Original subtitles

(dramatic orchestral music)

By 1945, the Nazis were on the run.

The Allies were flying high

and about to roll over Germany's flat western borders.

But in the deep southern heartland

of Hitler's Reich loomed the threat of the unknown.

Fears grew of a last-ditch Nazi fightback in the Alps.

In terms of a defense,

it was an ideal place to defend yourself.

This one, it was high mountains, very difficult terrain.

How could you wage a war with tanks there?

Almost not possible.

Very low experience from the Allied side

to wage a war in this mountain region.

A lot of experience from the German side,

a lot of elite troops there.

They knew there were a lot of SS troops in Austria.

So, uncertainty.

(typewriter clacking)

Amid such uncertainty

came evidence of the Western Allies' worst fears.

Neutral Switzerland bordered part

of the German alpine region.

The American intelligence chief in Bern,

Allen Dulles, had a grim report.

It suggested that a fanatical elite was massing

in the mountains, a hard corps,

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.

(suspenseful orchestral music)

The horrible idea was an ultimate nightmare

for the advancing Allies.

An Alpenfestung or Alpine Fortress

extending into northern Austria.

Defended by thousands of troops steeling 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 January 1945,

they didn't know what was going on

when they entered Germany

and they were taken by surprise

by the Battle of Bulge with the German counterattack

in December 1944, and they didn't expect that.

So, the question was, yes, we have won the war,

this is clear, but are we able to cross the Rhine?

Are there some secret weapons still?

Is there somehow a secret counterattack prepared?

So, it was all uncertain.

Uncertainty and fears of so-called

wonder weapons were understandable.

The Germans had already

developed ballistic missiles and jet planes.

(engine rumbling) (dramatic music)

And other more fearsome,

more destructive horrors were on Nazi drawing boards.

What 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 it.

Some tunnels

and bunkers had already

been excavated in existing salt mines.

(dramatic music)

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.

(speaking in foreign language)

This is where, according

to the plans for the Alpine Fortress,

the high command of the SS would've

been situated, led by Himmler.

Himmler's documents in Berlin

were already packaged and addressed.

The complex extends over 6,000 square meters

and the plan was for 22,000 square meters.

As well as bunkers below,

the Germans seemed to be amassing manpower above.

Senior Nazis gathered in the Alps.

SS chief Heinrich Himmler's deputy,

Ernst Kaltenbrunner, moved back

to his native Austria to a villa

above the spa town of Altaussee.

Himmler named him command-in-chief

of all forces in Southern Europe.

He would coordinate the Nazi fightback

from a region he knew well.

He was somehow in charge of the secret police

and the political police,

so he was quite a 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 Austrian by birth

and was a weird figure with almost no military training,

but he was very clever to establish himself in the SS world.

At this time of the war in April 1945,

he was in command of what we call the special forces,

the SS special forces command units.

And he was able to withdraw two

of his command units from the Eastern Front to Austria.

And this should've been the core

of the defense 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 weapons.

Schwaz is the site of old Austrian

silver mines near the German border.

One shaft runs deep into the mountain

and a haunting Nazi ruin.

(water dripping) (dramatic music)

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 lie scattered across the stony floors,

the corroded remains of aircraft parts abandoned

before workers had the chance to put them together.

(speaking foreign language)

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 the complex.

Everything is still standing on mounting racks.

It really is unbelievable.

Deep underground,

far from the 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 Reich.

These are the remains of one of the first

jet fighters in the world, the Messerschmitt 262.

(engines roaring)

Almost 1,500 were built,

but only a few hundred flew in combat.

The Germans had also developed a jet-powered bomber.

Hermann Goring, the head of the Luftwaffe,

had dictated a requirement to the aircraft industry

that he wanted this 1,000-kilometer aircraft,

1,000-kilometer range, that could fly at 1,000 kilometers

an hour and carry 1,000 kilograms of bombs.

And at the time, it was a huge, a very,

very challenging requirement for any manufacturer to meet.

German engineers overcame

another great challenge

and had developed the world's first

long-range ballistic missile, the V-2.

SS chief Heinrich Himmler was one of many top Nazis

who had visited the V-2 testing facility at Peenemunde.

More than 1,000 V-2s were fired at Britain.

They were the pinnacle of rocket technology

at the time, flying some 80 kilometers above the Earth.

V-2s sparked fear and devastation.

They are estimated to have killed almost 3,000 people.

Launched from mobile ramps,

V-2s 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 Wernher von Braun.

With Allied invaders closing in around them,

in early 1945, they were redirected

south to the so-called Alpine Fortress.

(speaking foreign language)

Von Braun was ordered to go to the Alps,

so we 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.

The original plan was, which we had never believed,

to continue building V-2s 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.

A menacing bat-like jet fighter bomber

partially made of wood.

(engines roaring)

Looked sexy and looked efficient and fast and menacing.

Was a unique configuration and a unique shape.

It was advanced technology,

a jet-powered interceptor faster

than anything the Allies could field.

The Horten H. IX

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 Horten brothers hoped

their plane would eventually carry a one-ton bomb.

If the Horten IX could've been put into production,

perhaps even fitted it with rockets,

unguided rockets that they could've used against

the bombers, I think all these things are quite possible.

And fielded in significant numbers,

it would've been certainly faster

than the Allied piston-driven airplanes

and it could have had a significant impact on the air war.

(dramatic music)

Conventional planes were

still winning the war for the Allies.

But the possibility of a German counterstrike

from the Alps forced a chance in tactics.

Potential threats like Hitler's rocket engineers

had to be stopped from reaching the mountains in the south.

General Eisenhower,

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, Wehrmacht

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 spearhead south towards the Alps.

He doesn't wanna see them filling the mountains

with materiel, ammunition, more troops.

So, Allied strategy is directly affected.

How long would it take to defeat 300,000 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 Gebirgsjager, or mountain troops.

(speaking foreign language)

Originally,

the SS had planned that we all moved into the barracks.

They wanted to concentrate us all there.

But then, one bomb could've killed the entire team,

so this convinced the SS commander

that we should disperse across the country.

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 incalculable 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.

(dramatic music)

Some tantalizing tales of Nazi treasure are based

on supposed eyewitness 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.

(speaking foreign language)

So, some locals who had relatively little

to do with the confusion of the war

realized something was going on, including my mother.

She was a young girl then.

And after during the chores in the stables one evening,

she saw a column of mules making

its way up the mountain path.

One special thing she always mentioned

was that there was a white mule among them.

Eva Sturm's 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 long.

This gold was also eventually recovered

by American troops after rumors spread

about the mysterious mule train in the night.

(speaking foreign language)

I think the rumors started

because there were a few forest workers who saw these bags.

So, it wasn't all that secret.

Many people had noticed something.

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.

(speaking foreign language)

Nobody would admit that it happened

in this way, but there are rumors, there are reports.

At times, it is children who tell the stories,

that their father suddenly had a lot of money and wealth.

That is, of course, always interesting for us to follow up.

You could find a further trail through

one of these connections.

Marked on Jurgen Proske's map

are potential sites that he thinks could hold Nazi loot.

Armed with local knowledge and a metal detector,

he scours the hills near Garmisch-Partenkirchen

in the far south of Germany.

He and his fellow treasure hunters

have found a variety of relics,

from bullets to rusty helmets, but no Nazi gold.

(speaking foreign language)

That is the former training area

of the mountain troops,

and they knew every stone, every rock, every cranny.

They found good hideouts,

which were then used to stash known shipments,

treasure that came to the area.

But some shipments weren't recorded.

Not all transports were treasure.

And on a former military training ground,

they have to tread carefully.

Oh yeah.

Oh, there's something here.

(speaking foreign language)

We're 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.

(speaking foreign language)

This is the area

where the Reichsbank gold treasure also ended up.

It was a kind of retreat route

that had been drawn through this area.

At the time, they left ammunition

in different depots so when an attack had happened,

they could withdraw, fire,

and rearm at the next depot,

so they could continue to shoot at the attackers.

So, they did that all around these hideouts

because it wasn't clear what was happening.

And if there was an attack,

they had the possibility to defend themselves.

(dramatic music)

The Nazi gold trail extends further east,

to the picture-postcard lakes

and mountains of the Salzkammergut near Salzburg in Austria.

This was also to be part of the Alpenfestung.

It's another place where stories

of hidden treasure proliferate.

There were also treasure cases

which came from the SS 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 mine.

The stunning lakes that are part

of a UNESCO World Heritage Site

have an added allure,

as fabled dumping grounds for Nazi gold.

The Salzkammergut has been dubbed the Devil's Dustbin.

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 Toplitzsee.

A local farmer is said to have been summoned

in the dead of night to help SS men dump truckloads

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 Toplitzsee,

its 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 Zauner.

(speaking foreign language)

We dumped it in the Toplitzsee

and then recovered it and had it confiscated.

Three days later, they realized it wasn't gold.

It was a glittering example

of Gerhard Zauner's mischievous sense of humor.

The gold ingots were bars of bronze.

But his hoax proved to be a 24-karat sensation.

(speaking foreign language)

We were given it back,

but there was a massive media reaction.

Gold found in the Toplitzsee.

It went round all of Europe.

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.

Thousands of people have seen gold transports.

Yes, there was some gold there,

but this gold was recovered,

it was found already, and it's very, very unlikely.

And it's all driven by this myth,

oh, there must be a secret Nazi network.

There must be some treasures.

And so, if you speak to treasure hunters,

they are absolutely convinced, and nobody found anything.

And yet, another kind

of treasure has been found in the Toplitzsee.

In the 1980s, biologist Hans Fricke ventured deep

into the lake, searching for a wealth of wildlife.

(speaking foreign language)

Stupidly,

I hadn't followed the story of the lake.

If I had, I would've thought twice about going diving there.

And so, I walked right into

the media trap when I dived down there.

They weren't interested in what this guy

was actually doing there if he's

looking for bacteria and worms.

They thought that under the guise of scientific research,

someone was looking for gold instead.

As usual, exploration in

the legendary lake of Nazi gold

attracted all kinds of attention.

(speaking foreign language)

People from all corners

and of all shades came to us.

We met a lot of people with dousing rods

and others who all knew where the gold was hidden

and told us that's where we should really dive and so on.

The biologist 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 Toplitzsee.

(speaking foreign language)

I knew that the Austrians

had apparently cleared out the lake

as part of the recovery of a German diver in 1963.

So, I was amazed that we still found

these huge amounts of money down there.

Perhaps that's what was

in the boxes a local farmed claimed

to have seen when he allegedly

helped the SS dump them in the lake.

A printing press had also been recovered,

relics of Nazi attempts at economic sabotage.

They were targeting the British economy system,

the British money system.

So, the whole idea behind the forged

bank notes was to cause inflation in Britain.

The bank notes

were forged in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp

under the command of SS Major Bernhard Kruger.

Unlike most prisoners in the death camps,

Sturmbannfuhrer Kruger survived the war

and was invited to see the remains of his work.

(speaking foreign language)

Amazing.

I can't forget this undertaking.

First, because of the success it initially had,

and secondly, because the inmates managed

to save their own lives this way.

To an extent, they were printing for freedom.

The former concentration camp

officer was deluding himself.

There was no freedom for inmates forced to forge for Hitler.

Behind the myth of Nazi treasure

and the Alpine Fortress lie real war crimes.

As well as counterfeit currency,

Nazi victims were also forced

into working on underground missile factories.

Nordhausen, or Dora-Mittelbau, was one of them.

It wasn't in the Bavarian Alps

but in the central German Harz mountains.

When American forces liberated the camp,

only a few victims remained.

The rocket engineers they were enslaved

to 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.

(dramatic music)

Polish, Italian, and French prisoners

from the nearby Mauthausen concentration camp

were among those forced into slavery.

(dramatic music)

Few survived, and 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 Gruber,

who smuggled food and money into the camp,

but was found out, and French priest Pere Jacques,

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 Monin managed to hold onto life.

(speaking foreign language)

I was already in the barracks for the dying.

I thought it was all over for me.

But friends took me into the central camp

and hid me there for 14 days.

Then we were liberated.

I weighed 38 kilos then.

(dramatic music)

(airplane guns firing)

Mauthausen was one of many horrors that

the Western Allies and Russians would uncover

as they advanced into what was left of Hitler's Reich.

The regime responsible

for the murder of millions was in ruins.

Weary that they could face a final fanatic fight

in a Nazi Alpine Fortress,

the Allies had cut escape routes

to the south and stormed into Bavaria itself.

The American Seventh Army advanced into

the traditional Nazi heartland and marched into Nuremberg.

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 bore telling graffiti.

Concentration camps Velden, Buchenwald.

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 to 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 Ernst Kaltenbrunner

recalled a lakeside stroll with Adolf Eichmann.

(speaking foreign language)

He complained to me

that Kaltenbrunner 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.

I want orders on how to proceed.

He was one of the few who really

believed in the Alpine Fortress.

The Allies cautiously closed in

around what they thought could be

the dreaded Alpenfestung, 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 for important Nazis like Adolf Eichmann,

there was no Alpenfestung in which to hide.

He was captured, but later escaped.

Others, like Himmler's deputy Ernst Kaltenbrunner,

used the threat of an Alpine Fortress as a bargaining chip.

Ernst Kaltenbrunner realized,

well, the war's over and how can I rescue myself?

But then he said, Well, there is 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 will do everything

possible to avoid that last battle.

Kaltenbrunner was one

of many Nazi war criminals who thought

they could negotiate and get away with murder.

Group of SS men led by Heinrich Himmler's former chief

of staff, Karl Wolff, began sending messages

to Allen Dulles in Bern that

they wanted to talk about surrender.

Allen Dulles was the most unsecret secret agent in Europe.

If you wanted to send a message

to the West, talk to Allen Dulles.

Dulles was shocked.

Why would these people wanna talk?

He was being a little naive.

Karl Wolff was not thinking about the future of Germany.

Karl Wolff was thinking about the future of Karl Wolff.

Karl Wolff 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,

barbed wire trenches, bunkers, shelters, whatever.

It was far too late.

So, even if we ask the question,

what happens if, 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 a 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 SS men 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 Wernher von Braun developed

the V-2 missiles that killed many thousands

of innocent civilians, yet they were given new

lives in the United States to continue their work.

(speaking foreign language)

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.

The Germans had run out of manpower,

materials, and perhaps the will to mount

any kind of meaningful resistance in the Alps.

The Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS was beaten by April 1945.

There was almost nothing left.

So, there 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 Adolf Eichmann slipped away.

But there was no escape for the larger-than-life

figure of Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goring,

who also fled south.

His flamboyant tastes extended beyond elaborate uniforms.

The Reichsmarschall was an avid art collector.

But the art treasures of senior Nazis

like Goring 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 Aryanization

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 art collectors.

Thousands of artworks destined

for Hitler's Fuhrermuseum

were recovered from an Austrian salt mine.

Himmler's deputy, Ernst Kaltenbrunner,

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 Counter Intelligence Corps.

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.

Skorzeny received a treasure

from Josef Spacil, a senior SS administrator.

He had orders to get in touch with Skorzeny.

And, of course, he handed over a tremendous amount

of treasure to Skorzeny, which has disappeared.

It's yet another alluring story

of hidden Nazi loot that inspires

treasure hunters to this day.

Skorzeny and his troops were once

camped near the Austrian lake of Bodensee.

Evidence of their presence was found in the mud.

(speaking foreign language)

I marked all the underground springs

here for the hydrographic office.

This lake is like a gigantic bog.

And during this work, I found a ring.

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 Bodensee.

Another tale has emerged of mysterious

goods dumped into the water.

(speaking foreign language)

There was a forester

who 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.

And we didn't find anything

because there was so much mud there.

It's really difficult to find anything.

The Bodensee 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 boxlike shape in the mud.

Was this Otto Skorzeny's gold?

Austrian forestry officials

were unimpressed and forbade any diving.

At least one historian is also highly skeptical.

This is all a myth

and this is all driven by this perception of Indiana Jones.

This is a good story for a Hollywood film, definitely,

but has nothing at all to do with history.

We know that they sometimes tried to hide the gold,

but this was recovered quite quickly.

But legends like

that of Skorzeny'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.

Skorzeny was put into a prisoner of war camp.

He was there for approximately three years,

I believe two or three years.

And ultimately, he just walked out

of the prisoner of war camp

and disappeared until he resurfaced in Spain in 1950,

at which point he seemed

to be much richer than he had been previously.

Otto Skorzeny

was interviewed at his holiday home in Mallorca in 1973.

Ruled by the fascist dictator Franco,

Spain was a safe haven for unrepentant Nazis.

(dramatic music)

(speaking foreign language)

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.

Personally, I don't regret it.

(speaking foreign language)

Would you do the same things again today?

(speaking foreign language)

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

proffering the Hitler salute.

Skorzeny took any secrets of Nazi gold to the grave.

This is again part of the secret story

and the true Nazis living in Madrid

and being millionaires because of the Nazi gold.

No, it's very unlikely.

It's definitely not possible that he had two tons

of gold with him in his suitcase in flying to Madrid.

(dramatic music)

Back around the German alpine

town of Garmisch, 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 hoard was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

All that's left is a hole in the forest floor,

yet treasure hunters still dream of finding

a motherlode similar to that

unearthed by victorious Allied troops.

(dramatic music)

The riches that were recovered

were transferred to a special Allied commission.

A lot of the treasure was found 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 Alpenfestung was a myth.

There was no fortress and no heroic last stand

in the mountains of Germany and Austria.

Like the Alpine Fortress, the legends

of Nazi gold also seem 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 detritus have been recovered

from the deep waters of the Toplitzsee.

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 unlikely,

that in some deep Austrian lake there

is still waiting something for us.

(dramatic music)