[music playing] Quinto: World War II
was the deadliest conflict in modern history. But it was also one of
the greatest heists ever pulled. In their quest
for world domination, Germany's Third Reich
amassed what might be the largest collection
of stolen wealth ever acquired. And those aren't
the only secrets the Nazis kept hidden away. Equally valuable,
they were protecting knowledge, advanced weapons technology completely unknown
to the Allies, which, if unleashed,
could have led World War II to a very different outcome. Tonight we aim to uncover the Nazis'
most enduring secrets, from an incredible
stockpile of lost gold to a first-ever television look
at a cutting-edge machine thought to have vanished
70 years ago and one treasure so priceless, it's been called the missing
Eighth Wonder of the World... as we go in search
of Nazi secrets. From 1939 to 1945, more than 50 countries
were embroiled in World War II. But Adolf Hitler's atrocities actually started
six years earlier. When he became chancellor
of Germany in 1933, he immediately
began preparing his Third Reich to take over Europe
and perhaps the entire world. To do this,
Hitler needed two things, weapons and wealth. To achieve the first,
the Nazis began hiring and even kidnapping
Europe's top scientists, putting them to work
on new weapons technology. To achieve the second, the Nazis
looted almost four tons of gold from central banks across Europe and vast troves
of priceless artwork. While some of the Nazis'
stolen loot and technology has been recovered,
much more is still missing. The question is,
where did it all go? NYU Professor
Dr. Timothy Naftali is a leading expert
on Nazi plunder. Today he's gotten
a rare opportunity to visit what might be
the Nazis' favorite hiding spot for their secret stolen goods. - Today I'm two hours
outside of Frankfurt. I'm headed to Merkers mine
to see where the Nazis put the gold that they
had plundered from Europe at the end of World War II. Quinto: The town of Merkers
is still home to a working
salt and potassium mine, and, just like in 1945,
the Nazis' secret treasure room is not easily accessible. The journey starts
with a 2,000-foot descent in the mine's industrial lift. - When you descend
in the elevator, you have
this sense of claustrophobia. And when you leave the entryway, you have a sense that you're
completely locked away. Quinto: Dr. Naftali
has never had the chance to visit this site before. Luckily, he has the advantage
of a mining truck and a driver who knows the way. A visitor in 1945 could have spent years
wandering these tunnels without ever finding
the stolen gold. - Here we are 500 meters down, traveling in a truck. It's very dark. There are 30 kilometers
of passageways in this mine. You could take
the map of this mine and put it
over the map of Leipzig, a large city in Germany. That's how extensive
the mine is. Quinto: Dr. Naftali has finally
reached a nondescript entrance to the room the Nazis
simply called number eight. Behind this door sat one of the greatest
treasure hoards ever assembled. - Wow. Quinto: 75 feet wide
and 150 feet long, with 12-foot-high ceilings and its own tram railway
leading in and out, this space once contained the lion's share
of Nazi Germany's secret wealth. - I could see why the Nazis
had selected this place, because I don't know how anyone, without a little bit of luck,
could have found it. Quinto: But how did
the Allies find this room thousands of feet below ground along one of a near-infinite
series of tunnels? Actually, it was
completely by accident. - Two French women
told American soldiers that they had seen
sacks of money being taken out of the mine. Well, at that point,
the U.S. Army took notice. Quinto: But the Nazis
wouldn't give up their secret treasure so easily. There was an intense battle before the U.S.
took control of the mine and discovered
the door of room number eight. Fearing the door
would be booby-trapped, troops blew a hole in the wall. It wasn't until the dust settled that they realized
the enormity of their discovery. - U.S. soldiers
come into this room, and they discover
8,198 of these gold bars. Quinto: In addition
to 110 tons of gold bars, the army found
55 crates of gold bullion... 5,000 bags of various currency, and hundreds
of priceless artworks. And when they reached
the back wall of room number eight, they found something
even more shocking. - Behind me, there were
189 suitcases and trunks. They were filled with
silverware, jewelry, gold teeth. The Nazi war machine's
hunger for gold was such that the S.S.
was looking for the gold in the teeth of its victims. And so, the teeth were stolen so that they could be added to
the plunder of the Nazi state. Quinto: Along with the treasure, the U.S. Army found
a detailed inventory of every item
in every container. They spent several days loading up the stolen goods
and taking them to an abandoned bank
in Frankfurt for safekeeping. But despite all
of the meticulous oversight, it's here
that the true mystery begins, because, as it turns out, the secret treasure
of Merkers mine was quite a bit lighter
than expected. - The fact of the matter
is the sums don't add up, and there still is some mystery as to what happened
to all of that gold. It is estimated that the Nazis
stole $598 million-- this is 1945 dollars--
worth of gold. What was found here
was not all of it. Quinto: The gold
stored at Merkers mine was worth
about $250 million in 1945, less than half of the alleged
$598 million total. So where was the rest of it? - The fact of the matter is we don't know
where all of it went. - Imagine a multi-billion-dollar
lost treasure out there
waiting to be discovered. It sounds like a pipe dream,
but it may actually be true. Though the U.S. Army
recovered a vast amount of stolen Nazi gold
in Merkers mine, it's been estimated
that an even larger quantity is still unaccounted for, a sum that today
is worth about $5 billion. Without a doubt, a great deal of
that was spent to fund the war, but did the Nazis
actually spend all of it? We know for a fact
that the answer is no. In April of 1945,
nearly 10 tons of gold was found by the Allies
near the town of Einsiedl. Even as recently as 2015, amateur treasure-hunter
Florian Bautsch found a cache of 217 buried Nazi gold coins
outside the town of Luneburg. Why were these
smaller amounts of gold separated
from the Nazi stockpile? It's a simple matter
of greed and opportunity. As the war ended,
soldiers from both sides couldn't help but be tempted
to take some of the treasure for themselves and hide it away. How much of this
now twice-stolen gold remains hidden somewhere,
still waiting to be found? Treasure hunter Jurgen Proske believes it could be
a staggering amount. In fact,
he has an incredible new lead on one particularly large cache
of stolen Nazi loot. - Now we are going
to the Lake Walchen, which was the final destination
of the gold from the former
national bank of the Nazis. [speaking English] Quinto: We know
the Nazis transferred gold from their national bank
to Merkers mine. From there,
Jurgen believes 10 tons of it was brought here to Einsiedl... where the Allies
found it buried in 1945. But, according to Jurgen,
they didn't find everything. Quinto: 150 kilograms
may not sound like a lot, but it's actually
$7 million worth of gold. Jurgen has been
looking for it for 10 years. But recently he's found
an incredible new clue as to its whereabouts. Quinto: According to Jurgen,
in the diary, the officer confesses
to stealing the gold. But when he returned
years later, the landscape had changed, and he could no longer find
his buried treasure. The question is,
did someone else find it, or could it still be here? Quinto: If he's right, Jurgen
could be about to close the case on a 75-year-old,
$7-million mystery. [music playing] [beeping] Quinto: This is a German
M43 hand grenade, which would have originally been mounted on a stalk
for throwing. [detector beeping] Quinto: But despite the danger, this is a good sign for Jurgen. Because there was no active
fighting here during the war, it would be unusual
to find a grenade. Unless, of course,
some disgruntled soldiers were here guarding
something they'd stolen... like a $7 million treasure. [detector beeping] - Aha. Quinto: There are
rounds of ammunition from Nazi machine guns. And remnants
of a World War II belt buckle. Quinto: But where is the gold? So far, Jurgen's metal detector has only turned up
small objects. 330 pounds of gold would
generate a much larger reading. [detector beeping] [clinking] Quinto: It may not be the gold, but this helmet
is an incredibly rare find. There are also remnants
of a gas mask inside. Quinto: As today's search
comes to an end, Jurgen is more confident
than ever that he's on the right track. The grenade, ammunition,
insignia, and helmet found today could well indicate
that something valuable was being guarded here. - As we've already seen, on any given day,
German treasure hunters might just be
one turn of the shovel away from millions of dollars
or even billions in Nazi gold. But let's not forget
that stolen money was only a small part
of the Nazis' many secrets. They also pulled off the biggest
art heist in history, hundreds of thousands
of priceless works by artists like Michelangelo,
Rembrandt, and Van Gogh. Hitler had plans to exhibit
all of his stolen artwork at a new museum to be built in his hometown
of Linz, Austria. At the centerpiece
of the<i> Führer</i> museum was to be perhaps
the single greatest treasure the Nazis ever stole. What was
this incredible treasure? It's a work of art so massive
and so valuable that it's been called the missing
Eighth Wonder of the World. But to those who lost it, it's simply known
as the Amber Room. Historian David Caldwell-Evans
is an expert on the Third Reich's
many stolen treasures. But none has captivated him as much as this one
in particular. - The Amber Room
is a unique work of art. It was a room entirely paneled
with nearly 190 square feet of decorated, carved,
embellished amber. Quinto: Estimated to be worth as much
as half a billion dollars, the Germans gave the Amber Room
as a gift to Russia in 1716. It was installed
in St. Petersburg's
Catherine Palace. That is, until the Nazis invaded and looted the palace in 1941. They dismantled the Amber Room,
packing it into 24 large crates. Then they brought it
to Konigsberg castle in the German state of Prussia. But the Soviets
wouldn't give up so easily. In 1944,
they advanced on Konigsberg and destroyed the castle. As they searched the ruins, they were shocked to discover that the Amber Room
wasn't there. So where could it have gone? Today David is
in the Polish town of Mamerki hoping to answer
that very question. Just 60 miles from Konigsberg,
Mamerki was the center of German command
on the Eastern Front. Here you can find remnants
of the Nazis all around. - This is
just one of the bunkers surviving today at Mamerki. As you can see,
they're full of earth. They've not
been properly explored. Only one percent of the area has been properly explored
or been examined. So, from bunkers like this,
there could be a branch, a network of tunnels,
reaching out across this area to connect who knows what, with other bunkers,
air-raid shelters, or maybe a chamber
holding the Amber Room. But the important question is, why would the Amber Room
come here? Quinto: That question
has a very simple answer. This is high-ranking
Nazi official Erich Koch. He oversaw the Amber Room
at Konigsberg. After his capture
and imprisonment, he told investigators
that the room was brought here to Mamerki and kept in a bunker
just 200 yards away. When that bunker was searched,
nothing was found. But Bartek Plebanczyk
of the Mamerki Museum is convinced
it must still be nearby. Today he's brought
a new tool to aid in his search, a ground-penetrating radar. - How does it
actually work, then? What is it showing us
on the screen here? - I'm making the lines,
like one line for five meters, and if something
is different in the ground, like, let's say
a concrete wall or metal parts, the machine will calculate
any differences, and I will see
something is under the ground. Quinto:
It's a painstaking process that involves
crossing back and forth through an area
in precisely aligned paths. - If the Amber Room
is at Mamerki, it's not gonna be
in one of the obvious bunkers that anyone can visit today. It must be buried somewhere. It must be underground. Quinto: It takes
nearly four hours to fully map the area surrounding the bunker
identified by Erich Koch, but the search has turned up
one very promising lead. - This, this point
is very interesting for me. The bunker is here. We make--We searched
the square area and all the colors are the same,
and this color has changed, so I have very strong belief that, uh, we've found
what we are looking for. - So what's next? - I think
we should start digging. Quinto: The object
on the radar scan is less than a foot
below the ground. Even so,
reaching it won't be easy. - Mamerki, today,
is a largely unspoiled area. It's sort of natural forest. It's been growing here
for many years. So when you think
you have 70 years of neglect to dig through
to find anything, then any task is gonna be
extremely difficult here. - [shovel clatters]
- I-Is that a line there? - Yes, it's a straight line, so this is exactly
what we are looking for. Quinto: The excavation
has revealed a concrete hatch. Now the pair must determine
if it's safe to enter. - Previous searches
here at Mamerki have found German explosive
devices from World War II, hand grenades,
mines lying around the woods. Very often, they're inert, because they've been immersed
in water for many years, but you simply
can't take that risk. - Bartek works with a local
expert in underground surveys. - The reason for bringing him in
is he actually designs systems, cameras that can
be used by the security and the search and rescue
services around the world to actually explore cavities,
things like that. Quinto: This could be
the first glimpse anyone has had of this chamber
in over 70 years. - I'm getting a picture. It's pretty dark in there. Okay, now I can see something. There's something
right by the camera now. Steel, uh, steps, rungs, ladder going down
the side of the--the brick. It's very solid-looking
brickwork after all this time. Quinto: The camera doesn't show
any immediate hazards, but there's only one way to tell just how large
this bunker might be. Could this be the resting place of the Nazis'
most valuable stolen treasure? If so, we're finally
on the verge of finding out. What is the single greatest
treasure the Nazis ever stole? One candidate
is the famed Amber Room... a lavish chamber
taken from a Russian palace, worth up
to half a billion dollars, that has been missing
since 1944. - I can say that something
is different under the ground. Quinto: But today there's
a chance it might soon be found in a complex of underground
bunkers in Mamerki, Poland. - Is it safe to go down? - It seems like
it's safe to go inside. - Well, the hatch is open, so
there's only one way to find out whether we found the Amber Room,
and that's go down and look. Right, well, I'm down now. Uh, let me give you an idea
what I can see if I just turn on
the light I brought. It's an extremely
strange feeling going down
into a brick chamber... at the site of the German Army's high command headquarters
in World War II. You do realize that no one has touched those iron rungs
for 70 years. Quinto: The chamber
is dry and secure, suggesting that,
if the Amber Room is here, it might remain
well-preserved. - And so, brickwork, solid concrete roof above me,
and sand, sand and mud
filling the bottom of this. Looks as though
the brickwork has fallen away. This does look,
unfortunately, like a dead end. Quinto: Even if
it were buried under the sand, this chamber appears too small
to hold the 24 crates that contain
the dismantled Amber Room. But David and Bartek
still believe it could be hidden nearby. - It's important to remember, when Erich Koch, the Nazi
governor of East Prussia, was brought back
to this site in 1970, he identified a site
only 200 yards away and said that's where
the Amber Room was buried. So, between there-- between that site
and this site, who knows? There could be other chambers,
other ways. Even if this doesn't connect,
another chamber might connect to the last resting place
of the Amber Room. Quinto: There are
200 buildings in this complex, covering over 600 acres, with many more miles
of tunnels underneath. Each year, Bartek hopes
to scan and excavate at least
two new hidden chambers, but, at that rate, the work
will still take over a decade. - It's bound to be
a painstaking process, and something
that's easy to find, you don't get
quite the same reward. And the story of the Amber Room,
it's so complex, so mysterious that every time you chip away at that fundamental
underlying mystery, one more place
that it isn't, just brings you closer
to the place that it is. - The Amber Room
appears to be a Nazi secret that will remain hidden for
at least a little while longer, but let's not forget that the entire concept
of Nazi secrets could be interpreted
in many ways. So far, we've focused
on stolen gold and hidden treasures, certainly items
of great intrigue, but we're ignoring something that could be
even more important. What if the Nazis had a secret
that could have changed history? As it turns out,
they actually did, a devastating technology that destroyed
nearly 3,000 Allied ships. And, in fact,
it could have been even worse, because, as we're
about to find out, Hitler was on the verge
of launching a weapon that could potentially have
won the war for the Third Reich. What was the single greatest
secret the Nazis possessed? Was it the billions of dollars
in stolen gold they hid deep underground? Was it their collection
of artistic, religious, and cultural masterpieces
from across Europe? Or was it something else, something that could have
actually won them the war? To achieve their goal
of world domination, the Third Reich rapidly
researched weapons technologies, making incredible advances
in a short period of time. They developed
long-range missiles and jet airplane engines
well before the Allies. Fortunately these breakthroughs
happened late in the war, when the tide had already
turned against Hitler. But there was
one secret technology that actually made
a significant impact, the U-boat. German U-boats sunk 3,000 ships
during World War II, causing the destruction of over 5 million tons
of Allied goods. And, according to military
historian Dr. Geoffrey Wawro, it could have been
a whole lot worse. Today Dr. Wawro
is sailing from Denmark with a six-man
underwater salvage crew in search of the Nazis'
most powerful top-secret weapon, which was lost
just before the end of the war. - We're going
to look for U-3523, one of the most advanced
German U-boats in World War II. Quinto: Dr. Wawro's team
hopes to solve several mysteries
on this voyage, including
what secret technology the U-boat
may have been equipped with and why it was here
in the first place. - Was it just a crew
that was on a routine mission, or were there Nazi grandees
aboard who were trying to flee, or was it loaded with Nazi gold
and other treasure? Quinto: Thought to be
the deadliest submarine ever made, the U-3523
could very well have changed
the outcome of World War II. - This was
the first fully submergible for long periods of time,
long-endurance submarine that was designed primarily
to operate underwater, and that restored stealthiness
to the submarine service. It meant that subs, which were
always very vulnerable 'cause they had to come up
to the surface to get air, now they could stay underwater with this ingenious
German invention called the snorkel tube. Quinto: This submarine
was the first in history that could outmaneuver
an Allied ship while remaining unseen
underwater. And it wasn't
just built for speed. It was also built to destroy. - The Type XXI U-boat was better armed than
the other German submarines. It had six
bow-facing torpedo tubes that--that could be
electronically reloaded with these hydraulic
assisted machines, which meant that you
could fire six torpedoes faster than you
could fire one torpedo on the old Type VII U-boat. So this thing was really
gonna be a game changer as far as the Germans
were concerned. Quinto: What other secrets could these U-boats
potentially be hiding? The Allies never
got the chance to find out, because the Nazis were defeated before construction
was finished. - There were 118 of these
Type XXI U-boats commissioned. 3523 was one of the four
that became operational. Quinto: And, of those four,
only two were deployed. The one we're
searching for today, U-3523, launched just one day before
Germany officially surrendered, as the Nazis were attempting
one final effort to win the war. - Admiral Dönitz,
who replaced Adolf Hitler as German<i> Führer</i>
in the last days of the war, was ordering
all the U-boats to assemble for a last stand in Norway. They had
350,000 troops up there. They had a lot
of naval assets congregated in the ports like Bergen
and Trondheim in Norway. Quinto: But U-3523
never made it to Norway. So where exactly did it end up? Geoffrey's team
believes the U-boat was hit by an Allied bomb
and sunk here, 10 miles off the coast
of Skagen, Denmark, a place where the ocean floor
is nearly 400 feet down. - We're gonna use this R.O.V.,
remote operated vehicle, to dive beneath the waves
and look for it. - We have the sonar here,
so when we reach the seafloor, we can use that
to locate the wreckage, and we got
three different cameras, and we've got four lights. - So we basically have, uh, eyes and illumination on the seabed,
so we're gonna be able - to see everything...
- Yep. - hopefully, so let's
get this thing in the water - Let's do it. Quinto: The R.O.V.
has a 1,000-foot tether and approximately
two hours of battery life. - It definitely has a needle
in the haystack feel about it, what we're doing. I mean,
'cause we're way out here in the middle of the ocean,
and it's 400 feet down. So we got
our work cut out for us. Quinto: If they
could locate the wreckage, the team could pull off
the first-ever televised look at what might be the Nazis'
deadliest secret of all. Quinto: Is it possible
that the Nazis possessed a secret weapon that could have changed
the outcome of World War II? Military historian
Dr. Geoffrey Wawro thinks it is. Today he's out
with an underwater search team in the North Sea, which could be
the final resting place of an advanced
Nazi submarine called U-3523. - What we're doing today
is gonna show us one of the only surviving
examples of this U-boat. It's gonna show us, maybe,
why this thing was leaving. Was it actually
heading out into the Atlantic to try to escape with
high-ranking German officials? Or was it trying to get
up to the German submarine pens in--on the coast of Norway? Quinto: To find the U-boat, Geoffrey's team has sent in
a remotely operated drone to scan the seafloor
400 feet down. - Okay, here we got the sonar, and then we're looking
for the--the wreckage. It looks like we have
a good mark here, and, uh, we're
gonna drive over. - So I see, like,
some hard object - that the sonar's picking up.
- Yep. - And then that's
the camera that, whenever we get close enough,
we can get a good look at it? - Yep. Yep. - Wow, that's very interesting. G.P.S. and our charts tell us
this is where it ought to be, but what if it's
not where we think it is? So we're looking at the monitor, and it's just dark, and we're
not really seeing anything. We're down pretty deep. Getting closer.
I can feel it. W-We're straining
for some sight of U-3523 and hoping against hope
that it--that it's there. Feel like I see some-- - Coming in here now.
- There's some-- I see something right here.
Look at that. - There it is.
- That's it. That's it. - That's the tail.
- There it is. - She's been down here
for, what, 74 years, and we just found her. So here it is, a--you know,
a top-secret Nazi technology that was designed
to win the war. And people were desperate to get hold
of a prototype of this thing, and here we are looking at one
on the seafloor here. We've got 70-odd years
of marine life growing on this thing,
so it's pretty obscured, but that's really cool. Quinto: At this level
of depth and decay, it's hard to make out
the details of the U-boat, but one thing is clear. After it was bombed,
it went down fast, and it went down headfirst. - You see that it's driven into
the seabed at a 45-degree angle, so it just dove a-as deep
as the ocean was at that point, 400 feet, and then it
just hit the seafloor and it went in like a lawn dart. Quinto: From the portion
sticking up from the sand, we can calculate that U-3523 was approximately
250 feet long and 26 feet wide. It appears to have two
turbo-charged diesel engines, allowing it to travel
nearly twice as fast as any other sub of its time. - And, really, think about
how this was gonna be the backbone
of a revived German navy. They were gonna build
1,200 to 2,000 of these. Quinto: A fleet
of that size could have completely blocked off
the Allied naval forces. - This is just such an advance on the previous
German submarines, and, in one year,
they made this technology leap? It looks like, you know,
a-a nuclear submarine from, you know,
the 1950s or 1960s. Quinto: Unfortunately
the sub's weapons systems are completely buried
at the front of the vessel, and the exterior hatches
all appear to be closed. Now that it's been discovered, U-3523 is officially classified
as a war grave, meaning its interior
cannot be disturbed. Whatever secrets this U-boat is
hiding won't be revealed today. - I'm just personally
thrilled to have been a part of this expedition,
to find this sunken U-boat, and to get such a close
and intimate look at it. And to begin solving
this mystery of U-3523, to me,
that was just a real thrill. thrill of a lifetime. - With the discovery of U-3523, the mystery of one of the Nazi''
most powerful weapons can finally be put to rest. But when it comes
to Nazi secrets, there are still
important answers that need to be uncovered. Somewhere out there
are billions of dollars in lost gold and currency. Still missing
are hundreds of thousands of artistic masterworks. All of these items
were treasured long before they fell
into the hands of the Nazis. It's crucial that our society
remains vigilant, because the truth is
there won't be justice until the Nazis have
no more secrets remaining. The search continues.
