Nazi lake of gold

[kenb]

In the final days of the Third Reich, some Nazi officers loaded gold, documents and counterfeit British currency (pounds) into army trucks in Berlin, Germany, and drove south toward the Alps.

Some Nazi remnants -- a gold urn, personal seals, etc. -- have since been found in Bavarian and Austrian lakes such as Walchensee (Bavaria) and Altausee (Austria). Yet most of the Nazi's gold treasure is still missing. Many people believe that it was dumped into Lake Toplitz at the time of the downfall of the Nazi empire. The story of lake Toplitz has inspired many authors and filmmakers as well as treasure hunters who dived in the lake in search of the missing gold.

The Nazis had planned to destabilize the British economy by dropping counterfeit British pounds from airplanes over the country -- a plan they never carried out. Some of this counterfeit currency has been found by diving expeditions in Lake Toplitz. Other lakes in Bavaria and Austria are supposed to contain also Nazi gold treasures, yet nobody knows the details. Nor does anybody know what happened to the Nazis who transported the gold and secret documents.

Were they killed at the end of the war? Did they commit suicide? Did they flee to South America or other places?

The gold had been stolen from banks in occupied countries, had been broken out of the teeth of Jews, Gypsies and others who were killed in death camps like Auschwitz or had been robbed from victims of Nazi persecution (handicapped people, homosexuals, communists and socialists, Catholic priests and many others).

In charge of the concentration camps was a voluntary force called the SS, which also had an all-volunteer military branch ("weapons-SS"). Both the military branch of the SS and its concentration camp staff wore black uniforms with a cap that showed skulls and bones.

This was derived from the uniforms of the soldiers of the Duke of Brunswick, Germany, 150 years before and was intended to inspire fear, awe and horror. Not only Germans but also Frenchmen, Ukrainians, Dutch, Scandinavian and other European men served in the SS.

SS boss Heinrich Himmler has been quoted as saying, "Many Germans of our time have to vomit when they see these (SS-men in their) black uniforms, we know this and don't expect to be loved by anyone" (see The Order of the Death's Head by Heinz Hohne).

The SS and the Nazi party kept thorough records of all their lootings and killings but probably destroyed most of their records at the end of the war. One can only guess where the Nazi treasures are today. Maybe they are at the bottom of some lake. Maybe they'll stay there for good, until the end of time.

kenb

 

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[Kentucky Kache]

Good one to research. If you could prove that such treasure WAS transported away, and is unaccounted for, it would be one to look for.

 

[kenb]

Google Lake Toplitz, Lots of storys of Nazi treasure. Heres another article.

(CBS) Imagine a lake more mysterious than Loch Ness - a lake that hides a secret no one was meant to discover. There is such a place high up in the Austrian Alps. It is a lake called Toplitz.

Early one morning in 1945, Nazi S.S. officers sank a number of wooden boxes in Toplitz. Legend has it that the lake conceals everything from Nazi gold to the darkest secrets of Hitler's Reich.

Two years ago, 60 Minutes II led an underwater expedition in search of those boxes. As first reported last fall, its crew found evidence of a Nazi plot you didn't read about in your history books. What's in Hitler's lake? CBS News Correspondent Scott Pelley reports on the secrets at the bottom of Lake Toplitz.
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It is hard to imagine a better place to hide. In a dense mountain forest, Lake Toplitz lies secluded, folded deep into the Alps of western Austria. It isn't large - just a mile long. What is daunting is the depth.

Getting to the bottom of Toplitz is a journey. After 30 feet, the sun goes dark. Below 100 feet, the water is nearly freezing. At 348 feet, the bottom comes into view. There is no life (no plants and no fish) because there is no oxygen in the water. In 1945, Toplitz was practically as remote as the moon. And with secrets to keep, Toplitz was just what the Nazis were looking for.

Feb. 23, 1945: Hitler's Reich was tumbling down. The Allies were closing in and, in bombed-out Berlin, the Nazis were scrambling to truck their most valuable secrets out of town.

Adolf Burger was expecting to die at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was the man who knew too much - a Jew who had been forced to work on a top-secret Nazi plot. "That means I am someone who is privy to state secrets, they always end up dead; they were always liquidated," said Burger.

He and several other prisoners were forced to participate in a covert Nazi project: creating fake currency to crash Allied economies - including that of the United States.

When the project was abruptly ended, Burger was told to pack the counterfeit currency into boxes. He didn't know at the time, but the product of his work was taken to the Nazis' last holdout: the Austrian mountains called the Alpine Fortress. The Nazis planned to evacuate Hitler and a guerrilla army to the region around Lake Toplitz.

In the Alpine Fortress, time ran out on the Reich. By April 1945, Hitler was dead in Berlin, and the Allies were closing in all around. You could actually hear the artillery echoing in the mountains. Many of the last leaders of the Nazi regime fled there - some to make a last stand, others to try to save some remnant of the Reich in hope of starting over one day.

And Adolf Berger's work was essential to that plan.

The cargo was so well hidden that, chances are, no one would have ever seen the boxes again if it weren't for a 21-year-old Austrian farm girl. Ida Weisenbacher saw where the boxes went. She lives in the same house near Lake Toplitz where Nazi soldiers found her 55 years ago.

"It was five o'clock in the morning, we were still in bed when we heard the knock on the door," remembered Weisenbacher. "'Get up immediately. Hitch up the horse wagon, we need you.'"

They needed the wagon because the truck had reached the end of the road. Only horses could make it to Toplitz. "A commander was there. He told us to bring these boxes as fast as possible to Lake Toplitz," added Weisenbacher.

She said each box was labeled with bold-painted letters and a corresponding number.

She carried three wagonloads to the lake. "When I brought the last load, I saw how they went on to the lake and dropped the boxes into the water.... The S.S. kept shoving me away but I saw the boxes were sunk into the lake," said Weisenbacher.

The Nazis knew that searching a place so cold, so dark, and so deep wouldn't be possible with the technology of the time. But they couldn't have foreseen a phantom in the future.

The Phantom is a deep-diving robot operated by Oceaneering Technologies in Maryland and connected by a tether to a pilot on the surface. Jeff Kowalishen is one of the pilots of the underwater craft: "It's hard to hide something from this type of equipment."

Oceaneering uses The Phantom around the world on some of the toughest jobs imaginable. It was Oceaneering that recovered the wreckage of the Space Shuttle Challenger, lifted TWA Flight 800 off the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and located the aircraft of John F. Kennedy Jr.

60 Minutes II hired Oceaneering to search every inch of Lake Toplitz and recover the boxes if they could be found. "No one has tried at Toplitz to do this, but we have done this type of work all over the world," said Kowalishen.

But in that part of the world, the project wasn't entirely welcome. The Alpine Fortress region still celebrates its traditions, but many Austrians don't like dredging up reminders of a Nazi past.

It was in the winter of 1999 that negotiations were started with the Austrian government and the country's forestry service. After being assured the project wouldn't hurt the environment, the Austrians agreed to lease the lake for 30 days - an incredibly tight schedule for what the Oceaneering team was about to attempt.

There had been other dives in Lake Toplitz over the years, and artifacts related to the project had been raised before. But this expedition was to be the first comprehensive search of Toplitz. The dive would cost over $600,000, with major funding provided by the World Jewish Congress.

Toplitz doesn't seem large until you search it inch by inch. The video image relayed from the remote submarine is only three feet wide. The first thing Oceaneering found was a layer of silt on the bottom that often blew like a blizzard, blinding the camera.

Team member Ian Griffith of San Francisco is an expert on the remote-controlled subs. "If we are to high, we are not going to see anything. If we are too low, we are going to destroy the visibility and not see anything," he said.

For 12 hours a day, the crew strained for some familiar shape. "We have four pilots. You can only do it for so long, and then it really becomes monotonous," said Griffith.

But there was no hint of anything like Adolf Burger's boxes. It was possible the boxes were buried or covered in silt. It was also possible, after 55 years, they had just crumbled away.

The days turned into weeks - nearly three weeks of searching. The submarine would cover more than 35 miles altogether. The 30-day deadline imposed by the Austrians was getting closer. And Oceaneering couldn't get a break from the lake.

To the tethered mini-sub, the lake floor was a minefield. Oceaneering expected trees but not underwater forests. Trees had fallen from the mountain and were stacked 60 feet high in some places. The Phantom would spend days lost in the woods.

And when it wasn't the trees, it was the weather.

The picture-postcard lake often developed a foul mood. There were hailstorms and lightning.

The crew figured it was out of luck when a bolt of lightning struck the navigation system, and the search pattern wasn't reliable anymore. But Kowalishen wanted to press on, guiding The Phantom by dead reckoning and as it turns out, dumb luck.

Then a discovery was made - not the intact boxes the crew hoped to find, but the remains of something decades old, pieces of wood that might have come from the Nazi crates.
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kenb

 

[Kentucky Kache]

I remember seeing that, but I didn't remember much about it. Thanks.

 

[allen_idaho]

The story is highly credible as the scenario of dumping the treasure into a body of water was once a highly used method of keeping it out of enemy hands. The Russians did it often. The Japanese, British, Germans and United States did it on several occasions during the first and second world wars.

However, paper currency and wooden crates have only a slim chance of survival. The only factors that could possibly save it from total disintegration is the fact that it is fresh water and that it has a constantly freezing temperature.

Anyway, it is an interesting story. I hope they find something. I wouldn't be surprised if they dumped more than just the counterfeit bills in there.

 

[monkeymann]

I was in the U.S. Army and lived in Germany between 1986-1988. We had a Post Exchange..Ie. Post Mall. One week they had a "Starving Artist" show/sale. I purchased a painting that the german guy who painted it said that it was of a place called "Dachstein". He claimed that the Nazi's had dumped gold and other things into the lake at this site. Funny thing...the painting that I have that the guy said was a place called "Dachstein"...It looks a heck of a lot like the picture of the lake on this site. I had the guy that I purchased the painting from write on the back of the frame where the painting was done and what it's significant's was. I'll try and take a picture if it and post it.