Tonight, an enduring World War II mystery.
Somewhere, the Nazis are sitting on a stockpile
of confiscated wealth.
Vast amounts of art, gold, silver, and currency
are looted by the Nazis and stashed all over Europe.
Anything of value that can be stolen, they steal.
LAURENCE: Though some is recovered
in astonishing finds, much more is still missing.
KEVIN HYMEL: Now, the mystery begins.
Where else did the Nazis hide their wealth?
We'll explore the top theories surrounding this lost treasure.
MARTIN MORGAN: The CIA documents show this gold
is linked to these high-ranking Croatian priests.
The Nazi gold train was found in the Owl Mountains.
KEVIN: The diary says that something around
$7 million worth of Nazi gold was stolen by this officer.
Where did the Nazis take their stolen loot,
and can it ever be found?
[music]
April 1945, as Allied forces
advance into Nazi territory,
they occupy the small town of Merkers, Germany.
Merkers is right outside of Frankfurt.
From a strategic perspective, it's f
The only thing notable is a salt and potassium mine.
AMORY SILVERTSON: On the morning of April 6th, 1945,
American military policemen
are patrolling an area
outside of Merkers
when they stop two refugee women
for violating a curfew.
KEVIN: As they're driving them back
to the American command post, a German-speaking American MP,
Richard Mootz, starts interrogating the women.
He wants to know why they're out walking
in spite of the curfew.
AMORY: As they drive by the Kaiseroda Mine,
the women say, "Forget the curfew.
"How would you like to know about a significant amount
of stolen treasure?"
LAURENCE: That question immediately sparks
intense interest.
Rumors of a vast Nazi treasure horde
stored throughout Europe are rampant.
KEVIN: Almost from the moment that Hitler becomes chancellor
of Germany in 1933, he instructs his military
to start stealing gold.
AMORY: This begins domestically,
confiscating money from local banks
and from Jewish citizens that are being displaced
from their homes and sent to concentration camps.
KEVIN: Once Hitler's army start invading other countries,
they do more of the same,
and it goes beyond just stealing gold.
MARTIN: Artwork, jewelry, silver, platinum--
anything of value that
can be stolen, they steal.
AMORY: So, when the soldiers hear the rumor
from these women about stolen treasure,
they definitely take notice.
LAURENCE: The news quickly reaches
U.S. General George S. Patton,
commander of the Third Army in Germany.
AMORY: By the time General Patton
hears this particular story from Merkers,
the Allies estimate that Nazi Germany
has taken nearly $600 million worth of stolen gold.
This includes 223 million from Belgium,
193 million from The Netherlands,
additional gold from Austria and Czechoslovakia.
And that's just what Patton knows about.
It doesn't include millions more in stolen gold
from private citizens and businesses.
LAURENCE: Despite these estimates, Patton is wary.
AMORY: Lots of people have tried to get leniency
with promises of hidden Nazi treasures,
and almost none of it has panned out.
But Patton decides it's still worth looking into,
because he knows that somewhere, the Nazis are sitting
on a stockpile of confiscated wealth.
MARTIN: We always have to remember
that even as late as April 1945, the end of the Second World War
was not a forgone conclusion,
and lots of things could have gone wrong.
Depriving the enemy of a significant quantity of gold
is the equivalent of driving a nail into his coffin.
KEVIN: Finding any part of this treasure
will help the Allied war effort.
The only question is, where is it?
AMORY: According to the two women
detained in Merkers, it's there,
deep underground in the local salt mine.
MARTIN: These women claim to have eyewitnessed
these valuables being transported
on trucks and crates.
And when valuables are moving in the wrong direction,
meaning moving to the mine and going down into it
rather than the other way around,
that's where their suspicion
about things of great value came from.
AMORY: Within hours of the women telling their story,
General Patton sends a bunch of resources to Merkers.
MARTIN: He has to use fighting forces
that would otherwise be committed to battle,
and designate them to come back to Merkers
to provide a security cordon around the area,
because after all, he has to exercise great caution
that this might be a trap.
LAURENCE: The next day, April 7th, American soldiers
start interviewing other eyewitnesses.
KEVIN: They talk to several men in and around Merkers
who were forced to work in the mine,
either clearing out rooms or bringing gold down into it.
AMORY: One British POW who had also been forced
to work in the mine tries to make a sort of crude map
for the Americans to show them the location
of the treasure room.
KEVIN: Army engineers survey the area
and start making plans to descend into the mine.
AMORY: Patton tells everyone to keep
this potential treasure top-secret.
Don't report it to anyone until they have it in hand.
LAURENCE: On April 8th, American forces enter the mine.
MARTIN: I can't imagine what must have been going
through the mind of these troops as they go down
into this deep mine.
They don't know what they're going
to encounter down there, they don't know who
they're going to encounter down there.
KEVIN: There could be armed Nazi guards,
there could be booby traps, there could be nothing.
MARTIN: Exploring this mine was no small task.
It's a network of tunnels below the surface,
18 square miles in overall size.
There's no convenient signage.
There's nothing that says, "Nazi gold, this way."
KEVIN: But based on the interviews with people
that work there, they know to go to a room
called Room Eight.
And as they approach, it's pretty clear
there's something very important inside it.
LAURENCE: The room is sealed by a huge steel door.
AMORY: The door is impenetrable.
But the engineers figure the adjacent brick wall is not.
So, they load up one side with dynamite.
That's how they open the vault.
[explosion]
KEVIN: The first thing the American soldiers see
is gold-- literally tons of gold.
This is the motherlode.
MARTIN: Room Eight's not a room at all.
It's more of a cavern than anything.
It's 75 feet wide, 150 feet deep,
12-foot ceilings-- it's a massive open space.
AMORY: They count 8,198 individual bars of gold,
each worth thousands of dollars.
MARTIN: The world hasn't seen this much gold in one place
outside of Fort Knox.
LAURENCE: And that's just the beginning.
KEVIN: Besides the gold bars,
they also find gold bullion, currency from England,
France, and Germany, gold coins, platinum,
and the plates used to make German Reichsmarks.
LAURENCE: Also hidden in the mine,
hundreds of priceless stolen artworks.
MARTIN: In other words, this was the largest
German pawn shop of the time.
Anything that had any value at all
had been crammed into this one cavern
inside this mine complex.
KEVIN: So, everyone is ecstatic and amazed
by this once-in-a-lifetime discovery.
There's so many riches, so many treasures.
But then they get to the back of the room,
and the mood changes.
AMORY: In addition to the precious metals,
they find 189 suitcases
filled with gold and silver household items
that have clearly been stolen from everyday people.
But that's not the worst of it.
In some of the suitcases, they find a horrific sight--
hundreds and hundreds of teeth,
human teeth that all have gold fillings in them.
KEVIN: Nobody has to ask where these gold fillings came from.
They already know.
They're the teeth of thousands of Jews
extracted from the living and the dead
in concentration camps.
MARTIN: They had gold fillings ripped out of their head,
because that gold had value.
It gives you an idea of how cynical
the Nazi view was towards humanity,
towards human decency and dignity.
I don't know of anybody else besides the Nazis
who did anything like that.
LAURENCE: As they come to terms with their grisly discovery,
American forces need to figure out the next steps.
It's a task so daunting that Generals Patton and Eisenhower
show up in person to supervise.
AMORY: The generals approve a logistical plan
to get all this heavy stuff out from 2,000 feet below the ground
and move it to safety.
Remember, there's still a war going on very close by,
so it's an already difficult job made even harder.
MARTIN: As all of this material is moved from inside the mine
to above ground, it's taken into Frankfurt
to an old bank building
that had been captured by Allied forces.
And as all of the material is being deposited at that bank,
and an accounting of all of it is being completed,
there's recognition for the fact
that there's a lot still missing.
AMORY: The gold, silver, and currency
that was found at Merkers adds up to about $250 million.
But according to Allied estimates,
the Nazis stole closer to $600 million.
So, what was found at Merkers isn't all of it.
Not even close.
KEVIN: This of course means one thing--
there's more out there.
So now, the real mystery begins.
Where else did the Nazis hide their stolen treasure?
The discovery of 250 Million dollars
in stolen Nazi loot in Merkers, Germany, in 1945
inspires a military treasure hunt
that lasts long after the end of World War II.
The U.S. and our allies
continue to occupy the area
for many months after the war.
There's a lot of work to be done--
helping displaced people, shoring up infrastructure,
cleaning up dangerous unused ammunition and explosives,
and trying to track down more of what the Nazis stole.
MARTIN: The overall quantity of treasure
that was discovered at the Merkers mine
is believed to be less than half
of the total amount of treasure
that Nazi Germany looted
during the Second World War.
AMORY: Remember, this wasn't their gold to begin with.
They took it from governments, banks, everyday citizens,
all of whom deserve to have it returned.
It's estimated that about 90%
of what was found at Merkers was eventually returned
to its rightful owners.
LAURENCE: But where did they hide the rest?
AMORY: After the salt mine, we know a few things
about where the Nazis like to keep their stolen treasure.
It's a remote location.
It has cold low-oxygen conditions
ideal for preservation, and it's a facility
that's already in use for something.
So, trucks coming and going
wouldn't have been seen as suspicious.
And they don't have to build a bunch of new stuff.
There's already electricity, manpower,
and plenty of storage space.
LAURENCE: Among the first possibilities,
a Nazi weapons testing facility in Austria near Lake Toplitz.
Soldiers descend on the area in May of 1945
and begin interviewing potential witnesses.
MARTIN: Ida Weisenbacher provides a personal account
in which she details the way that German troops
arrived at her home,
and how they got a truck stuck in the mud,
and they needed assistance transferring crates
that carried something on board, onto a horse-drawn cart
so that they could move them toward the lake itself.
AMORY: Ida described seeing possibly hundreds
of sealed Nazi crates, and they take the crates
up the mountain in multiple trips.
Ida says she witnesses all those crates
get dumped into Lake Toplitz.
Ida, of course, has no idea
what's in these crates.
But the Allies suspect it might be Nazi treasure.
LAURENCE: Lake Toplitz sits at the edge
of the Austrian Alps,
an ideal site for covert operations.
AMORY: It's so remote and hard to reach.
The Allies would never spot it.
It's over a mile long, a quarter of a mile wide
and it has a depth of up to 300 feet.
KEVIN: This area is known as the Dead Mountains.
It's inaccessible and frozen over
for five months of the year.
When it is accessible, its only entrance
is a steep dirt path.
Let's just say it's a pretty good place
for the Nazis to hide anything.
LAURENCE: These same conditions
make it a difficult place to search.
First off, it's very hard to get equipment
in and out of there.
An underwater search of a 300-foot-deep lake
requires a lot of machinery.
AMORY: Even just sending in divers is gonna be difficult.
'Cause keep in mind, this is the mid-1940s.
At this point, the first SCUBA apparatus, the Aqua-Lung,
has only just been invented by Jacques Cousteau.
And there's no such thing as a dry suit,
which is what divers today use to keep warm
in cold temperatures.
LAURENCE: The Navy spends two years devising a plan
to explore the 300-foot-deep lake.
In 1947, they're finally ready.
KEVIN: They go down about 60 feet,
and then they have to stop.
They've encountered an impenetrable wall of wood.
Toplitz is surrounded by a forest,
so over the years trees have fallen into the lake,
creating this wooden barrier about 60 feet down.
MARTIN: It's very, very difficult to operate
in that environment.
The divers are challenged just to get beyond it
to see what's on the other side of it.
And that could easily hide things of great value.
The divers then begin swimming along the barrier
hoping to find the crates that may have fallen on top.
But sadly, they don't find anything.
STEFAN BURNS: Whatever was in those crates was heavy enough
to sink past that barrier,
which implies possibly Nazi gold.
And the fact that these crates
sunk to the bottom of Lake Toplitz
means it's extremely difficult
to pull them back out.
LAURENCE: After one of their divers drowns in 1947,
the Navy calls off the search.
KEVIN: The Navy finally decides,
this is basically an impossible task.
But that's not gonna stop others from trying
to explore Lake Toplitz.
And it doesn't stop people from dying either.
There's a string of suspicious death
associated with Lake Toplitz.
LAURENCE: These begin soon after World War II ends.
In 1946, two men, Helmut Mayer and Ludwig Picher,
are both found murdered near the lake.
During the investigation into this murder,
it is ultimately revealed that the two men
had once worked at Lake Toplitz during the war.
KEVIN: You have to wonder, did they come back
knowing there was something worth retrieving from that area?
They certainly had the background
to know what might be down there.
And if so, were they killed because of it?
LAURENCE: In the 1950s there are several more deaths.
In 1952, a French civilian is found dead at the lake.
And during the investigation into his death,
the bodies of two other people are found,
and those two people have both been shot in the head.
KEVIN: This is getting kind of creepy.
One death, that's one thing.
But this is a string of murders around a lake
that supposedly has Nazi gold at the bottom.
AMORY: As these stories start to spread through the press,
more and more people really do believe
that there is something secret and valuable
hidden at Lake Toplitz, and maybe someone's guarding it.
LAURENCE: In 1959, an expedition
sponsored by German magazine Der Stern,
tries to finally solve the mystery.
By this time, diving technology has improved substantially,
so it's slightly less dangerous to dive the lake.
It's not without risk, but the Der Stern divers
are able to stay there for more than five weeks at the site.
And eventually, they reach the bottom.
LAURENCE: What they see is truly remarkable.
KEVIN: The crates are down there.
This is incredible!
And they're able to bring 15 of them up to the surface.
AMORY: But when they pry the crates open,
they don't find gold.
They find paper money, millions of British pounds--
700 million, to be exact.
MARTIN: The reason that the Nazis
dumped all of this British paper currency
into Lake Toplitz was because it was all counterfeit.
KEVIN: Back in the 1940s Adolf Hitler started a plan
called Operation Bernhard to flood Great Britain
with fake currency to drive up inflation
and basically wreck the British economy.
AMORY: Operation Bernhard was never fully realized.
And now, thanks to the Der Stern divers,
we now know what happened to at least some
of those counterfeit bills.
LAURENCE: But is there more to uncover?
The Der Stern divers reported that there were more boxes
at the bottom of the lake,
but because of all the money already spent on this mission,
they were told to leave those boxes alone.
MARTIN: Those 15 crates, though,
linked them directly to Operation Bernhard,
and they also established the truth
of the Ida Weisenbacher personal account.
AMORY: In the decades since, several expeditions,
some very well-funded ones,
are mounted to try to recover the rest of the crates.
They find some Nazi artifacts.
Some divers report seeing aircraft
and other weapons down there,
but so far, no stolen Nazi treasure.
Unless we figure out some technology
to go and drain Lake Toplitz, it doesn't look to me
like anybody's ever going to figure out
exactly what's down there.
And so, we're gonna have to live with this mystery
for a long time to come.
In the immediate aftermath of the war,
the U.S. government is determined
to find more hidden Nazi treasure.
From 1945 until 1948,
all branches of the American military
are involved in trying to
discover looted Nazi treasure.
And one of the elements of the American military
that's involved in this search is the O.S.S.
The O.S.S., the Office of Strategic Services,
is the precursor
to today's CIA.
LAURENCE: But in 1947, it's an unexpected agency
that makes a breakthrough.
MARTIN: When we think of government agencies
and important investigations,
we don't think of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
But as it turns out, a Treasury agent
by the name of Emerson Bigelow is searching for Nazi treasure.
And in many ways, a Treasury agent
is the right person to go sniffing around this idea
of looted Nazi gold.
In 1947 Bigelow sends a memo
to his superiors claiming
to know what happened
to a large chunk
of the stolen Nazi gold.
His memo is so incendiary
that it really just gets swept under the rug.
And it isn't until 50 years later
when it gets declassified
that this bombshell finally comes to light.
The Bigelow memorandum is ultimately revealed
in a 1997 documentary, and what he found
was that a very, very large quantity of money
went into a bank account that was owned by the Vatican.
LAURENCE: Bigelow's theory begins in Croatia.
In World War II, the Nazis
set up a puppet government in Croatia called the Ustasha.
They're in power from 1941 till the end of the war in 1945.
Let's be clear-- they're put there
by the Nazis, for the Nazis.
AMORY: The Ustasha are just as vile as the Nazis.
They participate in the same form of racist terrorism
that's fueled by a distorted view
of both Roman Catholicism and Islam--
something they called Croatian Nationalism.
Like Hitler, they want to purify the blood of the country
by mass-murdering Jews, Serbs, and Roma.
It's estimated that they kill hundreds of thousands of people.
And the Ustashe extorted gold,
and jewels, and other valuables
from people who they threatened,
saying that, "If you do not give this to us,
you could be shot, you could be otherwise killed."
And so, people who had the gold, gave it.
They were killed as well as the people
who didn't have the gold,
but that was the Ustashe method.
LAURENCE: The stolen gold is sent to Germany's Reichsbank
to be melted down into bars and coins.
AMORY: According to Bigelow's report,
towards the end of the war, the Ustasha make efforts
to hide this money,
and they also help German Nazis hide some of theirs.
KEVIN: When Bigelow talks to intelligence agents,
they tell him that 350 million Swiss Francs
have been taken out of the country.
LAURENCE: That money would be worth
$1.5 billion today.
KEVIN: But more eye-popping than the amount
is what happened to it.
According to Bigelow's sources, that transfer of wealth
was overseen by officials with the Vatican.
LAURENCE: Bigelow's sources claim they have proof.
AMORY: Some of it was discovered.
About one-third of it was confiscated
by British authorities at a checkpoint
on the Austria-Switzerland border.
It traveled up from Croatia into Austria,
and Bigelow's sources believe it was ultimately headed
for a Swiss bank account owned by the Vatican.
Meanwhile, according to the Bigelow memo,
approximately 200 million Swiss Francs' worth of gold
did get through to a Vatican bank account in Switzerland.
LAURENCE: Bigelow's research ends there.
But in 1997, investigative journalists
Mark Aarons and John Loftus pick up where he left off.
Mark Aarons has made a name for himself in Australia
for hunting down former Nazis.
And John Loftus is a former prosecutor
with the U.S. Department of Justice's Nazi-hunting unit.
In that capacity, Loftus has access to CIA files.
LAURENCE: As they dig deeper, more shocking evidence emerges.
MARTIN: The CIA documents prove
that this gold is directly linked
to these high-ranking Croatian priests in Rome,
one of which has a Vatican association,
who are involved in getting this looted Nazi gold
into Swiss bank accounts.
LAURENCE: But that money doesn't stay in there for long.
They claim some of the Nazi gold was used
to relocate Croatian Nazi officials.
AMORY: Aarons and Loftus' research
seems to blow the lid off of a three-part scheme
involving the Vatican, the Nazis, and the Swiss banks.
So, when they publish their research in 1998,
what do they call the book?
"Unholy Trinity."
LAURENCE: Many top-ranking Nazis are put on trial
and executed in Nuremberg after the war.
But the Ustasha are notably absent.
Almost the entire Ustasha hierarchy
just walks away scot-free.
Their leader, Ante Pavelic, aka the Butcher of the Balkans,
is actually received as an honored guest
at the Vatican for two years after the war.
Other high-ranking Ustasha escape to relative luxury
in South America,
and that's where some of the gold went.
It paid for passports, transportation,
places to live, food to eat, et cetera.
If this is true, this money goes back
into the hands of the Nazi puppets
who stole it in the first place.
LAURENCE: According to Aarons and Loftus,
the conspiracy doesn't end there.
KEVIN: Just when you thought you couldn't be more disgusted
by this whole affair, it gets worse.
The authors present evidence that the CIA
not only knew about it, but they helped make it happen.
AMORY: In 1998, the U.S. Congress
passes the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act,
which requires the release of any government records
pertaining to Nazi war criminals.
As a result, over 300,000 pages of documents
linking the U.S. Army and the CIA to this
have been disclosed.
AMORY: And now, declassified Army Intelligence reports
states that by the summer of 1947,
the U.S. forces were actively supporting
the people-smuggling operation.
The CIA wanted Nazis to escape Europe for two reasons.
Some of them were advanced scientists
that could help the U.S. military.
Others could be planted in areas
that faced the growing threat of Communism.
They placed high-ranking former Nazis
in various South American countries
with a mission to quell any potential
Communist uprisings there
and install U.S.-friendly leadership.
One of the most notable examples is Operation Condor,
where Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie is used
to help overthrow the government of Bolivia.
LAURENCE: The influx of ex-Nazis into South America
is known as the "ratline."
According to Bigelow, Aarons, and Loftus,
this ratline operation was paid for.
It was financed by the very gold
that had been looted by the Ustasha
on behalf of Nazi Germany
that then ultimately made its way
into Vatican bank accounts.
But here's the thing. Whatever wasn't spent
on this nefarious scheme should still be sitting
in the Vatican's bank.
This could be hundreds of millions of dollars in gold,
which we'll probably never be able to recover.
MARTIN: Unsurprisingly, the Vatican
denies every last bit of this.
This is, of course, a denial coming from an entity
that has a document policy
by which they destroy everything every 10 years.
One thing we know-- if history tells us anything,
it's that money can corrupt
even the most seemingly sacred institutions.
Perhaps someday, some long lost document
will show what happened to all that gold
that made its way to Switzerland.
But until then, it's part of the significant tally
that remains lost.
By 1948, 3 years after the end of World War 2
the United States government begins to slow down efforts
to locate any additional stolen Nazi goods.
But a global army of amateur treasure hunters
picks up the mantle, and in 2015,
one team announces a breakthrough.
September 4th, Lower Silesia, Poland.
Researchers Piotr Koper and Andres Richter
claim that they know where to find
a massive cache of Nazi treasure.
MARTIN: Koper is Polish,
Richter is German.
Together, they release
an announcement that they have
received a deathbed confession from a former German officer
who knew the whereabouts of a train
laden with Nazi gold that was on its way
through Poland and back to Germany,
but it never made it to its destination.
During the war, Hitler orders that 330 tons of gold
will be loaded onto a train and moved west
to a more secure location.
AMORY: If this story is true, this would represent
a giant chunk of the gold
that we think is still missing.
LAURENCE: According to Koper and Richter,
the planned route of the train was from Breslau
to somewhere in Germany, but at some point
the train was diverted and sent near the city of Bydgoszcz.
The question is, where did it go from there?
The pair starts by looking for potential hiding spots
along the train route.
AMORY: Hitler is many things,
but he's not shortsighted.
And by 1943, he sees how the tides of the war
are starting to turn.
Allied air raids are increasing,
and they're taking a toll on Hitler's war machine.
So, he starts making plans for worst-case scenarios.
This is the beginning of Project Riese,
Hitler's attempt to fortify
and move his operations underground.
MARTIN: Project Riese was a German construction project
during the Second World War that sought to establish
this very extensive underground bunker network
in the Owl Mountains in Silesia.
AMORY: The Nazis excavate a massive labyrinth of tunnels.
Though it's never finished, some suspect the purpose
is to create an underground headquarters
and miles of underground factories
safe from Allied bombers.
LAURENCE: Koper and Richter zero in on a location
near the Project Riese tunnels.
It's a widely held belief in Poland
that this Nazi gold train could have entered
Project Riese locations, and then ended up
where Koper and Richter are actually looking.
At some point in 2015, Koper and Richter went
without a license and used ground-penetrating radar
to do a readout of a site along the Bydgoszcz rail line.
And they believed that this showed
an underground structure, which they believed
was the correct density to be a train.
LAURENCE: Encouraged, the researchers
share their evidence with the local press.
MENACHEM: As Koper and Richter's claim sort of gets out,
the Polish government, both local and national,
are forced to respond.
And by and large, they seem to support
the assertion that the train is there.
AMORY: Polish Deputy Culture Minister Piotr Zuchowski
throws the weight of the government behind the claim,
saying that there's a 99% probability
that a train more than 300 feet long
was found in the Owl Mountains.
Later, it's also revealed that Koper and Richter
have made a pretty sweet deal with the Polish government,
saying basically, "Hey, if you support the excavation,
we'll give you 90% of the profits."
It's an astronomical figure if it pans out.
This, of course, ignites a media circus,
and the hunt is on.
LAURENCE: Before they can dig,
the Polish Army is sent in to secure the area.
STEFAN: All of Europe was littered
with munitions after the war,
and in this area in particular,
it was a hotspot of German activity.
So, before there can be any digging,
they have to perform a UXO, or unexploded ordnance search.
AMORY: Then, they clear-cut the area of its trees.
Finally, they scan and probe the area
to certify that there are no dangerous explosives below.
LAURENCE: On August 15th, 2016,
Koper and Richter, along with a large group of volunteers,
officially begin digging.
STEFAN: This team consisted of about 60 people.
They had a geologist, they had engineers,
they had laborers, of course Koper and Richter.
The cost of this dig amounted to about $130,000,
and it was all funded privately.
AMORY: After one week of digging,
the team halts their work, finding no evidence of a train,
train tracks, or any other manmade objects,
at least not to a depth of 60 feet.
STEFAN: They found that this GPR anomaly
turned out to be a natural geologic formation.
Koper and Richter didn't give up,
because at this point, they claimed to have found
many other anomalies,
but they simply didn't have the funds to excavate them.
AMORY: Richter eventually leaves the team,
but Koper continues to search for the Nazi gold train.
In 2021, he announces he's found new evidence
of a train at the bottom of a lake in a Polish village.
Additional site analysis is ongoing,
so hopes of recovering this particular stash
of Nazi gold aren't over yet.
By 2016, most searches for stolen nazi plunder
are helmed by amateur investigators.
Among them, German treasure hunter Jurgen Proske,
who's working on a unique approach.
MARTIN: Proske's taken a different method
for looking into looted Nazi gold,
whereas others are more consumed
by trying to find additional
hordes or deposits of gold
that are undiscovered out there.
What Proske is doing, is he's looking at the records
associated with hordes that have already been discovered
to determine if anything was overlooked.
He turns his attention to a story
that unfolds in 1945 at Mittenwald, Germany,
right near the Austrian border.
LAURENCE: There, on April 20th, 1945,
Nazi Colonel Franz Pfeiffer and six officers
gather at a German military base.
Coincidentally, this is Hitler's birthday.
The Allies are closing in,
and Pfeiffer is given one final mission--
to hide a stash of Nazi gold.
The Nazis consider this gold their last best hope
for preserving the future of the regime.
The aim is to hide it until they can return to power
and a new Reich can be formed,
which will be funded by the gold.
LAURENCE: Pfeiffer swears his men to secrecy,
then orders 365 sacks of gold
loaded onto a convoy of trucks.
MARTIN: The order itself comes from Reichsfuhrer-SS,
Heinrich Himmler.
Himmler orders several truckloads of looted valuables
to be transported to the area where Pfeiffer is in command.
The Nazi's first plan is to hide it
in this bowling alley that was abandoned.
So, they bring it all there,
and they deposit it in the building.
Then, days later, Allied forces are approaching.
They have to go back, take it all out of the bowling alley
and find someplace else to hide it.
It's clear they're gonna have to move this stuff
much farther away.
So, they choose a new destination--
a lodge up in the mountains
outside of a little town called Einsiedl.
The lodge is owned by a man named Hans Neuhauser,
who lives there with his wife and son.
And Hans basically has no choice but to let the Nazis in
and do whatever they say.
LAURENCE: After unloading the gold at Neuhauser's lodge,
the Nazis next use mules
to move it further into the mountains.
In the span of just 24 hours,
the Nazis had dug pits,
and they deposited gold
into these, and then covered them back up.
KEVIN: And it's none too soon, because the Allies
arrive on scene three days later.
LAURENCE: The freshly dug pits are easily spotted
by the Allied soldiers.
In total, 12 tons of gold bullion is unearthed,
valued at nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars today.
So, they recover this gold.
It's another great true story of buried Nazi treasure
that continues to inspire treasure hunters today.
STEFAN: Most treasure hunters use this story as evidence
that other undisclosed locations of Nazi gold may exist.
But not Proske.
Proske decides to keep looking into this story.
What if the Allies never found all the treasure?
Is there any evidence to suggest that some of this
did in fact get left behind?
LAURENCE: Sure enough, Proske finds that evidence.
AMORY: In 2016, amongst a collection of antiques,
Proske finds the diary of a former Nazi officer,
and in it, this guy claims to have taken
some of the Einsiedl gold
and put it in his own secret hiding spot.
KEVIN: The diary says that about $7 million of Nazi gold
was stolen by this officer and hidden somewhere nearby.
Remember, this is gold the Nazis stole
that this officer then stole from them.
According to the diary, the officer hid the gold
near the base of a steep hill.
On top of the hill is a flat area with a hut.
To Proske, this is like a pirate treasure map
that's gonna lead him right to the gold.
LAURENCE: There's just one problem.
STEFAN: The story in the diary doesn't end after the war.
It continues.
Several years later, the officer goes back
to this location to dig up the gold.
When he returns, he can't find it.
He lost it.
KEVIN: The ensuing years have changed the landscape,
so it looks very different from when the officer
first buried it.
If that isn't karma, I don't know what it is.
So, what does this say to Proske?
It says maybe that gold is still out there
waiting to be found.
LAURENCE: And Proske has something
the officer didn't-- a metal detector.
STEFAN: So far, Proske has made dozens of trips
to this area looking for the Nazi gold.
And he's found several promising leads.
He's found grenades, a Nazi helmet, ammunition--
all things which indicate activity in the area.
KEVIN: And this isn't a place that had any active fighting
during the war.
These artifacts mean that maybe one or more Nazis
were up to something in this area.
Maybe hiding gold.
So far, Proske hasn't found any gold.
But like any good treasure hunter,
he's still at it.
In 2019, decades after the end of world war 2
a new lead to the location of lost Nazi treasure emerges.
A Masonic lodge in Quedlinburg
in Germany decides that they want
to atone for their associations
with Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Third Reich.
They have hung onto a large quantity of documents
relating to the Nazi time period,
including a diary that was maintained
by a former SS officer
who wrote under the assumed name Michaelis.
AMORY: They decide to give all this memorabilia
to the Silesian Bridge Foundation,
a Polish-German antidiscrimination cooperative,
as sort of an apologetic gesture.
At first, the Silesian Bridge Foundation
accepts all this stuff.
Just, "Thank you very much."
It's just a nice way to accept and heal some of the wounds
from the past.
LAURENCE: But when they start to read the diary,
they realize this gesture could be worth much more.
AMORY: It immediately becomes clear
why the author used a pseudonym,
because the diary details 11 different locations
that Himmler himself picked out to hide Nazi treasures.
MARTIN: Many of these locations are thought
to include gold coins, metals, jewelry--
items that were deposited with Nazi police
for safekeeping as Allied forces approached.
One of these locations is described
as having 47 valuable pieces of art from artists
to include Botticelli and Rembrandt.
The Silesian Bridge decides to go
and inspect some of these locations,
and they choose as their starting point
the biggest horde of them all,
and it's a location that is supposedly warehousing
28 tons of Nazi gold.
It's hidden in an abandoned castle
called Hochberg Palace.
LAURENCE: The foundation puts together a search team
led by their president, Roman Furmaniak.
AMORY: The location actually makes sense,
because Hochberg Palace has a special reputation
as a Nazi hangout during World War II.
MARTIN: During the Second World War, the German military
maintained a network of bordellos--
some for the common soldiers, some for the officers.
And during World War II, Hochberg Palace
was what they called an offizieres bordelle,
meaning an officers' bordello.
It's not all that far-fetched to assume
that there might have been some hidden treasure here.
KEVIN: People are constantly coming in and out
of this location, so Furmaniak actually obtains
eyewitness accounts of people who said they saw treasure
being stored in the palace.
Unfortunately, since the war,
this site has severely deteriorated,
making it dangerous to explore.
LAURENCE: The team starts carefully searching the area.
STEFAN: They use ground-penetrating radar
to sweep the area for safety purposes,
and in the process,
may have actually revealed
the hiding spot.
KEVIN: The diary says the gold,
48 crates of it, are buried 200 feet down
at the bottom of a well.
This well would have been encased in metal.
And in their initial scan, the team discovers
what appears to be a large metal casing.
LAURENCE: Encouraged by this promising find,
the foundation hopes to begin digging soon.
It takes time to coordinate
these big search efforts like this.
You have to work with the government,
you have to work with local authorities.
There's always the danger of unexploded ordnance,
so you have to coordinate with the military as well.
They're only just now beginning this excavation
at Hochberg Palace, and who knows what they'll find.
Can you imagine $1.7 billion worth of Nazi gold
being returned to its victims?
I hope it happens. The world is watching.
In addition to their research
at Hochberg Palace,
the Silesian Bridge Foundation
hopes to explore the other
10 sites in the diary
one by one.
Each brings a fresh chance
to fully recover the missing treasure.
And perhaps, one day, more will be found.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching
"History's Greatest Mysteries."