[intense music]
- Tonight, as the Allies
sweep through the Sahara during World War II,
General Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox,
is suddenly on the run.
- While Rommel is getting
pummeled by Allied forces,
the Germans make a desperate dash to the coast
to protect their men, but also stolen gold.
- The Nazis take tens of millions of dollars
in gold and treasures from the Jews in North Africa.
Rommel has to send this gold back to Berlin
or he is gonna face Hitler's wrath.
- But when the German surrender,
Rommel's $50 million in gold is nowhere to be found.
- One of the most vicious organized crime operations
in all of Southern Europe
becomes intensely interested in these rumors
about treasure just off the coast of Corsica.
There is speculation that this stolen treasure
may have never left Northern Africa at all.
- If Rommel knows where the gold is,
the secret goes with him to the grave.
- Now we explore the top theories
behind the missing treasure
and ask what really became of Rommel's gold.
- [Laurence] It's December, 1940
and the North African campaign of World War II
isn't going well for the Axis powers.
Italian forces had stormed into Egypt a few months earlier
hoping to defeat the British troops there,
but instead, the Italians are getting pummeled
in the Sahara Desert.
- By early 1941, Allied forces
take down nine Italian divisions.
They capture 130,000 men.
For Hitler, any sort of setback
that happens to the Italians
in North Africa
is essentially threatening Hitler's plan
to seize control of the southern Mediterranean.
Hitler becomes furious at these losses
that are happening to the Italians in North Africa,
so he calls in one of his aces, General Erwin Rommel.
- Rommel is very popular in the military and in Germany.
He has a legacy of success from serving in World War I
and he was one of the German officers
responsible for what we know as the Blitzkrieg.
[artillery booming]
- The term blitzkrieg means lightning war,
and that's because it doesn't rely on brute force,
but instead speed and precision.
Instead of pounding endlessly
against the enemy's front lines,
this tactic employed by Rommel would identify a weak point,
create a breakthrough at that weak point,
which will have the effect
of disrupting command centers, splitting divisions,
and devastating communications before the enemy can react.
- In June of 1940, Rommel used
these blitzkrieg tactics against the French successfully,
which only strengthened his popularity
as a leader on the battlefield.
- [Laurence] Hitler wastes no time
deploying Rommel to North Africa,
appointing him commander
of the German military's newly formed Afrika Korps.
[subdued music]
- [Sami] Rommel arrives in Libya in 1941
and initially they just hold a defensive line,
but he starts employing these blitzkrieg tactics
to take out the British Army
and to take out British forces and Allied forces
and make inroads on that war.
And because of his successes,
he actually earns the nickname the Desert Fox.
Behind the front lines of Rommel's Afrika Korps,
another team is created with a whole different goal,
which is to essentially carry out the Holocaust
on the roughly 400,000 Jews
that are living in the North African region.
- [Lis] Following the same brutal pattern
seen across Europe
as the Nazis persecute the Jews,
they also steal their wealth
and that lays the groundwork
for what's known as Rommel's gold.
- [Maritn] The Germans target one of
the oldest Jewish communities in the entire world,
a community that's over 2,000 years old,
an island off the coast of Tunisia, known as Djerba.
For centuries, Djerba's Jewish population
has been known for goldsmithing and jewelry making,
which has produced a treasure trove
that has been passed down through generations.
- [Laurence] In January, 1943, the Nazis storm Djerba
and begin their ruthless plunder.
- They get into the heart of the city
and the primary synagogue
and they see the wealth around them.
They go in and take everything.
[fire crackling] [victims whimper]
- [Cristina] The Jews are stripped of all their rights.
And if that weren't enough,
they send the Jewish population
to newly created labor camps in North Africa.
So now that we have the military campaign in North Africa,
we also have the Holocaust as well.
- It's believed that at Djerba,
the Nazis steal tens of millions of dollars
in today's money,
and that's not including the countless millions
that have already been stolen from North Africa.
- [Laurence] Rommel's domination of North Africa
doesn't last long.
By early March of 1943,
the Allies have forced the Desert Fox
and his Afrika Korps to retreat.
It's one of the Allies' first major victories
of World War II.
- [Sami] Not long after the retreat, though,
Rommel leaves Africa for good.
As to the fate of all the gold
that was stolen from the Jews of North Africa,
it's unaccounted for.
There are some rumors that there might be a hoard of gold
somewhere within the realm
of about $57 million in today's money
that still is out there somewhere
waiting for someone to find it.
- People have launched expeditions,
some have even reportedly died
trying to go on the hunt for this.
but it's still a big mystery
and no one knows where Rommel's gold is.
- [Amory] 80 years after the war, people are still trying
to find this secret resting place
of all of this stolen gold and treasure,
and some people believe that the answer lies
in studying Rommel's battlefield tactics.
[intense music]
- [Nick] In June, 1942, Rommel is on the move
and he's crossing into Egypt
and going towards the Suez Canal.
The Suez Canal is very important for the Allied forces.
This really powers the British military,
everything from oil, munitions, gasoline,
and so this is a very strategic marker for the Axis here.
- [Martin] Ultimately, Rommel's objective
in the North African campaign
is to advance on Alexandria and seize the Suez Canal.
Doing so will cut the British off from their colonies
and sever their supply lines,
and then it will provide Germany access
to an oil-rich region.
Suddenly, the Afrika Korps begins defeating
the British 8th Army driving it back into Egypt
and Rommel seems unstoppable.
- [Laurence] But Rommel's rapidly advancing army
has a major problem:
it's moving way too fast.
- [Amory] Rommel's blitzkrieg attacks are so fast
that sometimes he runs out of supplies
before he makes it to the front lines.
He runs out of munitions and even drinkable water.
If he can't restock his supplies quickly enough,
he can't make it to the Suez Canal.
So Rommel makes this desperate plea
to the Nazi high command.
- [Cristina] He reaches out to Berlin
and asks for these urgent reinforcements.
Hitler says he's gonna send them, but they never arrive.
This leaves Rommel and his inner circle
to suspect that maybe Hitler
and the Nazi leadership in Berlin
are jealous of Rommel's success in North Africa.
- [Amory] Rommel makes another plea directly to Hitler,
and Hitler says that he is going to send the supplies to him
and they still never come.
- [Laurence] Almost out of supplies,
surrounded by enemy forces and rapidly losing ground,
Rommel seems to be out of options,
but somehow the Desert Fox strikes back
winning what many historians call
one of the most improbable Axis victories
of the North African campaign.
- [Martin] In February, 1943,
Rommel launches a surprise attack
that culminates in an action
at a mountain pass in central Tunisia
near the town of Kasserine.
Despite being undersupplied,
Rommel nevertheless takes on
two American divisions, defeats them,
he causes over 6,000 American casualties during the action,
he takes 3,000 American prisoners,
he kills 1,000 Americans in combat,
he destroys 183 armored fighting vehicles
and captures dozens of pieces of field artillery
in the first battle
in which the American military fights Nazi Germany
during World War II.
[subdued music]
- [Lis] It turns out to be
Rommel's last major victory in the war,
and it's one that leaves the Allied commanders stumped.
I mean, how did he do it?
Just days earlier, his men were in retreat
and he was seriously undersupplied.
- [Sami] What some historians believe Rommel does
is, in order to rev up his war machine,
he uses some of the stolen gold
and other items to barter for resources
for items that he needs to continue fighting.
- [Amory] The timing is curious
because the Battle of Kasserine Pass takes place
just days after he's stolen all of this loot from Djerba
so maybe it's not a coincidence.
- [Martin] Some argue that this victory
had nothing to do with the stolen gold,
that any gold that was expropriated
from the Jews of Djerba
would've just been sent back to Berlin,
and the victory was produced in its entirety
by Rommel's skill as a battlefield commander.
- [Lis] But the fact of Rommel's unlikely win
and the missing treasure
leads some to wonder whether Rommel used the Djerban's gold
to fund one last strike.
[serious music]
- As the Nazi commander of his Afrika Korps,
Erwin Rommel directed his subordinates
to plunder riches from North Africa's Jewish communities.
Rommel himself wasn't the one
personally overseeing all this looting,
that was someone else entirely.
Some historians insist that he is the one
who knows what happened to the missing treasure.
His name is Walter Rauff.
[text chitters]
- [Amory] Walter Rauff is a notorious member of the SS,
he's a good friend of Hitler's
and he is one of the architects
of the final solution or the Holocaust.
- [Sami] Rauff is also the man that is known for inventing
a nefarious device known as the gassing van.
It's a van with a airtight rear that's outfitted
with an exhaust pipe
that feeds right back into the container.
And so all of this carbon monoxide
would essentially just be pumped into the back of this van.
Anybody that was inside is now dead.
And it's believed that these gassing vans were used
to kill thousands of Jews during World War II.
- [Nick] In 1942, Rauff arrives in Northern Africa
and in coordination with Rommel's Afrika Korps,
he sets his sights on the region's Jews
and he starts conducting
what the Nazis call executive measures.
And those are effectively torture campaigns
where they go town to town, city by city, and pillage.
- [Amory] Under Rauff's command,
the SS sets up a network of forced labor camps.
More than 2,500 Jews would later die at these camps.
He and other Nazi officials
are kind of adhering to this rule
that when you conquer someone,
you are bringing all of their wealth back to Germany.
- The idea here is to rob from the conquered
to fund the German war machine.
Their objective becomes extracting wealth
from any and all conquered territories
so that that wealth can then be sent back to the Fatherland.
[serious music]
- [Sami] After Rauff settles in Tunisia,
he surveys the Jewish enclaves
and he's attempting to figure out
how much wealth is within these Jewish communities.
He also takes it upon himself
to personally stand shoulder to shoulder
with other members of the SS
and threaten the Jewish population on the island
basically saying, "Give us the gold
in exchange for your lives."
- [Katherine] This isn't wealth for Rauff,
this isn't wealth for Rommel,
they are under strict orders
to take all of the wealth that they can
and ship it back to Germany.
This is supposed to be for the Fatherland.
This is supposed to be for the war effort.
If any of them were caught
keeping these goods for themselves,
they would get most likely killed.
- [Laurence] But moving these tons of plunder
would require very strategic planning.
- [Martin] It's late February, early March, 1943,
and as the Afrika Korps is fighting
in the vicinity of Kasserine Pass,
Rauff and his men are preparing
to make a beeline for the Tunisian coast.
Rauff's goal is to escape
from the advancing Allied forces with the gold
before they can cut off his line of retreat.
- [Laurence] Historians believe Rauff makes it out of Djerba
with the stolen gold,
then heads for the Tunisian coast
where it's allegedly loaded onto a ship bound for Italy.
- [Katherine] The supposed plan for this gold
is to ship it from Tunisia
across to Italy,
then take it from Italy up to Germany and then into Berlin.
In Berlin, there's a place called
the Berlin Municipal Pawn Shop.
It sounds very simple, "Oh, a pawn shop."
But in reality, this is where all the wealth
that's being stolen across Europe, across North Africa,
the gold, the jewelry,
everything that is being gathered by force by the Nazis
is being shipped to this pawn shop,
then it's being melted down into gold bars.
Once you melt down the gold, it can no longer be traced.
Then you can sell it anywhere, right?
You can trade those gold bars for cash.
You can trade those gold bars for weapons.
You can do whatever you want.
- [Martin] Rauff's objective in all of this
is to retreat toward the Tunisian coast with the gold
so that it can be loaded onto transports and sent to Berlin
to where it can be put to use
funding the German war machine.
It may have been difficult, if not impossible,
to move the gold through the collapsing front,
but some historians believe that there is evidence
to suggest that Rauff did just that.
- [Amory] There is a record showing a significant shipment
of gold coming into Berlin in 1943.
There's no way to prove
that that's the gold taken from North Africa,
but the timing is notable.
If the gold had made it back to Berlin,
it's final location would be really hard to know
because the gold bars could be in private vaults
or they might just be mixed into the global banking system.
- [Laurence] In early May, 1943,
the Allies capture the Tunisian capital of Tunis,
leading to the full surrender of Axis forces
in all of North Africa.
- [Sami] The Allied forces liberate
nearly 400,000 Jews in the region,
many of whom were forced into those labor camps
that were set up by Walter Rauff.
- [Katherine] By late April of 1945,
Rauff sees the writing on the wall.
He knows Germany is about to lose.
He knows the war is over, so he escapes to Italy.
He is captured there on April 30th, 1945 and interrogated.
- [Sami] Rauff ultimately reveals little to nothing
in terms of concrete information
about the gold or any stolen treasure,
and he ends up being put in a POW camp
where he'll remain until he escapes in 1946.
As to the fate of the stolen wealth,
that remains a mystery.
[subdued music]
- [Laurence] On March 22nd, 1945,
General George Patton leads US troops across the Rhine River
and into the heart of Germany.
As Allies close in, the Nazis frantically seek
to hide all evidence of their atrocities,
including stolen treasure from around the world.
- [Amory] General George Patton leads his troops
into the heart of Germany.
And they come across this abandoned salt mine,
and they go into the mine,
they take an elevator 2,100 feet below ground
and they come across this large steel-plated door.
So they blow open the door
and they are shocked by what they find inside.
- [Sami] There are rows and rows of loot.
You've got 8,000 gold bars, cash, rare artwork.
And as they make their way further back into the vault,
they start coming across these bags and boxes
and suitcases that are full of all this gold and jewelry
and all of them have a tag on them with the name Melmer.
- [Nick] Melmer is a notorious SS officer
and his task during World War II
is taking the wealth stolen from Jews in concentration camps
and transporting it back to Germany.
- [Cristina] Many believe the looted valuables
of the North African Jewish population
could have been taken to Germany,
melted down into golden tablets,
and then found its way into this mine,
now discovered by Patton and his troops.
- [Sami] There are some historians
who dispute this theory
because there's no proof tying this gold
directly to the gold that was stolen from Northern Africa.
There is new information which suggests
that perhaps the gold never left Africa after all.
After the devastating battle of El Alamein,
Rommel's Afrika Korps is essentially in full retreat
and heading westward back towards Libya.
And the Allied forces are moving forward
and retaking control of the country back from the Germans.
- [Martin] It's alleged by some
that elements of the Afrika Korps during that retreat
may have been in possession of the looted gold,
and during this hasty retreat,
the German soldiers may have taken this gold
and made a mad dash for the Libyan coast
so that it could be buried there.
[serious music]
- [Lis] During the chaotic Axis retreat,
the Germans were in crisis.
Supply lines were closed, routes were cut off,
and it would've been near impossible
to get the loot out at that point.
According to reports, German soldiers are seen
loading metal crates onto armored cars
and driving through the Libyan desert to the coast
where they bury those crates in the seabed,
hoping to come back after the war to retrieve them.
- [Laurence] With the Germans long gone from Africa,
the crates allegedly lie in limbo
until a sea diver's chance encounter years later.
- [Amory] In 1962, Robin Lee, who's a British soldier,
is snorkeling off the coast of Tobruk, Libya,
and he sees something down on the sea floor
about 79 feet below him.
He sees these metal crates.
And so he tries to free dive down
to go see what's inside of them,
but there's no way that he can get these crates open
without having to come back to the surface for air.
- [Sami] And he wants to go back with full scuba gear
with the hopes of unearthing these crates,
bring them to the surface and seeing exactly what's inside.
But unfortunately, Lee will never get the chance
because not long after that snorkeling trip,
he actually gets transferred to another base in Yemen.
Now while he's in Yemen,
Lee comes across an old magazine article
that talks about two Germans that were desperate
to try to find Rommel's gold off the coast of Libya.
- [Martin] According to Lee, he recognizes these men as
former Afrika Korps soldiers,
who after World War II had gotten jobs
working as maintenance engineers
at an old base located in Libya,
and now here they are showing up in an article
about looted Nazi gold.
- Lee remembers that he used to see these guys walking
around the army base sort of at odd hours,
and the guys would claim that they were just looking
for, you know, unused munitions for their Luger pistols.
But now Lee really thinks that these two guys
were actually looking
for stolen gold off the coast of Libya.
- [Cristina] He now suspects that they know the whereabouts
of Rommel's gold.
He always thinks he's gonna come back,
but the political tides turn
and Libya is closed off for him,
and that is why to this day,
we don't know if those crates contained any gold.
- [Martin] No one knows for sure what was in those boxes,
but according to Lee,
they might carry looted Nazi gold
from the North African campaign back in 1943,
and if they were ever recovered,
there is certainly no record of that having been done.
So to this day, this remains one of the great mysteries
about looted Nazi gold in North Africa.
- The location of Rommel's gold remains a mystery
until the winter of 1947 when a former German soldier
walks into the French consulate in Stuttgart, Germany.
He wants to share a secret
that he's been hiding for nearly five years.
[text chitters]
- [Amory] A former German soldier named Peter Fleig
walks into the French Consulate.
He is 21 years old at the time, he's gaunt,
he has this big scar running down the side of his face
and he says that he's looking for a visa
to go to the island of Corsica.
- Now this request raises a flag
for one of the consulate officials,
because a German asking for a visa to go to Corsica
seems a bit off considering that during World War II,
Corsica was an island that was battered
and just ravaged by the Germans.
So Corsicans have no love for Germans at all.
In fact, the only Germans
that are on the island of Corsica right now are POWs.
So if Fleig says that he wants to go to Corsica,
he's essentially risking his life.
- [Martin] As the story goes,
Fleig tells this representative at the consulate
that after having served in North Africa,
he is then transferred to the Italian port of La Spezia.
Then during the summer of 1943,
he gets an order to collect his scuba gear
and get ready to go.
- [Amory] Fleig is an experienced diver
and he's supposed to help clear mines from the area
and be on call for search-and-rescue operations.
At this point, the Allies have retaken North Africa
and they're allegedly going
to be crossing the Mediterranean Sea
to launch attacks on Sicily and Italy as a whole.
Against this imminent threat of invasion,
Fleig gets picked up by a speedboat
and whisked off to Corsica,
and he's told that he's gonna be part
of this top-secret mission ordered by the fuhrer himself.
- [Laurence] According to Fleig, he's then led into a room.
Inside are six metal crates
packed with gold, jewelry, and other stolen treasures.
- [Martin] Allegedly Fleig is told that the gold
and the crates was loaded on a convoy
that was on its way to Berlin,
but then Allied aircraft began bombing
and strafing Italian roads.
Some historians argue that because of this,
the gold was then diverted to Corsica and the plan was,
from there, the gold would be buried on the sea floor
so that it could be recovered after the war.
And Fleig, the experienced diver,
is the man that would be given the responsibility
of burying it.
[serious music]
[text chitters] [ship horn blares]
- [Amory] On September 18th,
Fleig and four other German officers
allegedly set out on a boat with these six metal crates
into the Mediterranean Sea.
Fleig finds what he thinks is the perfect spot to bury them.
It's about three miles from the coast.
There's sort of a rocky embankment
where he's going to take each crate one by one
down to the sea floor and secure it down there.
- All he knows is that these crates are meant for Germany,
they're meant for the war cause.
He's also smart enough to know to take a special note
of where they are and what it looks like
so that if Germany doesn't get them someday, he can.
- [Laurence] But just days later, after returning to Italy,
Fleig's dreams of outlasting the Germans
are thrown into jeopardy.
- [Sami] When Hitler allegedly learns of this mission
to bury all of this treasure at sea,
he flies into this wild rage.
He orders that the four Nazis
that accompanied Peter Fleig on the mission
are brought back to Germany,
court-martialed, and sentenced to death.
Now, Fleig is sent to the Russian front as punishment,
but reportedly escapes back to Germany
after the war comes to its conclusion.
He bides his time in Germany for a while,
tends to his wounds before mustering up the courage
to walk into the French consulate.
- [Laurence] Fleig assures his interrogators
that he's the only one still alive
who knows where the stolen gold from North Africa is hidden,
and now he's ready to help the French find it.
- [Amory] They are intrigued enough
that they put together a search party in 1948
and Fleig is gonna be the one to lead it.
So the plan is that Fleig is gonna dive down
to that exact spot where he says he deposited the gold
and he's gonna use salvage equipment
to try to bring it back up to the surface.
- [Katherine] They spent two months out there in the water
looking for these cases.
Fleig takes them from place to place,
is so certain of where it is.
This is gonna be an expensive trip.
They've got a ship,
they've got crew that they're paying to go out there
all on the word of this German
who claims he knows where this lost treasure is.
- [Laurence] But soon, the French begin to suspect
that Fleig has an ulterior motive.
- [Sami] They start to see that Fleig's story
might not be adding up the way that he told it.
For starters, when they go out into the water
and they start diving for these crates,
they notice very quickly that he is a horrible diver.
He doesn't know how to resurface correctly,
and they were worried that he would get the bends,
a condition that a diver can experience
if they come back up to the surface too quickly.
- [Nick] Not only is he a terrible diver,
he also is misidentifying landmarks
and his coordinates also seem to be off.
It's at this point they begin to question who he really is.
They think he's a conman
that may have learned the story
from somebody who befriended maybe an SS officer
who actually knew where this gold was buried,
but they don't think Fleig is who he says he is.
- [Katherine] After two months, the French are like,
"That is enough, we're done,"
and they walk away and send Fleig off on his own.
The French have the idea
that Fleig probably just misidentified the landmarks
that he couldn't really remember where it was
and it was just lost.
- [Amory] After the expedition, Fleig is arrested
for never returning the salvage operator's camera.
Once he's in jail, he starts making up these hand-drawn maps
of new locations where this gold might be.
Now why would Fleig have made up this whole story?
Well, some believe that he was actually just trying
to send the French on a wild goose chase
because they refused to give him a reward
for helping him find the gold,
and maybe Fleig was going back to Corsica
to try to get all the gold for himself.
- [Sami] After he's released from jail in late December,
Peter Fleig vanishes.
Now, French authorities do conduct a search for him.
They don't find him, but they do speculate
that he probably made his way back to Germany.
However, it's also rumored
that he might have made contact with another group
before making his way back to Germany
and that group being the Corsican mafia.
[subdued music]
- [Laurence] The French expedition's
highly publicized failure to find Rommel's gold
sparks a global obsession to find this elusive treasure.
Yet back on Corsica,
one of the most feared organizations in the world
may already know where it is
and they'll stop at nothing to get their hands on it.
- [Martin] For decades, the Corsican mafia maintained
a near total grip on parts of the island
controlling prostitution,
illegal gambling, drug trafficking,
and they've done so with such brutality
that their reputation extends well beyond Corsica.
- [Katherine] During World War II,
they hated the Germans more than they hated anybody else.
France had controlled Corsica.
As France is defeated, Corsica comes under German control.
So the mafia works with the French resistance
to try to break up the German's stronghold over Corsica
and to kick them out.
The deal that they make with France
is that after the war,
they'll be able to do whatever they want there in Corsica.
- [Laurence] It's during this time
that the mafia reportedly becomes obsessed
with finding Rommel's gold for themselves.
The first person to make this connection
is a world-famous novelist.
- [Amory] In 1963, the British author who created James Bond,
Ian Fleming, writes this book
called "On Her Majesty's Secret Service,"
and there's this passage in there about this, quote,
"mysterious business" of Rommel's gold
being buried at sea off the coast of Corsica.
- [Sami] It also mentions two treasure hunters in the book.
You've got one character in the book
that's referenced as Fleigh
who vanishes off the face of the earth
according to the novel,
and then the other treasure hunter ends up dying
because he ends up getting riddled with bullets.
- [Laurence] It's a work of fiction,
but there appears to be some truths woven in.
- Before writing this,
Ian Fleming was the real deal.
He was a spymaster and he oversaw operations
in Northern Africa and Europe, and that included Corsica.
It was during his time as an intelligence officer
he got an intelligence briefing
which said that Rommel was sending a vessel to Berlin
that sank off the coast of Corsica
filled with treasure and gold.
- [Sami] Fleming's intelligence work also exposes him
to elements of organized crime,
including the Corsican mafia.
Through his writing, he speculates that the mafia
becomes very invested in finding Rommel's gold.
[serious music]
- [Martin] The author Ian Fleming
is about to publish the book "On Her Majesty's Secret Service,"
and as a part of that, he's being interviewed
by a British journalist named Peter Haining.
In that interview, Fleming mentions
how there are rumors of looted Nazi gold in Corsica,
and he even suggests the involvement of organized crime.
- As the story goes, this idea sticks with Haining
who would go on to research it for decades,
and he comes to the conclusion that the Corsica mafia
may have been involved in what happened to Rommel's gold.
- [Laurence] According to the theory,
in order to scale up their criminal empire,
the mafia targets Rommel's gold.
- [Amory] There's a report of a local diver
who's gunned down on the island.
He had been going around to local bars
and claiming that he knew where Rommel's gold was.
Now the case goes unsolved,
but Corsicans really believe
that he was killed by the mafia.
- [Sami] Then Corsican police, acting on a tip,
approach this group of men that are ready to set sail.
These men then start firing at the officers.
Several people are wounded
and two of the men aboard the ship are captured.
They're later ID'd as mobsters
who are in search of Rommel's gold.
- [Laurence] Though the treasure remains elusive,
the mafia may be preventing anyone else
from finding it first.
- [Amory] The Corsican mafia may very well be preventing anyone
from going to look for the gold because after the war,
they get significant control of the coastline.
So they're gonna know
if anyone is going out in search of the gold
- [Lis] Irish adventurer John Kilbracken learns firsthand
how dangerous it can be to look for Rommel's gold.
He arrives on the island of Corsica in 1963
with a fully funded expedition.
It's reported that a year earlier
Kilbracken tracks down the one person
who says he knows exactly where that gold is buried,
the mysterious Peter Fleig.
- [Martin] Reportedly the two strike a deal,
and that is that Kilbracken will fund the expedition
and Fleig will come along and bring his expertise
as well as a map showing the exact location of the gold.
- [Laurence] But the Corsican mafia
reportedly gets word of their endeavor.
- [Sami] According to another historian,
Kilbracken and his team are threatened by the Corsican mafia
and told to not go looking for the gold.
And it's this threat that causes Kilbracken
to completely call off the expedition.
But Kilbracken firmly believes
that they were in the right spot
and had they a little bit more time,
they would've found that treasure.
[subdued music]
- [Laurence] Some say that the key to the whereabouts
of Rommel's gold is to find the Nazi fugitive
originally put in charge of stealing it.
- [Amory] In 1946,
Walter Rauff escapes from a POW camp in Italy.
He hides out in a convent for several months in Rome.
He briefly resurfaces
as an intelligence officer in Syria in 1948.
So he keeps managing to evade capture
despite being one of the most-wanted war criminals.
And he's able to do this because of the ratlines,
this secretive, pro-Nazi network of human smugglers.
- [Sami] Ratlines are
a series of safe houses
that are set up by these pro-Nazi sympathizers
to help Nazis escape.
And most routes in these ratlines
go from Ally-occupied territory
to places that are much more
sympathetic towards ex-Nazis,
specifically in South America.
And these ratlines are orchestrated in plain sight.
They're operating openly in Italy
and other Ally-occupied territories.
- [Laurence] Yet some contend
that in order for Rauff to access the ratlines
and travel great distances to South America,
he would need access to vast sums of money.
- [Martin] After the war, Rauff resurfaces in Chile,
and the belief is that he,
the man who originally expropriated the gold
to begin with, held onto it
and used it to fund his winding escape from Europe
at the end of the conflict
that brought him to South America.
[text chitters] [serious music]
- [Sami] Now, while in Chile,
Rauff and his family are given protective status,
so essentially they're shielded from extradition.
They can't be taken back to Germany.
At the same time, because he's residing in Chile,
the Chilean government actually calls up Rauff and
turn him into an intelligence officer for the country.
Rumors swirl about, how is Rauff able
to secure passage for himself and his family?
- [Martin] At the end of the war, many former Nazi leaders
purchased their freedom using bribes
to pay for everything from forged documents to safe passage
and then protection from foreign governments.
- [Laurence] But did Rauff fund his escape to Chile
off the gold stolen persecuted Jews?
Recently declassified documents may provide answers.
- [Cristina] In the early 2000s,
the CIA declassified intelligence information
from the American military in World War II
due to the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.
And in this dossier, there is a report
of a sighting of Walter Rauff
on the streets of Rome in 1947,
and he is carrying a suitcase.
- [Amory Inside of this suitcase is supposedly gold and jewelry
and all sorts of other treasures,
but Rauff refuses to say where it came from.
Rauff could have brought
this same suitcase with him to South America
because by all accounts,
he is living a very comfortable life there
and he's free to espouse his pro-Nazi views.
- [Martin] It's reported that Rauff
was welcomed as a VIP in Chile
and that he was welcomed
in the highest offices of Pinochet's government,
working specifically in intelligence,
and that he had the resources and the wherewithal
to ingratiate himself among his new hosts.
Rauff remained an unrepentant Nazi to the bitter end.
At his funeral, other expatriate Nazis
shouted "Heil Hitler" and delivered the Hitler salute.
- [Sami] In an off-camera interview,
Rauff's grandson doesn't believe
that his grandfather had any access
to any sort of stolen gold during his time in Chile,
but his grandfather never really spoke
about his experiences during the war
so his grandson really doesn't know all that much
about his grandfather's time during World War II.
So whether or not
Rauff had access to this gold
to be able to fund his lifestyle in Chile
continues to remain a mystery to this day.
- [Laurence] Decades later, the search
for Rommel's gold continues
with one recent endeavor rekindling belief
in a well-worn theory.
- [Katherine] In more recent times,
British author and investigator Terry Hodgkinson
says he knows where Rommel's gold is.
He firmly believes that this gold
is at exactly the place that Fleig said that it was,
that it's just there off the coast of Corsica.
It's near a rocky outcropping
and that it's there buried underneath the seabed.
- [Laurence] His theory hinges on the accuracy
of a code scrawled on the back of a faded photograph.
- [Amory] Terry Hodgkinson has this photo
that he's obtained of Peter Fleig.
It's worn out, but there are lines and numbers on the back
and he thinks that these are coordinates
that actually point right to the gold.
- [Cristina] Hodgkinson is convinced
that these are the exact coordinates
of the location of Rommel's gold,
and he says he's deciphered them,
but he still needs to raise the money for the expedition
and get past the Corsican mafia.
- [Sami] If anybody were to actually find this missing gold,
hopefully they would be required
to share some of that bounty
with the families of the North African Jews
who had that wealth stolen from them
and were forced into those labor camps
that were set up by Walter Rauff during World War II.
I mean, after all, it is their treasure,
so it only makes sense
that it would be returned back to them.
[subdued music] [static crackles]
- For more than 80 years
the whereabouts of Rommel's gold
has been one of the most famous enduring mysteries
of World War II.
Explorers and documentary crews
continue to regularly travel to Corsica
and other locations around the world
to search for the missing war bounty.
Many believe that the loot is still out there
and that, one day, the full story of Rommel's gold
can be added to the history books.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries."