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Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's select

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Speaker 1: I've chosen our episode on Legends of Nazi Gold from

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Speaker 1: April of twenty twenty. This is the one where we

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Speaker 1: learned that Nazis were even worse than we thought. Not

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Speaker 1: only were they murder a swine, obviously, they were also

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Speaker 1: scumbag thieves too, who didn't have enough money to fund

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Speaker 1: the war they started in the first place, so they

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Speaker 1: went around looting and robbing from neighboring countries, and by

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Speaker 1: the end of the war, with the writing on the wall,

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Speaker 1: they hid a lot of that gold that they stole

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Speaker 1: in strange, unmarked places around Europe. Some people believe it's

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Speaker 1: still hidden, just waiting to be found, hence this episode.

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Speaker 1: Hope you enjoy.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and

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Speaker 1: there's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and somewhere we

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Speaker 1: lost I think she wandered off.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, but this.

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Speaker 1: Is stuff you should know regardless the Lost Nazi Gold.

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Speaker 3: Edition, the Legend of Curly's Gold.

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Speaker 1: If Curly was a white nationalist.

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Speaker 3: Well who's to say he wasn't I don't.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. He Jack Palance seems like the kind

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Speaker 1: who would have beat up white nationalists for fun, as

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Speaker 1: like a hobby, you know what I mean.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, we can't get into the super ins

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Speaker 4: and outs. But as you know, my brother worked on

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Speaker 4: the Legend of Curley's Gold and Jack Balance was a

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Speaker 4: tough sob Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I hear he used to do shots of nails.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, he wasn't a jerk. I wouldn't say,

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Speaker 4: but it just sounded like he was just sort of

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Speaker 4: a very cantankerous old fella to work with.

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Speaker 1: That's so funny, man, because I mean, if you at

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Speaker 1: the end of the date, he's an actor.

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Speaker 3: I know, you're an app on the earth.

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Speaker 1: It's not like you you weld machine guns or something

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Speaker 1: like that. Give me a break, You're an actor.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, like clinice Wood's not really tough. Well, actually that's

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Speaker 4: not true.

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Speaker 1: Is he?

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Speaker 3: Oh sure, probably he's got to be.

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Speaker 1: At the very least. He's been acting like it's so

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Speaker 1: long he's developed. Yeah. Yeah, it's probably like a callous

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Speaker 1: you know what I mean, where it's just kind of

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Speaker 1: forms and stays a callous. It's the callousness of toughness

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Speaker 1: that an actor.

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Speaker 4: I don't think Clint Eastwood whinds about a hang nail.

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Speaker 4: Let's just say that, no, like like we do.

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Speaker 1: That'd be pretty disappointing. I actually was whinding about a

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Speaker 1: hangnail to myself the other day, of course, But I'm

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Speaker 1: not an actor. I'm a podcaster.

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Speaker 4: No, we have a TV show that proves that. And

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Speaker 4: I'm speaking for both of us.

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Speaker 3: Ouch.

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Speaker 1: I thought I did some good work.

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Speaker 3: I thought you did a better job than I, And actually.

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Speaker 1: I think we both did a much better job than you.

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Speaker 3: Remember.

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Speaker 1: All Right, So if you hate Nazis and you're like

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Speaker 1: it's been a while since I was given a reason

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Speaker 1: to hate Nazis a new one, rejoice because we're about

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Speaker 1: to give you another one. At least I didn't really

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Speaker 1: realize this to this extent, did you.

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Speaker 3: You know?

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Speaker 4: I knew about Nazi gold and that they took things,

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Speaker 4: but I didn't know that it was almost one big

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Speaker 4: people killing and world robbing operation.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing. That's the new thing to hate

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Speaker 1: them for. Not only were they murderers, they were also

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Speaker 1: just common thieves as well. I mean thieves on one

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Speaker 1: of the greatest scales anyone's ever seen. But thieves nonetheless.

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Speaker 3: Become an exceptional thief.

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Speaker 1: Who was that Michael Kaine, No.

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Speaker 4: Diehard, They called him a common thief, and he goes exceptional.

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Speaker 1: Thief, right, Rodney conscr You imagine. Oh, I can't wait

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Speaker 1: till Telogy gets like advanced enough that you can just

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Speaker 1: insert whoever into whatever character and they'll say the same

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Speaker 1: lines and everything. Uh huh, that'd be great. That's the

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Speaker 1: first one I'm doing. Is Rodney Daegerfield is Hans Gruber.

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Speaker 1: He would have been wonderful.

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Speaker 4: That scene where he's fooling him into thinking he was

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Speaker 4: one of the party goers.

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Speaker 3: And he goes, what's your name, It's Bill Clay. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: that's what it is.

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Speaker 1: Don't shoot me.

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Speaker 3: Come on, nobody shoots me. I got no respect.

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Speaker 1: That's pretty good, Pretty good, no boy? Okay. So the

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Speaker 1: Nazis were thieves, not just because they looted and plundered

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Speaker 1: like the countries that they occupied, but that they did

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Speaker 1: it because they were broke to start off with. That's

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Speaker 1: what truly makes them thieving sobs is that their whole jam,

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Speaker 1: this whole war World War that they started, they didn't

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Speaker 1: have the resources financially or industrially to actually carry out

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Speaker 1: this war they had to go steal to f and

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Speaker 1: their role in World War Two, which they started.

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Speaker 4: That's right, they you point out here, you put this together,

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Speaker 4: good stuff. Thanks that in nineteen twenty three they had

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Speaker 4: hyperinflation such that in November of that year it cost

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Speaker 4: eighty billion marks to buy a loaf of bread.

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Speaker 1: Is that right, Yeah, which sounds like a lot on

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Speaker 1: its own, but if you consider that earlier that year,

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Speaker 1: in January, a loaf of bread costs two hundred and

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Speaker 1: fifty marks. Yeah, so the price of bread went from

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Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty marks to eighty billion marks in

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Speaker 1: less than a year.

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Speaker 3: But isn't that just a way of saying that nobody

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Speaker 3: bought bread?

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Speaker 1: No, it meant it's a way of saying that their

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Speaker 1: money was totally worthless. Remember it happened in Zimbabwe. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I can't remember what episode it was. Maybe how much

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Speaker 1: money is there in the world? We talked about hyperinflation,

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Speaker 1: I think.

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Speaker 3: So that was staggering.

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Speaker 1: It was staggering. And the same thing happened in nineteen

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Speaker 1: twenty three in the Ymar Republic. And this is the

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Speaker 1: state of the German economy that the Nazis rose to

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Speaker 1: power in because you know, that's one of the reasons

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Speaker 1: they were able to rise to power and fascism was

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Speaker 1: able to take over because the country and the economy

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Speaker 1: was in such dire straits that this idea of like, hey,

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Speaker 1: everybody get in line behind this guy, because he's going

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Speaker 1: to lead us out of it. That's how That's essentially

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Speaker 1: one way that Hitler and the Nazis were able to

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Speaker 1: rise to power. But that also means that he inherited

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Speaker 1: a terrible economy and he had to figure out what

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Speaker 1: to do. Not only a terrible economy took but they

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Speaker 1: Germany lacks natural resources that you would need to start

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Speaker 1: a war machine too.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. They have no oil.

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Speaker 4: No, they don't have mineral deposits that you can make

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Speaker 4: really find metals out of.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, they've got sour kraut.

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Speaker 1: They have sourk They have a lot of beer too,

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Speaker 1: and their to their credit. But you know, if that's

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Speaker 1: all you got, you need more to fight a war with.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: So what happened was they they had what was called

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Speaker 4: the Reich's Mark, which was the monetary unit of the

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Speaker 4: Third Reich, and they were five neutral countries that declare

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Speaker 4: during World War Two, like, we're not going to trade

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Speaker 4: in reichs marks. So Hitler and Germany said, well, you

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Speaker 4: know what's always valuable anywhere is gold, and let's start

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Speaker 4: taking it from anywhere and everywhere we can get it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and gold in particular, it's what's called a very

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Speaker 1: fungible commodity, Like you can trade just about anything for gold. Right.

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Speaker 1: If you have gold, people will give you whatever you want.

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Speaker 1: You can use it to buy oil, you can use

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Speaker 1: to buy guns, you can use it to fund terrorism,

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Speaker 1: you can use it to back your own currency. There's

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Speaker 1: a lot of stuff you can do with gold. But

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Speaker 1: in particular in World War two, if you were the

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Speaker 1: Third Reich, the Nazi regime, you needed to use gold

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Speaker 1: because these neutral countries couldn't accept reich marks by agreement.

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Speaker 1: But also the reichs marks were worthless anyway, so if

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Speaker 1: you wanted to buy a bunch of guns, you needed

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Speaker 1: some gold. And because Germany at the time only had

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Speaker 1: about twenty five tons of gold in its reserves, which

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Speaker 1: sounds like a lot, but as we'll see, is a

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Speaker 1: paltry amount of gold compared to what they looted and

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Speaker 1: pillaged and took. They needed some gold, and so yeah,

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Speaker 1: they started looting it. And the first place they turned

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Speaker 1: chuck was Austria.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, how much gold did you say they had?

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Speaker 1: They had twenty five metric from what I understand, twenty

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Speaker 1: five metric tons of gold and the reserve Germany did

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Speaker 1: at the outset of World War two.

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Speaker 4: All right, well, this will drive home how much that is.

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Speaker 4: They looted fifteen tons, just ten tons less from the

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Speaker 4: citizens Jewish citizens of Vienna, Austria, from the capital city only.

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Speaker 4: They looted fifteen tons of gold from Jewish citizens, just citizens,

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Speaker 4: like you said, oh yeah, and that's those are just people.

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Speaker 4: So the Central Bank of Austria they got one hundred

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Speaker 4: tons of gold there, four times what they had in reserve.

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Speaker 4: And then they said, hey, you know that six tons

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Speaker 4: of gold that you're trying to send away to England

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Speaker 4: to keep safe from US. Huh, bring that back here too,

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Speaker 4: we want that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they did. So just from Austria alone, they got

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Speaker 1: one hundred and what twenty one tons, yes, to add

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Speaker 1: to their existing twenty five tons. It was a huge

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Speaker 1: deal that kickstarted the Nazi war machine into high gear.

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Speaker 1: It was a big coup. Austria wasn't expecting it. No

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Speaker 1: one was expecting it, and so other countries in Europe

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Speaker 1: suddenly like gulped and they were like, we need to

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Speaker 1: we needed to take this as advance warning. Basically, we

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Speaker 1: don't want to become like Austria. And they triggered chuck,

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Speaker 1: the largest physical transfer of wealth that the world, the

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Speaker 1: planet has ever seen.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, because I didn't know this, And it's kind of

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Speaker 4: cool that, you know, countries that are are friendly to

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Speaker 4: one another, we'll help.

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Speaker 3: Each other out like this.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, you can say, hey, US, you've got Fort Knox there.

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Speaker 4: I've heard that's a pretty safe place to keep gold

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Speaker 4: where England, So can we send you a bunch of

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Speaker 4: that to keep for us? And just you know, we'll

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Speaker 4: make a receipt out so we know how much there

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Speaker 4: is and I owe you and you promise not to spend.

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Speaker 3: Any of it.

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Speaker 4: And the US and Canada early on at least did

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Speaker 4: things like this. They accepted huge gold shipments. There was

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Speaker 4: a operation in nineteen forty called Project Fish where the

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Speaker 4: UK was sending or Britain was sending fifteen hundred metric

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Speaker 4: tons of gold to the US to store in Fort Knox.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and in twenty nineteen dollars. The amount that they

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Speaker 1: sent on slow boats through the Atlantic, which by the way,

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Speaker 1: we're infested with U boats by nineteen forty was worth

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Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty six billion dollars in today's dollars.

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Speaker 3: And it got there somehow.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, not one of those ships was sunk, astounding, and.

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Speaker 3: That nutsy Well, they didn't know clearly, so.

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Speaker 1: They they sent. So Britain sent that fifteen hundred metric tons.

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Speaker 1: Russia they were like, we're just going to take care

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Speaker 1: of ourselves. They evacuated a bunch of stuff from their stockpiles.

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Speaker 1: They sent twenty eight hundred tons of gold from its

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Speaker 1: banks to a location in the Ural Mountains for safe keeping.

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Speaker 1: They also sent two other national treasures too, the embalmed

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Speaker 1: corpse of Nikolai Lennon and artwork from the Hermitage Museum.

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Speaker 1: Those those were the three things they prized the most

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Speaker 1: to transfer by train to the Ural Mountains to stash

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Speaker 1: until the war was over.

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Speaker 4: So all told, if you want to add it up,

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Speaker 4: during the course of World War Two, the Nazi stole

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Speaker 4: at least that we know of, four hundred million American

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Speaker 4: dollars in gold from countries they occupied, and another one

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Speaker 4: hundred and forty million dollars in gold from people, largely

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Speaker 4: Jewish people, from their homes. People that it were imprisoned

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Speaker 4: in concentration camps. Yeah, they stole It was a very

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Speaker 4: meticulous thing that they did. They would raid their homes.

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Speaker 4: They wouldn't just round people up, they would go to

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Speaker 4: their safety deposit boxes. They would rip their dental fillings

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Speaker 4: out of their teeth, such that it even got the

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Speaker 4: name tooth gold.

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Speaker 3: It's on gold, and.

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Speaker 4: That didn't you know, that covered everything that they stole

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Speaker 4: from people, not just the gold from teeth. That covered

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Speaker 4: people's wedding rings and their jewelry and their parts of

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Speaker 4: eyeglasses and other things like that. It's just unbelievable how

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Speaker 4: much gold they looted from concentration camp victims.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, especially when you step back and look at it

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Speaker 1: like that. Germany really needed the money, The Third Reich

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Speaker 1: needed the money. They were just robbing, robbing and murdering,

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Speaker 1: that's what they were doing.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 1: It really kind of puts it into perspective more. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean the Nazis were the worst, dude, and still are.

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Speaker 1: Nazis are the worst. So most of that gold that

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Speaker 1: was stolen from occupied countries. I didn't see how many

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Speaker 1: tons it was, but what'd you say, generally the figure

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Speaker 1: I've seen is about five hundred to six hundred million

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Speaker 1: dollars in nineteen forties dollars stolen, and most of it

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Speaker 1: was put into the reichs Bank, which is Germany's central bank,

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Speaker 1: kind of like its federal reserve, and there are different

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Speaker 1: branches throughout the country, and you know, the gold was

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Speaker 1: kind of distributed here there, but as the war kind

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Speaker 1: of moved on, it was moved more and more into

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Speaker 1: the central reichs Bank in Berlin until nineteen forty five

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Speaker 1: and there was a bombing raid on Berlin on Germany,

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Speaker 1: and they said, we need to get this gold out

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Speaker 1: of here and into secret locations, and so the gold

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Speaker 1: from the reichs Bank, hundreds of millions today, billions and

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Speaker 1: billions worth of dollars worth of gold, was moved to

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Speaker 1: places where no one had any idea, secret locations that

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Speaker 1: weren't banks in Germany.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so this would set off I mean, people are

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Speaker 4: still looking for Nazi gold today, and not just walking

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Speaker 4: around with a metal detector, but some people are putting

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Speaker 4: a lot of money into looking for Nazi gold. And

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Speaker 4: one of the big reasons is a, like you just said,

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Speaker 4: we know that they moved it at some point. And

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Speaker 4: b In April of nineteen forty five, there were some

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Speaker 4: military police patrolling around the town of Merkers. They questioned

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Speaker 4: a couple of French women who had been displaced, and

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Speaker 4: they said in French, I would imagine that they saw

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Speaker 4: gold being stored in a potassium mine near the town.

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Speaker 1: And the piece of soccer blue I mean holy cow.

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Speaker 4: And the army investigates this and they found the it's

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Speaker 4: famous now the Merkers mine Treasure, which was a horde

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Speaker 4: of gold. There was a room covered in seven thousand

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Speaker 4: marked bags of gold coins, gold bars, gold jewelry valued

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Speaker 4: at about two hundred and thirty eight million, nineteen forty

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Speaker 4: five dollars. So this was a signal to everyone like, wow,

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Speaker 4: the legend of Curley's Gold is real.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, this is only about half the money. So let's

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Speaker 4: let's get our metal detectors out.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, this idea that the Nazis hid gold

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Speaker 1: in mine shafts or all sorts of different places was

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Speaker 1: proven by that Murker's Mind treasure that they did this,

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Speaker 1: and there were substantial amounts to be found that was

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Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty eight million dollars worth, but they

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Speaker 1: stole five hundred to six hundred million dollars worth. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which means that there is a substantial amount of gold

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Speaker 1: unaccounted for, and that is what has fueled treasure hunters

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Speaker 1: to look for what today would be billions of dollars

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Speaker 1: worth of gold that was lost and scattered and spread

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Speaker 1: after World War Two. And I say, Chuck, I have

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Speaker 1: a proposal for you.

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Speaker 3: I bet I know what it is. Lie, what kind?

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Speaker 1: What's your favorite kind of pie?

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Speaker 3: Oh?

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00:16:10,200 --> 00:16:13,280
Speaker 4: I really love a key lime. Yeah, it's hard not

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Speaker 4: to go with key lime.

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Speaker 1: Okay, but what about just like a standard traditional fruit pie.

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Speaker 1: They're really tough to beat, like a good cherry pie.

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Speaker 4: If I'm going fruit pie, it's gonna be an apple

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Speaker 4: crumble for sure.

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Speaker 1: Okay. I used to be in that same group with.

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Speaker 3: You until you had the sweetest cherry pie.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Warrant. Warrant talked me into trying it, and I

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Speaker 1: loved it. Cherry pie is actually as good as the

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Speaker 1: song makes it sound.

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Speaker 3: Wow, all right, we'll be right back, Okay. I want

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Speaker 3: to learn about a terrorist and call it horrid actyl.

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Speaker 3: How to take a bird is gone. That's another word up.

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Speaker 2: Jerry cheese my cherry pie.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I've tried it with cheese, like they say, but

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Speaker 1: it's not very good. I think that's typically apple pie

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Speaker 1: that's supposed to have cheese on it. So I just

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Speaker 1: like straight cherry pie.

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Speaker 3: Cherry pie, cool drink of water. It's a sweet surprise.

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Speaker 1: Yep. I've tried it with the cool drink of water too.

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Speaker 1: It's good. It's better with just water than say, like coke,

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Speaker 1: because coke's sweet taste competes with the sweetness of the

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Speaker 1: cherry pie. So they're pretty much right on except for

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Speaker 1: the cheese.

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Speaker 3: They say it'll make a grown man cry.

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Speaker 1: I'm here to tell you that's the truth.

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Speaker 4: Oh boy, that song and that video so dumb but

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Speaker 4: also very titillating for a very young chuck.

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Speaker 1: You know, have you seen the Rush documentary? Oh sure,

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Speaker 1: did you know that Sebastian Bach from skid Row?

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Speaker 4: It was skid Row, right, he was well warrant saying

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Speaker 4: cherry pie. But yeah, yeah, Baschion skid Row.

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Speaker 1: I know, okay, but like it's just a huge leap

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Speaker 1: from skid Row to Warreck. Give me a break. But

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Speaker 1: Sebastian Bach was from Warrenck.

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Speaker 3: Right, No, no, no, he was skid Row.

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Speaker 1: Oh that's what I mean.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Warrant was Janie Lane if I was taken.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, man, you got it. The poor man's

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Speaker 1: Brett Michaels.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, in a way.

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Speaker 1: So and sorry, Janey, I really didn't mean that, but

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Speaker 1: I couldn't leave it the But Sebastian Bach from skid

347
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Speaker 1: Row is one of the greatest and longest standing Rush

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Speaker 1: fans of all time.

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Speaker 3: That's right. He was all over that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he was. He joined their fan club

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Speaker 1: in like seventh or eighth grade, he said, and.

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Speaker 3: I love it.

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Speaker 4: Right now, somewhere Brett Michaels is walking around playing that

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Speaker 4: on repeat to his family.

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Speaker 3: Did you hear that? Did you hear what Josh said?

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Speaker 1: He thinks I'm better than the skid Row guy. No,

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Speaker 1: you mean Warret. It doesn't matter, all right. So we're

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Speaker 1: talking about Nazi gold, and we were saying before we

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Speaker 1: started talking about Warrant and everything, that that there is

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Speaker 1: gold that is unaccounted for, that was stolen by the

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Speaker 1: Nazis that just kind of vaporized after the war. Gold's

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Speaker 1: not supposed to do that. It's one of the things

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Speaker 1: that people love about gold is it doesn't just vaporize

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Speaker 1: into thin air. It's very easy to keep track of

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Speaker 1: if you want to. And so people started looking for

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Speaker 1: gold or looking for clues, and one of the big

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Speaker 1: clues that people started following was local rumors and legends.

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Speaker 1: Like in Murkers there were plenty of rumors and legends

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Speaker 1: that there was gold hidden in a mine nearby dar

370
00:19:37,040 --> 00:19:42,639
Speaker 1: Hills exactly, and they so that people people hearing local

371
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Speaker 1: legends has really kind of fueled hunt for hunts for

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Speaker 1: Nazi treasures for almost a century now.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so we're going to go through a bunch of these.

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Speaker 4: There's one called Lake Toplets. Yeah, Like it's a very

375
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Speaker 4: lovely place. I'm sure you looked up pictures. But people

376
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Speaker 4: and treasure hunters have been looking for this gold and

377
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Speaker 4: Lake Toplets ever since. And this is very much fact.

378
00:20:06,840 --> 00:20:09,919
Speaker 4: A bunch of Nazis retreated there in the Austrian Alps

379
00:20:09,920 --> 00:20:13,080
Speaker 4: in the final months of the war. US troops were

380
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Speaker 4: closing in fast and Germany was about to collapse, and

381
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Speaker 4: so they transported a bunch of boxes to this lake

382
00:20:22,480 --> 00:20:26,119
Speaker 4: military vehicles and then horse drawn wagons even and they

383
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Speaker 4: dumped them in the lake. So I think that part

384
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Speaker 4: is definitely true.

385
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Speaker 1: Right, there's yes, from what I could tell, it was

386
00:20:33,800 --> 00:20:38,439
Speaker 1: reported on like that is fact, right? What was in

387
00:20:38,480 --> 00:20:43,280
Speaker 1: the boxes? Yes, what's up for debate exactly.

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Speaker 4: Some people say that's the Nazi gold about five and

389
00:20:46,800 --> 00:20:51,280
Speaker 4: a half billion dollars worth. Other people said no, I

390
00:20:51,320 --> 00:20:56,480
Speaker 4: think some of this stuff are documents where they they

391
00:20:56,480 --> 00:21:00,600
Speaker 4: were basically confiscated from Jewish victims, about where they're assets

392
00:21:00,600 --> 00:21:04,879
Speaker 4: were hidden and what Swiss bank accounts they could loot maybe, And.

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Speaker 1: I saw also artwork. Sure they think that was sealed artwork.

394
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Speaker 1: Also there's a rumor that there's three hundred pounds of

395
00:21:13,520 --> 00:21:18,560
Speaker 1: morphine in oh wow in those boxes. That was contributed

396
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Speaker 1: by I think Albania's president because he didn't want it

397
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Speaker 1: to fall into the hands of the Allies.

398
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Speaker 4: Well, one thing they know is down there, because they

399
00:21:29,720 --> 00:21:33,719
Speaker 4: actually found some of these in nineteen eighty three. Was

400
00:21:34,119 --> 00:21:37,680
Speaker 4: Hitler had the idea at one point, Hey, let's sabotage

401
00:21:37,800 --> 00:21:41,720
Speaker 4: various countries by creating counterfeit money of those countries.

402
00:21:41,840 --> 00:21:44,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a pretty smart plan for a dirty Nazi

403
00:21:45,520 --> 00:21:45,800
Speaker 1: I know.

404
00:21:46,040 --> 00:21:50,479
Speaker 4: So they created just hundreds of million dollars worth of

405
00:21:50,720 --> 00:21:53,960
Speaker 4: British pound notes, and in nineteen eighty three a German

406
00:21:54,000 --> 00:21:58,240
Speaker 4: biologist by accident discovered a lot of these British pounds

407
00:21:58,520 --> 00:21:59,000
Speaker 4: in the lake.

408
00:21:59,560 --> 00:22:02,760
Speaker 1: What we talk about that in like how counterfeiting works.

409
00:22:02,800 --> 00:22:06,240
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe it does sound familiar though for sure.

410
00:22:06,119 --> 00:22:08,840
Speaker 1: We definitely talked about that plan. And remember there was

411
00:22:08,920 --> 00:22:14,959
Speaker 1: like a Jewish printer who was a Holocaust prisoner, a

412
00:22:15,000 --> 00:22:17,439
Speaker 1: prisoner of a concentration camp. We can't remember which one,

413
00:22:17,520 --> 00:22:21,600
Speaker 1: who turned out to be like this master counterfeitter. Yeah,

414
00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:24,480
Speaker 1: like because the Nazis trained him to or force them

415
00:22:24,480 --> 00:22:28,160
Speaker 1: to was if I remember correctly, it was our counterfeiting episode.

416
00:22:28,320 --> 00:22:30,240
Speaker 4: Yeah, And in nineteen fifty nine I talked about the

417
00:22:30,320 --> 00:22:34,000
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty three fine. But in fifty nine they recovered

418
00:22:34,320 --> 00:22:38,920
Speaker 4: seven hundred million pounds of these counterfeit notes from that lake.

419
00:22:39,040 --> 00:22:42,080
Speaker 4: So some people say that's all that was down there.

420
00:22:42,880 --> 00:22:46,120
Speaker 4: Other people say there may still be gold down there.

421
00:22:46,359 --> 00:22:50,080
Speaker 4: And Austria actually still to this day has a problem

422
00:22:50,119 --> 00:22:53,040
Speaker 4: about ten divers a year illegally dive in that lake

423
00:22:53,119 --> 00:22:54,000
Speaker 4: looking for that treasure.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And what's interesting about this lake, aside from the

425
00:22:56,480 --> 00:22:58,400
Speaker 1: fact that there might be Nazi treasure in it, which

426
00:22:58,440 --> 00:23:01,840
Speaker 1: is interesting enough to make the lake remarkable and noteworthy.

427
00:23:01,880 --> 00:23:05,640
Speaker 1: But in addition to that, this lake has a kind

428
00:23:05,680 --> 00:23:09,639
Speaker 1: of a strange hydrology and that the top half of

429
00:23:09,680 --> 00:23:12,320
Speaker 1: it is fresh water the bottom half is salt water,

430
00:23:12,600 --> 00:23:15,199
Speaker 1: and they're separated by density. And in the middle of

431
00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:20,800
Speaker 1: these two layers is a layer of floating layer of

432
00:23:20,960 --> 00:23:23,680
Speaker 1: ancient logs that have fallen to the lake and been

433
00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:27,639
Speaker 1: preserved over time. And so you can only dive so

434
00:23:27,880 --> 00:23:31,159
Speaker 1: far before you hit this layer of logs, and some divers,

435
00:23:31,200 --> 00:23:34,199
Speaker 1: I think five divers at least have died in this

436
00:23:34,280 --> 00:23:36,800
Speaker 1: lake looking for Nazi gold, and at least one of

437
00:23:36,800 --> 00:23:38,920
Speaker 1: them got tangled up in this layer of logs. It's

438
00:23:38,920 --> 00:23:41,879
Speaker 1: a really dangerous place to dive. But the fact that

439
00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:47,119
Speaker 1: you can't really see past this layer of logs is

440
00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:49,439
Speaker 1: one of the things that keeps people coming back and

441
00:23:49,520 --> 00:23:53,600
Speaker 1: keeps this legend alive, because they can't thoroughly search this

442
00:23:53,720 --> 00:23:57,280
Speaker 1: lake and show conclusively, no, there's no gold here. Leave

443
00:23:57,320 --> 00:24:01,800
Speaker 1: this place alone, stay away. It is pretty amazing. And

444
00:24:01,880 --> 00:24:04,320
Speaker 1: then the other thing about it too, is this is

445
00:24:04,359 --> 00:24:08,600
Speaker 1: a really remote location that was used by Nazi officers,

446
00:24:08,680 --> 00:24:12,600
Speaker 1: high ranking Nazi officers and for missile testing. It seems

447
00:24:12,640 --> 00:24:18,359
Speaker 1: like a really odd place just to dump counterfeit pound notes. Yeah,

448
00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:21,240
Speaker 1: like you could dump those just about anywhere, So I

449
00:24:21,240 --> 00:24:22,960
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe there is something to it.

450
00:24:24,240 --> 00:24:25,160
Speaker 3: You're gonna get your scuba.

451
00:24:25,240 --> 00:24:28,880
Speaker 1: You're ready. I got my flippers on already. You can't see,

452
00:24:28,920 --> 00:24:29,760
Speaker 1: but I've got them on.

453
00:24:30,840 --> 00:24:31,200
Speaker 3: All right.

454
00:24:31,480 --> 00:24:36,200
Speaker 4: We're gonna move now to an eastern German town along

455
00:24:36,280 --> 00:24:41,040
Speaker 4: the Chech border called Deutsch katherinenberg N. It sort of

456
00:24:41,040 --> 00:24:43,680
Speaker 4: looks like the alphabet when it's on a page. It's

457
00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:46,880
Speaker 4: a lot of letters in a row. Yeah, but there

458
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:49,000
Speaker 4: are people there that think and not only is there

459
00:24:49,080 --> 00:24:54,680
Speaker 4: gold here, but possibly the amber room which was this

460
00:24:56,200 --> 00:24:58,720
Speaker 4: You just look up pictures of the amber room room.

461
00:24:58,720 --> 00:25:03,120
Speaker 4: It's pretty amazing. Chamber of honey and lindseed and kangnac

462
00:25:03,160 --> 00:25:08,800
Speaker 4: confused amber panels, gold frame mosaics, marble, precious stones. And

463
00:25:08,840 --> 00:25:12,200
Speaker 4: it was a gift of Prussian King Frederick Wilhelm first

464
00:25:12,760 --> 00:25:15,840
Speaker 4: to Russia's Peter the Great, once called the eighth Wonder

465
00:25:15,840 --> 00:25:18,440
Speaker 4: of the World, and it disappeared during World War two.

466
00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:22,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Nazis plundered it from Russia, from the USSR,

467
00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:27,600
Speaker 1: and they took it back to Germany, back to Kunigsburg

468
00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:31,640
Speaker 1: or Kunigsburg, which was I think now a time part

469
00:25:31,680 --> 00:25:35,879
Speaker 1: of Russia again, but at the time during World War

470
00:25:35,960 --> 00:25:38,679
Speaker 1: two it was part of Germany or Prussia, and they

471
00:25:38,720 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 1: had it on public exhibit for like four or five years,

472
00:25:41,680 --> 00:25:43,080
Speaker 1: and then at the end of the war it just

473
00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:46,000
Speaker 1: vanished and no one's seen it since. And there's a

474
00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:47,840
Speaker 1: lot of people who say, well, it was destroyed in

475
00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:50,439
Speaker 1: air raids. Other people say it was sunk on the

476
00:25:50,760 --> 00:25:54,160
Speaker 1: you know, on a ship that was secretly carrying it.

477
00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:57,480
Speaker 1: It's just lost. But there's a pair of treasure hunters

478
00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:02,240
Speaker 1: at Deutsch Katherinenburg who searched in the area because they

479
00:26:02,240 --> 00:26:06,560
Speaker 1: were sure that, among other things, the amber room panels

480
00:26:06,840 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 1: were buried there in that town.

481
00:26:09,400 --> 00:26:12,320
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is probably the worst ending to a

482
00:26:13,160 --> 00:26:17,359
Speaker 4: potentially cool story ever, But there was a pair of

483
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:21,440
Speaker 4: searchers searching for this stuff. One of them's father was

484
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:24,640
Speaker 4: a German Air Force officer in World War Two and

485
00:26:24,680 --> 00:26:28,200
Speaker 4: in his personal notes, this son thought that he'd found

486
00:26:28,240 --> 00:26:31,200
Speaker 4: the exact coordinates of this treasure. So he got together

487
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:34,680
Speaker 4: with another treasure hunter who was another German. He was

488
00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:37,720
Speaker 4: a mayor in fact of a nearby town, and they

489
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:42,680
Speaker 4: thought that they had discovered through radar this big rectangular

490
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:46,359
Speaker 4: underground space about sixty feet down. And when I was

491
00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:48,800
Speaker 4: reading this, dude, it was so juicy. I was like,

492
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:53,679
Speaker 4: oh boy, what happened? They didn't ever tell anyone. No

493
00:26:53,720 --> 00:26:55,680
Speaker 4: one knows if they found any treasure. They didn't say

494
00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 4: anything about it. Apparently they had an acrimonious split in

495
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:01,399
Speaker 4: two thousand and eight, and that's just sort of the

496
00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:02,280
Speaker 4: end of the story.

497
00:27:02,359 --> 00:27:05,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess the other treasure hunter was staying in

498
00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:07,280
Speaker 1: the mayor's town and the mayor kicked him out of town.

499
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:10,800
Speaker 1: It was that acrimonious. Wow, So that's it. Last I

500
00:27:10,840 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: heard was that they didn't find anything in two thousand

501
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:16,680
Speaker 1: and eight, or they did never search for it. Right,

502
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:19,360
Speaker 1: So it was a little lame, but worth putting in there.

503
00:27:19,400 --> 00:27:21,720
Speaker 1: I think, Oh, no, it's worth putting in there. It's

504
00:27:21,800 --> 00:27:25,440
Speaker 1: just it has no good resolution. No, it's yeah, no,

505
00:27:25,800 --> 00:27:27,440
Speaker 1: But you read a lot of fiction, so you can

506
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:31,800
Speaker 1: deal with that, right, that's right. Okay, So in Poland,

507
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:37,520
Speaker 1: south southeastern southwestern Poland, and a little corner down there,

508
00:27:37,520 --> 00:27:40,600
Speaker 1: there's something there's a range of mountains called Owl Mountains

509
00:27:41,600 --> 00:27:47,200
Speaker 1: and there's a long standing and widespread rumor that's been

510
00:27:47,240 --> 00:27:50,439
Speaker 1: there for a very long time. I would say roughly

511
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 1: since around the end of the Second World War. That

512
00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:56,200
Speaker 1: would be my guess, that there is a ghost train

513
00:27:56,280 --> 00:28:01,840
Speaker 1: and Nazi ghost train loaded with jewels, gold, weapons, art,

514
00:28:01,960 --> 00:28:04,400
Speaker 1: basically everything you can think of that the Nazis would

515
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:08,120
Speaker 1: have plundered or pillaged, loaded onto this train, driven into

516
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:11,159
Speaker 1: a tunnel in the mountain, and left there hidden, And

517
00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 1: that it's still there and people have been looking for

518
00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:17,920
Speaker 1: it for a very long time again since probably about

519
00:28:17,920 --> 00:28:19,800
Speaker 1: the end of World War Two. But the thing that's

520
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:23,520
Speaker 1: kept this treasure hunt alive, Chuck, is there really is

521
00:28:23,680 --> 00:28:29,200
Speaker 1: a vast, unmapped network of tunnels in the Owl Mountains

522
00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:31,240
Speaker 1: that the Nazis dug there in World War two.

523
00:28:32,280 --> 00:28:34,879
Speaker 3: Yeah. So again, some of this is based in fact.

524
00:28:34,920 --> 00:28:38,080
Speaker 4: So that's what'll keep any sort of urban legend alive

525
00:28:38,440 --> 00:28:39,480
Speaker 4: if part of it is true.

526
00:28:40,160 --> 00:28:40,880
Speaker 3: And they did.

527
00:28:40,920 --> 00:28:44,280
Speaker 4: They dug these tunnels of mine shafts between forty three

528
00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:47,800
Speaker 4: and forty five. It was called the Reisa project, which

529
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:49,440
Speaker 4: means giant in German.

530
00:28:50,280 --> 00:28:51,480
Speaker 3: And no one knows why.

531
00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:53,440
Speaker 4: Some people say it might have been in one of

532
00:28:53,440 --> 00:28:57,600
Speaker 4: their weird secret weapons programs. Yeah, some people say it

533
00:28:57,600 --> 00:29:00,440
Speaker 4: may have been potentially where Hitler was going to hold

534
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:03,600
Speaker 4: up for his last stand. But it was very, very secretive,

535
00:29:03,640 --> 00:29:07,320
Speaker 4: even among the SS, because if you worked on this tunnel,

536
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:12,800
Speaker 4: you had to sign a confidentiality agreement, which just sounds funny.

537
00:29:12,840 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 4: For some reason, I thought everything about the SS was

538
00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:18,120
Speaker 4: so secretive it would just be implicit.

539
00:29:18,200 --> 00:29:20,000
Speaker 1: But right, and what are they going to do, like

540
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:23,840
Speaker 1: take you to court that you violated your NDA or something. Well,

541
00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:25,040
Speaker 1: it is odd, isn't it.

542
00:29:25,400 --> 00:29:26,240
Speaker 3: You know what they would do?

543
00:29:26,360 --> 00:29:28,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, they just shoot you. I wouldn't think that you

544
00:29:28,360 --> 00:29:30,760
Speaker 1: would need a signed agreement for that. These are the

545
00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 1: Nazis we're talking about, you know.

546
00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:35,800
Speaker 4: Yeah, so they were not allowed to have their family

547
00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:41,080
Speaker 4: members within forty kilometers radius of this area, and these

548
00:29:41,120 --> 00:29:45,400
Speaker 4: tunnels were dug by forced labor from concentration camps nearby. Yeah,

549
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:49,400
Speaker 4: and it might have been a place for gold. It

550
00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:51,760
Speaker 4: may still be. But the Soviets ruined all that in

551
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:55,280
Speaker 4: nineteen forty five when they came knocking at the door

552
00:29:55,760 --> 00:29:59,280
Speaker 4: and the Nazis fled and basically blew up their own

553
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:01,320
Speaker 4: tunnels behind them.

554
00:30:01,680 --> 00:30:03,520
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I want to say, there's a really good

555
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:06,080
Speaker 1: New Yorker article about the hunt. I can think it's

556
00:30:06,080 --> 00:30:09,000
Speaker 1: even called the Hunt for Nazi Gold, about this particular

557
00:30:09,640 --> 00:30:12,800
Speaker 1: legend and people looking for it, and they take a second.

558
00:30:12,840 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 1: I think it's really worth pointing out here too, is

559
00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:19,440
Speaker 1: you know, people who get who start looking for treasure,

560
00:30:19,560 --> 00:30:22,560
Speaker 1: no matter what the providence of the treasure is, just

561
00:30:22,600 --> 00:30:25,160
Speaker 1: get so wrapped up in the treasure and the legends

562
00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:27,880
Speaker 1: and the myths and everything that it's easy to forget

563
00:30:28,280 --> 00:30:31,240
Speaker 1: things like, well, you're running around a tunnel network that

564
00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:34,760
Speaker 1: was dug by people who were literally worked to death

565
00:30:35,120 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 1: over the course of weeks. They were worked that hard

566
00:30:37,520 --> 00:30:42,400
Speaker 1: they died digging these tunnels that hold maybe this legendary treasure.

567
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:43,960
Speaker 1: That is the only thing you can focus on when

568
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:47,280
Speaker 1: you're talking about that. And that's definitely like a part

569
00:30:47,320 --> 00:30:50,360
Speaker 1: of the problem that comes along with the job is

570
00:30:51,160 --> 00:30:54,520
Speaker 1: you know, forgetting like having blinders on that you forget

571
00:30:54,560 --> 00:30:57,880
Speaker 1: the reality of the situation. It's definitely it's important to

572
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:00,400
Speaker 1: remember this that you know, some of this old we're

573
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:04,920
Speaker 1: talking about was pulled from the teeth of dead Holocaust victims.

574
00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:07,400
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, it's I remember that too.

575
00:31:07,960 --> 00:31:11,080
Speaker 4: It's like Bill Paxson in Titanic. He needed that reminder

576
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:14,320
Speaker 4: from the old lady, like you're all pumped up looking

577
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:15,200
Speaker 4: for this jewel.

578
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:17,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, people died. People die here man.

579
00:31:17,600 --> 00:31:22,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's get it together, Paxixton rip. Yeah, that was

580
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:24,920
Speaker 1: so jarring when you told me that that first time

581
00:31:25,720 --> 00:31:26,560
Speaker 1: few months back.

582
00:31:27,240 --> 00:31:28,440
Speaker 3: Did I break you that news?

583
00:31:28,720 --> 00:31:30,000
Speaker 1: You did? You broke it hard.

584
00:31:31,640 --> 00:31:34,840
Speaker 4: So according to this legend, as far as the al

585
00:31:34,880 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 4: Mountains go, there was this ghost train, like you said,

586
00:31:37,720 --> 00:31:40,440
Speaker 4: and it was a freight train loaded with all kinds

587
00:31:40,480 --> 00:31:44,840
Speaker 4: of valuables, artwork, jewels, gold boyyon, bars of gold, and

588
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:47,320
Speaker 4: that they drove that thing in this thing and it

589
00:31:47,360 --> 00:31:52,040
Speaker 4: never came out in those tunnels. And the other part

590
00:31:52,040 --> 00:31:55,760
Speaker 4: of this story that is rooted in fact is there

591
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:59,000
Speaker 4: were Nazi trains that carried tons and tons of gold

592
00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:02,680
Speaker 4: and v and jewelry and paintings. That was one in

593
00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:05,880
Speaker 4: particular called the Hungarian Gold Train that was intercepted by

594
00:32:05,920 --> 00:32:09,960
Speaker 4: Allied forces in nineteen forty five. So you got a

595
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:13,280
Speaker 4: real train that happened. You've got these real tunnels that

596
00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:15,960
Speaker 4: were dug and all of a sudden, this rumor of

597
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:17,120
Speaker 4: the ghost train takes route.

598
00:32:17,360 --> 00:32:21,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, the idea that those two things have come together

599
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:22,040
Speaker 1: in the Owl Mountains.

600
00:32:22,080 --> 00:32:22,280
Speaker 3: Though.

601
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:24,760
Speaker 1: That's the thing that's never been shown.

602
00:32:24,560 --> 00:32:27,400
Speaker 3: To be true, that's right, And not from a lack

603
00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:28,160
Speaker 3: of looking.

604
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:29,880
Speaker 1: No, not at all. No, there's a lot of people

605
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:35,320
Speaker 1: looking for that there. This one's actually my favorite, weirdly,

606
00:32:35,920 --> 00:32:39,320
Speaker 1: probably because it's a shipwreck. I'm just so fascinated by shipwrecks.

607
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:42,960
Speaker 1: So the ship I'm talking about is called the SS Minden,

608
00:32:43,080 --> 00:32:46,440
Speaker 1: and it was a German merchant vessel and back in

609
00:32:46,520 --> 00:32:50,680
Speaker 1: I think nineteen thirty nine, it was disabled by the

610
00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 1: British Royal Navy off of the coast of Iceland, right.

611
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:58,640
Speaker 1: And what's so mysterious about this is that the Minden's

612
00:32:59,040 --> 00:33:04,240
Speaker 1: ship register shows that it was just carrying resin from Brazil.

613
00:33:04,560 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 1: I didn't see what kind of resin, but you can

614
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:08,320
Speaker 1: do all sorts of industrial stuff with the resin, from

615
00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:13,120
Speaker 1: making adhesives to plastics to whatever, and then that was it. Right.

616
00:33:13,520 --> 00:33:15,400
Speaker 1: But the thing that makes the sinking of the men

617
00:33:15,520 --> 00:33:19,040
Speaker 1: In some mysterious is that the ship's captain, rather than

618
00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:23,239
Speaker 1: let it fall into British hands, sunk it himself. And

619
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:26,000
Speaker 1: he sunk it in seventy seven hundred feet of water

620
00:33:26,080 --> 00:33:30,200
Speaker 1: off the icelandic coast and that's where it lay undiscovered

621
00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:33,960
Speaker 1: until I believe twenty seventeen when a mysterious ship showed

622
00:33:34,040 --> 00:33:37,720
Speaker 1: up and started looking around the Icelandic coast and it

623
00:33:37,760 --> 00:33:38,920
Speaker 1: believes that it found it.

624
00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:42,400
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a little odd to sink

625
00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:46,560
Speaker 4: a ship full of resin only right. It raises a

626
00:33:46,600 --> 00:33:48,400
Speaker 4: little bit of suspicion, like you said, even though you

627
00:33:48,400 --> 00:33:50,880
Speaker 4: can do some things with it. It kind of stuck out

628
00:33:50,880 --> 00:33:52,760
Speaker 4: to me as like what else is on that boat?

629
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:56,080
Speaker 4: But yeah, in twenty seventeen, the Coast Guard and Iceland

630
00:33:56,760 --> 00:34:00,160
Speaker 4: bordered a vessel of the seabed construct Or.

631
00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:03,800
Speaker 1: It's like an unnervingly bland name.

632
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:05,280
Speaker 3: It's so boring.

633
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:08,880
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not like the Well, now I can't all

634
00:34:08,920 --> 00:34:09,960
Speaker 4: boat names are kind of dumb.

635
00:34:10,040 --> 00:34:14,000
Speaker 1: The Hercules of the sea, that's what I would name

636
00:34:14,040 --> 00:34:14,640
Speaker 1: in my boat.

637
00:34:15,360 --> 00:34:15,760
Speaker 3: Yeah.

638
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:16,120
Speaker 1: Sure.

639
00:34:18,560 --> 00:34:21,200
Speaker 4: So they intercepted it. They said, hey, what are you

640
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:25,359
Speaker 4: guys doing here? And they said, oh, well, this boat

641
00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:28,359
Speaker 4: has been leased by a group of British folks who

642
00:34:28,440 --> 00:34:30,760
Speaker 4: are searching for the wreck of the s S. Mendon

643
00:34:31,719 --> 00:34:37,320
Speaker 4: And they were like what They're like, haven't you heard

644
00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:40,000
Speaker 4: that that was just full of resin? And they said

645
00:34:40,280 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 4: clearly not, because we're spending one hundred thousand dollars a

646
00:34:43,120 --> 00:34:45,799
Speaker 4: day to lease this boat, which frankly is not that

647
00:34:45,840 --> 00:34:47,480
Speaker 4: great of a deal, but we couldn't talk them down

648
00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:50,719
Speaker 4: any So that I mean, if someone is spending one

649
00:34:50,760 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 4: hundred thousand dollars a day, that means that makes me

650
00:34:53,200 --> 00:34:54,560
Speaker 4: think they know something that we don't know.

651
00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:58,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so the Icelandic press actually reported that they

652
00:34:59,040 --> 00:35:01,799
Speaker 1: think that the you know something we don't know, so

653
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:04,319
Speaker 1: much so that they interviewed the crew, and the crew

654
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:07,440
Speaker 1: said the official story is that they're looking for a

655
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:10,240
Speaker 1: couple hundred million dollars worth of gold that they believe

656
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:13,759
Speaker 1: was hidden in the safe on that ship, but that

657
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:16,799
Speaker 1: the real story, the real prize for what they're looking for,

658
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:20,360
Speaker 1: is only known to a handful of people, high ranking

659
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:23,960
Speaker 1: people on the boat. Yeah, that man left at that

660
00:35:24,320 --> 00:35:27,960
Speaker 1: which man the Icelandic press knows how to spin a mystery,

661
00:35:27,960 --> 00:35:28,640
Speaker 1: if you ask me.

662
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:31,840
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that really added this extra air of

663
00:35:31,880 --> 00:35:34,800
Speaker 4: mystery on top of everything else, which is, oh, sure

664
00:35:34,920 --> 00:35:37,800
Speaker 4: we think there's one hundred million dollars plus in gold,

665
00:35:38,480 --> 00:35:40,760
Speaker 4: but we're really there for another secret reason.

666
00:35:41,040 --> 00:35:44,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, if a hundred million dollars worth of gold is

667
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:48,920
Speaker 1: your decoy cover story? Man, You're onto something impressive. I

668
00:35:48,960 --> 00:35:51,000
Speaker 1: can't wait until they raised that thing, because from what

669
00:35:51,040 --> 00:35:54,680
Speaker 1: I could tell, everything everything pointed to the fact that

670
00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:57,400
Speaker 1: they did successfully find the Minden. That that is the

671
00:35:57,400 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: minden they found. But as far as I know, they

672
00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:01,600
Speaker 1: have an gone down and salvage.

673
00:36:01,600 --> 00:36:04,279
Speaker 3: Did it all get James Cameron on it?

674
00:36:04,440 --> 00:36:06,840
Speaker 1: Who knows? Maybe I mean the Amber Room was sunk

675
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:08,880
Speaker 1: and maybe it happened to be on the SS Minden,

676
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:10,839
Speaker 1: So maybe we'll have the Amber Room back in the

677
00:36:10,840 --> 00:36:16,920
Speaker 1: next ten years. Well, hey man, you said today's magic

678
00:36:17,120 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 1: second ad break word James Cameron, which means we're now

679
00:36:21,560 --> 00:36:24,120
Speaker 1: obligated to take our second message break Do you want

680
00:36:24,160 --> 00:36:26,960
Speaker 1: to take it now or shall we have taken it

681
00:36:27,000 --> 00:36:27,880
Speaker 1: three minutes ago?

682
00:36:28,360 --> 00:36:29,200
Speaker 3: No, let's take it now.

683
00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:32,319
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll be right back. Everybody want to learn about

684
00:36:32,360 --> 00:36:34,200
Speaker 1: a terror's art and college lad Actel, how to take

685
00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:36,399
Speaker 1: a perfect boom, all about fractalk is gone.

686
00:36:36,480 --> 00:36:37,440
Speaker 3: That's another hunt the.

687
00:36:39,680 --> 00:36:42,959
Speaker 2: Everything should know.

688
00:36:45,840 --> 00:37:00,239
Speaker 1: Word up, Jerry. All right, Chuck. So there's places where

689
00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:04,000
Speaker 1: you can physically go to search for legendary gold. You

690
00:37:04,040 --> 00:37:08,040
Speaker 1: can also just enter the international gold trade and you

691
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:12,560
Speaker 1: can turn up alarmingly Nazi gold that was kind of

692
00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:15,880
Speaker 1: lost you could put it after the war.

693
00:37:17,040 --> 00:37:20,440
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is really interesting. In nineteen forty six, as

694
00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:24,440
Speaker 4: part of reconstruction and restoration all over Europe, there was

695
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:29,960
Speaker 4: a committee for him called the Tripartite Gold Commission or

696
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:34,799
Speaker 4: the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold. And

697
00:37:34,840 --> 00:37:38,120
Speaker 4: this is formed by the US, by the French, and

698
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:41,799
Speaker 4: by the Brits, and basically the whole jam here was,

699
00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:45,040
Speaker 4: let's find all this gold, let's account for all this

700
00:37:45,200 --> 00:37:49,839
Speaker 4: gold that we discovered as allies, and then let's redistribute

701
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:52,759
Speaker 4: it back to where we if we can trace it

702
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:56,759
Speaker 4: such to where it was looted, to the banks and

703
00:37:56,800 --> 00:38:00,640
Speaker 4: central banks, and even if we can find out human individuals,

704
00:38:00,920 --> 00:38:01,960
Speaker 4: that would be even better.

705
00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:05,640
Speaker 1: And it was strictly to I believe, strictly to the

706
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:09,200
Speaker 1: European central banks that had a claim to have it

707
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:12,120
Speaker 1: having been looted from after the war. And then in

708
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:15,880
Speaker 1: the late nineties there was a real push to try

709
00:38:15,920 --> 00:38:21,520
Speaker 1: to compensate the survivors and the heirs of the Holocaust

710
00:38:21,880 --> 00:38:25,360
Speaker 1: who also had been robbed too. So a lot of

711
00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:28,759
Speaker 1: gold that some countries still had claim on as part

712
00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:33,000
Speaker 1: of this London Conference on Nazi Gold that was held

713
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:36,560
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety seven. Some of the countries that said, well,

714
00:38:37,120 --> 00:38:39,439
Speaker 1: actually we're still owed a lot of this gold. They said, okay,

715
00:38:39,480 --> 00:38:41,800
Speaker 1: well we'll take a portion of this gold and divert

716
00:38:41,840 --> 00:38:47,080
Speaker 1: it to humanitarian groups who will use it to for

717
00:38:47,239 --> 00:38:51,320
Speaker 1: reparations to Holocaust victims, which is pretty cool. The big

718
00:38:51,360 --> 00:38:55,480
Speaker 1: outlier in this was a little tiny country that remained

719
00:38:55,560 --> 00:39:00,160
Speaker 1: neutral during World War Two, at least on paper, Switzerland,

720
00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:03,160
Speaker 1: who not only it turns out, was secretly assisting the

721
00:39:03,239 --> 00:39:07,239
Speaker 1: Nazis and laundering their gold in exchange for money that

722
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:09,640
Speaker 1: the Nazis could go use to fund its war machine.

723
00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:13,200
Speaker 1: They hung on to this Nazi gold and from what

724
00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:16,600
Speaker 1: I can tell, still have all of the Nazi gold

725
00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:21,759
Speaker 1: that they had after World War Two, including gold that

726
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:25,840
Speaker 1: was made from that zon gold melted down, personal effects,

727
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:29,560
Speaker 1: and gold teeth that Switzerland apparently still has in its

728
00:39:29,600 --> 00:39:31,920
Speaker 1: gold reserves and is not willing to give up.

729
00:39:32,640 --> 00:39:34,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was really surprising.

730
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:36,600
Speaker 4: This all came out because of a historical paper that

731
00:39:36,640 --> 00:39:39,960
Speaker 4: was part of that conference. It showed that the US

732
00:39:40,160 --> 00:39:43,919
Speaker 4: had a lot of this gold that they melted down

733
00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:46,280
Speaker 4: after the war and did return to the central banks

734
00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:49,239
Speaker 4: in Europe as part of an effort to stabilize their

735
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:53,799
Speaker 4: economy there. But finding out that Switzerland did this, and

736
00:39:53,840 --> 00:39:58,640
Speaker 4: that Switzerland was neutral, and that the Geneva Convention, which

737
00:39:58,719 --> 00:40:02,200
Speaker 4: explicitly bars this kind of thing, comes from Geneva, Switzerland, right,

738
00:40:02,880 --> 00:40:06,759
Speaker 4: is like the ultimate irony here, and it's I just

739
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:08,399
Speaker 4: want to know if there's more to this. There's got

740
00:40:08,440 --> 00:40:09,080
Speaker 4: to be something else.

741
00:40:09,160 --> 00:40:10,920
Speaker 3: Right. They're good people.

742
00:40:11,960 --> 00:40:17,200
Speaker 1: Sure, but I mean countries do bad things for sure,

743
00:40:17,280 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 1: you know, even if there are good people that live there,

744
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:23,279
Speaker 1: there's I mean, from everything I could tell, it came

745
00:40:23,320 --> 00:40:26,200
Speaker 1: out in the nineties that it was pretty clear Switzerland

746
00:40:26,200 --> 00:40:30,120
Speaker 1: had served as money launderers for the Nazis without anybody

747
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:31,360
Speaker 1: realizing it for decades.

748
00:40:31,880 --> 00:40:32,280
Speaker 3: Wow.

749
00:40:32,440 --> 00:40:36,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is pretty shocking, for sure. I think the

750
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:40,440
Speaker 1: thing that gets me though, is the idea that there's

751
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:45,000
Speaker 1: a lot of gold in the international gold trade today

752
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:49,120
Speaker 1: that can be traced back to missing Nazi gold, that

753
00:40:49,160 --> 00:40:53,280
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily buried in the side of a mountain

754
00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:56,840
Speaker 1: in Poland or under a small town along the German

755
00:40:56,880 --> 00:41:00,759
Speaker 1: Czech border. That's it's out and about being used as

756
00:41:00,840 --> 00:41:06,320
Speaker 1: currency or as a commodity today in the international gold trade.

757
00:41:06,400 --> 00:41:08,719
Speaker 1: That to me is the most astounding part of all

758
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:09,040
Speaker 1: of this.

759
00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:11,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, how do you trace gold?

760
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:14,520
Speaker 1: They have a very strict system for it, but it's

761
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:18,840
Speaker 1: only as strict as how it's observed. Oh okay, So, like,

762
00:41:18,960 --> 00:41:22,200
Speaker 1: for example, in twenty nineteen, the Simon Weisenthal Center, which

763
00:41:22,719 --> 00:41:24,879
Speaker 1: has spent a lot of time hunting down Nazi war

764
00:41:24,920 --> 00:41:29,400
Speaker 1: criminals in the I think starting in the sixties, seventies

765
00:41:29,440 --> 00:41:37,440
Speaker 1: and eighties, they accused Venezuela and specifically the administration of

766
00:41:37,560 --> 00:41:43,400
Speaker 1: Nicholas Maduro of trafficking in Nazi gold that he sold

767
00:41:43,440 --> 00:41:46,759
Speaker 1: over the course of his administration so far something like

768
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:49,759
Speaker 1: seventy seven tons of gold. And they're like, you know what,

769
00:41:50,520 --> 00:41:53,560
Speaker 1: we're pretty sure that that was Nazi gold that was

770
00:41:53,600 --> 00:41:57,680
Speaker 1: transferred late in the war to Spain and then on

771
00:41:57,920 --> 00:42:01,880
Speaker 1: to South America to help fund a fourth Reich, a

772
00:42:02,000 --> 00:42:05,959
Speaker 1: rebuilding of the Nazi regime among the war criminals living there,

773
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:08,920
Speaker 1: And they think that this was some of that gold,

774
00:42:09,200 --> 00:42:11,080
Speaker 1: and that Maduro has been selling it to kind of

775
00:42:11,080 --> 00:42:16,440
Speaker 1: bankroll his his country and his his his regime. Wow,

776
00:42:17,040 --> 00:42:19,920
Speaker 1: isn't that nuts? It is nuts?

777
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:21,000
Speaker 3: Is nuts?

778
00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:25,319
Speaker 1: Yeah? It is absolutely the Like I can't remember how

779
00:42:25,320 --> 00:42:26,680
Speaker 1: I came across as I think it was a house

780
00:42:26,680 --> 00:42:28,920
Speaker 1: stuff works article. There's a couple on them, and it

781
00:42:29,040 --> 00:42:31,919
Speaker 1: just started digging further and further, and it's just one

782
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:34,279
Speaker 1: of those things where it's it just takes such a

783
00:42:34,320 --> 00:42:38,560
Speaker 1: great left turn, great meaning like just surprising and unexpected,

784
00:42:38,800 --> 00:42:41,560
Speaker 1: where it's like, you know, you're going from treasure hunters

785
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:44,919
Speaker 1: arguing and kicking one another out of little towns and

786
00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:49,560
Speaker 1: and kicking around mountains in Poland to the international gold

787
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:53,520
Speaker 1: trade trafficking and Nazi gold. Still it's it's just just

788
00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:55,440
Speaker 1: a crazy story.

789
00:42:56,040 --> 00:42:58,480
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's pretty mind blowing and disappointing in a

790
00:42:58,520 --> 00:42:59,000
Speaker 4: lot of ways.

791
00:42:59,160 --> 00:43:02,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, because again, remember a lot of that gold,

792
00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:04,680
Speaker 1: those gold bars are melted down gold teeth taken from

793
00:43:04,760 --> 00:43:08,400
Speaker 1: Holocaust victims or gold wedding rings taken from Holocaust victims,

794
00:43:08,400 --> 00:43:12,840
Speaker 1: and now they're used to as part of an international

795
00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:13,880
Speaker 1: form of currency.

796
00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:16,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, boo boo.

797
00:43:17,719 --> 00:43:19,200
Speaker 1: Well that's it. You got anything else?

798
00:43:19,760 --> 00:43:20,479
Speaker 3: Got nothing else?

799
00:43:20,640 --> 00:43:23,759
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about Nazi gold, there's

800
00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:26,279
Speaker 1: a lot you can read. It's quite a rabbit hole

801
00:43:26,360 --> 00:43:29,319
Speaker 1: you can go down if you want to, So you

802
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:32,200
Speaker 1: could start by going to HowStuffWorks dot com. And checking

803
00:43:32,200 --> 00:43:34,520
Speaker 1: out their articles on it. And since I said how

804
00:43:34,560 --> 00:43:36,799
Speaker 1: stuff works, it's been a while, that means it's time

805
00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 1: for a listener may all.

806
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:40,319
Speaker 3: That's right.

807
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:44,240
Speaker 4: I was thinking that would be a good movie about

808
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:48,080
Speaker 4: World War two era Nazi gold hunters. But it's sort

809
00:43:48,120 --> 00:43:49,520
Speaker 4: of like Three Kings already did that.

810
00:43:49,640 --> 00:43:50,560
Speaker 3: But that was a Gulf War.

811
00:43:51,560 --> 00:43:55,439
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then also there was that one museum men.

812
00:43:56,160 --> 00:43:58,879
Speaker 1: I think they were brought into kind of make sure

813
00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:00,840
Speaker 1: that the paintings that were looted we're not.

814
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:03,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, sure, whatever. I didn't see that. What was

815
00:44:03,080 --> 00:44:04,799
Speaker 3: it called? It wouldn't call museum and what was it?

816
00:44:04,880 --> 00:44:06,280
Speaker 1: Almost positive of his museum?

817
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:08,080
Speaker 3: Man? Was it? Whill you look that up? While I

818
00:44:08,120 --> 00:44:11,040
Speaker 3: read listener? Real? All right, because that's a terrible name.

819
00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:12,839
Speaker 1: I agree, I'm going to call this.

820
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:17,399
Speaker 4: We cited someone that we probably shouldn't have cited, and

821
00:44:17,440 --> 00:44:20,279
Speaker 4: this is from anonymous. Hey, guys, really enjoyed this show

822
00:44:20,280 --> 00:44:23,560
Speaker 4: this week. On universal Basic income, just a heads up,

823
00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:28,600
Speaker 4: you cited the conservative economist Charles Murray and his justifications

824
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:32,200
Speaker 4: for introducing UBI to the American economy. I'm sure you

825
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:34,560
Speaker 4: didn't realize this, but Murray is a particular favorite of

826
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:38,680
Speaker 4: white supremacist, oh Boy, for his views on genetics and

827
00:44:38,760 --> 00:44:42,560
Speaker 4: their contribution to social inequality between whites and people of color.

828
00:44:43,120 --> 00:44:44,600
Speaker 4: He has a book called the Bell Curve that is

829
00:44:44,640 --> 00:44:47,759
Speaker 4: often cited as a data proven evidence for white supremacy.

830
00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:51,040
Speaker 4: It's also largely been debunked as pseudoscience.

831
00:44:52,239 --> 00:44:52,520
Speaker 3: Wow.

832
00:44:52,560 --> 00:44:55,239
Speaker 4: He links to a Southern poverty law center's write up

833
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:58,719
Speaker 4: for our own reference, and he says, I will no

834
00:44:58,719 --> 00:44:59,520
Speaker 4: doubt keep on listening.

835
00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:01,040
Speaker 3: Guys. I'm sure it was unintentional.

836
00:45:01,080 --> 00:45:04,680
Speaker 4: Please take more care though in curating your sources, especially

837
00:45:04,760 --> 00:45:07,239
Speaker 4: if it might throw your narrative for a loop. And

838
00:45:07,280 --> 00:45:10,879
Speaker 4: that is from anonymous, and boy, Anonymous, you were right.

839
00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:13,560
Speaker 4: We had no idea, should have done a little bit

840
00:45:13,560 --> 00:45:17,040
Speaker 4: more digging there. So please everyone realize, and anyone that

841
00:45:17,040 --> 00:45:19,880
Speaker 4: listens to the show probably realizes we certainly did not

842
00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:22,560
Speaker 4: mean for that to be the case when we cited

843
00:45:22,680 --> 00:45:23,320
Speaker 4: mister Murray.

844
00:45:23,560 --> 00:45:26,440
Speaker 1: Now, we kind of biffed that one big time. No

845
00:45:26,520 --> 00:45:29,200
Speaker 1: offense intended. Hopefully you didn't take it, and thank you

846
00:45:29,239 --> 00:45:34,640
Speaker 1: for a very measured and level and even handed correction.

847
00:45:34,880 --> 00:45:36,280
Speaker 3: That's right, it was very kind.

848
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:39,040
Speaker 1: And by the way, Chuck, it's monuments men.

849
00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:42,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, I knew there's something about it that didn't sound right.

850
00:45:42,600 --> 00:45:45,520
Speaker 1: But there is a show called museum Men that's been

851
00:45:45,520 --> 00:45:46,880
Speaker 1: on since twenty fourteen.

852
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:49,879
Speaker 3: But they act sexy, do sense?

853
00:45:50,200 --> 00:45:56,480
Speaker 1: They kind of They make displays for museums. They're craftsmen,

854
00:45:56,880 --> 00:46:02,160
Speaker 1: craft people. Okay, okay, so museum men monuments men, two

855
00:46:02,160 --> 00:46:05,400
Speaker 1: different things, that's right. And if you want to get

856
00:46:05,440 --> 00:46:08,560
Speaker 1: in touch with us, you can join us on the internet.

857
00:46:08,760 --> 00:46:11,040
Speaker 1: Send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on

858
00:46:11,080 --> 00:46:13,719
Speaker 1: the bottom, and send it off to stuff podcast at

859
00:46:13,719 --> 00:46:17,680
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com.

860
00:46:18,520 --> 00:46:20,839
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

861
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:24,520
Speaker 4: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

862
00:46:24,719 --> 00:46:27,640
Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.