luck? J cool? Well, Hans Luck. Then
Hans Gluke uh seventy six back in and he'd been
searching for this trove of gold, diamonds, artwork and for
some reason, rare postage stamps which are still a big
(22:47):
thing for twenty years. He has based on an old
map that he found, Uh, he has he has become
certain that he's pinpointed this Nazi treasure that was lost
on a train. Here's here's what happened, according to him
and according to the Sun. During the close of the war,
(23:10):
Heinrich Himler greenlit this bank heist, like you said, man,
he he greenlit an inside job bank heist. And he
told his deputy, a fellow named Ernst Kultan Bruner, to
empty the Berlin Reichs Bank of Loot and put it
all on a train and send it to the Alps.
And they thought, you know, after the wars officially declared over,
(23:33):
will still be able to fight, will be funded by
this treasure, will essentially be guerrillas, you know, move in
the night, will hide behind the trees, will will disrupt
into me UH supply lines and so on. And they
wanted to have the train cross the border into Austria
and then they would store all this stuff from the
train an assault mine. But the Russians were advancing, the
(23:57):
Allied aircraft were just cloppering place. So the train hid
in a tunnel for three days and the s s
there had a had a functioning radio post nearby in
the forest, at a place called Iraq A R R
A C H. And according to Hans Gluke, this is
where the treasure ultimately ended up. We we know that
(24:22):
at some point the train was you know, stuck in
that tunnel, right. We don't know what happened to the
treasure after it. We do know that Soviet troops were
able to intercept a report from that Nazi radio post,
and the report simply read in German something like command executed,
transport of guards, taken over stored in b S C. H.
(24:43):
W asked for further instructions. It all hinges. I want
that abbreviation means it well. And and you know that
if you go through and you read that whole story
on the Sun, it's one of it. Like Ben said,
it's one of those that feels a little far fetched.
But again, anytime there are seeds of truth within something
like this, I don't think you can allow dismiss it, right,
(25:06):
I mean, just I would recommend hey go over to
the Sun check out Golden nine an E I N
which just means gold now, and it says treasure hunter
finds five hundred million dollars worth of gold Nazi gold
in a Bavarian forest, but landowner won't let him dig
it up, right right, Just a little more about the story,
do you know it is? We do know that there
(25:26):
was some treasure in play because the guy who mentioned
Carlton Bruner, he gets away for a time. He goes
to Austria where he's from, and he's not arrested until
May twelve. But in the garden at his house, like buried,
I think, in a beat patch, they find seventy six
(25:47):
ms of gold in six gold bars. And that's that's
clearly a case of like how much can I physically
carry with me when cash and carry? Yes, just so,
And Carlton Brunner was found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg.
He was executing October sixteenth. He never told anybody where
the loot went. But Gluke was contacted by an old
(26:12):
man with a strange tale about an s S officer
shipped to Siberia who had sewn a map of sorts
into the lining of his coat. And this is what
led Gluke off on his merry adventure, his frustrating chase.
Right now, as you can tell from the title, that
match has read as far as we can see, the
(26:36):
excavation or the search is still being held up because
the person who owns the property says, you know, hey,
I'm maybe I'll find it, or Hans Gluke is accusing
them of that, yeah, yeah, and just so. I mean,
it's so interesting the way this kind of thing plays out.
It feels like the watch story from Pulpture, where it's
(26:59):
this thing, this map in this case instead of a watch.
And and again there are no um cavities involved necessarily
other than the cavity in the coat, I guess. But
but it's an important thing that got passed down and
passed down because you know, it went from this guy
who was important enough that he knew he was going
to get killed as soon as he entered a camp,
gave it to another pow and like in hopes that
(27:22):
it would make it back somewhere to someone. Um. And
now it went to this other guy and now he's
searching for the treasure, but it's on this other person's
land and he just can't go in there and you know,
dig up things willy nilly, or even follow the map
to exactly where it is because he wouldn't be able
to dig it up because he wouldn't own it. It
would be a great plot for a film, right, Yeah.
(27:45):
And we have more examples ahead, including some that are
a little closer to home. After a word from our sponsors,
let's talk about Lake Toplets. A lake Toplets. It's a
fun name, right, It's also the source of a World
(28:05):
War two legend. According to this story, the Nazi Party
dumped billions of dollars worth of stolen gold somewhere around
to the tune of five point six billion dollars worth
into an isolated lake, Lake Toplets in the forest in
the Alps. Yeah, and history dot com reports that in
the forties, uh, the Nazis actually use this lake as
(28:29):
a testing site for naval equipment and the mountains around
it as uh series of strongholds, well more, I guess
retreats kind of you could say, for their military officers.
Than In fifty nine, investigators found seven hundred million pounds
worth of counterfeit bank notes that Hitler actually had a
(28:51):
pretty sinister plan to use to sabotage Britain's economy. And
what way do you think ben um flooded with exact
and then the cash would be worthless if the notes
are good enough, there's no way to discern the fake
ones from the real ones. Yeah, one of those conspiracy
theories people are always talking about China, Like China could
(29:12):
do that devalue our currency by flooding because they've like
stockpiled all this American currency and they could like affect
our economy by like flooding us with with cash. Yeah,
but that's a different kind of thing in in this case,
imagine the chaos of seven hundred million dollars just being
at play now that you know is counterfeit. You don't
(29:32):
even know how much is is out there, Like if
you're on the Allied side or the United States side,
you would have no idea how much is actually in
the system, but you would know that, Oh my god,
a great portion of the exchanges that are occurring within
our economy right now are happening with phony money, and
now every single transaction is going to have the question,
(29:53):
especially given how fragile the British economy is at the time,
because you know, London had been bombed left to write UH,
and it was definitely in a recovery period. The interesting
thing about what you said, no regarding UH, the the
idea of currency devaluing, it's another theory could happen. UH.
(30:15):
The only difference would be that the assets the government
of China would hold in that situation would be real
and not counterfeit. The best counterfeit notes, though US notes,
are from that part of the world. There the North
Korean supernotes. According to the Treasury Department, the way you
can tell a North Korean supernoe from a real one
dollar bill is that the supernoe looks better. It's like
(30:36):
a better bill. We did a story of ridiculous history
about this very thing where there was a very crafty gentleman.
It was in Spain, I believe, I can't remember now.
He figured out a way to counterfeit money and then
did flood it, and he actually single handedly kind of
wrecked the economy of Portugal. Is where it was. Yeah, yeah,
he's the Portuguese bank note crisis. And actually our show
(31:01):
for that is the top resultant Google when I searched
for it by school. It was Artur Alves Reyes who
was the mastermind behind this, but a very similar scheme. Right,
It wasn't he wasn't trying to wreak havoc. It just
kind of was a byproduct of his greed, and he
uh basically single handedly toppled the banking system of Portugal.
And this this had nothing on what Hitler had planned, right,
(31:27):
and we have to wonder how this would have played out.
So there was some kind of treasure found already, like Toplets,
and that was uh seven million pounds worth of counterfeit notes.
As for the other stuff, as for billions of dollars
of gold that has yet to be found today, however,
we do have a case of some of this Nazi
(31:50):
gold actually being found. It was a real thing, a
real conspiracy to hide it. Oh yes, And this takes
us back to Operation safe Haven as it was, uh
as it was not really beginning, but it was in
full play here and there were a group of it's
actually a really large number of the United States Army,
(32:10):
the third Army, ninety Infantry Division. They're in Mrkers, Germany, Okay,
and it's it's as the war is ending. They're kind
of doing clean up. They're trying to find gold during
Operations safe Haven, as we mentioned before. And it's April five,
nineteen and some military police from from this division they
(32:32):
come upon two refugees essentially, they're they're called displaced persons.
They're from France. According to uh A h C. They
were two female French citizens who were displaced. And there's
a large amount of gold that had been transferred and
been moved out and then moved near Merkers somewhere. But
(32:55):
nobody could you know, verify any of these they're just rumors, right.
They just knew that they were frequently trucks that were
loaded with some sort of precious object in these trucks
were coming continually during the night. Yeah, and they were
going to a very specific place and it was this
mine near Merkers. It was a potassium mind of all things.
(33:17):
And these women, these two displaced persons where France said, yeah, oh,
do you guys know about that mine? Right with all
that gold in it? Right? You guys know about that?
And that's all it took. Really they decided, okay, we're
gonna go check this out. And uh, they they found
their way by the way, General Eisenhower in General Patton
were a part of this little mission to go down
(33:39):
into the mine and try and see what's down there. Yeah,
and Patton has Patton has his own crazy scheme that
we can maybe mentioned at the end here. But what
do they find when they when they go into the mine, Well,
a whole crap ton of gold, seven thousand sacks of
gold bully to be precise, um in an underground area
(34:03):
that was around seventy deep a hundred and fifty feet
wide um. And the mine also had ninety eight million
francs French francs uh and um. The there's also a
ton of gold coin that was recovered down they're separate
and this absolute smorgess Borg of currency. Um wasn't even
(34:24):
the most alarming thing that they found down there. They
also found luggage with gold fillings that had been extracted
from Yeah, you guessed, at concentration camp detainees. And you
can actually see some film that was taken around or
of that time of what they found. There, a lot
(34:44):
of still photographs, some like I said, film and it
I don't even know how to describe it unless you
Unless you see it, you won't understand such a large
container of the gold from human beings. Mouthed, yeah, and
this this was a real thing. I think a lot
(35:05):
of people when they first learned of this at the
close of World War Two, I think a lot of
people thought maybe it was propaganda, or maybe it was
an unnecessary exaggeration. But it was not propaganda. It was
not an exaggeration. They were taking people's wedding rings, their watches,
they were literally taking metal out of people's teeth. And
(35:28):
this plunder, this Nazi gold story. We usually see reports
of it being scrolled away somewhere in Europe, right in
a mine or in a Swiss bank, or in the Vatican,
or we see it maybe as you said, Matt, being
wired or transported somehow to South America, which also is
very plausible, but we don't often talk about the plunder
(35:52):
closer to home. The United States is also guilty of
these types of nefarious clandestine activities. In The New York
Times reported this this following claim quote. In nineteen fifty,
the Federal Reserve Bank of New York melted down hundreds
of gold bars, burying the swastika imprint and recast them
(36:15):
with a pristine stamp bearing the words United States Assay Office.
At the time, according to memos from the FED, the U. S.
Treasury knew that a lot of the gold, worth about
twenty three million at the time, had been stolen from
the Netherlands in Belgium when they were invaded by Germany.
Operation Right. But this is like, you know this nineteen fifty,
(36:37):
Uncle Sam is not really asking questions, Just like the
Swiss banks, just like the the other collaborating forces that
we publicly despised, the US is just taking the money
and running. The rationale here is that Uncle Sam is
primarily concerned with rebuilding Europe at this time, rather than
(36:57):
investigating the ethical injuries in the providence of this stolen loop.
But back to New York Times. At the request of
the National City Bank, which later became City Bank, the
Treasury Department authorized the reissue of the gold, and that was,
according to this reporter, a polite phrase for purifying it
and wiping out the German markings so the gold could
(37:19):
be used as collateral for a transaction between Spain and
the I T. T Corporation that we're trying to build
a telephone system. But here's the other problems. It gets
more uncomfortable, Yeah, boy does it. Ever, the Germans meant
was known for taking gold that German troops stole from
(37:40):
central banks all over Europe and then melted them down.
Together with those more grizzly examples of plunder, the tooth fillings, UM,
things like wedding rings and other jewelry that was looted
from um people who were in turn in those concentration
camps and the death camps victims. Germany's goal was to
(38:02):
put these lifted items into a form that was a
lot harder to trace and then could be laundered through
the Swiss National Bank. Yeah. Yeah, and um, it's hard
to really know how much of the kind of gold
that we're talking about that came from victims from concentration
camps actually made it into each individual gold bullion bar
(38:26):
or each each coin that was then minted in Germany.
But we do know it happened, and we do know
that kind of gold was also just anecdotally smelted down
to create fillings for SS officers. That was a real
thing that occurred. Hitler's own dentist, the guy that he used,
(38:48):
would do that. Uh. And of course it's not proven. Uh,
there are rumors all over the place that specifically gold
from other people's mouths ended up in Hitler's mouth. Blah
blah blah. But but just the feeling that you're probably
getting just from knowing some of that, that perhaps this
(39:08):
gold that the United States melted down and purified was
actually from victims from concentration camps. Perhaps perhaps right. We'll
also have to note that the purification process, the re
smelting conducted by the government, likely wiped out all traces
of what historians call hate this euphemism, but that's this's
(39:30):
the euphemism people use non monetary gold. M uh, you know,
because it's gold that was never meant to be currency.
But if we think about it, that means that the
US had literally taken blood, money, gold ripped from people's mouths,
and there are there, there are more. I know a
lot of us listening today are saying, guys, you have
(39:52):
to talk about the Nazi gold train. So quick mention
of that. There's a local legend in Poland that a
train laden with gold had disappeared in May of nineteen.
Now the area is part of Poland, but previously when
this took place, it was southeast Germany people who searched
(40:13):
for the train. Ever since World War Two, no evidence
of a train has been found. You'll hear historians say
that the train never existed. And in two thousand fifteen
it was back in the news because people thought that
they had discovered the location of the train in the
course that searched. It turned out they had discovered something.
It was a cavity in the rock filled by a
(40:35):
natural ice formation. So no train that we know of.
Maybe there's a mythical train made of gold. This time
it was not just a train that had gold in
it or was carrying gold. Maybe there's a mythical golden
train out there somewhere that will learn about. It's called
the Hogwarts Express. Reference um yeah, this is some disturbing stuff.
(40:58):
Well let's okay, let's get down too. Just when we're
thinking about all of this. You know, we just mentioned
blood money, the concept of that very real sense of
blood money. But when you're thinking about wars and profiting
from having physical conflicts like that with other countries or
(41:19):
other places, with other people, and then gaining from that
all those altercations and those deaths and and the blood
that is spilled, um, this kind of thing like maybe
maybe we forget because we're so inundated in like our culture,
in particular in the United States of war movies a
(41:41):
lot of times that are to a great extent glorified,
like the the concept of fighting a good fight, fighting
for good, fighting the right side. Um. But but really,
just anytime there's war and profit generated, it should feel
for everyone on every side like an icky thing. I think. Well,
here's the crazy thing, man. I mean, I I distinctly remember,
(42:03):
you know, after nine eleven the idea of we're going
to war being a big deal in my mind and
thinking it was going to have some effect on my
day to day life. But we've been at war for
so long as a country that it's sort of your
sort of numb to it, and you don't really we
were so isolated from it in our daily lives that
it's very difficult unless you have military and your family
(42:25):
to have a real ramification of these conflicts, which, if
I would argue, I think many would most would agree
are largely for profit. The notion of staying in a
perpetual state of war feeds that machine. You know, well,
let's get let's just get to Afghanistan. And what we
learned in previous episodes about the poppy fields. Oh yes,
(42:45):
poppy production, which was waning under the Taliban, exploded under
US under US supervision during coalition control, right right, The
idea of being it's the best cash cross up. US
soldiers were tasked with protecting the opium the poppy fields. Rather,
(43:05):
let's were the oil fields in the rock? Sorry, I
don't know. I mean we we keep seeing it, at
least from the United States side, Well sure, from every side.
You know that it goes into US Medley Butler's idea
of war as a racket, economic confessions of an economic
hit man, the concept that war maybe an economic necessity
(43:28):
for certain types of governments or societies, and this money
goes missing. All of the time, we've barely touched on
things like we didn't talk about the Amber room, right,
that's missing too. We didn't talk about Himmler's ninety three
million dollars worth of silver. We didn't talk about Lake Vultian.
(43:48):
Apparently Germans hit a hundred million in gold there too.
There are laundry list of hidden or stolen gold and valuables,
and that kind of practice didn't stop when the Nazi
party collapsed. There was a palette with what a billion
dollars that just went missing in the Middle East. Uh,
(44:10):
don't don't talk about that. I'm just kidding. We did.
Didn't we do a whole episode on that, or at
least I know we talked about it. We did. We
did talk about it. And we've always known that war
and profit are inextricably intertwined. We know things continue to disappear. Uh,
this this is just by the way, when we say
money continues to disappear, we're just talking about the money
(44:32):
that people lost. We're not talking about the money that
never really existed due to black budgets and off the
book spending. Oh my god. And you know not to mention,
by the way, all the arms deals that occur across
the globe from one country to another. Good point. I
mean that, I mean, you want to talk about blood money,
it's right there, that's true. That's as true blood money,
(44:53):
blood money that's gonna be cashed out. And some people
will argue this is just uh, an un pleasant, necessary
piece of the global financial system. And some people would
respond to that argument by saying, well, why don't we
make another system for some people? Problem is that there's
not a problem. Business is very very good. Yeah, uh,
(45:16):
you know, I just just there's an anecdote. But I
just watched Fight Club for the first time in a
long time and had a discussion about it and that
feeling of why not just make a new system? Right? Um?
In that movie there are depictions of people wanting to
make a new system, But that concept of tearing one
(45:38):
down to create a new one is pretty terrifying. Um,
at least now that I'm in my mid thirties, I
probably been. They've already been, like, you know, paying into
the current system for so many years. Now I can't
start over. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's weird the
way that kind of feeling happens. But I would be
right there with you, that that feeling is pretty pervasive
(45:59):
of thing needs to change because the system is not
functioning properly or ump for ump for umph. Something must
be done, but no one agrees what we want to
hear from you. What do you think how much truth
is there to these different claims of hidden Nazi treasure?
Is there more of this treasure somewhere out there in
this wide world of ours? The answer I think is yes.
(46:22):
And I also, I'm going to go a step further
pure speculation. I think not only is some of that
stolen stuff still out there, it is accounted for by
people who have just held onto it or profited from it,
and they're not going to come forward because why would you.
You're a war criminal at that point. Well in decades
have passed by this point that maybe it's not even known,
(46:46):
like by current heads of banks or you know, board
members or something. If this stuff is secreted away somewhere
in a vault, maybe it's not known what it is
because maybe it was smelted down, just like the United
States allectually did. I don't know. I think you're right, then,
I think you're right. Last thing, just for an example,
(47:06):
I've got to mention this because it was so bizarre
to learn about this. George Patton, who we mentioned earlier,
had a plan to use Nazi gold to fund the
US military after the after the war. Patton, after discovering
that a salt mine treasure, he sat down with some
army generals later that night and they said, okay, how
(47:28):
do we handle this? And Patton's first suggestion off the top,
he was coming in hot man. He said, let's distribute
the gold to the boys. He wanted quote uh, some
gold for every son of in the third Army. And
they said, no, you can't do that. We have to
we have to follow some sort of law. And then
he said, okay, well, if we can't just give it
away to the boys, let's keep it a secret from
(47:50):
the Congress and from the generals who aren't cool. It
didn't work. I love that he used the phrase generals
who aren't cool. Yeah, that's that That part might be paraphrasing.
But we know that there's still we know there's still
stuff that's being discovered. There was one point eight billion
(48:12):
dollars worth of art discovered in a Munich apartment in
two thousand and twelve. People are still finding things that
was not very long ago. So what do you think
about all of this stuff? If you do, you have
other examples that we should talk about their noteworthy let
us know. You can find us on Facebook or Twitter
where we are a conspiracy stuff. We are conspiracy stuff
(48:34):
show on Instagram. If you want to check us out individually,
you can find me at how Now Noel Brown? I think, Maddie,
you got one now, don't you? Yeah? I do. But
you're gonna have to go back through the the archives
and find that one time that we said it like that. Huh?
How much you've been? I am going to be on
(48:56):
a number of strange excursions over the next few weeks.
Hopefully I will make it back safe and sound. You
can find what I'm up to where I'm getting kicked
into or kicked out of on Instagram at Ben Bowling,
or you can find terrible one liners and hot takes
on Twitter at Ben Bowlen H. S W. If you
(49:18):
don't really care for the social meds, we of all
people get it. We have a number you can call.
We are one eight three three st d W I
t K. Leave a message, just tell us what you
think and you might get on the air. It's a
nice little jingle you got there, Yeah, there, there you go.
So you give us a call, well we'll hear it
and it'll be fun. Hey. If you don't want to
(49:39):
do any of that stuff, you can also send us
a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i
heart radio dot com. M Stuff they Don't Want You
(50:02):
to Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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