National Geographic- Nazi Underworld Nazi Gold

by 1945 the Nazis were on the run the Allies were flying high and about to roam over Germany's flat western borders but in the deep southern heartland of Hitler's Reich he loomed the threat of the unknown fears grew of a last-ditch Nazi fight back in the Alps in terms of a defense it was an ideal place to defend yourself this one is was high mountains a very difficult turn how could you wage a war with tanks they're almost not possible very low experience from the Allied side and to wage a war in this mountain region a lot of experience from the German sides they don't offer elite troops there then you learn a lot of SS troops in Austria so uncertainty amid such uncertainty can evidence of the Western Allies worst fears neutral Switzerland bordered part of the German Alpine region the American intelligence chief in ban allan dulles have a grim report it suggested that a fanatical elite was massing in the mountains a hard call led by those with death heads on their caps the merciless SS would spearhead a desperate guerrilla war from an Alpine fortress it was the very fact that the Bavarian and Austrian mountains seemed to lend themselves so well to guerrilla warfare that this horrible idea because it represented a nightmare for allied military strategists that this horrible idea started to gain currency the horrible idea was an ultimate nightmare for the advancing allies an Alpen fest own or Alpine fortress extending into northern Austria defended by thousands of troops stealing themselves for a final do-or-die fight for the fatherland their fingers on the triggers of an arsenal of secret weapons hidden in crags and crannies at this time in say in January 1945 but didn't know what was going on when they entered Germany and they were taken by surprise by the battle of bulge for the German counter-attack and the 744 and they didn't expect that so the question was yes we have won the war this is clear but I mean are we able to cross the Rhine are there some secret weapon still is there somehow a secret counter-attack prepared so this was all uncertain uncertainty and fears of so-called wonder weapons were understandable the Germans had already developed ballistic missiles and jet planes and other more fearsome more destructive Horrors were on nazi drawing boards but the Allies decided to do was to be prudent to assume given Hitler's nature given the fanaticism of the SS and the fact the SS probably controlled the German state by then to prepare for the worst the Alpine redoubt was the worst it was the worst case scenario that anyone could imagine and they felt they had to prepare for some tunnels and bunkers had already been excavated in existing salt mines even today the crumbling remains of the would be Alpine fortress are well hidden one tunnel complex near the Austrian city of Salzburg was to be the command center of the Nazi Alpine fortress such tunnels were also used to build planes and rockets as Allied bombing reduced conventional German factories to rubble this is worth according to the plans for the Alpine fortress the high command of the SS would have been situated led by Han and billions Nicholas documents in Berlin were already merged in address the complex extends over 6,000 square meters could plant but and the plan was for 22,000 square meters with the Hamilton as well as bunkers below the Germans seemed to be a massing manpower above senior Nazis gathered in the Alps SS chief Heinrich Himmler's deputy and Stapleton Brunner moved back to his native Austria to a villa above the spa town of out Jose Himmler named him commander-in-chief of all forces in southern Europe he would coordinate the Nazi fight back from a region he knew well he was somehow in charge of the secret police and the political police so he was quite an very important figure in the SS world another influential Austrian SS man was lurking in the Alps the presence of SS commando leader lieutenant colonel Otto Skorzeny was yet more evidence of an Alpine fortress Otto Skorzeny was was Austrian and by birth a Mosul was a weird figure was almost no military training and but he was very clever and to establish himself in the SS world at this time of the war and in April 1945 he was in command of the what we call these Special Forces as special force the commands units and he was able to withdraw to office command units from the Eastern Front to Austria and this should have been to the core of the defence force of the Alpine fortress the region bordering southern Bavaria and Austria was already riddled with old mining tunnels some of them were extended and used to build wettest shruts is the site of old austrian silver mines near the german border one shaft runs deep into the mountain and a haunting Nazi rule the dank dark subterranean world is usually off-limits to visitors two kilometers inside the mountain a broken steel and concrete shell of an underground aircraft Factory is slowly rotting away bits of rusting metal lies scattered across the stony floors the corroded remains of aircraft parts abandoned before workers had the chance to put them together Alvers a year for the whole complex is in entirely the same state as it was when it was left following the detonation at the time and the workers had only just left a complex everything is still standing on mounting racks it really is unbelievable Goblin deep underground far from a threat of Allied aerial bombing the old mining tunnels were ideal places to build weapons including a new generation of planes diehard Nazis hoped would repel the Allies rampaging into the rice these are the remains of one of the first jet fighters in the world the Messerschmitt 262 almost one and a half thousand rebuilt but only a few hundred flew in combat the Germans had also developed a jet-powered bomber Hermann Goering the head of the Luftwaffe had dictated a requirement to the aircraft industry that he wanted this thousand kilometer aircraft thousand kilometer range that could fly 2,000 kilometers an hour and carry a thousand kilograms of bombs and at the time it was a huge a very very challenging requirement for any any manufacturer to meet German engineers became another great challenge and had developed the world's first long-range ballistic missile the v2 SS chief Heinrich Himmler was one of many top Nazis who had visited the v2 testing facility at Panem endure more than a thousand vetoes were fired at Britain they were the pinnacle of rocket technology at the time flying some 80 kilometers above the earth v2 sparked fear and devastation they are estimated to have killed almost 3,000 people launched from mobile ramps v2s were another potential threat from an Alpine fortress and there was another even greater horror emerging from Nazi drawing boards a longer range version of the v-2 dubbed the america rocket such horrors were the brainchild of Nazi engineers like van have fun bomb with allied invaders closing in around them in early 1945 they were redirected south to the so-called Alpine fortress from baldon vorlon von Braun was ordered to go to the Alps so he received an official order to leave Peenemunde so we didn't flee but it was requested that we go to the Alpine fortress in the south of Germany his chance again now stood Trant the original plan was which we had never believed to continue building v2 s down there the Nazi Germans may have had a technological advantage but they were vastly outnumbered by conventional planes tanks and troops German airfields and factories were overrun in central Germany the advancing allies found the remains of another wonder weapon and menacing back like jet fighter bomber partially made of wood sexy and looked fishing and fast and yeah and you know menacing was a unique configuration and a unique shape advanced technology jet powered interceptor faster than anything the Allies could feel the Whorton h9 was also covered in carbon and plywood making it more difficult to detect by radar it was perhaps the world's first stealth type aircraft the holy brothers hope that plane would eventually carry a one-ton bomb if the court nine could have been put into production perhaps even fitted it with rockets which Rockets unguided rockets that they could use that you know of used against the Bombers I think all these things are quite possible and filled it in significant numbers it would have been certainly faster than the Allied piston-driven airplanes and it could have had a significant impact on on the air war conventional planes were still winning the war for the Allies but the possibility of a German Counter Strike through the Alps forced a change in tactics potential threats like Hitler's rocket engineers had to be stopped from reaching the mountains in the south generalizing our because of his fear of a final Nazi campaign in the mountains of southern Bavaria and Austria decides to cut Germany in half to prevent troops Vermont and SS troops from the northern part of Germany to go south to Bavaria and Austria Eisenhower changed the direction of his main thrust and directed a spare head south towards the Alps it doesn't want to see them filling the mountains with material ammunition orchards so Allied strategy is directly affected how long would it take to defeat three hundred thousand Nazis armed to the teeth in the mountains no one knew the rocket engineers from the Baltic coast evaded the Allied advance and made it to the Alps they were a vital asset to be protected in the barracks of the PBX Yaga or mountain troops was French were to DSS the sphere originally the SS had planned that we've all moved into the barracks they wanted to concentrate us all there and I know bomba can do the scan search team searched but then one bomb could have killed the entire team so this convinced the SS commander that we should disperse across the country under Samba Alchemist rocket engineers were not the only assets moved to the relative safety of the Alps the Reichsbank in Berlin was badly bombed gold cash and other reserves were no longer safe in the capital hundreds of millions of dollars worth of government and private treasure was shipped south I believe that this is the only time in history that so much treasure has been consolidated together a treasure of such encounter will value has been concentrated in one area at one time most of the Reichsbank gold dumped in a mine was recovered by the Allies a small percentage remained unaccounted for there are still Nazi relics in the tunnels mines and alpine lakes around Germany's southern borders some believe that fabled Nazi treasure still lies hidden in the region where Hitler's diehard disciples planned to raise an Alpine fortress some tantalizing tales of Nazi treasure are based on supposed I witness accounts in the last days of the war but not all can be dismissed as fanciful a mule train spotted traveling up an Alpine mountain one night attracted attention I wouldn t are not the Yankee some locals who had relatively little to do with the confusion of the world realized something was going on including my mother Olivia Thomason she was the young girl then and after doing the chores in the stables one evening she saw a column of mules making its way up the mountain passing one special thing she always mentioned was that there was a white mule among the race the smoothieboard a babe gave us storms mother saw what was supposed to be a secret transport of hundreds of gold bars worth millions of dollars it didn't stay a secret for loving this gold was also eventually recovered by American troops after rumors spread about the mysterious mule train in the night Gupta's in total hinged on him I think Sabrina started because there are a few forest workers who saw these bags I fear this is Sookie Cosima essence wasn't all of that many people have noticed something was MIT becoming rumors and stories persist of other buried treasures that were not recovered according to local legends some people grew suddenly rich after the war such tales have attracted a new generation of treasure hunters in the old Alpine fortress territory oh yeah oh there's something here when did efforts mythic or at the end of our expertise here we need someone to help us a bomb disposal team confirmed that they were right to be cautious Jurgen and fellow treasure hunters found a cache of live rifle grenades the Nazi goat trail extends further east to the picture-postcard lakes and mountains of the salt scum aboot near Salzburg in Austria this was also to be part of the Alpen festival it's another place where stories of hidden treasure proliferate there are also treasure Katia's which came from the SS and and the Foreign Office everybody had evacuated their individual treasures as you might say down to this area as well as gold priceless artworks taken from private collectors churches and museums were sent south Hitler had intended to display art acquired by his agents in a special Museum in his Austrian birth town of Linz but as defeat loomed the treasures were sent to salt mines for safekeeping but not all treasures required the protective rarefied atmosphere of a my the stunning lakes that are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site have an added a viewer as fabled dumping grounds for Nazi gold the salts chemical has been dubbed The Devil's dust bin Nazi relics have been recovered from the Grand Lakes like this sign that proclaims Nazis enjoy visiting here it probably adorned one of the many local inns until such advertising suddenly became unfashionable in 1945 one of the many alluring stories surrounds the deep remote Lake top let's see a local farmer is said to have been summoned in the dead of night to help SS men dump truck loads of heavy boxes into the lake packed with gold and secret Nazi files such alleged eyewitness accounts sparked a kind of gold rush divers dreamt of scooping up a fortune but alpine lakes are dangerous at least two divers have drowned in the top let's say it's dark waters full of snags and hidden obstacles but in 1987 it seemed that the deadly risks were worth it a breathtaking treasure was apparently recovered from the treacherous mud by a local dive expert Gerhard Sommer we humped us into will dump it in the top let's see and then recovered it and Britain had it confiscated three days later they realized it wasn't gold cooties it was a glittering example of Gerhard Salle's mischievous sense of humor the gold ingots were bars of bronze but his hoax proved to be a 24-karat sensation but becoming victims were given it back obvious but there was a massive media reaction median of gold found in the topless table it went round all of Europe inspiring transferal / the fake gold features in a display in his dive shop along with a huge range of Nazi and other relics recovered from the lake he's found everything from medals to a working anti-aircraft gun but no gold and yet another kind of treasure has been found in the top let's say in the 1980s biologist Hans flicker venture deep into the lake searching for a wealth of wildlife the biologists discovered a previously unknown worm but that's not what made headlines the lake yielded an intriguing wartime secret bundles of British pound notes perfectly preserved in the oxygen-deprived mud and water at the bottom it was the second time that British bank notes were found in the top let's say it was dusty this price I knew that the Austrians had apparently cleared out the lake as part of the recovery of a German diver in 1963 offers Northlands HC and so I was amazed that we still found these huge amounts of money down there these are ladies and men get it over your front mum perhaps that's what was in the boxes a local farmer claimed to have seen when he allegedly helped the SS dump them in the lake the printing press settles had been recovered relics of Nazi attempts at economic sabotage they were targeting the British economy system the British money system so the the whole idea behind that forged banknotes was to cause inflation in Britain the banknotes were forged in the saxon housing concentration camp as well as counterfeit currency nazi victims were also forced into working on underground missile factories Nordhausen or dog and metal bower was one of them it wasn't in the Bavarian Alps but in the central German hearts mountains when American forces liberated the camp only a few victims remained the rocket engineers they were enslaved serve had fled south to the so-called Alpine fortress in the alpine underworld like this tunnel near Salzburg the Nazis continued to work their victims to death a memorial stone and graffiti testament to the horrors that were once inflicted in the tunnels usually locked up and largely forgotten polish Italian and French prisoners from the nearby mount House and concentration camp were among those forced into slavery few survived then fewer still live to bear witness to the human cost of the Nazi Alpine fortress fantasy some returned to commemorate fellow victims of Mauthausen like austrian priest johann kuba who smuggled food and money into the camp but was found out and French priests pair Zack who was sent to the camps for trying to save Jewish boys from the Holocaust both were unable to save themselves but fellow prisoner Jean more now managed to hold on to life if you did not another I was already in the barracks for the dark I thought it was all over Fort Lee you feel huh Mort did was lob where so her friends took me into the centrioles camp and hid me for 14 days using the rule is they did then we were liberated which was it I weighed 38 kilos there Mauthausen was one of many horrors that the Western Allies and Russians would uncover as they advanced into what was left of Hitler's regime the regime responsible for the murder of millions was in ruins weary that they could face a final fanatical fight in a Nazi Alpine fortress the Allies had cut escape routes to the south and stormed into the Varia itself the American Seventh Army advanced into the traditional Nazi Heartland and marched into New Berlin once an imposing staging ground for Hitler's elaborate rallies the medieval city was bombed to ruins as was much of Munich the city that bred the Nazi movement or telling graffiti concentration camps Feldon more involved I'm ashamed to be German but few had dared to speak out when Hitler was in power and millions paid the price Dachau was the first concentration camp established under Nazi rule the survivors were liberated the oppressors became the oppressed hunted down and forced the answer for their crimes others like Adolf Eichmann who played a key role in planning the mass murders of the Holocaust retreated into Austria before he died a fellow Nazi who worked with SS deputy anced Kelton Buller recalled the lakeside stroll with Adolf Eichmann I wish we had Emir he complained to me that Calvin Bruner hadn't received him and had presented him with a roll of sovereigns English gold coins through an adjutant Eichmann said I don't give a damn about that I have my own he filled with fear I want orders on how to proceed he was one of the few who really believed in the Alpine fortress and faithfully job Tommy the Allies cautiously closed in around what they thought could be the dreaded Alpen fest Oh or Alpine fortress south of Austria the German garrison in Italy surrendered time was running out for senior Nazis hoping to make a last stand or desperate escape the Allies continued their advance around the mountains where fanatical German forces might fight a final battle but four important Nazis like adult Eichmann there was no Alpen fest oniy in which to hide he was captured but later escaped others like him as deputy ansed Canton Boehner used the threat of an Alpine fortress as a bargaining chip as cotton Brahma realized well the war's over and and how can I rescue myself but then he said well there isn't an Alpine fortress and there is a danger of a last battle and he knew that the Americans the British were keen to end the war as soon as possible so he must build up the danger of a last battle and then to offer something to say well we can avoid that we can avoid that and if you're going to rescue me and if I'm safe then I I will do everything possible to avoid that last battle Calton brother was one of many Nazi war criminals who thought they could negotiate and get away with murder Carl wolf had participated in the deportation of the Jews of Italy to Auschwitz he had to sell something to save himself and so what he offered was the key to unlocking the Alpine fortress once they got into the Alps the Allies realized there was no fortress no fanatics wielding wonder weapons in a last-ditch fight the problem is if you want to have a fortress you must build a fortress you must have time to build fortifications but why I trenches bunkers shelters whatever it was far too late so even if we ask thee the question what happens if and there was absolutely no chance for them to have more than just a last battle of one or two days for some senior Nazis the Alpine fortress was in ruse that bought them time to escape justice a group of SS men who should have gotten to know the hangman retired and lived out their days that was the basic effect of the negotiation these assessment who offered something they couldn't give managed to escape justice other prominent Germans were also keen to talk to the Western Allies rocket engineers like vana von Braun developed the v2 missiles that killed many thousands of innocent civilians yet they were given new lives in the United States to continue their work each lava spark wrangles I don't think it was a big problem for him it certainly wasn't a big problem for me I could see the advantages that we could continue working on rockets here under relatively good conditions while there was pretty much nothing happening in Germany for many years feasts or soiree the Germans had run out of manpower materials and perhaps the will to mount any kind of meaningful resistance in the Alps the Verma and the waffen-ss was beaten by April 1945 there was almost nothing left so it was resistance west of the Rhine but not very much east of the Rhine there was resistance in Hungary from hardcore SS units but not in Austria anymore nothing was prepared there was no fortress there was nothing there it was just a peaceful Lakes peaceful Alpine region there was a spring nice weather in the calm that followed the spectacular fall of Hitler's Reich lesser known Nazis like Adolphe iseman slipped away but there was no escape for the larger-than-life figure of Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering who also fled south his flamboyant tastes extended beyond elaborate uniforms the rice marshal was an avid art collector but they art treasures of senior Nazis like Goering and Albert Speer came from dubious sources ironically some Nazi art ended up hidden in Austria where it had originated taken from Jewish owners after the Nazi annexation in 1938 they set up an organized system of expropriation called Aryan ization by which they registered the property the assets of Jews in Austria and then systematically stripped them of their wealth now the art collections were part of that asset stripping process and German art dealers moved in and removed systematically metaphorically speaking at gunpoint the art collections of Jewish art dealers and and art collectors thousands of artworks destined for Hitler's Fuhrer Museum were recovered from an Austrian salt mine Himmler's deputy and Calton Brunner was also extracted from his Alpine hideout he was tried for war crimes and hanged in October 1946 according to some accounts a large quantity of gold was found hidden in his alpine villa SS commando leader Otto Skorzeny was also captured he's also said to have had a hoard of Nazi gold he was interrogated by the American army counterintelligence core and when he was interrogated it seems that he forgot to mention anything about the vast treasure that he'd actually taken possession of the SS major is the subject of many intriguing tales one says he was sent to France in search of the Holy Grail despite admitting that he and his men fought in American uniforms he was spared and some say extremely rich school zany received a treasure from from Joseph spaetzle a senior SS administrator he had orders to get in touch with schools Eenie and of course he handed over a tremendous amount of treasure to schools any witches disappeared it's yet another alluring story of hidden Nazi loot that inspires treasure hunters to this day escorts a knee and his troops were once camped near the Austrian lake of Eden see evidence of their presence was found in the mud we have traffic marked the underground Springs here for the hydrographic office this lake is like a gigantic bulb and during this work I found a ring on the SS Ring of Honor seemed to have been flung into the lake as the Allies approached perhaps it wasn't the only thing dropped into the urgency another tail has emerged of mysterious goods dumped into the water the cops knew first there was a forester and told us there was an Alpine Hut here and a high-ranking SS officer had come to get the key and then they went down and took stuff out of the hut to the middle of the lake and then they dumped it there yeah we didn't find anything because there is so much mud there it's really difficult to find anything so empty the earth is a is relatively flat carpeted in a thick layer of mud that would swallow a heavy object like a box full of gold it's also a nature reserve and diving is usually strictly verboten tentative permission was given for a search of the lake from a boat loaded with state-of-the-art radar scanning equipment and a GPS locator which would record the precise position of any object detected in the mud a radar map of the lake floor revealed a box-like shape in the mud was this otto Scott's a nice gold Austrian forestry officials were unimpressed and forbade any diving at least one historian is also highly skeptical this is all a myth and it's all driven by this perception of Ovid Jonna Jones is this a good story for for a Hollywood film definitely but has nothing at all to do with history we know that that they sometimes try to hide the gold but this was recovered quite quickly but legends like that of Scott's Annie's loot won't die if a fortune in Nazi gold was dumped in the lake perhaps it's already been recovered and spent after the war ss commando leader Otto Skorzeny left his native Austria for good to enjoy an apparently wealthy life spoole zinnia was put into a prisoner of war camp but he was there for approximately three years of late two or three years and ultimately he just walked out of the prison of war camp and disappeared until he resurfaced in Spain in 1950 which point he seemed to be much richer than he had been previously Otto Skorzeny was interviewed at his holiday home in Majorca in 1973 ruled by the fascist dictator Franco Spain was a safe haven for unrepentant Nazis this is fleek Theodore so dot it is every soldier's duty to lengthen the war to hold out as long as he has the order to do so whether that is sensible is for posterity to decide I don't think we have quite reached that point yet I don't regret it would you do the same things again today I can tell you that I would do the same things again in exactly the same way today two years later the smoker died of lung cancer farewelled by fellow Nazis unashamedly preferring the Hitler salute squad Saini took any secrets of Nazi gold to the grave this is again part of the secret story and and and the true Nazis living in Madrid and and being millionaires because of the nautical no is it's very unlikely it's definitely not possible that he had two tons of gold with him in in his suitcase and then flying to Madrid back around the German Alpine town of garnish the hunt for fabled Nazi gold goes on it was here in June 1945 that American troops recovered more than 700 bars of pure refined bullion the hold was worth hundreds and millions of dollars all that's left is a hole in the forest floor yet treasure hunters still dream of finding a mother lode similar to that unearthed by victorious Allied troops the britches that were recovered were transferred to a special halide commissioner a lot of treasure was found in in the 1940s but an awful lot of treasure just disappeared some of it was stolen some of it may very well be still there and somebody one day might just find some of it it's a prospect that continues to tantalize treasure hunters in the hills and lakes of the Alpine region once thought to form an Alpine fortress but the Alpen fest room was a myth there was their fortress and no heroic last stand in the mountains of Germany and Austria like the Alpine fortress the legends of Nazi gold also seemed to be no more than a myth yet the scouring of crags and crannies goes on German and Austrian lakes have produced a variety of Nazi relics tons of wartime Detroiters have been recovered from the deep waters of the top let's say bombs mines and rockets but no boxes of gold you don't put a gold treasure into a deep lake because it's just impossible to recover that thing so it's very unlikely very very likely that in some deep Austrian legs are still waiting something for us

Channel: Niels Tacoma

Views: 271,453

Rating: 4.6835442 out of 5

Keywords: Nazism (Idea), National Geographic (Periodical), Nazi Gold

Id: WMwLr094KWQ

Length: 44min 59sec (2699 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 06 2014