Original subtitles

- [Narrator] During the Second World War,

the Nazis rampage through the homes of millions.

As they systematically displace, torture,

and murder Jewish populations

in Germany and occupying Europe,

they steal everything they can lay their hands on.

The Nazis' ruthless pillaging is a crucial component

of the Holocaust.

- The Nazis really make a fine art out

of this nationally sanctioned theft.

Everything of potential value goes.

- [Narrator] Over the course of the war,

the Nazis steal billions of dollars worth of valuables,

including precious artwork, silver, and gold.

- Billions of dollars. You can't wrap your head around that.

- What happens to all that wealth

after the Nazis lose the war?

- [Narrator] Despite efforts to return the stolen property

to its rightful owners, much of it still remains missing.

- Could there yet still be gold onboard this ship

at the bottom of the sea?

- [Narrator] To this day,

hoards of Nazi-stolen goods are being uncovered

around the world.

- We all love hidden treasure stories.

- Are there hidden fortunes still out there

that we've yet to discover?

- [Narrator] How did the Nazis manage

to hide such a vast fortune,

and what could they possibly have planned to do with it?

- Complete world domination

and a 1,000-year reign was their idea.

[air whooshes]

[tense dramatic music]

[ominous music]

- [Narrator] In late March 1945,

the United States Army begins its push into Nazi Germany.

Within two weeks, they arrive at Merkers,

a small town of roughly 3,000 people.

Many of these locals are part

of the 40 million Europeans displaced by the German Army

and not from the area at all.

- As the American forces advance into Germany,

they're really entering the unknown.

They have to be extremely careful

because there are rumors and real suggestions

that there may be Nazis hiding out,

ready to attack these American forces.

- [Narrator] Little do the American soldiers know,

they're about to stumble upon one

of the greatest treasure troves of all time.

- Some of the troops encounter two women

who tell a story of a salt mine

that the Nazis had filled with gold.

Over time, this rumor repeats itself

and more civilians keep on suggesting the same thing.

After enough rumors,

there seems to be something worth investigating here,

and the United States forces

then go to check out this abandoned salt mine.

- [Narrator] Half a stick of dynamite is all they need

to blast through the walls.

[dynamite explodes]

- Just imagine what it must have been like

for those American soldiers

who probably quite tentatively went

into this disused salt mine

and were confronted with a veritable treasure trove

of what happened to be stolen goods.

Like something out of a movie, really.

- [Narrator] Thousands of bags lined the inside

of the 75-by-150-by-12-foot vault,

stacked knee-high in more than 20 rows.

As the bags are broken open,

the full extent of the loot becomes clear.

- Thousands of sacks of German currency,

boxes of gold bullion, bags upon bags of silver,

and vast amounts of gold.

- Looted paintings,

paintings of the great masters like Monet,

that the Nazis have pilfered from around Europe.

- And the US Treasury Department

and the Bank of England valued the gold alone

at around $4 billion in today's money.

- [Narrator] As enormous as the gold stores are at Merkers,

they are only a fraction of the whole Nazi fortune.

- The Nazis, of course,

are a criminal enterprise, in all senses of the word.

[tense music]

It's a criminal enterprise with a very systematic process

of looting everybody they invade and occupy.

- [Narrator] The Nazis' plundering dates back

to the earliest days of the regime,

when Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany in 1933.

[crowd cheers]

Baked into Nazi ideology right from the beginning,

the state-sanctioned seizure of Jewish businesses

and land only intensifies as the war looms closer.

- First, we have to understand the nature

of the Nazi conquest.

They understand it as an expression of their superiority.

These are not people who have any sense of human rights

or anything of that sort,

so it was perfectly consistent

for them to pillage everything.

They could not have a moral qualm about this

because they did not believe

that the defeated were also human.

[tense music]

- [Narrator] Nazi hoarding wasn't solely

about the cultural erasure of their victims

or even about individual greed.

Not only did the Nazis want gold, they needed it.

Beginning in 1933,

Hitler is desperate to portray Germany

as a global financial power,

especially coming out of the context

of the Treaty of Versailles,

which has gone to great lengths

to limit the country's economic growth.

- There is a sort of mythology

that's developed around the appointment of Adolf Hitler

as chancellor and the measures

that his regime took to repair the German economy.

These measures were largely achieved

through what we would describe as massive deficit spending

on infrastructure projects and rearmament.

Who was going to pay for it?

The Germans were practically insolvent by 1938

as a function of all this spending.

So in a pattern of circular logic,

going to war to steal from one's neighbors was a way

for paying for revitalization

of the German economy during the depression years.

- [Narrator] Hitler dreams of bringing Germany to autarky,

complete economic self-sufficiency.

This proves to be overly ambitious.

Although the Nazis succeed in lowering unemployment rates

and restoring a degree of national pride in the 1930s,

they still can't afford to fund the war effort

on the scale Hitler envisions.

Autarky is made further impossible

by Germany's dependence on other countries

for raw material parts.

For instance, they need:

tungsten from Portugal

for armor-piercing bullets and shells,

chrome from Turkey for manufacturing tanks and aircraft,

high-grade oil as fuel for tanks from Romania,

and ball bearings from Sweden.

However, none of these countries accept German currency.

Gold becomes the only way

the Nazis can keep their military ambitions afloat.

- German currency was not welcome

throughout most of the world.

When the Germans needed resources, goods,

things that they could not make at home,

they needed to buy them from abroad,

and they needed to pay for them with gold.

[gentle music]

- Gold is really interesting when it comes to our brains.

We like shiny things.

Gold is very shiny.

We like things that are warm colors.

Gold is a nice warm color like the sun.

Gold is soft and malleable.

You can make thread out of it.

You can make jewelry out of it.

You can show it off and show your wealth.

We've placed a lot of value on gold.

- Gold is coveted by humans

because we've made it something to covet.

- It wasn't useful like aluminum

and iron and all these other things,

but it was useful in terms of a status symbol,

in terms of wealth.

- The gold standard. That's the saying, right?

Like, it's built right in there.

[artillery blasting]

- [Narrator] When the Nazis invade Poland

on September 1st, 1939,

they continue to take virtually anything of value

from the homes of private citizens

and move on to bank vaults and museums.

- It starts at the top with the gold reserves of a nation.

Because often Nazis attacked without a declaration of war,

nations did not prepare to evacuate their gold reserves,

and the Nazis overrun them.

They're also seizing artwork from museums.

So there is a kind of nation-to-nation looting

that is taking place.

- From the Jewish people,

they took anything that they had on their person.

They would melt it down if it was gold and repurpose it.

They showed no respect to person, place, or thing.

- [Narrator] But less than a month after the war begins,

this mass looting and smuggling operation

would hit its first stumbling block.

[ominous music]

- In the early months of the war,

a German ship, the SS Minden,

left Brazil en route to Germany.

- [Narrator] On September 24th, 1939,

the ship was positioned between Iceland

and the Faroe Islands when it was intercepted

by two British cruisers.

To prevent British troops from seizing the ship,

along with all its cargo,

the SS Minden was scuttled by the crew,

following orders from either the captain or Hitler himself.

- It was sunk on purpose by its crew.

It suggests that there was something important on it.

- [Narrator] According to the official ship manifest

of the SS Minden at the time of its sinking,

the vessel was carrying resin from Brazil,

intended for industrial use,

having unloaded any precious cargo in South America.

But what if this isn't the full story?

- If they had something really important,

of course the logs would say that they weren't carrying it.

- German banks were global enterprises

that had branches around the world.

And some of these German banks actually had branches

in South America, in Argentina and in Brazil.

When war broke out in 1939,

Germany and German banks were recalling gold to Germany.

A legend has developed

that the Minden's crew actually took this step

because it was carrying treasure, that it was carrying gold.

- [Narrator] Nazi Germany's relationship

to South America proved crucial during and after the war.

Argentina and Brazil were particularly important,

as they had strong political and economic ties

to Germany dating back decades.

- You know, you have the dictatorial systems there

that are very sympathetic with fascism.

You also have large German populations in South America.

- [Narrator] In the 1930s,

the German and Brazilian economies are complementary,

both lack foreign exchange,

and agree to non-standard trade policies.

Germany is especially interested

in the large untapped resources of iron ore in Brazil

and wants to establish itself

as the country's chief trading partner.

The SS Minden represents just one link

in the strengthening chain between South America

and the Third Reich.

- In the lead-up to the second World War,

the Nazis made a number of modifications to the SS Minden.

Firstly, they extended its length from 109 to 116 meters,

and they also added a steam turbine

for its journeys back and forth across the Atlantic,

which would've not only increased its capacity as a vessel,

it would also have made it a faster, more efficient ship.

- [Narrator] We know the SS Minden was designed

to carry heavy loads across the Atlantic.

So the question remains:

At the time of its sinking,

was the SS Minden carrying gold back to Germany,

or had it already deposited gold in Brazil

and was carrying resin, as the ship manifest stated?

- The SS Minden was all but forgotten

as an early casualty of the war

until its rediscovery in 2017.

[mysterious music]

- [Narrator] The UK-based Advanced Marine Services conducts

a survey off the Icelandic coast and finds the wreckage.

Its known Nazi origin makes this a compelling site

for further exploration.

What could it have been carrying?

- The only reason they would sink it

that makes sense to us as a mystery

is that there's something of value.

- [Narrator] The search of the ship is halted

by the Icelandic Coast Guard

for not having the right license.

During this time, rumors of a chest containing

approximately $130 million worth

of Nazi gold are widely reported.

But when the search is finally completed a year later,

nothing is found.

[mysterious music]

Despite the official report,

the great lengths Nazis went to

in hiding their stolen loot leaves us wondering,

could researchers have missed something?

Might there still be stolen treasure waiting

to be discovered off the Icelandic shore?

- Could there yet still be gold onboard this ship

at the bottom of the sea?

And if not, then why are we still so fascinated by it?

- Shipwrecks have been associated with treasure ever

since people have been sailing the seas.

- And I think the historicity adds to it,

especially if it comes from something

as dark and sinister as the Nazi era.

It has that much more appeal to some people.

- There's something about our psyche

that we like to hold onto the hope

that this could be true,

that it really is out there somewhere.

[tense music]

- [Narrator] As the Nazi regime worked hard

to establish international links

through trade and treasure smuggling,

individual officers were also careful

to secure their own personal stashes

of stolen assets all over the occupied world.

- On the one hand, as the Nazis are extracting this wealth,

they're keeping very good records of what they've taken

and where they're keeping it.

But at the same time,

we don't know if those records are complete.

- Because of the power and the authority they wielded,

many top Nazi officials were in the perfect position

to collect their own private stashes of stolen gold.

- [Narrator] Erwin Rommel is one

of Nazi Germany's most infamous generals.

His leadership of German and Italian forces

in the North African campaign established his reputation

as a gifted tank commander and military tactician.

He earned the nickname Desert Fox

and was even respected by his Allied enemies

for his relative chivalry and popular motto,

"War without hate."

- Because of his achievements in the First World War,

his achievements in Africa,

he was a very well-respected soldier,

well-respected general.

He had written books on infantry tactics and so forth.

So he was a legend.

- [Narrator] During his campaigns in North Africa,

Rommel's unit is said

to have amassed more than 20 million pounds worth

of gold and other precious objects looted primarily

from Jewish people in Tunisia.

The treasure was supposedly loaded aboard a ship

to be sent to Germany, but the fate of that gold is unclear.

Some believe the vessel sank near the coast of Corsica,

and others think it may have been purposefully hidden

by retreating Nazis.

- It would be crazy for it

to just be a normal random act of chance

that caused this thing to sink.

We downplay natural causes

because most of the things we do

in our lives are based on choices we make

or the choices people around us make.

And so when something goes missing,

somebody caused it to go missing.

We know it wasn't enemy action,

so it had to be somebody who was involved.

And that means in the case of an awful lot of gold,

it's about greed and thievery.

- Is it possible that Erwin Rommel

or other senior Nazis stole gold and were trying to hide it?

For sure, it's possible. I mean, these were the Nazis.

- If you're told that stealing is part of your mandate,

it's built in, then that becomes behavior that's acceptable.

So whether everything you steal you give back to the state,

or you keep some of it for yourself,

you've moralized yourself that it's all right.

[tense music]

- [Narrator] In 1944, Rommel is implicated

in the 20th of July plot to assassinate Hitler.

- 20th of July plot is the culmination of a series

of attempts on the part of some German commanders

to basically unseat Hitler through assassination

and steer the course of the war in a different direction

that hopefully, from their perspective,

would not result in the complete destruction

of German society as they knew it.

Perhaps through negotiated settlement with the Allies.

- [Narrator] At the time of the assassination attempt,

Rommel is serving as a high-ranking field marshal.

His reputation prompts Hitler to make him an uncommon offer.

Rather than face a humiliating trial

that would lead to a certain death sentence,

Rommel is given the chance to take his own life,

leaving his reputation intact and his family unharmed.

- I think there was some interest on the part of Hitler

and others that Rommel chose the second option

because it certainly would not have been

a very good public relations

if this commander who would've been so widely lionized

by the propaganda machine turns out to be executed

as one of the 20th of July plotters.

- [Narrator] On October 14th,

Rommel swallows a cyanide capsule and dies minutes later.

- Only under those circumstances

would the Nazis leave his family alone.

- [Narrator] Any secret information he

is holding dies with him,

leaving only the mystery of his legendary gold.

- Rumors suggest that Rommel's men took

six large steel cases containing 440 pounds

of gold bullion with them when they left North Africa.

Well, if those rumors are true,

what happened to all that?

- [Narrator] Some believe the gold was smuggled to Italy,

while most think it was likely sunk close to the coast.

None of it has ever been located

despite hundreds of searches.

- Why we can't find it is probably

because it has disintegrated on the ocean floor over time.

The containers in which gold bars

would've been kept are metal,

and that metal erodes, especially in the ocean depths.

So, you know, it's quite likely

that everything sank right into the sand.

- And one of the only real effective means

of recovering it would be

through something called vacuuming the sea floor,

which is incredibly costly and incredibly time consuming.

Which leaves you wondering

whether this vast personal fortune will ever be found.

[ominous music]

- [Narrator] Over the course of World War II,

the Nazis loot immense amounts of gold, treasure,

and valuables across Europe and Africa.

- Occupied Poland is basically the clearing house

for all of these deported individuals

who are being fed into the extermination facilities

and for so much looted material from Eastern Europe.

- We have instances of castles, palaces,

significant structures becoming kind

of private store houses or private stashes

for some of the Nazi officials.

- After the war,

teams of historians have traveled right

across the Lower Silesia region of Poland

in search of stashes of stolen gold and artworks.

And one such stash was found in the former hunting lodge

of Hermann Goring, the Paulinum Palace.

- [Narrator] This palace,

in the Lower Silesia region of modern-day Poland,

was used for multiple purposes by the Nazis.

In 1933, the palace was purchased

for 70,000 marks by the famous Nazi German Labour Front

and used as a training facility

to teach Nazi anti-union ideology.

- In all of the occupied territories,

the Nazis make use of existing facilities and structures.

So it would be pretty typical for a building like that

to be repurposed during occupation.

- [Narrator] It is claimed that the palace was also used

as a storage place for top Nazi officials' personal stashes

of stolen wealth.

Most notably, Hermann Goring.

This is said to have become the palace's primary function

as the war came to an end

and the Russian Army closed in on Berlin.

The SS officers, including Karl Hanke,

the last gauleiter of Lower Silesia,

are rumored to have hidden their valuables

in a huge park that surrounds the palace.

- So at the end of the war,

where the invasion is inevitable

and Germany knows that they're going to lose this war,

there's a scramble to try to secure these assets

that they have attained,

to put them somewhere safe where,

perhaps at a later date,

some can come back and unearth them.

- [Narrator] The questions of whether

or when these valuables were recovered remain unanswered.

After the war, the palace became a sort of triage center.

The Nazis stole tens of millions

of precious artifacts from Poland,

and it was necessary to create temporary warehouses

for the recovered works of art.

Paulinum became the most important one

and was dubbed the Monuments Men Palace.

- The Monuments Men are a team of American experts

and were brought on to catalog the tremendous amounts

of artifacts and valuables that had been taken by the Nazis

and found in various locations.

The Americans understand, to their credit,

that they need to rebuild, not just economically,

but also in a sense of political and cultural integrity.

So the Dutch people deserve the Dutch art back

and the French people the French art back.

- The idea was to store and catalog the pieces of art

before sending the collections back

to their previous owners.

But the truth is that many of them disappeared,

stolen by a local crew, lost during transport,

or distributed among some local museums

where they're still stored in warehouses.

- Not surprisingly,

as the situation becomes more disorganized and chaotic,

that central authorities increasingly lose their grip

on where items are ending up.

- Who has them? Where are they?

Are they in an underground bunker somewhere?

- It's a sad part of war

that we lose those pieces of culture.

- [Narrator] As defeat bears down on the Nazi Army,

high-ranking officers scrambled

to keep track of their stolen treasure.

Yet, across occupied territory,

top-secret operations are unfolding on a much larger scale

to do the exact opposite.

In 1945, locals surrounding Lake Toplitz

in the Austrian Alps report seeing

heavily armored SS vehicles approach the shore

under the cover of night.

- Put yourself in the shoes of one of these locals.

All of a sudden, these convoys are arriving at night,

under guard, and you can see them taking things

and dumping them into this lake.

What are they getting rid of? What are they hiding?

- [Narrator] Lake Toplitz is stunning.

Surrounded by dense woodland,

its idyllic appearance contrasts sharply

with the eerie depths of the water.

While fish swim happily near the lake's surface,

any trace of life vanishes just 20 meters down.

There is no oxygen here;

the water turns from fresh to salt.

- The unique composition of both seawater and freshwater

in Lake Toplitz has created this almost barrier

of logs that are partially floating 20 meters down

from the surface,

which makes it a very difficult

and very dangerous place to search.

- [Narrator] At least five divers have lost their lives

in recent decades,

though the actual number is thought to be higher.

One of these was a US Navy diver,

who drowned in 1947 as part of a team sent

to explore the lake.

As a result, diving here is banned.

But what brought these people to Toplitz?

And why were they willing to risk their lives?

- Lake Toplitz is an eerie lake

that really seems to raise a lot of questions.

- [Narrator] Legend tells of the Nazis sinking up

to $5 billion worth of gold in the lake.

But with the water reaching over 300 feet deep in areas,

combined with the floating forest,

a thorough search is practically impossible.

- It almost could be something out of Greek mythology,

where somebody has to go on a quest

and pass through the barrier of logs

or whatever to get down to some mythical items

at the bottom of the lake that might not actually be there.

- Now, when we consider that this place

is not particularly suited for the recovery of materials,

to my mind, it seems like it was more of a dumping ground

than a place to store stuff.

- And that changes the narrative or the ideas

about what was in those crates.

We're putting things someplace inaccessible,

someplace no man will ever be able to see it again.

So what is that? Probably not gold.

- [Narrator] In 1959, a shocking discovery is made

when investigators successfully recovered

700 million pounds worth of bank notes from the lake.

How did so much English currency find its way

to the depths of an Austrian lake?

Lake Toplitz was initially part

of a Nazi naval testing station.

Scientists experimented with copper diaphragms,

detonating enormous 4,000-kilo charges at various depths.

But the recovered money was traced back

to a separate Nazi initiative,

a master plan to tank the British economy,

known as Operation Bernhard.

- Operation Bernhard is a German plan

to destabilize the British economy,

principally by creating a lot of counterfeit notes.

- [Narrator] Rather than use expert counterfeiters,

prisoners from various concentration camps are taken

to Sachsenhausen to produce the money.

The plan is to drop the forged notes

over Britain by airplane.

However, most of the notes are laundered instead

and used to fund the German military.

- This plan goes awry.

The forgeries do not break the British economy.

And yet, these forgeries are so good that after the war,

the British have to redesign their pound notes to make sure

that it's no longer fake Nazi pounds circulating

in British wallets.

- [Narrator] The production of counterfeit bills stops

by March 1945 with the advance of the Allies.

- People want to eradicate any kind of evidence,

especially if you're a senior Nazi or even a mid-level Nazi.

You gotta be worried about the paper trail

because you know damn well that the Allies are coming.

This war is gonna end poorly for you,

and if you survive,

you might be now the focus of war crimes.

- Well, I'm a soldier. I'm in charge of them.

My command headquarters back

in Berlin has been bombed into oblivion,

and nobody's answering the phone for the last two weeks.

Sounds like I'm on my own.

Let me stick them in the lake for now,

and in a couple of years,

I'll come back and take a few thousand.

- Now, these counterfeit notes

that were discovered in 1959 were worthless,

but it still raised questions about what else was lying

at the bottom of Lake Toplitz and what that might be worth.

- [Narrator] Efforts to recover more

of this counterfeit currency

and the famed gold loot continues to this day.

In 2000, the submersible that was used

to search the wreck of the RMS Titanic was used

to survey the lake floor.

Even then, the complex and treacherous topography

of Lake Toplitz makes it impossible,

leading to widespread speculation about its contents

as people continue to ask themselves,

what else could be down there?

[mysterious music]

- One imagines there's some great secret to be discovered

at the bottom of a lake or some great wealth.

It's hard to explain why we have this propensity.

The realities of what we know

about the war are already dramatic enough

that I'm not really too worried about what's

at the bottom of the lake, if anything.

[tense music]

- [Narrator] While sites like the SS Minden

and Lake Toplitz continue to garner attention

as Nazi treasure troves,

neither compares to the discoveries made

in the Merkers Mine.

- It is a collection of treasures

that some troops compare to Aladdin's cave.

- But the big question remains,

how did all this loot get here?

- [Narrator] For most of the war,

the Nazis store the bulk of their looted gold

in the Reichsbank in Berlin.

By 1944, Allied bombings escalate dramatically in the city,

forcing the emergency relocation of funds.

- They hid their gold, and they had to hide it

where they didn't think

that the Allies would ever go looking for it.

- [Narrator] On February 11th, 1945,

most gold reserves, approximately 1 billion reichsmarks,

are brought to Merkers and locked in a vault known simply

as Room Number 8.

- This was a way of getting the gold reserve out

from Berlin, which was being basically flattened

by Allied bombardment.

- [Narrator] The mine's location, far from the capital,

makes it a safe choice for the Nazis.

Further, the underground structure makes it

relatively inconspicuous from above ground,

while keeping it safe from Allied air raids.

[tense music]

Merkers is deemed so secure that even Heinrich Himmler,

the head of the SS,

asks for his own personal treasure trove to be stored here.

- Along with this gold reserve of the National Bank was

so many more tons of looted materials.

- [Narrator] As the US Army officers pour over the contents

of Room Number Eight,

they notice that many of the packing slips attached

to the loot bear the same name:

Melmer.

Who is this man,

and why is his name on so much of the Nazi's treasure?

- He's a captain, but his function is not military,

neither it's policing.

It's strictly economic.

He's basically the clerk. He's the teller.

- [Narrator] Bruno Melmer was a German SS officer

who played a major role in distributing stolen money

and jewelry throughout Nazi Germany.

He was responsible for the organization, transportation,

and sale of all valuables taken from Holocaust victims.

- And so as the SS begins implementing the final solution,

and they start killing off entire households and families,

they do it in a way

where the people now come to them,

as opposed to those mobile killing units

when they were just shooting people in the back of the head.

Now the people are, quote,

"evacuated to assembly areas."

They come with all their valuables,

including the dental gold in their mouths,

their wedding rings, watches,

any kind of jewelry that could be liquid,

in the case of emergency,

perhaps sewn into their clothing even, hidden away.

And once the SS get their hands on them,

they're, of course, stripped of all that.

[dramatic music]

Shoes, leather, fountain pens, eyeglasses,

and every single item is carefully cataloged.

5,000 alarm clocks in working condition.

3,750 alarm clocks requiring repair.

The dental gold is extracted from their teeth.

They even shave their hair

because there's an industrial use for hair.

They make slippers for submarine crews out of human hair.

[dramatic music]

The property is then distributed into the German economy.

- Melmer is the single cog in this machine

that is extracting treasure and wealth.

- Nazi Germany had entire organizations dedicated

to tracking and cataloging their stolen goods.

- That may have been there to counteract human greed.

Things go missing. Oops, something goes in my pocket.

Oh, it goes over to my house instead of,

you know, over to the bank.

If you have everything tracked,

you can ensure that people aren't stealing from the system.

[ominous music]

- [Narrator] The total worth of Melmer's shipments

is estimated at 36 million reichsmarks.

- He's got this transport now that he's responsible for.

He's gotta hide it.

- [Narrator] When the Allies begin to close in

and Nazi assets are rushed away from Berlin,

he oversees much of the relocation.

He even personally delivers

many high-ranking Nazi officials' personal stashes.

- Although it's American troops

that have discovered this cash

of gold and currency and art,

they know that, sooner or later,

this part of Germany is gonna be occupied by Soviet forces.

- If the vast store of wealth and art,

which was stored in the Merkers Mine,

had fallen into the Soviet hands,

right, it would've been a catastrophe for the Allies.

- So you have decades of animosity and tension

between the West and the Soviet Union.

Mutual fear and suspicion.

Frankly, downright hatred in the minds of some people.

- There was a worry that

as soon as the Nazis laid down their arms,

the Soviets and the Americans would start shooting

at one another.

- So that develops a really, you know,

profound sense of urgency at the end of the war.

If you're in a territory

and you realized there's something

that you could use or take, you're gonna do it.

That involves things like treasure, gold,

but also involves people.

It involves scientists, technicians, right,

that can be really useful to them in a postwar settlement.

- [Narrator] The US Army has to act quickly.

The Merkers Mine is squarely

in what will soon become Soviet territory,

as agreed by the Allies.

They hurry to move the treasure

from the Merkers Mine to Frankfurt,

which is part of the American occupation zone.

- This was a mind-boggling task as far as logistics goes.

- The Americans move the gold out of the Merkers Mine,

and then they have to make a decision what to do with it.

- [Narrator] Here, a power struggle ensues.

The fortune in the Merkers Mine is so great

that it threatens to corrupt even the most prominent

among the Allied forces.

- General George Patton, one of the US Army commanders,

wants to keep the money for the United States Army.

He knows that when the war ends,

the funds going to support

the American war machine might dry up.

And he wants to use this money

to strengthen the United States military.

- He's been the man on the ground

to see exactly what's happened,

and to him, the war, the atrocities,

and everything there is still very, very paramount.

And that means that it's going to be harder

for him to believe that this is done.

It's a we need to make sure

that we can keep this from happening again.

And to do that, we need a strong military.

And to do that,

we need the funds to keep the military going.

- But Patton's plan leaks, and it gets shot down.

The United States Army does not keep

the gold found at Merkers.

Instead, the United States government returns this money

to different central banks in Europe,

with a portion of the money going to a fund

for victims of the Holocaust.

- [Narrator] It's estimated that billions of dollars worth

of gold and treasure,

along with hundreds of thousands of priceless works of art,

are still missing.

- With due respect to all soldiers

who fought the Second World War, you know,

the average composition of the soldiers

in the field are generally young,

not terribly well-educated individuals,

who have been through hell.

There's a lot of revenge.

There's a lot of, you know, personal gratification

that they want to get at the end of the war.

Many people knew that this came from a population,

Jewish population, that had been murdered.

So I'm sure in their own heads they said, "Well,

it's not gonna go back to the rightful owners

because the rightful owners are gone."

- The Germans themselves, military and civilians,

also had the propensity to steal gold

and keep it for themselves.

So there was a real motivator,

if you will, to enhance their own lives.

- There's just so much material that the Nazis have removed

from occupied territories and resituated

and then moved again into hiding places near the end

of the war that I think it must have been quite impossible

at the end of the story for anyone on the German side

to account for where all of this stuff ends up.

- Once the fact becomes absolutely clear

that there was no way for Germany to win this war,

then panic ensues.

And under those circumstances,

the whole organization breaks down.

- Much of the authority structure is collapsing on itself,

and more and more of the senior leaders are either fighting

to the death, so to speak,

or making a point of disappearing.

In which case, they may not be able

to take very much with them.

- This keeps alive the possibility

that there might be treasure, there might be wealth,

which were hidden and are awaiting discovery.

- Across the world,

there are still areas where people are looking,

trying to find the Nazi gold that is still missing.

[tense music]

- [Narrator] The extreme measures the Nazis took

when hiding their gold took a great deal of effort.

The Nazis were meticulous with their record keeping

and organization when it came to stolen artifacts.

Specially appointed art historians

and theorists ran whole looting organizations,

like the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Institute

for the occupied territories

and Sonderauftrag Linz

to track and store objects.

The internal banking systems were just as structured.

The SS made sure that all the money and gold accumulated

through the pillaging operations was accounted for

in their Reichsbank records.

- Gold is melted down into state bars,

stamped with the Reichsbank as official German gold,

and then very quietly assembled

and exported into Switzerland.

And there, it's deposited

with a bank called the Bank of International Settlements.

Once it's in Switzerland, in the BIS,

it's no longer Nazi gold or German gold,

it's neutral gold.

- [Narrator] This means that while popular culture likes

to imagine vast hordes

of Nazi gold hidden around formerly occupied territory,

the truth is that much of this gold went

into the international banking system,

finding its way into Swiss and Turkish banks,

before eventually moving out of Europe,

where it continues to circulate indirectly to this day.

- It's in Ottawa, it's in Washington.

It's in the economies of all these nations.

It's working for us. It's collecting interest.

It's been taken and not returned.

[tense music]

[metal detector beeping]

- [Narrator] As treasure hunters continue

to explore parts of former Nazi Germany,

the meaning of treasure has slowly changed.

Today, intact pieces of German weaponry, tanks, uniforms,

or even former soldiers' personal belongings can be sold

for huge profits.

- It's my understanding

that this has become increasingly common

in Poland and Eastern Europe more generally,

particularly since the collapse of Soviet authority

and the Communist Bloc.

Has left a lot of these localities more accessible

to treasure hunters who often arrive in the guise

of pursuing archeological expeditions that,

really, for all practical purposes,

are little more than grave robbing.

I've seen some of the techniques that they use

when they're excavating sites and looking for war material.

In most cases, they're either putting their own lives

in danger by excavating areas

where there's lots of unexploded ordinance,

without any sort of sensible safety protocols,

and/or in engaging in what are essentially acts

of desecration of war graves.

They're unmarked, forgotten burial sites,

in a lot of instances.

Looking for rings and pieces of insignia

that might be of some value

to collectors of that kind of material.

This is a sort of example of,

in the case of German graves, at least,

of a looting kleptocracy,

who are now being looted in death, in a way.

- [Narrator] Yet still, some hunters are determined

to find the most precious Nazi remnants of all:

Gold.

- The Nazi regime was built

on the ruthless pillaging of both individuals

and entire states,

and it's estimated that the fortunes stolen

by the Nazis would be around $19 billion

in today's money.

- The idea that some Nazi leaders

were actually keeping private

and secret treasures has fueled the idea

that there's still more Nazi gold left to find.

- These are interesting examples

of how even 75 or 80 years after the fact,

the war still isn't quite finished, isn't it?

Whether it's searching the bottom of a lake

or a ship that might have gold,

or some individual looking for something that a father

or grandfather might have left somewhere,

it goes on.

- [Narrator] As we continue to unpack the extent

of the Nazis' looting today,

the scope of their pillaging

leaves many questions unanswered.

Considering how carefully the Nazis' loot was stored during

the Second World War,

what might their hoarding tell us about their ambition?

- The Nazis were, if anything, megalomania personified.

There was this belief

that they were building a world empire,

and they were building a reich

that would last for 1,000 years.

Even though they were very practical, in one sense,

these were people who did not have realistic goals.

So definitely their looting plans

and their storage plans were done from that perspective.

- [Narrator] Were they already planning

for a new economic system in the supposed 1,000-year reich?

And can we even begin to imagine a world

in which the Nazis were able to keep hold of this wealth?

[tense music]