In 2018 I was approached by a freelance writer/researcher who had developed an interest in the subject of Nazi Gold. He got in touch and interviewed me on several occasions. I also provided access to all the documents I had amassed between 1974 and 2018. It was his intention to publish the results of his wide-ranging research as a Wikipedia article. However, not having heard from him for several months I contacted him earlier this year, to enquire when the article would be finished. It transpired that his work on the Nazi Gold article had been temporarily shelved as a result of employment issues and he was unable to say when he would be able to continue with the project. He sent me an updated copy of what he had done so far and I decided to ask if I might display his work to date on the Nazi-Gold.com website . He agreed to this and I think it will enhance the knowledge of those who are interested in the subject. It will also, I believe, be of assistance to authors (fiction and non-fiction) journalists, academics, institutions and movie makers in ensuring that the stories they create or research are based more on reality than the often greatly exaggerated folklore which has sprung up around ‘Nazi Gold’ since it first became a generic term to describe all plunder looted by the Nazi regime during the Third Reich.
Ian Sayer. 1st January 2020
Incidentally I have taken the liberty of updating the list of books containing the term ‘Nazi Gold’ in the title. Please don’t hesitate to let me have details of any I have missed. I believe there are many others which have been based on the subject, some writers preferring terms like ‘Hitler’s Gold’, but these have been excluded. I have also changed some figures to reflect 2019 values.
Nazi Gold – The Legend and the Myths
Nazi Gold is a generic term which, often refers, not just to gold, but a variety of other assets also looted from governments, institutions, and private citizens of occupied countries between 1938 and 1945 by the civil and military authorities of the Third Reich.
References to Nazi Gold, currently made by governments, journalists, authors and the media in general, include, but are not limited to one or more of the following categories.
- Monetary gold legitimately owned by the Nazi regime (bullion and coins)
- Monetary gold looted from occupied or invaded countries by the Nazi regime (bullion and coins)
- Non-monetary gold including coins, jewellery and dental gold looted from private citizens and concentration camp victims sometimes referred to as ‘victim gold’ or ‘victim assets’.
- Other precious metals including silver and platinum.
- Diamonds (including industrial) and all other precious stones and gems.
- International currencies of all denominations.
- Transferable bonds and securities. Bearer bonds.
- Valuables looted and retained by all branches of the SS, Gestapo and German Armed Forces.
- Valuables in the custody of the Nazi Foreign Office.
- International currencies forged by the Nazi regime.
- Printing plates for genuine Nazi and forged international.
- Works of art looted by the Nazi regime.
The term Nazi Gold, therefore, could perhaps more accurately be described as Nazi Treasure, Nazi Loot or Nazi Plunder.
Although it made a brief appearance in the British press during a search for alleged Nazi treasure in an Austrian lake during the 1960s, the term did not spring to prominence until Granada Publishing (now Harper Collins) used it as the title for their 1984 international best-seller ‘Nazi Gold’ – The Story of the World’s Greatest Robbery’ authored by investigative writers Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting with the London Sunday Times. The book was attributed as the source for ‘The World’s Greatest Robbery’ entry in the Guinness Book of Records from 1984 to 2000. In fact, the title had originally been coined by the authors as far back as 1977 when the book had been offered to an earlier proposed publisher. The phrase is now so immured in common usage that the most recent edition of Hammond Innes’ 1948 thriller ‘The Lonely Skier’ incorporates it into the back-cover trailer. Actually, Innes never used the term in his book despite there being 71 references to just ‘gold’.
‘It lies somewhere beneath the snow, high in the Dolomites: Nazi gold, tainted with the blood of murdered men. Only a few know its secrets, and one by one they come in search of it – a hot-tempered Italian Comtessa, a racketeering pimp, a Greek criminal, a film-maker and a hapless writer. A tense battle of wits leads to an explosive finale in Innes’ classic tale of revenge and deadly greed’
In 1995 the World Jewish Conference began to apply political pressure designed to force the Swiss Government to reveal the existence of dormant bank accounts which had been opened by individuals who subsequently became victims of the Holocaust. Inextricably linked with this was a demand for transparency over the outstanding question of the disposition of gold bullion (weighing 362.56 metric tonnes) which the Nazis had looted and shipped to Switzerland between 1940 and 1945. In early 1996 President Clinton sanctioned a State Department investigation with a remit to evaluate the evidence against Switzerland. Lasting seven months and involving 11 government agencies who reviewed 15 million pages of documentation, the report was finally completed in May 1997.
In the same month the British Foreign Minister, Robin Cook, announced that Britain was to host an International Conference on Nazi Gold in London. The primary purpose was to decide on the ultimate disposition of the five and a half tonnes of looted gold still held by the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold but the wider aims of the conference were to evaluate the historic responsibility of those handling Nazi Gold and to examine the Allies’ record in managing it.
On the 8th May the Bank of England issued a press statement on behalf of the TGC giving details, for the first time, of their holdings and confirming that they had received two bars of looted Nazi Gold as late as October 1996, the first looted bullion bars received by the Bank since the main deposits had been made in the 1940’s.
By 1997 the term Nazi Gold was in common usage by the media and government institutions. This culminated in the British government’s decision to name their forthcoming conference – The London Conference on Nazi Gold. The conference was held between the 2nd and 4th December 1997 and was attended by delegates from around 40 countries. Under the umbrella of Nazi Gold, the discussions and subsequent papers encompassed many of the components listed above. The proceedings of the conference were published in 1998 by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office under the title ‘Nazi Gold – The London Conference’ thereby promoting the generic use of the term.
Since the advent of the new millenium Nazi Gold has featured prominently in the media, in connection with suspected caches of alleged hidden Nazi loot within Germany and former occupied countries. Invariably Nazi Gold is mentioned in the same breath as newly discovered sunken U-Boats and other Nazi maritime wrecks. As of 2017 there have been no reported recoveries.
Treasure hunters, whether organisations or individuals, and the media in general, seldom appear to have conducted any detailed analysis on the background or placement of alleged deposits of Nazi Gold and/or its associated components. The absence of proper research often leads to wild and exaggerated suggestions as to the extent or estimated value of the targeted assets.
Nazi Gold – Value versus weight.
Unfortunately, statistical information on the topic is not only hard to find but often difficult to interpret. References to monetary gold can be expressed in terms of value (both contemporary and the present day) or by weight (sometimes metric and sometimes imperial)
From 1934 to 1971 the price of gold was fixed at US$ 35 per fine ounce (subject to some minor fluctuations after the war) In 1945 a kilo of gold was valued at US$ 1,125.275. on the international market. During and immediately after the war the black-market value was many times higher than the fixed price. The Reichsbank and most other European banks kept much of their gold reserves in 12.5 kilo ‘good delivery bars’, a practice which is still adhered to today. Occasionally reserves were supplemented with relatively small quantities of monetary gold coins.
The gold price is now fixed daily. In December 2019 the average price was $1500 per fine ounce. At that level a 12.5 kilo good delivery bar would be worth around $602812. In 1945, with the gold price fixed at $35 per fine ounce the same bar would have been valued at $15432.
Nazi Gold ‘discoveries’ are now extremely popular, and invariably covered by the media but, quite often, the extent of the value or weight of these ‘discoveries’ can be grossly exaggerated. This entry is an attempt to provide some of the background relating to the expression and relevant statistical information where it is available.
The following tables have been converted from their 1945 US dollar value to metric tonnes for overall simplification. The figures are accurate to within a minor variance.
The following tables have been converted from their 1945 US dollar value to metric tonnes for overall simplification. The figures are accurate to within a minor variance.
Nazi Gold – Movements of Monetary Gold to and from the Reichsbank 1938-1945.
Monetary and non-monetary gold received by the Reichsbank between March 12, 1938 and June 30, 1945
Initial holdings 132.41
Looted 669.61
Monetary gold 596.12
Source:
Belgium 198.08
Netherlands 145.56
Austria 91.17
Italy 69.31
Czechoslovakia 37.85
Hungary 28.61
Greece 7.46
Poland 6.48
Luxembourg 4.26
Danzig 3.82
Yugoslavia 3.37
Albania 0.08
Non monetary gold 73.49
Source:
SS “Melmer” 3.55
Other looted 69.93
Foreign purchases 27.20
USSR (prior to 6/41) 20.43
Japan 3.73
Total 669.61 829.22
Monetary and non-monetary gold Reichsbank balances on June 30, 1945
End of period balance 273.51
Reichsbank monetary 227.49
Source:
Merkers mine 211.94
Found elsewhere 12.44
Missing 3.11
Other monetary 28.61
Source:
Hungary 28.61
Non-monetary 17.41
Source:
SS “Melmer” Account 1.77
Other looted 6.22
Foreign Office 9.41
Foreign Shipments 459.58
Switzerland 389.21
Source:
SNB* 4/40-6/44 335.91
SNB* 1/40-3140 8.88
Banks 4/40-12/41 17.77
From Italy 1944 26.65
Other 70.52
Source:
Rumania 47.81
Greece 7.10
Turkey 4.70
Japan 3.19
Slovakia 1.77
Sweden 1.51
Other countries 4.44
Other uses 92.77
Organizations 30.57
Industrial / artistic 53.32
Individual 8.88
Total 825.86
*SNB Swiss National Bank
Non-monetary gold, victim gold and other valuables
There are very few records available concerning the theft of gold from individuals during the Third Reich period. Any such gold should have been classified as non-monetary and, if unable to be returned to the original owners, turned over to the International Refugee Organisation (I.R.O.) along with all other non-monetary gold and valuables where ownership could not be traced.
However, there is a record of gold, belonging to individuals, which was looted by the Nazis from the Central Banks of Occupied Countries between 1938 and 1945. In their rush to comply with the terms of the 1946 Paris Reparations Agreement the TGC erroneously, and rather arbitrarily, incorporated some of this non-monetary gold into the monetary gold pool. Those amounts marked with an asterisk were so incorporated.
Nazi Confiscation of Gold from Individuals via Central Banks in Occupied Countries, March 12, 1938 – June 30, 1945
Netherlands 35.45*
Austria 12.97*
Greece 7.46
Poland 6.48
Belgium 6.39*
Yugoslavia 3.37
Czechoslovakia 0.97*
Luxembourg 0.08
Total 74.82
Apart from those individuals who had their gold deposited or confiscated by the Central Banks of the Occupied Countries there is no reliable information concerning the looting of other gold or valuables from individuals by either the civil or military agencies of the Nazi regime.
The amount of ‘victim gold’ looted from Holocaust and/or Concentration Camp victims is essentially incalculable.
Gold in any form and all other precious metals together with any other visible valuables were confiscated from new arrivals to the Nazi extermination camps in the occupied Eastern Territories upon entry. Clothes, suitcases and bags belonging to the dead were searched for hidden valuables. Dental gold was removed from the dead before burial or cremation.
Some valuables were stolen by SS guards and staff but, from 1942, the vast majority of dental gold, gold watches, gold rings, bracelets and other similar valuables etc were collected by the SS and sent to the Reichsbank.
The official in charge of this activity was SS Captain Bruno Melmer (1909-1982) who was effectively responsible for the Cashier’s Department of the W.V.H.A. (SS Main Economic and Administrative Office) in Berlin. The transportation of this material was cloaked in secrecy and referred to as the ‘Melmer deliveries’.
After processing, fine gold was smelted into bullion bars and the value credited to the SS ‘Max Heiliger’ account. All other valuables were distributed, by the Reichsbank, and disposed of by organizations such as the Municipal Pawn Shop, with the proceeds also being credited to the Max Heiliger account. Although some records were captured at the end of the war they are considered to be incomplete. The ‘Melmer deliveries’ accounted for some 3.55 tonnes of fine gold between 1942 and 1945. This gold and/or its currency equivalent was allocated to the SS for use in espionage and other overseas operations. Approximately 1.77 tonnes was recovered by the Allies in 1945.
At the end of the war the Allies collected valuables of all types from many previously occupied countries which had not been prepared for shipment to the Reichsbank. Some of it was found in and around Concentration Camps.
Apart from this organised looting by the SS there was ‘private’ looting by members of the SS which took place in all occupied countries.
The Gestapo often confiscated any valuables from their prisoners and, particularly if the prisoners died in custody, stole them.
The German military, such as the Wehrmacht, also processed similar types of material looted from individuals during combat operations or occupational activities. Broadly speaking this material was dealt with in a similar manner to that handled by the SS. However, no consolidated accounting records were discovered by the Allies.
The Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold
Colloquially known as the TGC this was an organisation established in 1946 by the British, French and US governments to receive and allocate looted monetary gold to claimant countries.
At that time the general understanding was that the term ‘monetary gold’ meant gold which was backing a national currency. However, the TGC applied a more tightly drawn definition for exercising their remit. This definition stated ‘All gold which, at the time of its looting or wrongful removal, was carried as part of the claimant country’s monetary reserve, either in the accounts of the claimant Government itself or in the accounts of the claimant country’s central bank or other monetary authority at home or abroad.
There were 10 claimant countries were Albania, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Poland and Yugoslavia.
The claimant countries lodged claims totalling 735 tons (The TGC calculated weights using the imperial system so 1 ton = 1,016.047 kilos). Claims which were validated by the TGC amounted to 514 tons. Gold deliveries to the TGC equalled 336 tons.
The former Soviet Union was not a signatory to the Agreement on Reparations which was signed in Paris on the 14th January 1946. This was the agreement which established the TGC. The former Soviet Union renounced all claims to gold recovered by the Allied forces in the Western zones of Germany at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945. The Western Allies did not apparently seek to discover whether any monetary gold was recovered by the Soviet Union in its zone of occupation or elsewhere.
Post-war Monetary Gold Recoveries.
Responsibility for recovering monetary gold in post war West Germany was vested in the Allied military authorities. Once secured the gold was subsequently delivered to the national banks of the USA, United Kingdom and France for the account of the TGC. Allied negotiators also recovered some comparatively small amounts of monetary gold from neutral nations where it had been held in former Nazi embassies.
Although the TGC had no remit to handle non-monetary gold, the Allies, in their rush to comply with the gold restitution policies, did consign, to the TGC, some undetermined and indeterminable ‘victim gold’ It had been melted down and disguised to appear as a part of the Nazi gold reserves. Some of this victim gold originated from the SS Melmer Account.
Several post war investigations into ‘missing’ Nazi Gold (or ‘discrepancies’ as they were occasionally referred to) took place. In the USA they were conducted by the FBI and in the US Zone of Germany by US Army intelligence and other military agencies including the Foreign Exchange Depository and CID. The German police also undertook several investigations of their own.
Although a number of leads were developed no arrests were ever made and none of the ‘missing’ Nazi Gold or associated assets were recovered. This perhaps was not surprising as the absence of many of the banking and transfer records made the task of evaluating and matching gold recoveries from so many countries extremely complex and, in some cases, impossible.
However apart from government investigations there have also been two successful private investigations which have earned some form of acknowledgment from the TGC.
The first investigation was carried out by Herbert Herzog (1922-1977), a Viennese merchant who was also a survivor of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. He was half Jewish and had been imprisoned for assisting a Jew to escape from the Gestapo.
In June 1945, Herzog reported the existence of a hidden cache of what appeared to be Nazi Gold. Herzog led troops of the 3rd US Infantry Division to the hiding place in the mountains at Bad Gastein near Salzburg in Austria. The haul consisted of monetary gold coins weighing 4314.78 kilos.
The gold was delivered to the Austrian State Bank in error. Although it had been processed through the Reichsbank on behalf of the Foreign Office it was still in sacks marked Bank of Italy who were still carrying it on their books and entitled to claim ownership. The gold should have been consigned to the TGC. However, in 1947 the TGC allowed the Austrian State Bank to retain the gold as a part of their validated claim against the TGC’s ‘Gold Pool’. Herzog had been hoping for a reward or ‘finder’s fee’ and claimed that he had received an informal assurance to that effect from a US Lieutenant who had been present at the recovery with Herzog. Unfortunately, nobody was interested in pursuing a discussion on the question of a reward so, in 1950, Herzog approached the Bank of Italy who, in conjunction with Herzog brought an action against the Austrian National Bank. The USA then brought political pressure to bear on the Italian bank and, by 1954, had persuaded them to drop the action and accept the apportionment made by the TGC.
But Herzog did not give up. In 1956 he attempted to open up a dialogue on the subject with the TGC but was initially rebuffed by them on the basis that they only communicated with governments and not individuals. However, despite this the Secretary General of the TGC wrote to the three Allied Commissioners of the TGC explaining that the three governments who were the custodians of the pool were alone, competent to decide whether Herzog would get a reward. Should they decide to do that the Secretary General recommended that any reward should be paid from the gold pool prior to the TGC announcing the share of the pool due to be awarded to each claimant country. Finally, he suggested that the Commissioners should prepare a report on the matter for their respective governments. Washington, London and Paris decided unanimously that Herzog should not receive an award. It was Washington’s opinion that any reward should be paid by the Bank of Italy and there the matter rested with the TGC’s formal reply to the effect that they only communicated with governments. Herzog. In August 1957 he sent the Secretary General a postcard bearing the inscription ‘Forget-me-not. Best Wishes.. Herzog tried one more time by phoning the Secretary General in February 1958 but he received the same response. By this time it appeared that he was in dire financial straits. He died in Vienna at the age of 54 in 1977.
The second investigation related directly to looted Nazi Gold.
In 1974 British investigative writer Ian Sayer came across an entry in the Guinness Book of Records which claimed that the World’s Greatest Robbery was the theft of the Reichsbank Reserves in 1945. At that time the entry was partly attributed to an out of print book ‘Gold is Where You Hide it’ by W Stanley Moss who, during the war, had participated in the capture of a German general from Crete. Reading the book piqued Sayer’s interest. Names had been changed and the end was inconclusive. Sayer spent the next 9 years attempting to unravel the true circumstances of the robbery which culminated in the publication in 1984 of Nazi Gold by Sayer and Douglas Botting with the London Sunday Times.
By 1983 Sayer had joined forces with the London Sunday Times who put their considerable weight behind Sayer’s investigation. Sayer wanted to pursue a test case relating to the disappearance of 2 bars of gold weighing 24.79 kilos, $426866 in US currency and £10405 in British currency all of which he had traced to having come under the control of the US in their zone of occupation. Consequently the Sunday Times wrote to the US Department of Justice in connection with the currency and the US State Department regarding the gold. At the same time they also wrote to the TGC in connection with the gold. The US Department of Justice responded that they were unable to confirm the loss of the currency ‘based on the information contained in the files retained by this office’ and added ‘We thank you for your interest in this matter and your offer to assist the United States. The TGC responded by stating that they only corresponded with governments. However, the Assistant Legal Adviser to the State Department agreed (five years after he had originally been asked) to implement a serious investigation. He then requested all the documentation. Apart from acknowledging the documentation nothing further was heard from the State Department until 1985 when they replied that they could not locate what had happened to the bullion from their own records and were getting in touch with the German authorities to see if they could assist.
In 1983 The TGC was still in existence mainly because it could not make a final distribution until the three governments had resolved a claim from Albania in respect of approximately two and a half tons of the remaining gold. There were various counterclaims against the Albanian government including one from Italy and one from the Great Britain. In 1946 two British destroyers had been mined in the Corfu Channel (subsequently referred to as the ‘Corfu Channel Incident’) causing much damage and 44 dead. In 1949 Albania was found to be responsible and the International Court of Justice had awarded the British government £843,947 in compensation. This situation ended in a stalemate which by 1984 had existed for more than three decades. Sayer decided to see if he could move the matter forward and establish if the survivors and families of those who had died in the ‘Corfu Channel Incident’ might benefit financially if a deal with Albanian could be achieved. To do this he enlisted the aid of Jeff Rooker MP (now Lord Rooker). Rooker made various representations, including an exchange of correspondence with the Prime Minister who was reluctant to discuss the issue. However, despite this Rooker laid down several Parliamentary Questions which culminated in an adjournment debate in the House of Commons in 1987. The Foreign office agreed to respond but, in view of the sensitivity of the case, in private. In fact, nothing materialised to progress the matter. In 1988 Sayer and Rooker wrote to the Albanian leader, Ramiz Alia, offering to visit him on a fact-finding mission which they hoped might help to resolve the impasse. There was no response and the Albanian Gold slipped into obscurity for another eight years. In the meantime, the government had advised Rooker that, whatever the outcome, neither survivors or the families of those who had died in the ‘Corfu Incident’ would benefit financially.
In 1996 the Swiss Gold crisis started to gain momentum and Sayer was approached by the editor of the Sunday Times Insight team to see if he had any information on the topic. He hadn’t but suggested that they might follow up his original investigation into the two bars which had ground to a halt more than a decade previously. Establishing contact with the US State Department the Insight editor was amazed to find it was the same Assistant Legal Adviser who had promised to investigate 13 years previously. When asked how the investigation was progressing he was told ‘Ongoing’.
On May 7th 1997 the US State Department released the Eizenstat Report (United States and Allied Efforts to Recover and Restore Gold and other Assets Stolen or Hidden by Germany During World War II) This was published in advance of the London Conference on Nazi Gold and confirmed a couple of important issues. Firstly, that captured Reichsbank records made it possible to trace specific gold bars in the Reichsbank’s gold reserves at the Foreign Exchange Depository and secondly that the final shipment of monetary gold to the account of the TGC occurred on August 3, 1948, after which the FED reported that no monetary gold remained in its custody.
The following day the Bank of England issued a Press Release which announced the exact amount of the gold being held on behalf of the TGC who had just authorised full disclosure. In one of the closing paragraphs it was stated ‘ In addition to the gold mentioned above, the Bank also holds on behalf of the TGC, a further two bars totalling some 797 ounces which were transferred from the Deutsche Bundesbank in September 1996. The bars bear the refining stamp of both the Prussian State Mint (1938) and Degussa (1956)’. The approximate value of the two bars in December 2019 would be just over $1.2m.
At the conclusion of the Release the Bank added ‘It is thought the missing bars may be the two referred to as having disappeared just after the war in a book called Nazi Gold by Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting. The two bars are the only bars held by the Bank that have Nazi markings’.
In fact, they did turn out to be the two bars whose disappearance had first been brought to the attention of the US State Department nearly 20 years previously. The question of where the two bars had been in the intervening half a century is a question that appears never to have received a satisfactory answer.
The gold and currency (valued at up to $40m in 2017) were being carried on the books of the FED at the Landeszentralbank (LCB) in Munich as late as November 1948, four months after they had confirmed that they no longer had any monetary gold in their custody. Sayer had written to the LCB about the gold and currency in 1979. The LCB passed his query on to the Deutsche Bundesbank in 1980. Owing to the usual secrecy laws they were unable to answer the specific enquiry but did point out that all foreign exchange assets held by German banks for the account of Military Government (including the FED) were returned to the persons originally entitled to them (where these could be traced) after their general release in 1955. Undeliverable assets were sold at public auction and the proceeds transferred to the Ministry of Finance.
During his investigation Sayer had established that the two bars of bullion had not been handed over to the TGC as it should have been, that the $426826 in US Currency which should have been shipped to the US Department of Justice never arrived which was also the case for the £10405 in British currency which should have been shipped to the Bank of England. It was, he believed, inconceivable that these losses could have been caused by administrative errors but despite his information leading to the recovery of the two gold bars the Deutsche Bundesbank have never explained what had happened to them between 1945 and 1988 when they notified the US Department of State that they had them in their possession. However, they did point out that they had refused to release them to the TGC for a further 8 years ‘because of problems in finding a mutually acceptable formulation on the technical question of liability’.
Behind the scenes the TGC and the British, French and US governments were applying considerable pressure on Germany to release the two bars. By 1995 they had already agreed that it had been established beyond argument that the two bars properly formed part of the TGC’s gold pool. The TGC Commissioners were also becoming very concerned at the undesirability of a situation developing where the German government could be portrayed as refusing to hand over gold looted by the Nazi regime thereby delaying the final distribution of the gold pot. The controversy over the two bars was effectively holding up the delivery of 5.5 tons of gold worth (in 2017) approximately $220m!
By mid-1996 the TGC Commissioners were becoming increasingly nervous. There was now intense media interest in TGC business and the Swiss gold controversy was building. The British Commissioner was also worried that the issue of the two gold bars and its importance to the final gold distribution was still being concealed. He therefore received agreement from the US and French Commissioners to speak to the German Ambassador to Belgium on the topic. Following this meeting the German government dropped their demand for any form of indemnity and arranged for the two gold bars to be formerly handed over to the US government on the 27th September 1996 at a ceremony in Bonn. It was exactly 50 years since the inauguration of the TGC. The German receipt signed by the Bundesbank and the US Embassy accepted that the bars had not been accompanied any details as to ownership although they bore Nazi markings and the imprint of the Prussian Mint. They were both dated 1938 as had thousands of other bars looted and re-smelted by the Nazi regime. Sayer, who had tracked the bars, at his own expense, from their origins in Belgium to the LCB in Munich and initiated the original State Department 20-year investigation was not invited to attend. The first news of the recovery of the two bars came from the Bank of England’s Press Release.
Sayer, who had never asked for a reward of any sort, received no thanks, nor any acknowledgment for his contribution to the recovery of the gold from either the British, French or US governments.
However, the Secretary General of the TGC, fully aware of the part Sayer had played, arranged with the Bank of England to award him the singular honour of a visit to the Bank’s gold vaults where he was photographed holding both the bars he had been instrumental in finding. He felt this tribute was a fitting culmination to his 22-year search for them. Of the millions of dollars’ worth of US and British currency, which might have been spent on supporting the victims of the Nazi regime, there was no sign. The US Department of Justice remain uninterested and the Deutsche Bundesbank appear to have reverted to the same secrecy laws that they had initially used to hide behind in the case of the two bars.
Post-war Nazi Gold Looting
The Hungarian Gold Train
The wholesale looting of non-monetary gold and victim assets did not stop with the cessation of hostilities in Europe.
In a devastated and chaotic Europe, the door was still open to looting and pilfering on a wide scale albeit on a much less organised basis. The Allied armies now became instruments of occupation and within their ranks appeared opportunists who saw any valuables as legitimate ‘war booty’. Essentially ‘To the Victors – The Spoils’. However, in many cases, it was still extremely difficult to assess what might have once belonged to the Nazi state and what may have belonged to its victims.
In addition, Western governments were turning against some countries who were becoming satellite states of the Soviet Union irrespective of their pre-war or former Allied status.
Such considerations helped to facilitate the systematic looting of what was to become known as The Hungarian Gold Train (not to be confused with the more modern myth of the Polish Gold Train).
In 1944 the Hungarian Fascist government collaborated with the German occupation forces in seizing all valuables of high monetary value from the estimated 800,000 Jewish citizens who lived in Hungary. The majority of the Hungarian Jewish population was subsequently murdered in Nazi death camps. In any event these victim assets were processed in such a way as to make any restitution to its former owners practically impossible.
In late 1944 an anti-semitic Hungarian Colonel prepared a plan to evacuate much of this loot before the arrival of the steadily advancing Soviet Army. His intended destination was Switzerland and the evacuation was to be undertaken by a forty-six freight wagon train (24 carriages of loot, 15 carriages for police, army and various other officials together with their families and 7 carriages for miners and Hungarian Ministry of War personnel. The train was to be accompanied by a motorized convoy of between six and eight vehicles which included two lorries designated to carry the most valuable items such as gold, jewellery and diamonds. The train had been assigned to carry the bulky and less valuable items which included works of art, pearls, gems, Persian and Oriental rugs, silverware, chinaware, furniture, fine clothing, linens, porcelains, cameras and stamp collections. There was also currency, mainly US dollars and Swiss Francs. The overall value has always been hard to assess and estimates have ranged from $3-$5m right up to $350m at 1945 values.
Looting of the valuables had begun to take place even before the train had left Budapest on the 15th December 1944.
TO BE CONTINUED…………………………………
Books with ‘Nazi Gold’ in the title published since 1984
Nazi Gold: The Story of the World’s Greatest Robbery – And Its Aftermath. Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting (with the London Sunday Times); Granada Publishing, London 1984. ISBN-13: 9780246117670.
Nazi Gold : The search for the Party Treasure. Humphrey Drummond, Historical Press, London. 1994. ISBN-13: 9781871430035. Fiction
Nazi Gold: The Story of the World’s Greatest Robbery – and Its Aftermath. Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting (with the London Sunday Times); Mainline Publishing, Edinburgh. New and Revised Edition 1997. ISBN-13: 9781840180749
Nazi Gold : The Full Story of The 50 year Swiss-Nazi Conspiracy to Steal Billons from Europe’s Jews and Holocaust Survivors. Tom Bower. Harper Collins, New York. 1997. ISBN-13: 978-0060175351
Hitler’s Silent Partners: Swiss Banks, Nazi Gold, and the Pursuit of Justice. Isabel Vincent. William Morrow, New York. 1997. ISBN-13: 978-0688154257
Nazi Gold -The London Conference. Foreign & Commonwealth Office. HMSO London, 1998. ISBN-13: 978-0115917608 The proceedings of the 1997 London Conference on Nazi Gold.
Nazi Gold: The Merkers Mine Treasure. Greg Bradsher. Prologue Magazine. A publication of the US National Archives and Records Administration. Atlanta, Georgia. Spring 1999.
Nazi Gold – The Real Story of how the World Plundered Jewish Treasures. George Carpozi Jr., New Horizon Press New Jersey 1999. ISBN-13: 978-0882821672
The First Witness of Nazi Gold. Steven Wassermann, AuthorHouse, Bloomington, Indiana.1999. ISBN-13: 978-1585007974. Fiction
Nazi Gold in New Hampshire. E G Curtis. Spooner’s Publishing, Place of publishing not identified. 2005. ISBN-13: 978-0976617907. Fiction
Red Diamonds and Nazi Gold. G Sson Miller. Authors On Line, Canada, 2005. ISBN-13: 978-0755201846 Fiction
Portugal and the Nazi Gold: The “Lisbon Connection” in the Sales of Looted Gold by the Third Reich. Antonio Louça and Ansgar Schäfer. CreateSpace Independent Publishing, USA. 2011. ISBN 13: 978-1463690564
Lost Nazi Gold – A Jack Hunter Adventure. Dave and Sharon Oester, CreateSpace Independent Publishing, USA., 2012. ISBN-13: 978-1475124224 Fiction
The Hunt for Nazi Gold – Secrets of the March Impromptu Code Revealed. Karl Hammer. Elmar Publishers, Delft. 2013. ISBN 13: 9789038923888 Alleged Nazi Gold and diamonds hidden in Bavaria.
Nazi Gold (Michael Riley Thriller Book 9). Douglas V Dollard. Kindle edition only. 2013. ASIN: B00GCTZHBK. Fiction
The Last Viking- In search of Nazi Gold. James William Jones. iUniverse, USA. 2013. ISBN-13: 978-1491702093. Fiction
The OSS and Project Safehaven: Tracking Nazi Gold. Donald P Steury. Kindle edition only. 2013. ASIN:B00C195K7Y. Fiction
Nazi Gold -Finding Rommel’s Treasure. Ron Boublil. TBI Publishers, Montreal. 2015. ISBN-13: 978-1507871799
Nazi Gold (The Order of the Black Sun). Preston W Child. Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing, USA. 2015. ISBN-13: 978-1516878802. Fiction
Nazi Gold – The Plunder of Europe and the Conspiracy to Keep The Spoils. Norbert Waldroop. Lulu.com, USA. 2015. ISBN-13: 978-1329607590
Monetary Men: The Allies’Struggle to Recover and Restore Nazi Gold, Silver, and Diamonds. Kenneth D Alford. Schiffer Military History, Atglen, Pennsylvania. 2015. ISBN-13: 978-0
Switzerland and the Crisis of Nazi Assets and Nazi Gold. Philippe Braillard. Routledge, Abingdon 2015. ISBN-13: 978-0764348365
Bemberg’s Island: A cold chase after Nazi gold. Hugh M Jones. Kindle edition only. 2015. ASIN:B00VYZL90U. Fiction
Nazi Gold-The Triad – Case of Lost Gold. L Joseph Smith. CreateSpace Independent Publishing., USA 2016 ISBN-13: 978-1536848212. Fiction
Documentary, Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., the OSS, Lt. Peter R. Bonano and an Intriguing Nazi Gold Saga, New & Revised Edition. Joseph Sprouse. Dog Ear Publishing, Indianapolis. 2016. ISBN-13: 978-1608447466
Nazi Gold. William M Heyn CreateSpace Independent Publishing USA. 2016. ISBN-13: 978-1519114594. Fiction
Nazi Gold, Portuguese Wine, and a lovely Russian Spy. Gene Coyle. Authorhouse, USA. 2016. ISBN-13: 978-1504972550. Fiction
The Legend of Nazi Gold. Robert Hubby. CreateSpace Independent Publishing, USA 2017. ISBN-13: 978-1544060750. Fiction
Find Hitler’s Gold: (A Nazi Gold treasure hunt action-packed adventure). James Makasi. Place of publishing and publisher not identified. 2018. ISBN-13: 978-1980578512. Fiction
Nazi Gold Train (Michael Riley Thriller Book 12). Douglas V Dollard. Kindle edition only. 2019. ASIN:B07S8R2N61. Fiction
Spirit Walker: The Nazi Gold Train. Kerry McDonald and Scott Allen. Level 4 Press. Jamul, California. 2020. ISBN-13: 978-1646300006. Fiction