Original subtitles

In May 1945, American soldiers crawled into a cave

in these mountains behind me

and uncovered a treasure trove.

Over 6,500 paintings, 2,300 drawings and watercolours,

and over 1,000 pieces of sculpture and tapestries.

From 1939, as the Nazis swept through Europe,

they not only destroyed homes and decimated populations.

They also plundered cultural property

from every territory they occupied.

But what else were they after?

Why did much of it end up in caves?

And how much is still out there

waiting to be discovered?

The Nazis were so keen to get their hands on all of Europe's

treasures for two reasons.

One was because it would establish Germany

as the centre of world culture.

And two, because individual Nazis wanted to line their own pockets.

It was the largest art theft

that the world has ever known.

It was taken from all over Europe.

And God knows how many pieces of art

that the Nazis actually accumulated.

The Monuments Men were an international organisation.

Their job was to go out into Europe and into Southeast Asia

and collect the vast amount of looted treasure,

artworks and artefacts.

It's nearly impossible to put a finger on the value of the art,

the gold, the relics that the Nazis stole.

It has to be in the tens of billions...

..if not more.

From 1939 to 1945,

the deadliest conflict in the history of mankind,

the Second World War, raged.

But beneath the bombs and amongst the marching armies,

another perhaps often overlooked battle was going on.

The fight to stop the Nazis from stealing the cultural

treasures of Europe.

By 1943, Nazi plundering had risen to such heights

that the Allies created a special division to fight back.

They were known as the Monuments Men.

They consisted of just a few hundred men

and leading it was a group of museum directors,

curators and art scholars who were all signed up to military duties.

Their job description was simple -

to save as much of the culture of Europe as they could during combat.

The Nazis were so obsessed

to gather Europe's treasures and relics

for several reasons.

One - national pride.

Two - they wanted to demonstrate that they uniquely had

ancient Aryan origins and that they were worthy

of these relics, and only they alone.

And third - it was residual wealth

to fund their ever-increasing war booty.

So, the Monuments Men were formed into a platoon

and basically put in the front line

to get to the artworks and the monuments as quickly as possible

to stop them being destroyed by the Nazis,

or hidden away at the bottom of a lake or in a salt mine or whatever.

So, incredibly brave, very knowledgeable people,

who did manage to recover a lot of artwork.

They were experts in art

and sculpture and artefacts.

But also, they were preservers - they had techniques

for preserving the artwork that they found.

They had a list of all the treasures

and the arts and the relics and the rest of it that had been plundered

from various cultural centres like the Louvre and other museums

and they wanted to go and grab it back

from the Nazis, and they did this actually before the end of the war.

Europe was still one giant battlefield, but they felt about it

so strongly that they wanted to go out and risk life and limb

to get back these treasures which the Nazis had taken

with no compunction whatsoever.

Once the war was over,

the extent to which the Nazis

had pillaged Europe's treasures became clear.

The big question was, where had they stashed it?

And so the Monuments Men were given a new task - to find it.

The quest for answers

took them to the Austrian Alps.

And deep inside the Altaussee salt mines,

the Monuments Men hit the jackpot.

They discovered that this series of mines,

stretching some 60km inside the mountain,

was used by the Nazis to store some of their most precious stolen art.

Its location is remote and hard to reach

but I'm meeting local mountain guide Marc Unterberger

to help unravel the secrets of the mines.

Oh, wow.

It's a pretty good hiding place. JAMIE LAUGHS

So, what did the Monuments Men find down here?

So, they find the most...or one of the biggest art collections

during the Second World War. During this time,

they hide here in the mountain 7,000 pieces of paintings, sculptures,

documents, gold, a little bit, and also other stuff.

And so, that's an enormous collection.

Yes, it's... Do we know what the value was?

You can't count it because until today

if you say, "What's the price of the Madonna?"

you don't have any... Sure. Any ideas.

And what kind of artists are we talking about?

I mean they were... So, we have all the big old artists

like Rubens, Michelangelo,

Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Van Eyck.

Also the biggest or the important...

What they find in here, the Ghent Altar.

When they set out to see what they could find, they were shocked

at the hoards of fine art, of gold, of silver, of stash of the Nazis

of one kind or another, and they were quite horrified

cos it gave them an inkling as to the magnitude

of what had just gone on - they had no idea it was a huge movement,

and most of the museums of Europe had been depleted.

Going ever deeper into the labyrinth of tunnels,

we were heading towards a cave known as Springerwerk,

one of the locations of the stolen art.

Which way are we going? We're going this way - straight. OK.

So, now, 700 metres deep in the mountain, we're getting

to one of the eight storage rooms,

the so-called Springerwerk.

You can already see the wood constructions.

Yeah. And they begin to build everything here in the mountain

in summer '43.

And in the winter of '43, the first paintings

get here in the mountain.

Right, OK. So, this is the room

where the pictures and the artwork... Exactly.

It's not only...

This room, what you see in front of you,

it's this big chamber we're standing right now. Oh, yeah - wow!

Look at this. And to build everything in the mountain beneath,

over 1,200 cubic metres of wood.

Right, to secure the tunnels. Exactly.

And what's this? "Vorsicht..."

My German's not so good.

You see... MARC READS IN GERMAN

What means, "Attention - marble. Don't drop."

Because if we open the box,

we can see why we should not drop it.

What is it? This is a bomb

which was dropped over Linz during the Second World War

and which did not explode, and the Gauleiter decided

to blow all the art in the mountain during the last days of the war up

so that everything was destroyed.

So, this is an unexploded bomb?

Exactly.

Fine. And, uh...

The reason why they had bombs here was because when the...

If the Allies had discovered the artworks, they were going

to blow everything up. Exactly. So, before they can discover it,

the Nazis decided if the Third Reich goes away,

it goes away with all the warriors and also with the art.

Right - so, if the Nazis weren't going to have it, no-one was going

to have it. Exactly. OK, we'll put this down very gently.

The Monuments Men worked very closely

with intelligence teams and divisions and they were able to talk

to local people, displaced persons,

and uncover a huge amount of information about what had been

hidden where, because it takes a lot of manpower

to move that amount of material into mines,

seal it up, build the necessary fortifications around it,

and people talked about this.

So, in some instances, the Monuments Men found this information just

by talking to locals.

So, now, this is the place...

..where all the art was carried away,

and you can see now only the empty boxes.

So, this very room

would have housed artworks from old masters... Exactly.

..Vermeer, Rembrandt... The big names we know

we have here in this storage room.

So, this would've been at the time the most important

art collection in the world. Exactly.

You can say until this time, it's the...

The treasury of the world.

When it comes to valuing these things, obviously if they ever were

to come on the open market, we're talking about millions and millions

and millions of pounds. Sure.

All stored in a mine under the mountain.

People watching this programme will say,

"What a ridiculous place to put valuable works of art!"

In a salt mine, dripping with water.

Damp, awful conditions - but basically, you go into the salt mine

where these works of art were stored and you've got perfect conditions.

It's perfectly dry.

The conditions are, for some reason, better than the basements

of the Tate or anywhere else.

And when you actually look at the wood...

..it's as if I'd sort of knocked the nails in last week

and created these frames.

It was perfect. And that's why they stored all the works of art there.

Hitler's plan to keep all these classic works of art preserved

in such excellent condition eventually worked to the benefit

of the Monuments Men.

And much of what was recovered can now be found

in museums across the world.

But it wasn't just paintings stashed in chambers like this one.

The Nazis had stored lots of stolen property in these mines,

from sculptures to coin collections and even gold.

It's a little bit like the scene in Raiders Of The Lost Ark,

when they discover where all the hidden artworks were held.

This was... This was it. This was literally the place.

Certainly, and we're standing right now where the pictures

in the movies you see,

here is where the past happens.

And what would you say was the most famous work of art

that was kept down here?

There is a lot of famous art here in the mountain,

but one of the important ones, not only for me,

was from Michelangelo,

the Madonna, and also

the Ghent Altar.

So, if you can say this to... what the most know.

And was any of it damaged,

or was it all kept in pretty good...? No.

Most... What's... What's here in the mountain

was just well-preserved

because of the conditions.

Uh...

They didn't find everything here in the mountains,

they're not 100%.

Just tiny pieces or a tiny part

of the art got lost,

but they don't know it if the...

..if by the transport here to the mine,

in the mine, or as the soldiers, the Americans

take it away back to their owner.

So, you're saying that there's a possibility

that there could still be treasure down here?

The one... Well, others say maybe in the mine

is still a piece of art.

So, if you find this, yeah.

You know what this means.

You can keep it? THEY LAUGH

I don't know. I'll try it.

If I find something, yeah.

I'm not standing here.

Yeah, we should start looking, right?

The Monuments Men were incredibly successful

in what they discovered in the Altaussee mine in Austria,

but also in other hiding places,

like the Merkers mine in Germany itself.

Their efforts after the end of the Second World War

led to more than 5 million

works of art being saved,

including paintings by Van Eyck,

Michelangelo, Rembrandt

and even Da Vinci's Mona Lisa

and the Last Supper.

But despite their monumental efforts,

a huge amount of artworks

are still missing,

and so the search continues to this day.

Remarkably, there's even a possibility

that some of the stolen Nazi treasure

remains hidden in the Altaussee mine itself,

or the surrounding locality.

Few people know the history of the area better

than local historian Hans Fuchs.

There he is.

Hi, Hans. Jamie. Hello. How are you?

Hello. Come in. Thank you.

Hello.

Thanks for agreeing to meet me. Hello, hello.

So, I just had a fascinating look around the mine.

You were at the mine? It's amazing.

It was great for you? Yeah.

What have you got to show me?

Jamie, I have a map for you.

You can see we are here now,

Steinberghaus, yes?

You can see the Steinberghaus. Yeah.

And here you go inside

and you were here in Springerwerk.

Yes.

So, this is where I explored here... Yes. ..where the paint...

This is where the paintings and the artwork was being...

Where the paintings... ..was kept.

Yes, but there are many other spots

in the salt mine.

That's here... Yeah. ..here, here.

So, it... Can I go and...?

Can I go and see these other places as well?

You can't go inside here because it's very dangerous, yes? Right.

Stones broke down and it's...

So, the mine has collapsed?

Yes, the mine has collapsed here.

But this was a small room,

what you're seeing,

much more bigger... Really?

..these spots, and all was filed with artwork.

Really? Yes.

The vast amount of stolen art discovered by the Monuments Men

in the Altaussee salt mine

is just one part of a network of locations throughout Europe

that held the Nazi stolen treasures.

I have brought you a list.

Yes?

A list from the Nazis...

..and the Monuments Men...

..make a file... Right.

..from Washington National Archive,

and you can see how much buildings,

sculptures, crimes was... Wow. So, OK...

..was inside.

So, this is declass... This is declassified documents,

and forgive... My German's not very good.

So, what is it telling us here?

This is mosaics...?

OK, uh...

You can see 6,500 paintings

aquarelles, graphics...

Aquarelles meant... This is watercolours?

Watercolours, yes, yes.

So, this is an extraordinary amount.

But here...1,200...

HE SPEAKS GERMAN

Boxes.

And nobody knows what was in the boxes, yes?

So, these were like the crates that I saw? Yes.

The big wooden crates? Yes, yes.

Is it possible that there could be some other paintings or artwork

hidden still in the mine?

Maybe, maybe,

but I cannot say it.

Maybe. Sure.

The Monuments Men were incredibly successful.

I think they were surprised by their own success.

We have photographs of them standing by, you know,

classic works of art.

Standing by gold bullion stacked as tall as they are.

You know, jars full of gold teeth

that presumably were taken

from Holocaust victims.

I mean, shock waves went through

the Allies when they realised

just the extent of how the Nazis

had pillaged EVERYTHING in Europe.

They found all these fabulous works of art.

That's one thing,

but then they suddenly come across bags and boxes

that are absolutely crammed full of gold fillings

from people's teeth,

and thousands and thousands of gold wedding rings

stored in the salt mines.

But it wasn't just art

that Hitler was after.

In this museum here in front of me

lies an altogether different artefact

that the Nazis took.

The Hofburg Palace in Vienna

was used by the Nazis to store looted art.

But it also held treasures of its own.

Hitler wanted to build his Third Reich

on strong cultural foundations from the past,

and so the Nazis also hunted for relics,

something Heinrich Himmler knew a lot about.

And one object in particular

captured their attention.

And this...is that object.

Now back here in Vienna,

it's called the Spear of Destiny,

or the Holy Lance,

and it's said to have pierced the side of Christ himself

at the time of the Crucifixion.

Now, embedded within it,

supposedly, is one of the nails

that attached Jesus to the cross, which, if you think about it,

is an odd thing for an atheist like Adolf Hitler

to be interested in.

It's hard to really separate what Hitler was trying to acquire

from what Himmler was trying to acquire,

but I think we could safely say

Hitler wanted the fine art,

the masterpieces

of the classical world.

Himmler wanted the relics,

he wanted the Holy Grail,

he wanted the crystal skulls.

He wanted things that would prove Germany's Aryan roots,

and together, it was a quite formidable combination.

They were both very motivated by this idea of the Aryan super race

and the history of Aryanism and Ariosophy,

and for them this was more than just

a political mantra.

This was something that was

almost spiritual in its veneration

of the Germanic-ness

and the Germanic race.

But Himmler had this crackpot occult side to him as well

that Hitler gave him free rein to indulge.

Dr Franz Kirchweger is a curator at the Hofburg Palace,

and can shed some light on why Hitler and the Nazis

were so interested in the lance.

Does the lance you have in the museum

actually date from the time of the Crucifixion,

and could it have been used to pierce the side of Christ?

It's incredibly difficult

to give a definite answer

about relics in any sense,

and everywhere, whether they

are real, coming from the time of Christ,

and whether they have been used during the Passion of Christ.

As far as the lance is concerned,

the spear is concerned,

we definitely know that the way it looks like

is from a different age

than from Christ, Jesus Christ.

It comes from the Carolingian time -

that means late 8th century.

Even if we have something within the Holy Lance

which is in the middle,

which was understood as to come from the Crucifixion of Christ

as one of the holy nails,

even if we could find a way to prove

it comes from the time of Jesus Christ,

we will probably never know if it was really used

for this very specific moment

that makes it a relic.

So, for us, it's difficult,

how to deal with, believe and the knowledge.

There is so much in between

that makes it uncertain and unclear

whether that's really the real relic.

Himmler was very centred

upon the idea of relics,

and of charging magically objects.

He had the idea that he could surround his SS officers in a room

for a ritual,

with alleged relics

or certainly objects of symbolic value

that somehow would

set off into the room magical vibes that they could pick up on

and that would fuel their souls

in what might be termed evil.

Himmler has his kind of Nazi Camelot.

So Wewelsburg Castle, a residence that he bought before the war.

He even had an Arthurian round table there,

and he wanted to bring to Wewelsburg

the treasures from the Passion of Christ.

So, he wanted the Crown of Thorns,

he wanted the Holy Grail,

he wanted the Holy Lance,

and he did manage to get some of those things to Wewelsburg,

in the hope that he could turn it into this SS capital city

and that he would be the Nazi King Arthur

and that the mystical power would help them to win the war.

It's OK for us to have people

who want to believe these stories,

and the ones that say,

"No, we don't have this specific proof."

And I can tell you especially

as far as the lance is concerned,

we are still in the process,

among scholars,

to find out whether there is a chance

that small parts maybe

of a former holy lance

or of a former holy nail

was integrated, was forced into the lance.

So there are options that we can say for sure,

"No, that's definitely not true,"

or we can say, "It's definitely true."

So there is still a way of - even for the ones who want to believe -

to do so.

It's not easy to get inside the head of Himmler.

But when you do, you realise his quest for these ancient relics -

whether it be the Spear of Destiny or the Holy Grail or others -

was not just for a trophy.

Somehow, he felt that these objects were talismans

for the Nazis to become the most prestigious power

the planet has ever known.

And that's what the quest was for.

The quest was for power through ancient relics.

Although Hitler may not have been quite so obsessed with relics,

he certainly had a passion for art, which originated from his youth.

The young Adolf Hitler famously failed to gain entrance

to the Vienna Art Academy here behind me.

Apparently he was very good at drawing buildings,

less so people.

But that didn't stop him from believing himself

to be an art connoisseur.

And so once he'd come to power, back in 1933, almost immediately

his artistic preferences became law.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in the art festivals

which took place in Munich from 1937.

The Great German Art Exhibition was a grand display of works

that Hitler approved of,

from idealised soldiers and landscapes to German women.

A few streets away,

the Degenerate Art exhibition did the opposite.

Here, people were invited to come and laugh at modern abstract art,

art that Hitler didn't like.

He wanted the good stuff, as he called it.

He wanted the old masters, the very valuable stuff.

And so he wanted it from everywhere that he took over -

Czechoslovakia, Poland, France.

He wanted all of the masters, he wanted them over into Germany

so he could have them, so he could own them.

But the other stuff, the degenerative art,

that had to be destroyed.

But then, of course, they realised that actually there was money in it,

or, of course, it could be sold.

A lot of it was destroyed, a lot of it was sold.

The big question, of course, is, where did all this art come from?

The answer?

It was taken from Germany's art galleries and museums

and stolen from its people.

In 1938, Austria was incorporated into the Reich,

and more art became available to the regime, and the Nazis took it.

It was the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Institute that was set up,

basically, to co-ordinate...

..bringing of all the works of art from all around Europe to Germany.

As the Nazis moved into one country after another,

they basically carry out the mass looting of museums, of libraries.

They went for extraordinary things like church bells.

They took all the stained glass out of Strasbourg Cathedral

and shipped it off.

And some of these museums - the Louvre, for example -

desperately tried to hide their artworks before the Nazis arrived,

and the Nazis would have people go out to find it

and bring it back into Germany.

There was one artwork that Hitler was especially keen

to get his hands on -

the Art of Painting

by the Dutch painter Vermeer.

But he faced a problem -

it couldn't simply be taken.

And so he had to resort to more legal means.

And in November 1940, he acquired it through his agent...

..something that art expert Konrad Kramar is very familiar with.

Ah! And this is it, the famous Vermeer!

It is. It's a beautiful painting. It is.

And it's in a very small room after all, interestingly.

I mean, they could have placed it in one of the big halls.

But still, that's the place where it is.

So it's fair to say that this was one of Hitler's favourite paintings.

Well, even more than that, it was his favourite painting.

And he was so obsessed by it from its young days

that he wrote about it, talked about it,

and when the time came, he found out he couldn't loot it.

Normally, he would ruthlessly have them all looted,

especially here in Vienna from the Jewish families.

But, as it was,

this picture here wasn't in the possession of a Jewish family.

It was a wealthy, very high-ranking Austrian noble family, the Czernins.

And the Czernins were,

to be quite frank, very hard to put under pressure

because they were wealthy, they were rich, they were powerful.

So it was kind of difficult to have them sell this painting.

Do we know how much he paid for it?

Well, in today's money,

it would be about five million euros, you could say.

So this was in Hitler's own private collection.

Well, it ended up - as we all know - in Altaussee, in the mine.

It was planned to go and be one of the most prominent pieces

in his Fuhrermuseum.

But the Vermeer painting was a notable exception.

As the war raged and Hitler's armies swept across Europe,

countries like Poland, France and Belgium had their art stolen.

The Nazis plundered the galleries and private collections of Europe

on an unprecedented scale.

And by the end of the war, millions of pieces of art -

from paintings to sculptures - were stolen.

Some made their way into the private hands of the Nazi leadership,

but most of it was destined for Hitler's Fuhrermuseum in Linz.

So, of course, the Nazis were taking artworks

that had been owned by Jewish people.

And clearly, the owners had been carted off to concentration camps,

so they could simply take that artwork,

but also, they went after art they knew was there.

After all, a lot of this art was catalogued. They knew it existed.

So they would go that artwork ruthlessly,

interrogating people, breaking into museums,

breaking into private residences, breaking into private libraries

and ransacking them.

The Nazis collected so much art and so many relics, you have to ask,

"What were they intending to do with it all?"

Well, of course, we know that Hitler was planning

his own museum in his hometown that was going to display a lot of it,

a lot of the classical art.

Then you have Wewelsburg, where you can be assured

that the most sacred relics would have been on display

for only the Nazi elite, not the general public.

Things like the Holy Grail, they would have gone there.

And then the coffers of Himmler and Goering

and all the other Nazi elite,

they would take some for themselves, certainly.

And they would probably keep some hidden,

because it's a source of wealth that they would need to fuel

the Third Reich into the future.

Just give me an idea of how important the Fuhrermuseum

was to Adolf Hitler.

I would say he followed this plan since he was young,

since he was a young man,

and he followed this plan until the end.

If you look at the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin in the spring of '45,

days before Hitler died,

he spent most of the time staring at the model of the Fuhrermuseum -

still dreaming of this place which he wanted to have

and which he thought would be, somehow...

..the thing he would leave for world history.

So it was going to be his legacy.

Do you think it will be fair to say that the Fuhrermuseum was singly

the most important thing that Adolf Hitler wanted to create?

Well, Linz, his mother town, and the way it should look as a capital city

was always in the focus of his plans,

and in the centre of Linz, as the Fuhrer's city, was the Fuhrermuseum.

This extraordinary city would be laid out in a very impressive way

which would, of course, all serve to point to their dominance

in the world, and also the fact that they were new Roman emperors.

They were emperors of the world.

On May 7th 1945, Germany surrendered and the war in Europe was over.

But as the victorious Allies celebrated, a big question remained.

What had happened to all the cultural property

that the Nazis had stolen?

And so the Monuments Men were given a new task - to find it.

Come the end of the war, the Nazis realised it's not going to end

the way they wanted.

So they're taking these artworks and this gold and these relics,

and putting them in the nearest caves

or the underground railway stations.

Or even as they're retreating through Italy,

they're taking relics and paintings out of museums as they go,

almost desperately.

It's now all about preservation

and saving it to fight for another day.

Towards the end of the war, it was clear that all this art

and all this wealth couldn't stay in Berlin,

where it would be discovered.

So it was shipped out of Berlin.

It was shipped out on trucks and buried in salt mines around Germany,

presumably with the intention that either it would be there

to be recovered if the Germans won the war,

or it would be kept away from the Allies if the Germans lost the war.

It's now over 70 years since the end of the Second World War,

and you might think that all hope of recovering these treasures is lost.

But artworks still continue to be found.

In 2011,

a vast collection of artwork worth some £830 million was discovered

in a Munich flat.

This was the home of Cornelius Gurlitt,

the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt,

one of the most important art-dealers of the Third Reich.

80-year-old Cornelius Gurlitt recalls helping his father

save works from wartime Dresden, dismissing suggestions

he might return some of the 1,406 paintings and drawings

to survivors of Nazi persecution.

I've arranged to speak with author and journalist Stephan Koldehoff

to find out more about how Gurlitt's collection came to light.

So, Stephan, can you tell me what Hildebrand Gurlitt's role was...

..during the war?

Hildebrand Gurlitt was one of the main art-dealers who was working

for Hitler in two ways.

One way was that in 1937, 1938,

the Nazis would remove many works of art from German museums

and they were to be sold.

Not to be destroyed, but to be sold, to raise money for the war.

And Hildebrand Gurlitt was one of the four art-dealers who had to sell

thousands of works of art to art-dealers in foreign countries.

But the second thing was that Hitler was also planning

to found a big museum -

bigger than the Louvre in Paris or any other museum in the world -

and for that, he needed works of art as well.

So when the Nazis invaded countries like France or the Netherlands

or Belgium or Poland, also there, Hildebrand Gurlitt was active

to steal or blackmail or also to buy works of art for that planned museum

to be built in Austria.

And were all the paintings recovered at the end of the war?

No, there are still very many families, mainly Jewish families,

who are still in search for what once belonged to them.

Many, many works never appeared again,

either on the market or in private collections.

Of course, some of them may have been destroyed during the war

or after the war, having been looted by other people.

But, no, I think at least half of those works have come to light

after the war.

In 2010, Cornelius Gurlitt was found with 9,000 euros in his wallet.

He wasn't married, he didn't have a pension, he didn't have a job,

so there was a huge tax investigation done.

And they raided his apartment in Munich

and they found something like 1,600 works of art

stored in his apartment, and a lot of them

had been stolen by the Nazis

from Jews and from different art foundations around Europe.

Obviously, there's just still so much out there

that has not been returned.

There are presumably hundreds, if not thousands,

of private collections that have stolen artworks in them.

And what of all the gold that the Nazis took?

Part of the Nazis' hoard was found in locations

such as the Merkers mine in Germany,

while some of it disappeared into European banks.

But much of it is still missing.

The Monuments Men were immensely successful in financial terms.

In just one example,

the Merkers mine - which is just northwest of Frankfurt -

they found $520 million worth of gold and currency,

which, in today's money, is over $7 billion.

Legend has it that a Nazi train lies buried somewhere,

containing a vast quantity of gold.

Its whereabouts remains one of the greatest questions

of the Second World War.

In Poland, a few years ago,

it appeared that it may have been finally found.

It was an event that sparked global interest.

Two men, a German and a Pole,

have set off something of a gold rush in the woods of Poland.

They claim they've discovered a Nazi train loaded with treasures

from the closing days of World War II.

One of the great legends of Nazi gold is the Nazi gold train

that was supposedly driven into a Nazi complex in what is now

modern-day Poland.

And it's supposed to have an incredible hoard of gold.

We do know that the Nazis were moving a lot of gold around

at the end of the war,

obviously as they were losing parts of their empire.

And this train was taken into a burrowed-out tunnel

in the Owl Mountains in Poland.

And of course, people have been very keen to find this and other gold

that the Nazis hid towards the end of the war.

Now, in 2016, there were some excavations carried out,

because radar did indicate that there was a train-like object

within the mountain.

It was found to be a kind of a geological quirk,

a strange rock formation.

But that said, that doesn't mean it's not there.

And I think it's pretty certain that we're going to turn up

some more Nazi gold, as periodically does turn up.

The Nazi train buried in a hillside in Poland

turned out to be wishful thinking.

If it did indeed exist, it is still out there somewhere,

out there with millions of pieces of art

which are yet to be recovered -

works by the likes of Raphael, Van Gogh, Rubens and Canaletto...

..even the Amber Room from Russia,

once dubbed the Eighth Wonder of the World.

The Nazis destroyed a lot.

They used flame-throwers to destroy stuff.

In other words, "If we can't have it, you can't have it back."

There is stuff to be found.

German soldiers would have stolen stuff.

The locals would have probably known where the stuff was in the mines,

and would have taken stuff as well.

Even down to Cornelius Gurlitt. They actually found,

in a suitcase that he'd got in a hospital, a Monet.

We have no way of knowing how much is still out there

in private collections.

We have, actually, no way of knowing - if we're very honest -

whether it was the Nazis who took all of the stuff in the first place,

because, you know, as is the way with large armies,

they will tend to pick up the odd thing as they move through,

and so perhaps the Allies have some of it.

The thing is, that the records, such as they are,

probably aren't all the records

or are selective in what they choose to record.

But it's important to appreciate just how successful

the Monuments Men were.

During and beyond the war, they tracked, located and returned

more than five million artistic and cultural items

stolen by Hitler and the Nazis.

Their role in preserving cultural treasures

is without precedent.

The story of Nazi art and Nazi loot is by no means over.

There's an immense amount that still hasn't yet been recovered,

either secreted in places one simply doesn't know where,

or still lost in the financial system.

It's really difficult to say how much of the Nazi loot -

the treasures, the gold, the relics - has been reclaimed

and how much of it remains.

Now, say 50% has been recovered.

That means some of the most incredible works of art,

some of the most incredible hoards of gold and silver

and some of the, arguably, potentially greatest relics

of antiquity are lying there in a cave somewhere,

sitting in a no longer used rail station

or high up in a mountain somewhere.

I think, over time,

we'll find some of this, but just how much is there and what's there?

That remains a mystery.

Nazi Germany's legacy can be seen in the scars on the landscape,

the graveyards scattered in every city, town and village in the world,

and perhaps, I guess more subtly,

in the gaps in the art galleries of Europe,

where once hung the greatest paintings in history.

The theft of art was a cultural crime

the likes the world had never seen,

but hopefully, more and more will be recovered

so that generations can enjoy them once again.

I'll see you next time.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media