Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00In the dying days of World War II, the Nazis hid millions of dollars worth of looted gold here in the Bavarian Alps.
00:12The order goes out to hide the gold. The last thing they want is for it to fall into the hands of the Americans.
00:18But where do they hide it? Well, they've got mountains, they've got forests, they've got the lakes. And I'm here to find it.
00:27What happened to that gold remains one of the greatest mysteries of the war.
00:34At the end of World War II, the Allies made a series of shocking discoveries.
00:40Hidden in trains, bunkers and deep underground, they found mountains of stolen treasure.
00:47That must have been like going into Aladdin's cave.
00:50Hitler and the Nazis had looted an entire continent and committed the greatest theft in history.
00:57Now, a team of investigators is opening up cold case files of Nazi plunder still missing today.
01:04We're talking about things that are worth tens of millions of dollars.
01:07Robert Edsel is author of the best-selling book turned Hollywood movie, The Monuments Men.
01:12And an expert in Nazi looted treasure.
01:15Hundreds of thousands of objects are still missing.
01:18We're still missing.
01:19Well, we have a lot of digging to do.
01:20Joining him is Second World War historian James Holland.
01:24None of this was really his.
01:26He'd just taken it.
01:27And investigative journalist Connor Woodman.
01:30And this is a genuine treasure hunt.
01:32We dig a hole in the ground and we find those cases.
01:35Their mission?
01:36Uncover new clues.
01:37Oh, gosh, this is it.
01:38Explore Nazi hideouts.
01:39Whoever built this brick wall really didn't want anyone to get through to the other side.
01:45Find out how the treasure was stolen and where it might be now.
01:49What a piece of history.
02:04At the team's headquarters, Robert and restitution expert Dorothy Schneider have begun a new investigation.
02:11The Nazis were incredibly prodigious looters of gold.
02:15I mean, armies have always stolen gold.
02:17It's been part of war since it was invented.
02:19But no army and no country ever stole gold on such an industrial scale as Nazi Germany.
02:25Yeah, and this American report outlines how much gold was taken from all these different countries.
02:31I mean, it's a staggering amount.
02:33In today's money, over $20 billion of gold was plundered by the Nazis from the occupied countries.
02:40This is just the hit list.
02:42I mean, Belgium, Holland, looting Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia, Italy, Poland.
02:48They didn't miss any countries.
02:50The Nazis stored their gold at the Central Bank in Berlin, the Deutsche Reichsbank.
02:55But by the war's end, the bullion had vanished.
02:58After the war, much of the gold that was stolen by the Nazis was found.
03:02But there's still millions of dollars of gold missing.
03:04And that's the focus of our investigation.
03:06And I think we need to get on the ground and begin our investigation right here in Germany.
03:12On February 3, 1945, the Deutsche Reichsbank in Berlin was nearly completely destroyed in a bombing raid.
03:24One week later, Nazi officials hid more than 90% of their gold reserves 200 miles away, deep in a salt mine.
03:32James Holland is on his way to investigate the biggest discovery of looted gold in the history of the world.
03:39We're now driving through deepest Central Germany.
03:43This is where Patton's Third Army, in the final stages of the war, came across one of the biggest hordes of gold ever discovered.
03:52The Merckers salt mine kept the gold safe from Allied bombs, but not American soldiers.
03:58On April 7, 1945, acting on a tip-off, they discovered a Nazi Eldorado.
04:04Merckers is still a working mine.
04:07Senior engineer Ulrich Goebbels shows James around.
04:11Ulrich.
04:12Hi.
04:13Hello.
04:18They descend 1,500 feet into the bowels of the mine.
04:25I really cannot get over the scale of this place.
04:27Over 2,500 miles of tunnels with hundreds of chambers made Merckers an ideal hiding place for Nazi gold.
04:34It's a three-mile drive to the chamber, where American soldiers found the biggest Nazi treasure trove in history.
04:48Here at the gold room now.
04:49What an extraordinary place.
04:58When the engineers of the 90th Infantry Division arrived here in April 1945, they blasted a hole into the wall.
05:06And were stunned by what they found.
05:12Huh.
05:13It's a big room.
05:15Yeah.
05:1650 meters in length and on about 15 in width.
05:20And full of gold, of banknotes and so on.
05:23Just covering the entire floor?
05:25Yeah.
05:26More than 8,000 gold bars had been stored here.
05:29All the gold reserves of the rice bank in former times.
05:33This is just incredible.
05:35Today, there are displays here to give visitors a sense of what the chamber looked like in 1945.
05:41$9 billion.
05:42$9 billion.
05:43$9 billion.
05:44$9 billion in today's currency.
05:46Only the gold's banknot, $7 billion.
05:49That's an astronomical sum, isn't it?
05:51And here we have an inventory.
05:54American $20 gold pieces, 711 bags, $25,000 a bag.
06:01And you think that's 1945?
06:03You can only imagine what it must have been like.
06:05The Americans came in and just saw this floor awash with gold.
06:09It must have been like going into Aladdin's cave.
06:11Yeah.
06:14It was an astonishing haul.
06:17But not all of the gold from the Reichsbank was hidden here.
06:22There's this interrogation report made by the allies after they questioned
06:26first Reichsbank director Goller.
06:29Well, it mentions Merkers, but it also talks about trucks being loaded with gold in Berlin
06:36and headed to Mittenwald.
06:39We better get Connor on the ground and see what we can figure out.
06:47Over $300 million worth of looted gold in today's money was spirited off to the Bavarian Alps.
06:53Gold that was earmarked to bankroll a guerrilla war in the mountains by diehard Nazis.
06:59The dreaded last stand never happened.
07:03But elite German troops hid the gold all over these mountains.
07:07And Connor Woodman is trying to locate it.
07:10He's meeting Jurgen Prosk and Andreas Kaiser, who've spent 10 years hunting the missing Nazi gold.
07:16Ah, hi, Connor.
07:17Hi, Jürgen.
07:18Hi, Andy.
07:19May I introduce you, Connor?
07:20Hi.
07:21Hi, Connor.
07:22How's to be?
07:23This is the command center.
07:24This is the command center.
07:25Here we are planning our expedition using real photographs or old maps.
07:29And what kind of things have you already found?
07:31I'll show you.
07:32Let's take a look at these things.
07:34These are gold coins.
07:35Wow.
07:36Oh, that's real gold.
07:37Yes, it's really gold.
07:38It wasn't just the Nazi state hiding bullion.
07:48As the Western Allied and Russian armies closed in, Germany was reduced to anarchy.
07:54Officers, soldiers, and even civilians, fearful of the future, hid whatever gold they could get their hands on.
08:01Like these coins that Jürgen and Andreas have found.
08:04But it's the Nazi bullion from the Reichsbank that is their prime target.
08:10That's what we are looking for.
08:12This is not a real bullion, but it's exactly like the original, which were transported in those bags from Berlin.
08:23The Americans found a lot of gold, but there still remains, we are sure about this.
08:29This, for example, is from Prague.
08:32This is silver and silver coins.
08:35In 2007, Jürgen found this stash of silver hidden in the mountains.
08:39It's from what is today the Czech Republic, and was most probably looted by German soldiers.
08:45So maybe this was stolen from somebody?
08:47Yeah, of course.
08:48Of course.
08:49Yeah, of course.
08:50The inhabitants of the war.
08:51The Czech Republic is a war for the Jews.
08:54The Jews, the Jews, of the Jews, of the Jews, of the Jews.
08:55You know how long the Jews?
08:56Of the Jews.
08:57The Jews, of the Jews, of the Jews, of the Jews, of the Jews in the mountains.
08:58You only do them, of the Jews.
08:59kind of terrain that you that we're going to be looking in this kind of lots of trees dense
09:03vegetation back in april 1945 with allied soldiers overrunning germany an elite regiment of alpine
09:16troops was tasked with hiding 300 million dollars worth of nazi bullion loading 364 sacks of gold
09:25bars on mules they buried the treasure in a series of stashes here in the mountains
09:33the gold could be anywhere but jurgen and andreas have a good idea where to start searching
09:39so why why this spot in particular uh this is the gold hole can we have a look yeah we can take a
09:45look so how much gold was was hidden in this spot 728 millions of gold each waiting 12
09:55kilograms these were tons of gold pure gold all that just there full of treasure it's full of
10:02history who found that the americans the americans lead on okay
10:12in 1945 allied soldiers found nine tons of gold buried in five pits like this one scattered across
10:19the mountainside much of this gold was returned to the countries it was stolen from but historians
10:25estimate that over half a ton of gold was never found today it's worth over 20 million dollars
10:34signal
10:34as close to the ground as possible is that right as close to the ground as possible
10:54connor has joined treasure hunters jürgen and andreas in their quest to find buried nazi gold
10:59they're searching this area because in 1945 the allies found nine tons of bullion in a series
11:08of pits on this mountainside keep it moving all the time it's estimated that at least half a ton was never
11:17found worth some 20 million dollars in today's money why is a german soldier hiding my gold where would i go
11:29it's not uh if the fact that it's not iron is quite exciting isn't it yeah it is
11:45the nazi's hunger for gold was driven by more than mere greed
11:49it was gold that bankrolled their vast war effort
11:55to find out more historian james holland is in the uk look at that that's just amazing thank you he's
12:04here to meet engineer john phillips and you completely restored this john more or less on my own yes
12:09by 1939 hitler had created a vast war machine millions of rifles and small arms thousands of
12:21airplanes and fighting vehicles all of these needed huge amounts of raw materials and to pay for them
12:29the nazis needed gold and that included the stug armored vehicle like this perfectly restored model
12:37so you've got lots and lots of steel steel in the tracks as well yeah that's uh manganese
12:43high manganese content very expensive to manufacture but it's amazing isn't it because you look at this
12:48you just think great big lump of steel yeah but actually it's got all these other metals in it as well
12:54each stug weighed 24 tons and cost the reich the equivalent of 30 kilograms of gold
13:00and you know there is a lot of raw materials here aren't there in just one tank and then times that by 10 000
13:06and then times that by all the pamphers and tigers and mark fours and all the other stuff and you've got
13:11a major problem oh this is still in running order isn't it it is yes can we give it a go of course
13:28to build weapons like the stug the nazis needed far more natural resources than could be found in
13:42germany so they had to buy these resources from neutral countries and pay with gold
13:48and when they ran down their gold reserves they began looting the gold of others
13:57what an experience thank you
14:04connor andreas and jürgen are searching for gold buried by an elite unit of alpine troops
14:09it's quite big and they think they might have found something wow for the carabiner 98 it's for
14:19ammunition you see it still works like it still works the ammunition clip loaded the carabiner 98
14:27the standard issue infantry rifle for german soldiers
14:30that's pretty cool i mean that's amazing it's still the clip still works
14:40it's an interesting find but the team's sights are set on recovering the buried nazi gold
14:45and as this is a nice signal here
15:02it's going to be with a shot sucher fieber this was a panzer faust
15:06that's a pipe of a panzer faust
15:15that was the same you know you put it on your shoulder like this yeah like a bazooka
15:24the panzer faust was a german anti-tank weapon
15:28over six million were manufactured and handheld it could knock out an allied tank from 60 yards
15:36to 60 yards
15:39what do you guys think of these well this is a proof that soldiers german soldiers have been here
15:45and those german soldiers uh were hiding the gold
15:50i mean this is evidence isn't it and you can tell from the dates on the bullets that you know this is
15:55second world war we know that these are nazi bullets there were nazi soldiers standing where we're
16:01standing up the team has uncovered some fascinating war material but there's hundreds of square miles
16:10to search andreas and jürgen's quest for the looted gold will likely continue for many months
16:15in dallas the team turns their attention to another potential horde of nazi gold an extraordinary
16:25discovery hundreds of miles north of bavaria well i just sent you a link to a recent article i found
16:31about a large stash of gold coins that were found in northern germany yeah let's check this out this
16:36looks like it's a good prospect
16:45i'm here in northern germany to meet a treasure hunter who if even half of what they say about
16:50is true has made one hell of a fine two hundred and seventeen points wow
17:07the team are hunting for gold stolen by the nazis during world war ii
17:11connor's in northern germany to meet a treasure hunter who struck it lucky and the archaeologists
17:17tasked with investigating the finds murky provenance so we wouldn't get my defunding when florian
17:25voucher was asked by his local history museum to search on one of their sites he unearthed an
17:31incredible find so describes me the the day then i i had the first signal and the first signal was a
17:39gold coin and i i know i have to stop there and let the experts do evacoration and
17:46excavated about two weeks okay and after two weeks what did you found the result 217 coins wow
18:00this is a belgian coin that's a belgian and are they all they all from belgium no for example these
18:05are from france there are also points from italy so you know 1910 from france 1876 from belgium is a very
18:15good spread of uh of coins here the age and provenance of these coins raises some questions
18:24is this nazi looted gold
18:29there's quite a lot of coins here presumably they must have been transported in something
18:34was there was there a pot was there a bowl a bag anything got a very important hint
18:39uh we found also two lead seals an examination of the seals reveals these coins are indeed linked to
18:48the nazis you see the swastika in the middle see it we've taken a photograph so we can see if there's
18:55rice bank and on the other side it says berlin these are the kind of seals that the reichsbank would have
19:01used for for sealing bags of gold are they yeah right what what are the what are the realistic
19:07possibilities what we know from the rice bank we know that they probably were part of one one lot
19:13and also uh the seals were used from 1940 to 1945 and then we know that the coins were mostly 19th
19:21century coins that's it yeah who buried these coins remains a mystery whether it was an official
19:28operation a rogue nazi feathering his nest or even an allied soldier hoping to come back for it the
19:35experts at lunenburg museum can't yet say but what it reveals is that buried nazi gold is not just a
19:43fanciful myth the nazis mo was simple but brutally effective soon after invading a country they would
19:54raid their central bank austria czechoslovakia holland belgium and poland's gold reserves were all ransacked
20:06on top of that the nazis had been robbing their jewish citizens of whatever wealth they could get their
20:11hands on since 1933 but as the tide of war turned against the third right their need for gold became even
20:21more acute when the americans found the treasure trove at merker's mine it wasn't just gold bars
20:28coins and currency there were also 18 sacks of personal jewelry and gold teeth evidence of a
20:37horrifying crime against humanity
20:43robert this is the inventory of the makers mine items and look at the bottom of that list
20:48i mean this is just sick you really see the depravity here teeth fillings
20:55and we know where they came from yeah and in a recent academic report i found in germany
21:00these professors came to the conclusion that in the occupied territories the amount of wealth that
21:06was stolen and looted actually paid for one-third of the german war effort just a staggering figure and
21:15you have to wonder how much of that was taken from individuals and when you think about all the
21:19concentration camps but certainly the one most everybody knows about auschwitz
21:33james has traveled to the nazis most notorious death camp
21:37to learn how it was used as a macabre gold mine the majority of people brought here were foreign jews who
21:46arrived bewildered a little frightened but with no real idea of the fate that awaited them
21:55each person was allowed to bring up to 50 kilograms of
21:59personal belongings and the moment they arrived they'd be ushered off the trains told to put down
22:05their luggage and then the fit and able would have been siphoned off as slave labor
22:13the rest the vast majority around 75 percent would be taken straight to the gas chambers
22:20the left luggage was then rifled through and collected up by the ss guards
22:25and all the gold all the treasures and trinkets would have been stolen
22:30and taken off to line the coffers of the reich
22:36the nazis lust for gold along with their perverted racist ideology
22:41were about to plunge mankind into its darkest moment of modern times
22:55the death camps run by the ss provided a final grisly opportunity for the nazis to loot gold
23:03and other valuables from jews
23:09amongst the vastness of auschwitz 30 huts now demolished were set aside for the processing of
23:15items stolen from the camp's victims the area was given the name canada because in the eyes of the
23:22inmates canada represented a land of plenty prisoners who were selected by the nazis to sort through the
23:29tons of possessions here were dubbed canada commandos
23:35only a handful are still living but robert has come to the united states holocaust memorial museum
23:41to meet irene weiss irene was just 13 years old when she arrived at auschwitz
23:47you've brought some photos here for us to take a look at today yes there were pictures taken by nazi
23:55soldiers of trains arriving the separation and processing of the prisoners they're documenting
24:03the whole documenting the holocaust these are the men being separated these are the men separated
24:09these are the women and children on their way to the gas chambers
24:16and these are all of the objects that are piled up being loaded into the trunk well yes they're
24:21throwing everything out of the train and then they were brought to this place where later
24:26i ended up working and sorting the stuff out these photographs are a unique record of how the nazis
24:34systematically robbed and executed europe's jewish community and for irene their importance is
24:41greater still because by a grim coincidence they were taken on the same day she and her family arrived
24:48at auschwitz and i looked at it with magnifying glass and and there i am this is when my family was
24:57separated these are my two little brothers this face here the profile this is our mother this is my mother
25:08she is among the many women and children sitting in a wooded area next to one of the gas chambers
25:17waiting to enter they were sitting straight to the gas chambers irene's mother father and four of her
25:24siblings were all exterminated and so we were in auschwitz for about a month and from then on we were assigned
25:35to work in this canada section which was just divided by electrified fence from a crematorium gas chamber number
25:47four
25:55they were all brought down here men women and children all put together and told to strip naked a humiliation
26:03in itself the reason was they were told was that they were about to have a shower but in fact having
26:10put their clothes and chews and final possessions in a neat pile they were then ushered around that corner
26:16into the gas chamber where they're about to be murdered
26:21specials on the commando then finally went through those clothes and picked out any valuables
26:30those working in canada doing this work somewhere in there presumably someone was working
26:37on the area with valuables with whatever jewelry they would have found or gold items we were told
26:44that if we find any any gold valuables on pain of death you must hand it over so we knew that they
26:51wanted it badly
26:56what a truly awful place this is a gas chamber of course they'd all been herded in still believing
27:03they were going to be given a shower and then through apertures like this the zyklon b the gas
27:08would be dropped it wasn't a quick death necessarily it could take up to 25 minutes
27:15and it certainly wasn't painless zyklon b would make you suffocate can you imagine
27:21how painful and horrible that must have been
27:29once dead the bodies would have had teeth extracted and gold teeth fillings all removed
27:35the chimneys belched fire not just smoke high into the sky really flames coming out so by this time
27:54you could not deny what was going on i literally asked myself why are you not crying i could not cry
28:05it it was not you know what the eyes saw the brain couldn't process
28:14the nazis destroyed much of the documentary evidence of the atrocities they committed at auschwitz
28:20but curator mirik obster check is taking james to see a stash of highly incriminating records
28:25which were overlooked when the ss guards abandoned the camp so mirik what what have you got here the
28:33original uh camp documents there are reports of extraction of dental gold so they made a recording
28:41of this yes everybody who perished who was killed or died the camp
28:45uh after his dead this uh deaths were extracted so is this the date he was killed yes 30th of may 1942
28:54and this is his name name bukowski siegmund camp's number and that's the one that's tattooed on the arm
29:00yes yes yes and this information how many golden tiffs were extracted
29:06you see four from the right side and four on the left side so eight gold tears eight gold tears next
29:16one this is no name at all no name just a number only number
29:27it's just amazing to think that they're itemizing every piece of gold i mean there it is written in
29:33bold gold gold it's just unbelievable
29:42after the war allied soldiers discovered a rare audio recording of ss leader heinrich himmler
29:49halfway through his speech to ss officers he boasts about the looting of jewish people
29:54i mean the jude evakuation the destruction of the jewish people
30:03from you will know the most of you will know what it means with 100 people
30:06in the family when 500 there lie or 1000 there lie
30:11the reichs who had them we took off
30:15it's estimated that in poland the nazis stripped two and a half tons of pure gold from concentration
30:32camp victims but they didn't manage to steal everything
30:36in 2015 researchers at auschwitz made an incredible discovery
30:43oh that's amazing we've got a ring we've got the ring
30:48look at that and a what looks like a gold bracelet yes sort of wrapped up in a little bit of cloth
30:55an x-ray of a tin cup revealed hidden treasures belonging to an unknown inmate
31:02who most likely died in the camp it was hidden inside oh so there's a lid which covers the bottom
31:10of the neck so it was a sort of false bottom here it looks incredibly fragile so i'm not going to touch
31:15it but that was in there and this was underneath yes yes how remarkable it's amazing to think this is
31:21one bit of gold that the nazis didn't manage to get their hands on what an amazing story
31:31the question for the team is what happened to the stolen gold after it was shipped out of auschwitz
31:38they know that ss officer bruno melmer was tasked with transporting it to the central reichs bank
31:43from there it would be sent to a private gold refinery called degusa dorothy has been granted rare access
31:53to their archives to find out more so there's no doubt that jewish gold went through the degusa holdings
32:00there's this large correspondence file juden gold jewish gold and silver is mentioned throughout
32:08and when you go to the ledgers of the company it will say jd which stands for judish
32:19this jutin gold was smelted down with other gold to form new bars of bullion but what happened to it then
32:27what is interesting is the gold then went from here from the reserves and i found a chart
32:36it talks in percentage how much gold went where 51 percent into export which means it went to
32:46countries like sweden portugal from where nazi germany had to buy resources
32:54it's explosive evidence that some of the gold pillaged from the bodies of concentration camp
32:59victims made its way to the so-called neutral countries
33:05the team are on the trail of gold plundered by the nazis from europe's central banks and all trails lead
33:11to one country switzerland under here if you're looking for nazi loot that's where it could be
33:19the team are on the trail of gold plundered by the nazis from europe's central banks
33:34and from the inmates of the concentration camps james is in zurich to untangle the secret web of big banks
33:42and neutral countries that helped oil the wheels of the german war machine it's amazing to think that
33:49during the nazi period thousands of germans were coming here to zurich and specifically to here
33:57barnshofstrasse this is where all the major swiss banks had their offices
34:03the swiss banks are notoriously secretive when it comes to their role in world war ii
34:09so james is meeting susan ronald a former banker an expert on how the banks and the nazis did deals
34:16the interesting thing was germany tried to sell gold in exchange for war material that they were
34:22buying from portugal okay direct to portugal and portugal refused what resources like portugal
34:29portugal absolutely totally refused and they they actually wrote they didn't write to germany they
34:36wrote to the swiss banking association and they said we cannot take gold anymore directly from germany
34:45what we can do is take gold from switzerland countries like portugal did not want to be seen openly
34:55accepting plundered gold so the nazis desperately needed a country that could wash away its dark
35:01provenance so what happened was the swiss came up with a system of cloaking the gold they were taking
35:07the gold rebranded and send it on to portugal and payment and then they were fine then they were fine
35:13they must have known it was still as of course they did so they all that it's not been moral scruples
35:18it's just recovering their backs no it was more a question of we think the allies are going to win
35:23the war we do not want to be punished just how complicit the swiss were in dealing nazi gold is
35:30still a hotly debated issue in 1998 the swiss banks made reparations of over a billion dollars to the
35:37victims and descendants of the holocaust but some like susan believe that to this day there may be
35:44nazi plunder hidden away in the numerous bank vaults deep beneath bonhafstrasse so i mean what are we
35:51talking about how extensive the vaults start at this intersection here and then go about another
35:57half a mile further north under here if you're looking for nazi loot that's where it could be
36:09if an account remains inactive for 16 years which all of the nazi gold has done then it belongs to the
36:17swiss government so they now own own yes all of all the nazi gold that's possibly still in their
36:24vaults that's correct i should add to that that as recently as last year the swiss banking association
36:33said that that's just a rumor there's no gold left but you think there is of course and looted art and all
36:41sorts of things as a former senior investment banker susan is one of the few people to have seen
36:47inside some of these vaults my first fault they actually had a gold room what do you mean the gold
36:58room was filled with ingots of gold what just all stacked up yeah yeah how amazing so proper kind of
37:06the land okay absolutely and did you see anything that perhaps you shouldn't have done or oh yes i
37:13got into a lot of trouble are you able to stay or is it all are you under sort of pain i will say that
37:18the bank manager who was at accompanying us told me that i'd broken the swiss secrecy laws
37:23by looking at one of the sliding walls where they hang the art and did you see things that were
37:28definitely looted yes in the war yes goodness we may never know for sure how much if any nazi gold
37:38remains in the vaults under this street but now the team train their sights on another target the bullion
37:45that passed through switzerland over 70 years ago and was used to keep the nazi war machine alive
37:51it's just a completely unidentifiable gold nugget could have come from anywhere
38:08in dallas the team are trying to find out what happened to the nazi bullion after it passed through
38:14switzerland i found this report about how germany and portugal have these really close trade relationships
38:21let me see it references their purchases of wolfram which is german for tungsten and we know that
38:29tungsten was a critical material for the production of armor-piercing artillery shells and then look at
38:35this april 30 1945 five very heavy chests of gold were brought into portugal by the german legation
38:44at lisbon what i want to know is what happened to all of that gold
38:51connor has flown to lisbon to investigate the portuguese connection
39:0075 years ago the city was a hotbed of spies intrigue and crooked dealings the perfect place
39:07for high-ranking nazis to barter their plundered gold for raw materials
39:12in recent years several journalists and historians have begun digging into this murky past
39:18i'm on my way to meet investigative journalist antonio lusa now he was the first guy to connect all
39:25the dots and tell this story that exposed how portugal was connected to the gold that was looted by the nazis
39:35okay so what we know for sure this triangle was set up with switzerland to facilitate the nazis
39:42buying things from portugal using looted gold without it being obvious to the rest of the world
39:48do we know how much came from nazi germany well about 123 tones antonio believes some of this gold was
39:58sent to lisbon's jewelry quarter they sold it to small jewelry and gold shops here lisbon they smelted it
40:07to small ingots so they took the the 12 and a half kilo ingots broke them up into smaller pieces and
40:14then sold them off individually which makes the gold untraceable it was a way to get rid of this
40:20alcohol it's incredible isn't it that the government is organizing this sale of gold but they have been
40:25doing for decades after the war
40:28it's an extraordinary allegation not only did the portuguese regime enable the nazis to launder
40:39their dirty gold but they continued handling this gold for many years after
40:46antonio can't say for sure where all the gold went
40:49but some of it almost certainly flowed through rudoro gold street
40:54this is where portuguese officials sold some of the nazi gold which would then be made into rings
41:02brooches and bracelets to find out how easily it's done connor has brought along some scrap gold
41:09let me show you a few of the things i have a gold ring i have a pair of cufflinks and uh gold necklace
41:17if i wanted to destroy the provenance of these items and leave here with just a piece of untraceable
41:25gold how could i do that
41:27agora é posto num cadinho é deretido e vazado e faz uma barra e demora a volta de cinco minutos
41:36in five minutes
41:39he looted the national gold reserves from the occupied countries
41:49he stole the wedding rings jewelry and gold teeth from concentration camp victims
41:57for hitler gold never lost its luster it was the currency that would pay for his thousand-year reich
42:03but of all the looted nazi treasure that went missing during the war
42:12gold has proved to be the most difficult to track down there's no way now of telling where that came
42:17from
42:29it's just a completely unidentifiable
42:34gold nugget could have come from anywhere you start with a bunch of jewelry you end up with something
42:40that's just worth hard easily transportable currency it's the perfect material
42:50the hunt for hitler's gold has taken the team from mine shafts this is just incredible to mountainside
42:59i mean this is evidence isn't it to a survivor of the holocaust who witnessed firsthand the nazi's
43:05greed and inhumanity these are my two little brothers they were straight to the gas yes of all the looted
43:12nazi treasure gold was the most precious it was the lifeblood of the third reich an element so vital
43:19they would do anything to get their hands on it the majority of gold that was looted by the nazis
43:26was probably smelted down and sold and scattered to the four corners of the globe we just don't know
43:32anymore where that gold ended up it could be in the jewelry you're wearing today it could even be in your wedding ring
43:39fact is it could be anywhere
44:02so
44:11you