Original subtitles

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."