Nazi Loot - Where Did It All Go?

The Nazis financed their war effort through looted gold – either from occupied nations or individual victims of concentration camps. Remember the infamous Melmer account in the Reichsbank?

SS Officer Bruno Melmer, transferred gold from victims of concentration camps to an SS account in Reichsbank. The notorious Melmer shipment list consisted of 29 columns of gruesome types of loot - "Gold and Silver Coins," "Purses," "Knives, Forks, Jewels," "Gold and Diamond Rings," "Watches," "Dental Gold," "Broken Gold," etc. Remember those tales of prisoners being forced to rip dental gold and jewelry from piles of bodies of their fellow prisoners?

All this gold was smelted into gold bars and then transferred from SS accounts in the Reichsbank to Swiss National Bank (SNB). The SNB must have at one point known the illegitimate nature of the gold– maybe not the gruesome origins. The figures are utterly astounding ($3.5 billion in 1998’s estimates..and a conservative estimate at that). The 1998 Bergier Report confirmed all this and much more.

By 1944, when the top honchos in the Third Reich began to realize that they were losing the war, a lot of this and other loot (art treasure, antiques, etc) began to go missing. After the War, finding the lost treasures of Europe was a Herculean task. Only a fraction of it was ever recovered - like the stash found in the salt mine Alt Aussee near Salzburg. There were other lost salt mines that were rumored to contain art looted from the occupied countries. (The salt trapped moisture and temperatures in the bowels of earth was low – perfect natural place to preserve art).

But where did the rest go? Here are some of the legendary theories/facts:

Bormann’s Treasure
Martin Bormann, a right hand man of Hitler, vast treasure crossed the Franco-Iberian border into Iberia in trucks. From there it was air flown to Argentina. The details of these periodic air shipments are still in FBI, Argentinian and UK govt archives. All the currency from the treasure was thought to be deposited into Eva Peron’s account who, theory has it, then transferred all the funds into unnamed Swiss bank accounts in Europe during her popular Rainbow Tour.

Lake Toplitz, Austrian Alps
Nazis used it as a marine warfare testing station. But in the closing months of the war, SS men and workers were sighted dumping huge metal cases into the lake. Rumors were ripe that these trunks were full of gold ingots and precious stones. Over the years, numerous diving expeditions recovered 18 waterproof metal cases in the 300 feet deep lake. Some cases were filled with documents of operations to devalue the British pound, others with a couple of million pounds in counterfeit money. Some had gold ingots, coins, diamonds from Kaltenbunner chalices… They have yet to find the rest of the cases believed to be still sitting the murky depths of the lake.

Lunersee
A first hand account of how the loot, amassed in the Dachau concentration camp, was shipped out in large ammunition boxes in the dark of the night and driven for four days finally to be buried in a spot close to the lake in the remote area of Lunersee was given by one of the four SS officers who was involved. He told this tale of buried treasure after War to physician Wilhelm Gross ( who was at that time treating the Dachau inmates).

And there are many many other Alpine lakes, castles, lost mines - to name a few, Merkers mine, Rommel’s Gold, Wewelsburg Castle, Zbiroh Castle– each hoarding its own vast, gruesome treasure.