Original subtitles

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

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 secret.

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

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, headed to Merkers Mine to see

the Nazis put the gold that they had plundered from Europe at the end of

War II.

The town of Merkers is still home to a working salt and potassium mine.

And just like in 1945,

The Nazi 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

away.

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

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.

Dr. Naftali has finally reached the nondescript entrance to the room the

simply called Number Eight.

Behind this door sat one of the greatest treasure hordes ever assembled.

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

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.

But how did the Allies find this room, thousands of feet below ground, along

of a near -infinite series of tunnels?

Actually, it was completely by accident.

Two French women told American soldiers that they had seen facts of

money being taken out of the mine.

Well, at that point, the U .S. Army took note.

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

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 borers.

In addition to 110 tons of gold bars, the army found 55 crates of gold

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 SS 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

Nazi state.

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

begins.

Because as it turns out, the secret treasure of Merker's mine was quite a

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.

The gold stored at Merker's 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 Merker's

mine, It's been estimated that an even larger quantity is still unaccounted

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 Einstädel.

Even as recently as 2015, amateur treasure hunter Florian Bauch found a

217 buried Nazi gold coins outside the town of Lüneburg.

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

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 Proska believes it could be a staggering amount.

In fact, He has an incredible new lead on one particularly large cache of

Nazi loot.

Well, now we are going to the Lake Wallchen, which was the final

the gold from the former National Bank of the Nazis.

We think there are still remains of the Nazi gold hidden in this area.

We know the Nazis transferred gold from their national bank to Merker's mine.

From there, Juergen believed 10 tons of it was brought here to Einfiedel, where

the Allies found it buried in 1945.

But according to Juergen, they didn't find everything.

This is the most famous treasure hole all over Germany.

Ten tons of pure gold were buried in this hole by the mountain troopers of

Nazis. The gold was recovered by American troops.

But 150 kilograms disappeared.

150 kilograms may not sound like a lot, but it's actually $7 million worth of

gold.

Juergen has been looking for it for 10 years.

But recently, he's found an incredible new clue as to its whereabouts.

We found a diary and we found photos from an officer who's

possible to be the hider of this 150 kilogram.

According to Juergen, 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?

In the letter...

It's mentioned that there is a steep hill going up to a flat area, which is

this side, and there is also an old hut, which is on this side.

I feel the gold is here. I will grab my metal detector and start scanning.

If he's right, Juergen could be about to close the case on a 75 -year -old $7

million mystery.

No signal up here.

There's a signal.

Wow. And a good one.

There's definitely something here. I'm going to dig.

Ah.

Well,

we should leave this.

It looks like we found a hand grenade.

I don't want to touch it, because that's going to be dangerous if we move it.

This is a German M43 hand grenade, which would have originally been mounted on a

stock for throwing.

They have an ignition time about five seconds, and then it makes boom.

These things are dangerous after 80 years, and there is a possibility

you touch it with your knife, and it will explode.

And so the best decision was to leave it alone.

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

find a grenade.

Unless, of course, some disgruntled soldiers were here guarding something

stolen, like a $7 million treasure.

There's something hot in there.

Let's pull it out.

Uh -huh.

There are rounds of ammunition from Nazi machine guns.

I see something. It looks like silver.

And remnants of a World War II belt buckle.

There is inscription also, Gott mit uns, as this means God with us. I think

really that there were Nazi soldiers up here, and this was at least their last

task to do, to hide the gold.

But where is the gold?

So far, Juergen's metal detector has only turned up small objects.

330 pounds of gold would generate a much larger reading.

Wow, that's a good one.

It's big.

I think it has to be the gold.

I've hit metal, and it seems to be massive.

It's really something big. I don't know what it is.

It's moving.

I've got it.

It's a helmet.

I can't believe it.

It's a German helmet.

Wow.

It may not be the gold, but this helmet is an incredibly rare find.

There are also remnants of a gas mask inside.

And the filter was fixed here in front of.

As today's search comes to an end, Juergen is more confident than ever that

on the right track.

The grenade, ammunition, insignia and helmet found today could well indicate

that something valuable was being guarded here.

I will check this area.

for the next two years checking every hole, every stump of trees and looking

underneath each stone because I believe that the gold up here and

it's just a matter of time to find it.

As we've already seen on any given day German treasure hunters might just be

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 Fuhrer 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

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 panelled with

nearly 190 square feet of decorated, carved, embellished amber.

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 Murmurki, hoping to answer that very

question.

Just 60 miles from Konigsberg, Murmurki 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 Murmurki.

As you can see, They're full of earth. They've not been properly explored.

Only 1 % 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?

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 Mimerki and kept in a bunker just 200 yards away.

When that bunker was searched, nothing was found.

But Bartek Plebanczyk of the Mimerki 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 than the ground, like let's say a concrete wall

metal part, The machine will calculate any differences and I will see if

something is under the ground.

It's a painstaking process that involves crossing back and forth through an area

in precisely aligned paths.

If the Amber Room is at Mameyake, it's not going to be in one of the obvious

bunkers that anyone can visit today. It must be buried somewhere.

It must be underground.

It takes nearly four hours to fully map the area surrounding the bunker

identified by Eric Koch.

But the search has turned up one very promising lead.

This point is very interesting for me. The bunker is here. We searched the

square area and all the colors are the same. And this color has changed.

Very strong belief that we found what we are looking for. So what's next?

I think we should start digging.

The object on the radar scan is less than a foot below the ground.

Even so, reaching it won't be easy.

Mameki today is a largely unspoiled area, 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 going to be extremely difficult here.

Is that a line there?

Yes, it is a straight line, so this is exactly what you're looking for.

The excavation has revealed a concrete hatch.

Now the pair must determine if it's safe to enter.

Previous searches here at Mameki have found German explosive devices from

War II. Hand grenades, mines, lying around the woods. Very often they're

because they've been immersed in water for many years, but you simply can't

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.

This could be the first glimpse anyone has had of this chamber in over 70

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.

uh steps rungs ladder going down the side of the the brick it's very solid

looking brickwork after all this time the camera doesn't show any immediate

hazard is it safe to go down it seems like it's safe to go inside

well the hatch is over so there's only one way to find out whether we found the

amber room and let's go down and look

Right, well, I'm down now.

Let me give you an idea of 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.

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. The looks of the brickwork has fallen away.

This does look...

Unfortunately, like a dead end.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. Jeffrey Warrow, it could have been a

whole lot worse.

Today, Dr. Woro 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 -35 -23, one of the most advanced German U -boats in

World War II.

Dr. Woro's team hopes to solve several mysteries on this voyage.

including what secret technology the U -boat may have been equipped with and

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?

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

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 because 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,

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 21 U -boat was better armed than the other German submarine.

It had six bow -facing torpedo tubes.

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 7 U -boat.

So this thing was really going to be a game changer as far as the Germans were

concerned.

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 21 U -boats commissioned.

3523 was one of the four that became operational.

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

win the war.

Admiral Dönitz, who replaced Adolf Hitler as German Fuhrer in the last days

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.

But U -3523 never made it to Norway.

So where exactly did it end up?

Jeffrey's team believed 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 going to use this ROV, remote -operated vehicle, to dive beneath the

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 have three different cameras, and we've got four

we basically have eyes and illumination on the seabed, so we're going to be able

to see everything, hopefully. So let's get this thing in the water.

Let's do it.

The ROV has a 1 ,000 -foot tether and approximately two hours of battery life.

Definitely has a needle in the haystack feel about it, what we're doing. I mean,

because 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.

What we're doing today is going to show us one of the only surviving examples of

this U -boat.

It's going to show us... maybe why this thing was leaving was it actually

heading out into the atlantic try to escape with high -ranking german

or was it trying to get up to the german submarine pens in on the coast of

norway to find the u -boat jeffrey's team has sent in a remotely operated

drone to scan the sea floor 400 feet down here we got the phone on and

we're looking for the the wreckage it looks like we have a good mark here and

then we're going to drive over it

so

i see like some hard object that the sonar is picking up yep and then that's

camera that whenever we get close enough we can get a good look at it yep yep

gps and our charts tell us this is where it ought to be

but what if it's not where we think it is

It's just dark, and we're not really seeing anything.

We're down pretty deep.

Getting closer. I can feel it. We're straining for some sight of U -35 -23

hoping against hope that it's there.

I feel like I see something. I see something right here. Look at that.

That's it. That's it. That's the tail.

She's been down here for 74 years, and we just found her.

So here it is, 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.

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 and just dove 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.

From the portion sticking up from the sand, we can calculate that U -35 -23

approximately 250 feet long and 26 feet wide.

It appears to have two turbocharged diesel engines, allowing it to travel

twice as fast as any other sub of its time.

And really think about how this was going to be the backbone of a revived

Navy. They were going to build... 1 ,200 to 2 ,000 of these.

A fleet of that size could have completely blocked off the Allied naval

This is just such an advance on the previous German submarines, and in one

they made this technology leap. It looks like, you know, a nuclear submarine

from, you know, the 1950s or 1960s.

Unfortunately, the sub's weapon 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 secret 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 Nazis' 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.

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