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00:00It's 1944, July.
00:14German Wehrmacht troops in Italy using trucks just like this one empty a villa that contains
00:20hundreds of the most important masterpieces in the great Florence Museums. Things worth
00:25more than a billion dollars. It was one of the great art fests in history. Some of those
00:32works are still missing today.
00:39At the end of World War II, the Allies made a series of shocking discoveries. Hidden in
00:46trains, bunkers, and deep underground, they found mountains of stolen treasure.
00:52That must have been like going into Aladdin's cave.
00:55Hitler and the Nazis had looted an entire continent, and committed the greatest theft in history.
01:01Now, a team of investigators is opening up cold case files of Nazi plunder still missing
01:08today.
01:09We're talking about things that are worth tens of millions of dollars.
01:12Robert Edsel is author of the best-selling book turned Hollywood movie, The Monuments Men,
01:18and an expert in Nazi-looted treasure.
01:21Hundreds of thousands of objects are still missing. Well, we have a lot of digging to do.
01:25Joining him is Second World War historian James Holland.
01:29None of this was really his. He'd just taken it.
01:32And investigative journalist Connor Woodman.
01:35And this is a genuine treasure hunt. We dig a hole in the ground and we find those cases.
01:40Their mission? Uncover new clues.
01:43Oh, gosh, this is it. Explore Nazi hideouts.
01:46Whoever built this brick wall really didn't want anyone to get through to the other side.
01:50Find out how the treasure was stolen and where it might be now.
01:54What a piece of history.
01:56What a piece of history.
02:10At the Monuments Men Foundation in Dallas, Robert Edsel and Italian art historian Anna Bottinelli
02:16are beginning the team's new investigation, the plundering of Italy.
02:20At the start of World War II, Italy under fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was Hitler's closest partner.
02:37But in 1943, everything changed.
02:42Allied forces swept into the south of the country.
02:46Mussolini was toppled and the new Italian government announced its surrender.
02:51Every act of hostility against the Anglo-American forces must be part of the Italian forces in every place.
03:00Incredible.
03:02I know. This is the original radio broadcast from the leader of Italy speaking to the nation on September 8, 43, announcing the armistice of Italy.
03:12I mean, this is what my grandmother heard. She heard the message and went out in the streets celebrating that it was over.
03:19They all thought it was over.
03:20They all thought it was over.
03:21And it was just the beginning, wasn't it?
03:23It was. I mean, it's the inflection point when the Italians are no longer allies to the Germans.
03:28And the Germans are enraged. They're embittered. They want revenge.
03:35The day after the surrender, the Germans seized Rome and occupied the country.
03:41From this point on, all of Italy was a battlefield fought over by the Germans, Italians, and allies.
03:51It was one of the deadliest campaigns on the Western Front. More than 350,000 soldiers and civilians were killed.
03:58And for the Nazis, it was a chance to steal on an epic scale.
04:03From the gold in the Bank of Italy and Rome to the cultural treasures of Florence, nothing was safe from Nazi looting.
04:13There's still so much missing.
04:15There's thousands of things missing, and that is the focus of our investigation.
04:19Find those missing things, find those works of art, and get them back home.
04:23The team heads to Italy on the trail of Nazi loot.
04:29Investigative journalist Connor Woodman begins the search for the lost gold north of Rome.
04:36While Robert and historian James Holland begin their investigation in Florence, scene of one of the greatest art thefts in history.
04:50In the summer of 1944, Florence was on the front lines of the war in Italy.
04:57By the time the Allies made it to the outskirts of the city, the Germans were in full retreat.
05:02The city and its contents were now in peril.
05:06The Allies had been fighting up the leg of Italy for the best part of a year, and now on the 3rd of August 1944,
05:12the British Eighth Army were nudging into the southern outskirts of Florence.
05:17It must have been an incredibly dangerous time for Florence, because you've got British Eighth Army advancing from the south,
05:22you've got German rearguards in the city, and you've got the fascists getting out of there.
05:27So suddenly you've got a vacuum, and when you've got a vacuum, that's when bad elements come in.
05:32Don't forget that in Florence you've got some of the most priceless works of art in the entire world.
05:38Florence was the jewel of the Italian Renaissance, a city of incomparable beauty and a repository for many of the world's finest treasures.
05:49Hanging on the walls of the Uffizi Gallery were some of the greatest of all Renaissance masterpieces,
05:55whose fate now hung in the balance.
06:00In a desperate bid to slow down the Allied advance into the city, the Germans started destroying the bridges across the river.
06:08Suddenly the city was ripped apart by a series of massive explosions.
06:14Vast amounts of smoke and grit and dust were flung into the air.
06:20When the dust all settled again, five out of the six bridges across the Arno had been completely destroyed.
06:28It might have been a massive act of architectural vandalism, but it certainly did the trick because it took the British another week to get into the city.
06:37And when they did get here, they had no idea what the retreating Germans had taken with them.
06:47By the time the Allied soldiers reached the Uffizi, its galleries were empty.
06:53And hundreds of Renaissance masterpieces by the likes of Cronach and Rubens, which had once hung on its walls, had been taken by the retreating Germans.
07:06How the theft was perpetrated is revealed in this telegram.
07:11Scarce resources were diverted from the war effort for the removal of the art treasures.
07:171,000 liters of gas and 13 trucks were requisitioned.
07:22The Germans and their plunder were now hightailing it northwards.
07:27Hundreds of masterpieces from the Florence collections worth billions of dollars were put on these trucks with no protective covering, no crates, no tarp on top, and moved over bomb cratered roads to the north.
07:42The man who signed the order was General Karl Wolf, head of the SS in Italy.
07:50SS General Karl Wolf is a fascinating figure.
07:53Hitler looks at him with great attraction, he's tall, he's blonde, he has this Aryan appearance in the mind of Hitler.
08:00He's well educated, he's cultivated.
08:04Hitler has a special assignment for Wolf, he sends him to Italy to be head of all the SS troops.
08:09The SS were the most feared and fanatical of all Hitler's forces.
08:17This rare color footage, shot at Hitler's home at the Burghof, reveals Wolf operating at the very center of the SS hierarchy.
08:25Standing alongside him are two of the most notorious men in the history of the Nazi regime.
08:32Leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, and one of the principal architects of the Holocaust, Reinhard Heydrich.
08:40In the course of the war, Wolf issues orders to resolve some of the bottlenecks taking trains of Jews to concentration camps.
08:47It's hard to find a photograph of Himmler at any of the concentration camps he visits during the war without having Wolf by his side.
08:56700 of the world's most precious works of art were now in the hands of a top-ranking SS general on the Allied list of wanted war criminals.
09:06Their destination unknown.
09:09For Robert, the investigation heads north.
09:17Meanwhile, Conor Woodman is in central Italy on the trail of Italy's missing gold.
09:25Two weeks after the Italian surrender, Nazi SS trucks had pulled up outside the bank of Italy in Rome and were loaded with bullion.
09:34More than 100 tons are known to have been shipped out of the country.
09:38But what happened to the rest remains a mystery to this day.
09:45I'm about an hour north of Rome on my way to Monte Serrati.
09:48The legend is that the Nazis buried a lot of gold underneath that mountain.
09:52So I've arranged to meet Gregory Palluccio, the guy that knows more about it than anybody else.
10:00Buried deep beneath this mountain is a vast bunker complex, which in September 43 was commandeered by the Germans as their army headquarters.
10:13After the war, the entire mountainside was off-limits to all but the military.
10:18What was hiding beneath was top secret.
10:21Local historian Gregory Palluccio was only given access to the bunker in the last ten years.
10:28And these would have been the barracks in here, these would have been the rooms where the soldiers were sleeping.
10:31Yes.
10:32This is a military-controlled area.
10:35Yeah.
10:36Right.
10:37And so when did you get access to this place?
10:39Well, ten years ago.
10:42It's a secret place kept from the Italian army.
10:46There were kilometers of tunnels, but nobody had seen.
10:50Until ten years ago.
10:52So this place and the tunnels underneath it, nobody has been into those tunnels since the end of the war until just a few years ago?
11:01Every day we discover something, something strange or something new.
11:06Every day, even now, you're still discovering new tunnels?
11:08Yes.
11:09Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:10Okay.
11:11I can't wait to see.
11:12It's a fantastic place for this.
11:13Yeah.
11:14Show me.
11:15Let's go.
11:16All right.
11:21I mean, you can really see the mountain here now.
11:24It's the perfect defense.
11:25Yeah.
11:26Gregory has lived his entire life in the shadow of Monte Serrate, leading the research
11:31into its history.
11:33Nobody knows more about its secrets than he does.
11:37And it goes down.
11:41Beneath the mountain is the bunker, a network of tunnels and caverns, much of it untouched
11:45since the Germans left in 1944.
11:48Wow, Gregory.
11:51They are vast.
11:54Do you have an idea of how big this bunker complex is?
11:57For sure, more than four kilometers.
12:00Four kilometers of tunnels?
12:01Yes.
12:02What?
12:03I mean, they just go on and on and on.
12:15Deep beneath Monte Serrate, 40 kilometers north of Rome, is a massive bunker.
12:24According to legend, around 70 tons of gold, worth over $2 billion today, were hidden somewhere
12:31in these tunnels by the German army in 1944.
12:34Wow.
12:35They are vast.
12:38Conor Woodman is on its trail with historian Gregory Paolucci.
12:43And when were they built?
12:46They built at the end of the 30s for Italian government.
12:52So they were built by Mussolini, built by the Italians?
12:55Yes, by the Italians.
12:57So in 1943...
12:59Yes, the Germans occupied.
13:01When the Germans occupied, they took over the tunnels?
13:04Yes.
13:04Right.
13:05Okay, I see.
13:06It was the operational nerve center of the German army in Italy.
13:13More than 1,000 soldiers lived and worked here.
13:16Some tunnels have been restored to their original state, but others are still off limits and only
13:21accessible to Gregory's team.
13:24And it looks like they were having quite a fine time here, to be honest.
13:28There's a few wine bottles.
13:30Like a bar, yes.
13:31This looks like the good stuff.
13:33Yes.
13:34That's a champagne bottle.
13:35And there was...
13:36Yes.
13:37There was beer.
13:39There was German beer.
13:41Classical.
13:41Right.
13:41Terracotta.
13:42And so each room, you think, would have been given, it would have had a specific purpose.
13:50It was a city, an underground city.
13:52You knew everything.
13:55Parts of the bunker collapsed after an Allied air raid.
14:00But beneath this rubble, there was once a fully operational cinema, a bakery, a beer hall.
14:06And on the walls of the mess room, a homesick German officer painted a mural of Dresden.
14:13Gregory has found a single photograph showing life in the bunker during the occupation.
14:18Wow.
14:20Wow.
14:20A German soldier in a gallery, just like this one.
14:24He's writing a letter home.
14:28Probably this room was used for, like, an hospital.
14:31Like the infirmary?
14:33Yes, infirmary.
14:34Like, take a look there.
14:37Those little bottles.
14:38Oh, yeah, it's from the pill bottle.
14:40Yes.
14:41Look at this.
14:42Probably a bell.
14:43To call the nurse?
14:44The ventilation system.
14:46Wow.
14:46All of the four kilometers of bunker have an heating system.
14:51Not conditioning, but heating.
14:53Right.
14:53Yes.
14:53That's pretty sophisticated.
14:55I mean, it's all evidence, isn't it?
14:57It's all evidence of, you know, life underground.
15:01You can touch the history.
15:04The real history.
15:06Part of that history is the legend of the gold.
15:08But is there any evidence beyond tabloid headlines and wild speculation?
15:15Gregory, the other thing that I know about this bunker is the legend that the Nazis, in their haste to retreat, may have buried or hidden some gold here.
15:27Oh.
15:29What do you think about that legend?
15:31Is it possible?
15:34I think yes.
15:36You think yes?
15:37I think that the gold passed, for sure, in this bunker.
15:43We have many witnesses that have seen boxes of gold, 69 or 72 tons of gold, so a huge quantity.
15:55Never found, for sure, from an Italian bank, National Bank of Italy.
16:0172 tons of gold would fit into a space smaller than three and a half cubic meters.
16:07Equivalent to the size of a small car, there are at least four kilometers of tunnels, and probably many more, which remain to be discovered.
16:17This bunker complex is full of these huge chambers, many of which, like this one, are filled with rubble.
16:25And then you'll see these holes.
16:27I mean, look how far down that goes.
16:29It's easily deep enough to hide away 72 tons of gold.
16:33You know, it might seem as though Gregory and his team have been here for a few years, but really that's only long enough to scratch the surface of the potential of what could be hidden in this place.
16:44While Conor searches for the lost gold, Robert Edsel and Anna Bottinelli are on the trail of the Florentine treasures.
16:56They know 700 works of art were stolen from the galleries of Florence, loaded onto trucks, and taken north with the retreating Germans.
17:04And they've identified this man as one of the main culprits, General Carl Wolf, head of the SS in Italy.
17:15To investigate the part played by the SS and Nazi looting, they've come to the Siviero Archive, a unique collection of investigative files documenting Italian artworks missing since the war.
17:28While poring over the case notes, Anna makes a discovery.
17:34I found something great.
17:36Here it is.
17:40Quadri paintings.
17:42Missing from the collection at Villa delle Pianore.
17:45The Pianore, yeah.
17:47It's an original report listing dozens of masterpieces by Renaissance artists stolen from one of the most significant and valuable private collections in Tuscany, the Villa Pianore.
17:58James Holland goes to the scene of the crime.
18:05In the summer of 1944, this palace was on the front lines of the battle for Italy and had been commandeered by the Waffen SS, the most feared and infamous of all Nazi forces in Italy.
18:20Gosh, what a place.
18:23You can see why the 16th Waffen SS would want to requisition this.
18:27I mean, here we are up in the hills.
18:29This is the start of the Gothic line, the main German line of defense.
18:34Under heavy bombardment, the Waffen SS had suffered severe casualties.
18:39The Villa Pianore became a field hospital.
18:42Its owner had already fled, leaving his palace and its contents to their mercy.
18:48I mean, this is a crime scene document.
18:52Like the police report, the minute they got there, handwritten out.
18:56Well, I've got to say, it's a magnificent place.
18:59Incredible wood-carved ceiling and beautiful parquet floor.
19:03And I can't just look at this.
19:05Some roof.
19:06When the SS got here, we'd have been absolutely stuffed full of fine furniture, treasures, works of art, tapestries.
19:16Look at this list of names.
19:18So many of them think it's more than 50.
19:23Here, five or six Canalettos.
19:25I mean, how about that?
19:27I mean, if it's in good condition, it could be $10 million.
19:30They're talking about five or six of them?
19:32I mean, a bad Canaletto is $2 million, $3 million.
19:36It feels rather sad and run down now, I have to say.
19:40There's a sort of wistful air about the place.
19:44And while the 16th Offen SS used this as a hospital, they also absolutely trashed the place.
19:52And when they left just over a month later, all they left behind was a pile of empty picture frames.
20:00I mean, they've cut these canvases right out of the frames with a bayonet or a knife.
20:05The whole place was completely cleared out.
20:11Like the Florentine treasures, the paintings from the Villa Pionore were shipped north.
20:16That's the treasure map right there, trying to find these things.
20:20Mm-hmm, absolutely.
20:21That's what's missing.
20:22The paintings were now in the hands of the notorious Waffen SS, guilty of some of the worst crimes in Italy, from looting to massacres.
20:34Just 10 kilometers from the Villa Pionore lies the village of Santana di Statsima.
20:46On August 12th, 1944, troops from the same 16th Waffen SS division arrived here at dawn.
20:55For the 16th Waffen SS in this area, life had become extremely difficult, to put it mildly.
21:01To the front, they had the Allies shooting and firing at them every time they moved.
21:04And to the rear, they had partisans making their life a misery.
21:07When they learned that this part of the mountains had become swollen with people, they assumed it was the partisans concentrating here.
21:16The trouble was, how do you distinguish between a civilian and a partisan?
21:21The solution is you don't.
21:22You just shoot everybody.
21:24A hundred villagers inside the church were systematically machine-gunned, and the church set alight.
21:34The SS then set about slaughtering the entire village.
21:40James has come to meet Enrico Pieri, who as a 10-year-old lived in this house with his family and relatives.
21:48So this is where you were, up here.
21:50See, this is a pallet that they pulled out from there, up here.
21:59And the Germans came from here, from the forest, and they entered into the kitchen.
22:05And here, they killed all the two families.
22:08Wow.
22:11Enrico survived by hiding underneath the kitchen stairs,
22:15from where he witnessed the massacre of his entire family.
22:19So this is the grave.
22:26I mean, how many members of your family did you lose that day?
22:29By noon, when the SS guards sat down for lunch in the grounds of the burning church, 540 villagers, including 120 children, were dead.
22:51As the Germans retreated north with their loot, the fate of both SS war criminals and Italy's artistic treasures were now inextricably linked.
23:03Beneath Monte Serrate, Conor Woodman is on the trail of looted Nazi gold.
23:16According to legend, 70 tons are still hidden somewhere in the maze of tunnels stretching 4 kilometers underground.
23:23A section of the wartime bunker became a top-secret military site in the 1960s.
23:31The tunnels were reinforced with concrete 2 meters thick,
23:35and it became the Italian government's nuclear bunker during the Cold War.
23:40But stories of the hidden gold have always persisted.
23:46Local historian Gregory Pallucci believes a recently declassified government report lends new credibility to the legend.
23:54Five years ago, it was unclassified.
23:57And this is the main proof that the Italian government, the Italian secret service, the intelligence, searched.
24:03A previously unpublished Senate investigation reveals the Italian secret service not only believed in the existence of a mystery treasure,
24:15but carried out their own search.
24:19So that changes things a little bit, doesn't it?
24:21Because we're not talking about some crazy legend that's based on myth and rumor.
24:26The Italian government took this seriously enough to send the army in here in 1960 to do a search.
24:32And do we know what they found?
24:34You can see the answer.
24:37Omesis.
24:39What they've found, if anything, remains a secret to this day.
24:44We don't know. It's classified.
24:46So, why don't...
24:48If I was to say, let's work on the basis that maybe there are still 70 tons of gold
24:55hidden somewhere in this bunker complex,
24:59the billion-dollar question is where?
25:00Where would you begin to look for it?
25:06During the German occupation,
25:08eyewitnesses in the nearby village of Santoreste claim to know the answer.
25:13Gregory takes Connor to meet a man who has spent a lifetime piecing together the evidence.
25:19Now in his 80s, Baron Giuseppe Fortezza believes he has solved the riddle of the mountain.
25:25So, this is the place where you were digging.
25:31So, this is a brick wall.
25:33And this is a gallery, a big tunnel.
25:39He made this drawing.
25:42The Baron's drawing shows a brick wall which stands at the end of a secret tunnel.
25:47In 1989, he became the first civilian to dig for the gold inside the bunker.
25:54So, it's the perfect place to hide the gold.
25:56So, why did you not find the gold in 1989?
25:59The Baron got this far and no further in his search.
26:16So, in that case, do you think the gold is still behind that wall?
26:19The baron was forced to abandon his attempt in 1989.
26:38Nobody else has been granted permission to see what lies behind this brick wall.
26:43Okay, let's try.
26:44Until today.
26:49In Florence, the team are investigating one of the biggest art heists in history.
26:59In the summer of 1944, German soldiers had seized more than 700 paintings and sculptures from the Florentine galleries.
27:08And 60 paintings from the Villa Pionore.
27:11As the Allies advanced north, the Germans retreated to their last holdout in South Tyrol, high in the Italian Alps.
27:23In the final days of the war, a million German soldiers and all their stolen loot crowded into these remote mountain passes.
27:31What would become of them now depended on the actions of one man, General Karl Wolff, head of the SS in Italy.
27:39James Holland has come to Bolzano, where in April 1945, Wolff was holed up at his luxury palace headquarters.
27:48I really don't think I've ever been in a building that's so overtly fascist as this.
27:54And what's incredible about it is that all the fixtures and fittings, all the furniture, is original.
27:59It's like going back in a time war.
28:02I suppose the big difference, though, is that back then, this building was stuffed full of loot.
28:09There were sides of beef, there was vintage champagne, there were all sorts of treasures, and there were also lots and lots of paintings.
28:23By the spring of 1945, the war was all but lost for the Germans.
28:27Knowing he was on the allied list of wanted war criminals, Wolff made a play to save his own skin and strike a deal.
28:40Using the Florentine treasures as a bargaining chip, he opened secret surrender negotiations with America's chief spymaster in Europe,
28:49Alan Dulles, head of the OSS, the precursor to the CIA.
28:52To uncover what was being agreed behind closed doors, James is meeting historian Gerald Steinecker.
29:02Even a person like Dallas, who was, you know, later head of the CIA in the 1960s,
29:07who had a lot of experience with people, people who were lying and cheating and spies and so on,
29:13but Wolff could convince him that he's, that Wolff is a reasonable person
29:17and not a fanatical Nazi SS criminal and mass murderer.
29:21I'm sure he said to Dallas also, you know, when it comes to it, I can dish the dirt on all sorts of people,
29:26but I need to know that I'm going to be looked after.
29:29And I think part of that is also artwork.
29:32So he brings in the artwork and says, listen, here under my command,
29:36there is very precious Italian artwork here, really belonging to humanity.
29:41And I can save it, I demand I can save it, and I'm going to offer you that as well.
29:45By surrendering early and bringing the war in Italy to a premature end,
29:56Wolff's actions may have saved thousands of lives, including his own.
30:01And unlike other high-ranking Nazis,
30:04he escaped prosecution and almost certain death at the Nuremberg trials.
30:09As for the Florentine treasures, their hiding place was finally revealed.
30:19High in the Italian Alps, the Monuments Men, the Allied Army's art protection unit,
30:25discovered hundreds of the world's greatest Renaissance masterpieces in secret repositories.
30:30It's incredible to think that here, the village jail,
30:36the Americans found some of the Uffizi Gallery's finest works of art.
30:41Rubens and crannics just stacked up against the wall.
30:46But the Allies were in for a shock.
30:49Not only had some of the paintings been damaged,
30:52the final tally of paintings didn't add up.
30:55Ten of the Florentine treasures had mysteriously disappeared.
31:00It makes you wonder what happened to the art they didn't find here.
31:08Where did that get to?
31:16James Holland is on the trail of the Florentine treasures,
31:19which were seized by the Germans in the summer of 1944.
31:23He's followed their wartime journey north from Tuscany to the last German stronghold in South Tyrol.
31:32Somewhere along the way, ten of them went missing.
31:37Who took them and how is now the focus of his investigation.
31:41With a million German soldiers carrying a million backpacks facing an uncertain post-war future,
31:50there were a million possible suspects,
31:52each of them with the motive and the opportunity to take one of the Florentine 10.
31:59Former members of the German army of the SS,
32:02they're all stranded here, thousands and thousands of people.
32:05So if you had a backpack full of treasure, you could hop over the Alps to Austria?
32:13These routes were known for the local smugglers, for example,
32:16were smuggling all kinds of things before and after the war.
32:19Yeah.
32:19And people who were stealing artwork, for example, or other things,
32:25would escape over the mountains into Austria and then further on.
32:28What happened to the Florentine 10 would remain a mystery for another 20 years.
32:40The first clue to their fate came when two masterpieces by Poli Aulo
32:44turned up in the possession of a German waiter in California who was having them restored.
32:51Here are the two paintings by Poli Aulo.
32:54He was known for being able to paint these figures in action.
32:58These are the first two out of the 10 that are found,
33:02and they're not found until 1963 and of all places in the United States.
33:08Information from the waiter in Pasadena led to a German butcher in Munich,
33:13and five more paintings were recovered.
33:16That leaves three of the Florentine 10 still to be found.
33:20The most significant is a still life by Van Hoyssen,
33:23for which there is only this black and white reproduction.
33:26They're spectacular, each one of them.
33:29You see them in the most important museums around Europe.
33:32That's exactly right.
33:32And they're always sought after.
33:34Highly sought after.
33:35I mean, sometimes Van Hoyssen sells for three to four million dollars.
33:39This is not as small as the Poli Aulo's, but it's still pretty portable, isn't it?
33:45You can sure see how these things walked.
33:48Imagine what it would be to have the real thing in front of us.
33:52You know, on the one hand, I'm sitting here looking at the beauty of it,
33:55this important 18th century flower painter from Holland,
33:58and then also where the heck is this thing.
34:05In the bunker 300 meters beneath Monte Sorate,
34:09this brick wall is perhaps all that stands between Connor Woodman
34:13and more than two billion dollars of Nazi gold.
34:16In 1989, the baron reached the same spot
34:21before the military stopped his excavations.
34:26Connor, at his guide to the bunker, Gregory Pallucci,
34:29now have a chance to go one further
34:31and see what's on the other side.
34:34After drilling through the brick,
34:36Connor gets first glimpse.
34:38See.
34:39Brick.
34:40Brick.
34:41Well, behind, yeah, it's concrete.
34:42So we've broken through two layers of bricks,
34:46and behind that seems to be a little bit of concrete.
34:49So we need to go a little bit further
34:51and see if we can get through that concrete.
34:53And fingers crossed there might be a space behind that.
34:56It's heavy going, though.
35:01Half a meter further into the brick and concrete,
35:04and the drill bit hits a third, unexpected layer.
35:10The bunker of Monte Sorate
35:11is about to reveal another of its long-held secrets.
35:22In the bunker of Monte Sorate in Italy,
35:26Connor Woodman is about to discover the truth
35:28about what lies behind this brick wall.
35:32You can just see now as you're drilling.
35:37And look what we've got.
35:38We've got...
35:39We've got plastic.
35:41We've got plastic coming out of the concrete, which...
35:43Oh.
35:44It's a clue that helps date this section of tunnel,
35:47and it's not promising.
35:49That means the concrete that's behind this brick
35:52must have been...
35:53Cold War era.
35:54Must have been Cold War era.
35:57During the Cold War,
35:59layers of plastic were used to line
36:01the two-meter-thick concrete walls
36:03of the nuclear bunker,
36:05which means this part of the bunker
36:07was built 20 years after the Germans left.
36:11It's full of secrets, isn't it?
36:13This bunker is full of secrets.
36:15Incredible.
36:16It is a setback,
36:18but the team still has made an important discovery.
36:21The Barron's Wall dates from the 60s,
36:23and the search for the gold
36:24must continue elsewhere in the mountain's tunnels.
36:2872 tons of gold sounds like an awful lot,
36:31but really we're just talking about
36:32a few cubic meters of gold
36:34in a place this size.
36:36Could be everywhere.
36:37It's a needle in a haystack.
36:38Yes, so it's possible.
36:40After 70 years,
36:42the mystery of the gold is yet to be solved.
36:45In Rome, Robert Edsel is on the trail
36:49of the missing Florentine treasures.
36:52Of the original Florentine 10,
36:54three are still missing.
36:56Location unknown.
36:57To figure out where he should search next,
37:00Robert is meeting General Fabrizio Parulli,
37:03head of the Heritage Protection Unit
37:05of the Carabinieri,
37:06the Italian National Police.
37:08Wow, what a room.
37:10The general is one of the world's
37:12go-to investigators of stolen art,
37:14and his case files stretch
37:15from ancient artifacts to Nazi loot.
37:19How big is this illegal trafficking
37:22of cultural objects?
37:24Well, last year,
37:26just to give you an idea,
37:27we recovered more than 20,600 pieces of art.
37:33And that's just one year?
37:35Just one year.
37:35Just Italy?
37:36Just Italy.
37:38In 2014,
37:39the Carabinieri made headlines
37:41with their biggest ever haul of stolen loot.
37:4345 crates containing more than 5,000
37:47ancient Etruscan artifacts.
37:51We are here in our safe.
37:53A nice door.
37:54No one's getting in that.
37:55Yeah, it's better to close.
37:56After guns and drugs,
38:00stolen art is the third biggest black market
38:02in the world.
38:03So this is essentially like an evidence room
38:06while the cases are going on?
38:09Yes.
38:10Nazi loot is part of this global black market,
38:13and even after 70 years,
38:15it's a top priority for the general.
38:17So how many cases do you have
38:19that you're actively working
38:20related to World War II?
38:23Well, we have roughly 2,000 cases.
38:252,000?
38:26We are working hard on this case.
38:28So you're confident
38:30that there are going to be more discoveries
38:31of things that have been missing
38:33since World War II?
38:34Yes, even if it's a long time that passes,
38:38but we are confident
38:39to find something more.
38:41The question for Robert
38:44is where should he search?
38:47A clue may lie
38:48with the Etruscan art find.
38:51It was recovered in Switzerland
38:53from behind the walls
38:55of the Geneva Freeport.
38:58The Geneva Freeport
38:59is a high-security,
39:01tax-free storage facility
39:02used by art dealers and collectors.
39:05Based on a tip-off
39:07and with the help
39:08of the Swiss authorities,
39:09the stolen artifacts were recovered.
39:11Is it likely you think
39:15that there's some other things
39:16in these Freeports
39:17that are stolen?
39:18Probably yes.
39:22In an exploding global art market,
39:24Geneva is just one
39:26of the many Freeports
39:27providing secrecy and anonymity
39:29to the world's super-rich.
39:31Robert goes to Geneva himself
39:33to find out more.
39:35Doreen, how are you?
39:37Great to meet you.
39:37He's meeting Doreen Carvajal.
39:39She's one of the only
39:41investigative journalists
39:42ever to have seen inside.
39:44The Freeports of Geneva.
39:46It doesn't look like much, does it?
39:47The beauty's inside, not outside.
39:50Kind of a modern-day Fort Knox.
39:52Incredible security,
39:54bomb-proof doors,
39:56magnetic locks,
39:58facial recognition,
40:00barbed wire.
40:02And you've been in there?
40:03Yes, I've been in there.
40:04No one knows for sure
40:07the exact value
40:08of what is being legally stored
40:09behind these walls,
40:10but the best estimate
40:11is more than a million artifacts
40:13worth half a trillion dollars.
40:15Would it surprise you
40:17that there might be works of art
40:19that were looted by the Nazis
40:20or other things that were stolen?
40:22No.
40:23There's one great flaw
40:24with the system.
40:25There's no overarching
40:27inventory control.
40:30I think until they do,
40:32there won't be real scrutiny
40:34of what's in there.
40:36Do you think that they will do
40:37a comprehensive inventory?
40:39Or that they'll be forced to do it?
40:41No.
40:41No.
40:42No.
40:43The Freeport offers its clients
40:45the highest levels
40:46of security and privacy
40:48and doesn't welcome
40:49the presence of the film crew.
40:51As Robert prepares
40:53to do more filming,
40:54he's stopped by security.
41:07The hunt for the missing
41:08Florentine treasures
41:09has brought Robert
41:10to the Geneva Freeport.
41:12As the crew is preparing to film,
41:14Robert is approached
41:18by security.
41:22He told us we needed to move,
41:24even though we're
41:26on public property.
41:29Robert's request
41:31for a formal interview
41:32received this reply
41:33from the Freeport.
41:35Due to internal restructuring,
41:37no interviews
41:38or on-site filming
41:39can be granted
41:40in the immediate future.
41:42I wanted to ask them
41:44about the objects
41:45that are already
41:45in the Freeport
41:46and that have been there
41:46perhaps for decades.
41:48What control procedures
41:49do they have
41:50to vet those objects
41:52and make sure
41:53that none of them
41:53are stolen?
41:55Unfortunately,
41:55at least today,
41:56we're not going to have
41:57that opportunity
41:58and I think that's a shame.
42:01Robert leaves Geneva
42:02frustrated.
42:04But in Milan,
42:06the Carabinieri's investigations
42:07have met
42:08with better success.
42:09Wow, fantastic.
42:16In 1944,
42:17these three paintings
42:18were stolen
42:18from the Villa Piengore
42:20by the Waffen SS.
42:22For 70 years,
42:23their location
42:24was a mystery.
42:26Until 2016,
42:28when Captain Francesco Provenza
42:30tracked them down
42:31to a private collection.
42:32This looks like
42:40a butt of a rifle
42:43or something,
42:43you know,
42:43something's compressed it,
42:45but the condition of it
42:46is fantastic.
42:49It's pretty miraculous
42:50they're in this good
42:51a condition
42:51as they're in.
42:52The hunt for Nazi loot
42:56in Italy
42:57has taken the team
42:58We are here
43:00in our safe
43:01inside the illegal trade
43:03and stolen art
43:04into wartime bunkers
43:06to the last Nazi stronghold
43:10in Italy
43:10to one of the most secretive
43:13art repositories
43:14in the world.
43:16Perhaps the items
43:17that we're looking for,
43:19works of art,
43:20cultural treasures,
43:21are behind the walls
43:22of the Geneva Freeport
43:24or other freeports
43:25like it around the world.
43:26But without a full accounting,
43:29no one will know.
43:30And so the search continues.
43:51you know,
44:01you know,
44:02you know,
44:02you know,
44:02and you know,
44:03you know,
44:03you know,
44:04there's also a powerful thing.
44:04You know,
44:05you know,
44:06there's some kind ofấm
44:07in the image that...