[dramatic music]
Fishburne: Tonight,
one of World War II's most enduring mysteries.
A stunning treasure worth half a billion dollars
lost without a trace.
- It might be the most expensive and beautiful
work of art ever made.
It's like it's just vanished.
Fishburne: Now, we uncover the top theories
surrounding the disappearance of a work of art so remarkable
that it's known as the eighth wonder of the world.
♪ ♪
- The castle suffers tremendous damage.
♪ ♪
You have to wonder,
was the Amber Room destroyed as well?
- Stenz and Mederer are convinced
that the Amber Room is hidden
behind the castle's walls just waiting to be explored
and waiting to produce discoveries.
Fishburne: Can a new expedition finally reveal its location?
- It's a treasure trove of material.
Fishburne: Will we ever be able to find
and incomparable Amber Room?
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
Fishburne: It's September, 1941.
Leningrad, USSR.
♪ ♪
Nazi forces invade Russia, moving relentlessly east
in a vicious sweep of destruction.
As his troops advance,
Hitler gives one important order:
preserve the priceless works of art
in Leningrad's Catherine Palace at all costs.
[soft dramatic music]
- Hitler wants to gut Russia,
and he wants to steal every work of art he can
en route to conquering the entire country.
The Catherine Palace supposedly houses
the most valuable work of art in the world.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: The artwork in question
is known as the Amber Room.
- It's exactly what it sounds like.
It's a room covered in beautiful amber panels.
Some people estimate it
to be worth over half a billion dollars,
making it one of the most expensive
and beautiful rooms ever created.
- During World War II, the German military stole
over 600,000 pieces of art from across Europe,
ransacking billions of dollars
worth of priceless cultural artifacts.
Fishburne: And some say
Hitler wants the Amber Room above all else.
- Not only does Hitler love art,
but he's also a nationalist,
and it infuriates him
that there are works of German art
outside of German territory,
and the Amber Room is a German work of art
that he desperately wants back.
Work began on the room in 1701 in Berlin,
which then was part of Prussia.
Fishburne: Frederic I, who rules over
the powerful empire in what's now Germany
originally commissions the Amber Room.
- Designed by a sculptor named Andreas Schluter,
and it's lavish and it's resplendent
and it's expensive and it's valuable.
♪ ♪
- Andreas Schluter starts by melting the amber
to the point where it is a thick kind of liquid.
At the time, Amber wasn't really used like this,
so in addition to being a beautiful work of art,
it's also enormously innovative.
♪ ♪
As if that isn't impressive enough,
then these 18th-century craftspeople
encrust them with jewels
and then cover it with gold and silver leaf.
It's also adorned with these four Italian mosaics,
making them works of art within a work of art.
King Frederic wants a palace
that will outshine France's Versailles,
and he decides that this is going to be the centerpiece.
Fishburne: In 1701, the Amber Room is installed
in the Berlin City Palace,
but it won't be there for long.
♪ ♪
- The Amber Room unsurprisingly
attracts the attention of another European royal,
Russia's famous tsar, Peter the Great.
Peter the Great visits the Berlin City Palace in 1716,
and he gets a tour of the Amber Room.
King Frederic is trying to forge an alliance
with Russia at the time, and he basically says,
"You want the Amber Room? You can have it."
♪ ♪
Around the time of Empress Catherine the Great,
it's installed in the Catherine Palace
and that's where it stays
undisturbed and unmoved for about two centuries,
and even after Russia becomes the USSR
and St. Petersburg becomes Leningrad,
the Amber Room is just there pretty peacefully
until the Nazis arrive.
[bombs whistling]
♪ ♪
- And here's where the mystery starts,
because after the Nazi siege of Leningrad,
the Amber Room goes missing.
We know that it was in the Catherine Palace.
- We know that Hitler sends Nazi troops to go recover it,
but that's the last thing we know.
Everything else is just theories.
♪ ♪
- We think that the Nazis do in fact
steal the Amber Room from Leningrad.
- The most valuable cultural institutions at the time
are the old palaces of the tsars,
and so Hitler sets his sights on those.
He's gonna tear 'em apart.
He's gonna loot, he's gonna pillage,
he's gonna burn 'em, he's gonna destroy 'em.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Hitler gives specific instructions
not to destroy the Catherine Palace,
at least not until the Amber Room is found.
- But apparently,
finding the Amber Room is easier said than done
because when the Nazis arrive, they don't see it.
♪ ♪
- So there's this one room, pretty nondescript,
and the soldiers notice
a little bit of plaster on the floor,
and they also notice a little bubbling in the wallpaper
right near the seam.
♪ ♪
One of the soldiers just slides a fingernail
right under the wallpaper,
and there's a little bit of sheepskin
or some other covering right behind that,
but just beyond that, there's the glow.
♪ ♪
So he starts shouting "Ist hier! Ist hier!"
And his comrades come charging down the hall.
♪ ♪
- They rip off the wallpaper,
and there it is, the Amber Room.
Fishburne: The room had been hidden
by head Soviet art curator Anatoly Kuchumov.
♪ ♪
- The original plan is for Kuchumov to pack up
as many works of art as possible for safekeeping,
and bring them deeper into Russia
and away from Nazi hands.
Kuchumov does an analysis of the Amber Room
and he realizes that these panels are very delicate
and they've become brittle over time,
so there's really only one move left to make.
Fishburne: Kuchumov covers the Amber Room
from floor to ceiling in thick wallpaper,
hoping the Nazis won't look too closely.
♪ ♪
- But in this last-ditch effort,
the Germans uncover the ruse.
And unlike Kuchumov,
they have all the hands and time that they need
to pack this thing up very carefully and slowly.
They spend about two days dismantling the Amber Room
and packing it into crates.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: But where does the Amber Room go from here?
♪ ♪
- The Germans take the Amber Room
along with a number of other important
Russian cultural artifacts,
and transport them to Konigsberg Castle.
♪ ♪
- Hitler's ultimate plan is to build a museum,
the greatest museum in the entire world,
and it was going to be in his hometown
of Linz, Austria.
Eventually, the Amber Room would go there,
but while the museum was being built,
the Amber Room would wait in Konigsberg Castle.
Fishburne: On November 13th, 1941,
a local newspaper announces an exhibition
featuring the Amber Room at the castle.
- So that's the best evidence we have that the Amber Room
ever actually went to Konigsberg,
but we don't have any photographic evidence of that,
and so we're not really even sure if that ever happened.
- Now here's the really unfortunate part.
While we don't know what happened
to the Amber Room,
we do know what happened to Konigsberg Castle,
and it's not good.
[bomber engines droning]
Fishburne: In August of 1944,
Britain's Royal Air Force heavily firebombs Konigsberg.
[explosions thundering]
♪ ♪
- After that, the Soviets march in and take Konigsberg,
but as part of the operation, they bring in a large quantity
of heavy artillery and they shell the city.
By the time of their final occupation of Konigsberg
on April 9th, 1945,
90% of the city lies in ruin.
- The castle suffers tremendous damage,
so we have to wonder,
was the Amber Room destroyed as well?
♪ ♪
This would be so embarrassing
if the Soviets had actually destroyed the Amber Room.
So they send a team to Konigsberg Castle
led by professor Alexander Brusov
'cause they have to be sure.
- He's able to make it into the castle cellar
where he discovers the charred remains
of three out of the four Italian mosaics
that were part of the Amber Room.
- Brusov thinks the room is toast,
and he says as much in a report.
He writes, "Summarizing all the facts,
"we can say that the Amber Room was destroyed
between the 9th and the 11th of April, 1945."
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Brusov's report won't be the last word
on this mystery.
Fishburne: When the Nazis steal the famed Amber Room
from Russia, where do they take it?
[dramatic music]
According to some, it's moved to the Konigsberg Castle
where it's ultimately destroyed.
♪ ♪
- But there at the castle among the wreckage,
there's only a small percentage of the Amber Room that's found.
This leaves some to wonder, "Really?"
"A whole room, and this is all that's left?
A room that took crates and crates to pack away?"
This has many theorists thinking,
"There's gotta be another explanation."
- What if the Germans moved the Amber Room
before the Soviet invasion of 1945?
- [speaking German]
- We have orders given by Adolf Hitler himself
on January 21st and January 24th, 1945.
[machine gun fire]
♪ ♪
The tide of war has changed.
He knows that Allied forces are moving in,
so he issues orders
that all looted material in Konigsberg Castle be moved.
Fishburne: Some speculate that a high-ranking Nazi commander
named Erich Koch
follows these orders.
- He was in charge of all civil administration,
including police and Gestapo operations
in East Prussia, Ukraine, and Belarus.
This is a territory that includes Konigsberg,
so anything that happens at Konigsberg Castle
is happening under his authority.
Fishburne: Then, in January 1945, Koch flees.
[soft dramatic music]
- Koch manages to stay on the run for four years
until he's captured by the British.
In 1950, he's returned to Poland
where he's forced to stand trial for war crimes,
at the end of which, he is sentenced to death.
- But here's the strange thing.
His death sentence is pretty quickly commuted
to life imprisonment.
Plenty of Nazis are executed for their war crimes.
There's no real reason for Koch to be spared.
His crimes are just as bad as any other Nazi,
and he's unrepentant about it.
He's truly a vile person.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Is Koch spared
because he has valuable information?
- Koch's sentence is commuted
after a long period of interrogation
by Soviet authorities,
and we think that during this interrogation,
Koch reveals that the Amber Room has survived...
and he knows where it is.
♪ ♪
- According to Erich Koch, Adolf Hitler ordered
that the Amber Room be packed up and moved
in January 1945.
He reveals that they packed it up
into 24 wooden crates
and trucked it 60 miles from Konigsberg
to a more fortified Nazi stronghold
at Mamerki, Poland.
Keep in mind that throughout this interrogation,
he continues to badmouth the Jews and the Soviets,
and he's also singing the praises
of Hitler and the Nazis.
It's not like he was trying to tell the Soviets
what they wanted to hear.
That lends a credibility,
that makes this more of a believable possibility.
♪ ♪
- This is also a testament to just how important
the Amber Room is to the Soviets,
that they're gonna spare a top Nazi
in exchange for a tip, basically,
just to keep the hope alive of recovering the Amber Room.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: But when the Red Army
arrives in Mamerki in the 1950s,
they meet an incredible challenge.
♪ ♪
- Mamerki was the center of the German command
on the Eastern Front and it was a massive complex,
and Mamerki hides a few secrets itself.
- Above ground,
the Germans build about 200 buildings,
and the entire fort covers about 600 acres.
But guess what?
Underneath the ground is even more impressive.
There are miles and miles
of underground bunkers and tunnels.
♪ ♪
- It's a hidden maze
and that's because of the fact that
during the course of the war, the Nazis backfill,
they fill in some of the tunnels
that they had built earlier in the conflict.
Then with the passage of time, Mother Nature works her magic,
making this underground complex
an extraordinarily difficult place to search.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: The Russians spend years
searching Mamerki with no results.
♪ ♪
- So after two decades of searching,
the Soviets are so desperate,
they take Koch out of prison in 1970
and bring him to Mamerki to try to find the Amber Room.
He points at a particular bunker
where he thinks the Amber Room was taken,
but it's not there.
- To that, you could say
that maybe Erich Koch's memory had lapsed,
or he's just trying to survive.
Because after all,
if the Soviets do find the Amber Room,
they have no more reason to keep Erich Koch alive.
Playing the Soviets the way that he did,
Erich Koch manages to stay alive
for almost another 20 years
until he dies of natural causes in 1986 at age 90.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Even so, the search for the Amber Room continues.
- These days, Mamerki is overgrown and falling apart,
but parts of it are run as a museum
by a Polish man named Bartek Plebanczyk,
and he fully believes
that the Amber Room is still there.
- They even have a replica of the Amber Room
inside of the museum, and every year,
Bartek excavates a different bunker in Mamerki.
That's all he could afford to do, one a year,
but he's gonna keep going until he finds the Amber Room.
- So far, they have found tons
of Nazi and Soviet artifacts, but it's estimated
that only 1% of the entire compound has been searched,
and that means that there could be
tunnels and bunkers still in that complex
just waiting to be explored
and waiting to produce discoveries.
These tunnels and chambers
have been unexplored in over 70 years,
so each dig could be the one that turns up the Amber Room.
[soft dramatic music]
Fishburne: For decades after World War II,
a global army of treasure hunters
search for the lost Amber Room.
♪ ♪
- It's become the obsession of thousands of people
across Europe, across the Americas.
People have even gone looking for the Amber Room in Japan.
Fishburne: While some believe it could be in Poland,
Two German historians think they know the truth.
♪ ♪
- Erich Stenz and Georg Mederer
see this news story coming out of the Czech Republic in 2007.
A former cook who used to work
in Czechoslovakia's Frydlant Castle
when it was under Nazi rule tells a fascinating tale.
♪ ♪
- Back near the end of the war,
the cook says that she sees hundreds of SS soldiers
arriving at the castle bringing in crates.
Every night for two weeks, they carry these crates
into the cellar of the castle, and then they're gone.
♪ ♪
- Stenz and Mederer immediately think
that these are the crates that could hold the Amber Room.
- When Adolf Hitler orders the Amber Room's evacuation
from Konigsberg, if it was moved to Mamerki,
it's still dangerously close to the front lines.
It would make sense for it to be moved
to Frydlant Castle,
which is much deeper in German territory.
♪ ♪
- So they go to Frydlant Castle down into the cellar.
They see these two large areas that have been walled off
with modern bricks and cement.
♪ ♪
They think this seems suspicious,
so they go to the Czech authorities.
- Who tell them initially
that the cellar in the castle doesn't even exist,
but of course they were just there,
so this feels like a ridiculous bluff.
At this point, Stenz and Mederer feel like
they're getting the runaround from the Czech authorities.
- But they press on, and they have photographs of the cellar
and the walled-off areas,
so they go back to the Czech authorities
who basically have to say,
"Oh, you mean that cellar? Nothing to see there.
There's just some books from a Berlin library behind there."
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Unsatisfied with this response,
Stenz and Mederer ask permission
to keep searching Frydlant Castle.
♪ ♪
- Surprisingly, the authorities say yes,
and they allow them to continue their investigation.
However, they forbid them from bringing in
any kind of special equipment
that would allow them to see past these modern walls
in this old cellar.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Is it possible
the Czech authorities have something to hide?
- There is one incident that suggests that the Czechs
are trying to keep a secret from the rest of Europe,
and it dates back to before the war.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: In 1938,
as part of a notorious treaty called the Munich Agreement,
this region of Czechoslovakia was ceded to Hitler
by Britain, France, and Italy to avoid war.
- It's considered one of the greatest betrayals in history.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Six months later, Hitler violates the pact
and invades the rest of Czechoslovakia.
♪ ♪
- The Nazis and the Munich Agreement
are still a sore subject in all of the Czech Republic,
but particularly in the region
where Frydlant Castle is located.
♪ ♪
- Stenz and Mederer are convinced
that the Amber Room is hidden behind the castle's walls,
and their theory is that the Czechs are hiding it
because of the Munich Agreement back in 1938.
♪ ♪
The Germans betrayed them,
and all of Europe was in on it.
After the Nazis are kicked out,
the Czechs decide not to give the loot back.
They wall it up and hide it,
sitting on these national treasures
as an act of revenge.
♪ ♪
- Stenz and Mederer continue
to pressure the Czech authorities
to reveal what's behind those walls,
and the Czech authorities continue to resist.
♪ ♪
While they still haven't revealed
what's behind those walls,
they insist it is not the Amber Room,
and they say Stenz and Mederer
are just a couple of deluded treasure hunters
trying to spin fantasies.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: But what if the Amber Room
is not behind any walls?
- Once again, let's assume that the Nazis
did pack up the Amber Room into 24 crates
and remove it from Konigsberg Castle
under Adolf Hitler's orders.
The thing is that at this point in the war
in January 1945 when Hitler gives that order,
the Nazis are expecting
to lose a lot of territory in East Prussia,
so they're not gonna just move back a few miles.
They need to trigger an overall broader evacuation,
and that becomes Operation Hannibal.
♪ ♪
- So Operation Hannibal is an attempt
to evacuate all of East Prussia via the Baltic.
We're talking the German army, civilians,
anything they can evacuate.
Fishburne: And some eyewitnesses think
they also attempt to rescue the Amber Room.
- Thousands of people descend on the harbor of Gotenhafen
where the converted luxury liner
"Wilhelm Gustloff" is standing by
to provide an evacuation.
♪ ♪
- People are just cramming into this area.
They're desperate. There's no turning them back.
They eventually get on the "Wilhelm Gustloff."
I'm talking about 10,000 people,
and they think this is Noah's Ark,
this is their salvation,
this is gonna get them to safety.
[ship's horn blowing]
Fishburne: The boat departs on January 30th, 1945.
♪ ♪
- But the Soviet Navy is waiting for any transports
moving back and forth on the Baltic,
and within hours of departure,
the "Wilhelm Gustloff" is torpedoed and sunk.
So we wonder...
was the Amber Room inside of it?
♪ ♪
With a death toll of more than 9,000 killed,
the sinking of the "Wilhelm Gustloff"
is the greatest maritime disaster in history.
Greater than the "Titanic" and the "Lusitania" combined.
Fishburne: But was the Amber Room actually on board?
♪ ♪
- Evacuees there report seeing the 24 crates
containing the Amber Room being loaded aboard the ship.
- The Russians believe any number
of valuable stolen goods are on the "Wilhelm Gustloff,"
including the most valuable one of all,
the Amber Room.
♪ ♪
So several months later, the Russians conduct a dive.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: They find bodies, equipment, and crates,
but no Amber Room.
- But they find something suspicious.
It looks like someone has gotten there first
because there's this large panel
that's been removed from the hull of the ship,
and behind that is this big cargo hold
that could have held the two dozen or so crates
holding the Amber Room, and it's been emptied out.
They think a theft has taken place
because most of the wreckage is pretty much undisturbed.
So it really looks like
someone who knew what they were doing
went in and looted this specific area.
For the dive team, this discovery is bittersweet
because on the one hand,
it means that the torpedo didn't destroy the Amber Room.
But where is it?
♪ ♪
Fishburne: The "Wilhelm Gustloff"
is now classified as a war grave,
making future expeditions illegal.
♪ ♪
If the shipwreck contains more clues
to the Amber Room's whereabouts,
they will remain hidden forever.
Fishburne: For over 50 years,
the search for the Amber Room started with one question:
Where did it go after the Nazis stole it?
There was no reason to challenge the belief
that Hitler's army took the artwork
to Konigsberg Castle for display
until a radical, new theory emerged
with a shocking twist.
What if the Nazis stole the wrong Amber Room?
[soft dramatic music]
- In 1995,
a Russian historian named Vladimir Lepskiy
reveals this new, extensive research that he's done
and potentially a new finding.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Lepskiy claims to have uncovered proof
that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin
created a ruse to trick the Germans.
- According to Lepskiy,
it starts out not as a trick at all.
It starts out as an act of goodwill
because in 1939,
the Germans and the Russians aren't enemies yet.
They're close neighbors,
and they actually have really good reason
to try to keep the peace after the devastation of World War I.
♪ ♪
- They sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Non-Aggression Pact,
which has also been called the Hitler-Stalin Pact.
It's technically a partition of Poland
by the two counties, but it serves to try
and slow Germany's rapid progression toward war.
Fishburne: To commemorate signing the pact,
Stalin orders a copy of the Amber Room
to be made for Hitler.
- Stalin intends to give it to Hitler
when he finally visits the Soviet Union.
It'll be a nice version.
It just won't have all of the precious metals
and gems as the original.
It won't be worth a half a billion dollars.
It'll be worth more like 10 to 12 million.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Stalin commissions Anatoly Baranowsky,
Russia's most famous amber craftsman,
to make the copy.
- So Baranowsky actually makes a copy,
and in addition to that,
his apprentices make another copy.
Fishburne: But Hitler never receives the gift.
Instead, he breaks the non-aggression pact
and invades Russia.
- Of course, Stalin knew the reputation that Hitler had,
a reputation for stealing art and treasures
and taking them back to Germany,
and he knows that Hitler wants the Amber Room.
- So according to this theory,
Stalin plays a brilliant trick on his former ally.
♪ ♪
The theory goes like this.
Before the Nazis were able to get to the Catherine Palace,
the Russians were able to swap the original Amber Room
for the reproduction,
and that's what the Nazis steal--
The wrong room.
The copies of the Amber Room are made in May 1941,
but the Germans don't get to Leningrad until September,
and it was during that time that the switch is made.
- Vladimir Lepskiy says that the Soviets
do actually pack up the Amber Room panels
and hide them away,
and they leave the apprentice copy in its place.
So it's a bait and switch of the eighth wonder of the world.
♪ ♪
- So the Nazis were duped.
The Amber Room they took back to Konigsberg
is the fake Amber Room.
So all of these people who are chasing theories from there,
they are chasing the copy, not the original Amber Room.
- From the Russian perspective,
this story is a phenomenal bombshell
because it would provide relief for Russian authorities
because it would be proof
that they did not lose or destroy the Amber Room.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: But if this is true,
where's the real Amber Room?
- So some believe that in November of 1941,
the original Amber Room was packed up
and sent to a pro-Soviet billionaire
in the United States named Armand Hammer.
♪ ♪
Armand Hammer was a pharmaceutical
and oil magnate,
and he was the son of Russian immigrants
who were big supporters of Lenin.
So Hammer's strong Soviet ties lead to this nickname,
"Lenin's chosen capitalist."
♪ ♪
Hammer has this world-famous art collection,
and it's alleged that the Amber Room
became part of it
maybe as some sort of collateral
in his business deals with Russia.
Fishburne: Others think it ended up
back where it started.
- In 1979, the Soviet government
orders yet another copy of the room.
24 years later,
this new copy of the Amber Room is completed,
partly paid for by the Germans
for a total cost of $11 million.
It is ultimately installed in the Catherine Palace,
and that's where it is on display to this day.
But there are some who believe
that this is actually
the real, original Amber Room,
that it was pulled out of storage
and reinstalled by the Russian government
decades later.
♪ ♪
- That would be an incredible story
if it were true,
but unless there was a confession
by somebody who truly knows, we will never know.
Fishburne: For 75 years,
some experts believed the Amber Room was lost at sea
when a German ship called the "Wilhelm Gustloff"
was torpedoed.
- But early searches of that turned up nothing.
And there's another ship
that the Nazis used during the evacuation,
and that ship was thought to be lost until now.
Fishburne: Could the Amber Room
actually be on that long-lost vessel,
the SS "Karlsruhe"?
[dramatic music]
- The "Karlsruhe" was made in 1905.
That's a ship with a 218-foot overall length
and a beam of 33 feet.
It was a part of Operation Hannibal in 1945,
which was the seaborne evacuation
of German military personnel and civilians
as the Soviet military approached.
- And here's the thing.
The "Karlsruhe" departed from Konigsberg.
A lot of people have focused on the "Wilhelm Gustloff,"
which was a much larger ship, and that left from Gotenhafen,
which was about 100 miles away.
The "Karlsruhe" was practically
within walking distance of Konigsberg Castle.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: The ship departs at nearly the same time
the allies destroy Konigsberg Castle in air raids.
- The wreckage of the "Karlsruhe"
has never been found.
So in 2020,
this Polish diving team decides they're gonna go for it
because there could be the most interesting story
sitting at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
Fishburne: The team is led by salvage diver Tomasz Stachura.
- SS "Karlsruhe" was one of the 247 ships
which sank during the Hannibal Operation in 1945.
♪ ♪
We was looking for this wrecks a few months
when we realized that maybe on the deck of this wreck
is something important.
We didn't want to be too excited,
but we have to admit that maybe
it's Amber Room over there
because if the Germans want to send something valuable
or something important to them to the West,
"Karlsruhe" was last chance for them.
♪ ♪
- So the ship departs Konigsberg on April 11th, 1945.
It was part of a convoy that was headed
to the German port of Swinemunde,
which is now part of modern-day Poland.
Fishburne: According to Nazi navy reports,
the ship is carrying 1,083 people,
mostly German civilians.
- The "Karlsruhe" also appears to be carrying
about 360 tons of other goods on crates,
so the diving team thinks there's a good chance
that the Amber Room is among those crates.
♪ ♪
- So the reports say that the ship was overloaded,
which means it probably fell behind the rest of the convoy,
making it a perfect target for the Soviet Navy.
♪ ♪
It's gonna meet the same fate as the "Wilhelm Gustloff."
It's gonna be torpedoed, it's gonna go underwater.
Everyone on board, everything inside of it
goes down with it.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Now Stachura's job
is to figure out where that happened.
- The Baltic is an incredibly challenging place
to conduct any kind of an underwater expedition.
It's because of the fact that you have
very difficult temperatures during the winter months,
howling winds,
and the howling winds churn up extremely heavy surf.
And these are all things that are enemies of conducting
any kind of an underwater search.
♪ ♪
- We had access to the Russian archives
which said that 13th of April, 1945,
Russian aircraft sank the SS "Karlsruhe."
But the problem was that
they show five different position,
and the distance between each other
was between 10 to 50 miles.
♪ ♪
- The problem here is this ship may have
actually engaged in evasive maneuvers,
so it could basically turn up anywhere.
♪ ♪
But the search team has some original documents,
and that's because when the ship sank,
the Germans were able to rescue 113 survivors from the wreck.
- [speaks German]
- In addition to that, the British intercepted
and decoded transmissions relating to the sinking.
And the British intercepted a German telegram
about the rescue as well.
Fishburne: All of the evidence points to an area
a few dozen miles north of the polish town of Ustka.
- The ship is about 300 feet down,
so this is a dangerous mission.
It's an expensive and resource intense mission,
and it's gonna take perfect weather
and a whole lot of luck.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: In June 2020,
the Baltic team finally launches their expedition
from Gdansk.
♪ ♪
- We have 300 feet of water. Cold, dark water.
This dive is very demanding,
and we don't need only to dive, we have to work underwater.
We have a lot of good equipment,
we have underwater drone, we have multibeam.
We have sonars, and we have ten very well-trained divers.
♪ ♪
This is, like, amazing moment in the history.
- You know, this is the kind of expedition that truly
just lights up the imagination because there's so much history
down at the bottom of the Baltic Sea,
and potentially the Amber Room.
♪ ♪
And it could all resurface for the first time in 75 years.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: It's June 2020,
and an expedition led by Tomasz Stachura
is heading into the Baltic Sea on a treasure hunt.
[soft dramatic music]
Its mission?
Locate the wreck of the torpedoed Nazi steamer
SS "Karlsruhe" and see if the Amber Room's on board.
♪ ♪
- We don't know exactly what we can expect on the bottom.
Maybe the current will be huge,
maybe the visibility will be close to zero,
or the wreck would be covered by nets.
All of them are very dangerous,
so we must be prepared for all condition.
♪ ♪
- For 75 years, no one has seen this ship.
It's just been lost, but we know that it carried
hundreds of tons of Nazi goods.
So could the Amber Room be among them?
Fishburne: As the divers descend to 288 feet,
the search conditions grow more challenging.
♪ ♪
- In a safe way, we have to use a lot of equipment.
We have to use very high-quality dry suit.
Special underwater heating system.
We have to survive more like three hours underwater.
We have 300 feets of cold, dark water.
It's not easy dive,
and we have to do it in a very, very safe way.
♪ ♪
After a careful 20-minute descent...
[suspenseful music]
The divers pinpoint the SS "Karlsruhe."
♪ ♪
- [indistinct exclamation]
Fishburne: This is the first time the ship has been seen
since 1945.
- So this is the moment after 75 years
we salvage "Karlsruhe" from the dark.
♪ ♪
We saw that the beautiful wreck,
if you can say about the wreck beautiful.
I have never seen so many artifacts,
so many crates, so many things on the wreck on the bottom.
This is amazing.
♪ ♪
- It's a treasure trove of material.
They find china plates that are in great shape,
they find military vehicles still intact
with the rubber still on the tires.
[scuba equipment hissing]
♪ ♪
Fishburne: But what about the Amber Room?
Beneath a large pile of debris,
the divers make out what appear to be
dozens of sealed crates.
♪ ♪
- Now that's the most interesting thing, of course.
Here we have crates
that match the description of the Amber Room.
Of course, they might just contain ammunition
or silverware, sundries.
But what if?
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Unfortunately,
the team is unable to safely transport the crates.
They'll have to return with additional equipment.
♪ ♪
- So unfortunately, they can't search the crates
on this trip.
At those depths,
you only have about 30 minutes max down there.
The last thing they want to do
is potentially damage the Amber Room in the process.
♪ ♪
- This expedition is step number one:
to identify the wreck, to check what is this,
but definitely we need expedition number two
when we can check exactly what cargo contain.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Plans are moving forward
for a salvage and recovery mission
in the next few months.
♪ ♪
- To check cargo on the "Karlsruhe,"
we need to do it on the proper way.
On the proper way that means that we have to spend days
or even weeks on the position,
that we have to anchor permanently the boat
with special equipment for the divers.
♪ ♪
- This time, they'll be bringing many more resources
to the effort.
They'll have divers that can work on a rotating basis,
they'll have equipment that can float large objects.
♪ ♪
If they find a crate,
they'll need to leave it sealed
until they get it to the surface.
- The dive team is also gonna be bringing a representative
from the National Maritime Museum in Gdansk, Poland
as an advisor.
♪ ♪
- It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
to bring something as rare and as valuable
a cultural resource as the Amber Room to the surface.
♪ ♪
This is a mystery on par with the Dead Sea Scrolls
and the discovery of King Tut's tomb.
Is it down there? I don't know.
But I certainly hope it is,
because I would love to see this thing finally revealed.
I would love to see this mystery solved.
♪ ♪
- I couldn't imagine how would we feel
when we find hard proof on the "Karlsruhe" ship
that we find Amber Room.
This is absolutely out of my imagination,
but perhaps it will be something special and unique
and maybe I remember this moment
till to end of my life.
♪ ♪
- Could the Amber Room lie in crates
at the bottom of the Baltic Sea?
If the dive team is successful
and can salvage what's aboard the SS "Karlsruhe,"
we may soon know the answer to this enduring mystery.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries."
♪ ♪