Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there,
Speaker 1: Jerry somewhere. We lost her. I think she wandered off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is stuff you should know, regardless the Lost
Speaker 1: Nazi Gold edition, the Legend of Curly's Gold. If Curly
Speaker 1: was a white nationalist, well, who's to say it wasn't.
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't know. He Jack Palance seems like
Speaker 1: the kind who would have beat up white nationalists for fun,
Speaker 1: as like a hobby, you know what I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we we can't get into the super ins
Speaker 1: and outs, but as you know, my brother worked on
Speaker 1: the Legend of Curly's Gold and Jack Jack Vallence was
Speaker 1: a tough s o b Yeah. I hear. He used
Speaker 1: to do shots of nails. Yeah. I mean, he wasn't
Speaker 1: a jerk. I wouldn't say, but it just sounded like
Speaker 1: he was just sort of a a very cantankerous old
Speaker 1: fella to work with. That's so funny, man, because I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're at the end of the day, he's an actor.
Speaker 1: It's not like you you welld machine guns or something
Speaker 1: like that. Give me a break. You're an actor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like Clint Eatwood is not really tough. Well, actually that's
Speaker 1: not true, is he. Oh sure, probably he's got he's
Speaker 1: got to be at the very least, he's been acting
Speaker 1: like it's so long he's developed. Yeah. Yeah, it's probably
Speaker 1: like a callous you know what I mean, where it's
Speaker 1: just kind of forms and stays like callous. It's the
Speaker 1: callousness of toughness that an actor will form. I don't
Speaker 1: think Clint Eastwood winds about a hang nail. Let's just
Speaker 1: say that, like like we do, would be pretty disappointing.
Speaker 1: I actually was whining about a hang nailed to myself
Speaker 1: the other day. Of course, but I'm not an actor.
Speaker 1: I'm a podcaster. No, we have a TV show that
Speaker 1: proves that I'm speaking for both of us. Ouch. I
Speaker 1: thought I did some good work. I thought you did
Speaker 1: a better job than night. And actually I think we
Speaker 1: both did a much better job than you remember. All Right, So, um,
Speaker 1: if you hate Nazis and you're like it's been a
Speaker 1: while since I was given a reason to hate Nazis,
Speaker 1: a new one, uh, rejoice, because we're about to give
Speaker 1: you another one. At least I didn't really realize this
Speaker 1: to this extent, did you. You know? I knew about
Speaker 1: Nazi gold and that they took things, but I didn't
Speaker 1: know that it was almost one big people killing and
Speaker 1: world robbing operation. Yeah, that's the thing. That's the new
Speaker 1: thing to hate them for. Not only were they murderers,
Speaker 1: they were also just common thieves as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: thieves on one of the greatest scales anyone's ever seen,
Speaker 1: but thieves nonetheless. Um an exceptional thief. Who was that
Speaker 1: Michael Caine, no die Hard, They called him a common thief,
Speaker 1: and he goes, exceptional thief, right, Rodney, you imagine. Oh,
Speaker 1: I can't wait till technology gets like advanced enough that
Speaker 1: you can just insert whoever into whatever character and they'll
Speaker 1: say the same lines and everything. Uh, that'd be great.
Speaker 1: That's the first one I'm doing, is Rodney Deserfield is
Speaker 1: Hans Gruber. He would have been wonderful. That scene where
Speaker 1: he uh, he's fooling him into thinking he was one
Speaker 1: of the party goers and he goes, what's your name?
Speaker 1: It's Bill Clay, That's what it is. Don't shoot me.
Speaker 1: Come on, nobody shoots me, I got no respect. That's
Speaker 1: pretty good, Pretty good, okay. So, um, the Nazis were thieves,
Speaker 1: not just because they looted and plundered like the countries
Speaker 1: that they occupied, but that they did it because they
Speaker 1: were broke to start off with. That's what truly makes
Speaker 1: them thieve s o b s. Is that their whole jam,
Speaker 1: this whole war, World War that they started, they didn't
Speaker 1: have the resources financially or industrially to actually carry out
Speaker 1: this war. They had to go steal to fund their
Speaker 1: role in World War two, which they started. That's right,
Speaker 1: they you point out here you put this together good
Speaker 1: stuff than that. In nineteen three they had hyper inflation
Speaker 1: such that in November of that year it cost eighty
Speaker 1: billion marks to buy a loaf of bread. Is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: which sounds like a lot on its own, but if
Speaker 1: you consider that earlier that year, in January, a loaf
Speaker 1: of bread costs two d and fifty marks. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the price of bread went from two hundred fifty marks
Speaker 1: to eighty billion marks in less than a year. But
Speaker 1: isn't that just a way of saying that nobody bought bread? No,
Speaker 1: it meant it's a way of saying that their money
Speaker 1: was totally worthless. Remember it happened in Zimbabwe. I can't
Speaker 1: remember what episode it was, maybe how much money is
Speaker 1: there in the world. We talked about hyper inflation that
Speaker 1: was staggering, it was stagreeing. And the same thing happened
Speaker 1: in the Weimar Republic. And this is the state of
Speaker 1: the German economy that the Nazis rose to power and
Speaker 1: because you know, that's one of the reasons they were
Speaker 1: able to rise to power and fascism was able to
Speaker 1: take over because the country and the economy was in
Speaker 1: such dire straits that this idea of like, hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: get in line behind this guy, because he's going to
Speaker 1: lead us out of it. That's how That's essentially one
Speaker 1: way that Hitler and the Nazis were able to rise
Speaker 1: to power. But that also means that he inherited a
Speaker 1: terrible economy and he had to figure out what to do.
Speaker 1: Not only a terrible economy took but they Germany lacks
Speaker 1: natural resources that you would need to fund to to
Speaker 1: start a war machine too. Yeah, they they have no oil. No,
Speaker 1: they don't have mineral deposits that you can make really
Speaker 1: fine metals out of. They've got saur kraud, they have sour.
Speaker 1: They have a lot of beer too, and there to
Speaker 1: their credit. But you know, if that's all you got,
Speaker 1: you need more to fight a war with. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: what happened was they um. They had what was called
Speaker 1: the reichs Mark, which was the monetary unit of the
Speaker 1: Third Reich. And there were five neutral countries that declare
Speaker 1: during World War two like we're not going to trade
Speaker 1: in reiks Marks. So Hitler and Germany said, well, you
Speaker 1: know what's always valuable anywhere is gold, and let's start
Speaker 1: taking it from anywhere and everywhere we can get it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and gold in particular, it's what's called um, a very
Speaker 1: fungible commodity, Like you can you can trade just about
Speaker 1: anything for gold. Right. If you have gold, people will
Speaker 1: give you whatever you want. You can use to buy oil,
Speaker 1: you can use it buy guns, you can use it
Speaker 1: to fund terrorism, you can use it to back your
Speaker 1: own currency. There's a lot of stuff you can do
Speaker 1: with gold. But in particular in World War two, if
Speaker 1: you were the third the Nazi regime, you needed to
Speaker 1: use gold because these neutral countries couldn't accept reich marks
Speaker 1: by agreement. But also the Reich reichs Marks were worthless anyway,
Speaker 1: so if you wanted to buy a bunch of guns,
Speaker 1: you needed some gold. And because Germany at the time
Speaker 1: only had about twenty five tons of gold in its reserves,
Speaker 1: which sounds like a lot, but as we'll see, is
Speaker 1: a paltry amount of gold compared to what they looted
Speaker 1: and pillaged and took. Um, they needed some golden. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they started looting it. And the first place they turned
Speaker 1: chuck was Austria. Yeah, how much gold did you say
Speaker 1: they had? They had five metric from what I understand,
Speaker 1: twenty five metric tons of gold in the reserve Germany
Speaker 1: did at the outset of um World War two. All right, well,
Speaker 1: this will drive home how much that is. They looted
Speaker 1: fifteen tons just ten tons less from the citizens Jewish
Speaker 1: citizens a Vienna, Austria, from from the capital city only.
Speaker 1: They looted fifteen tons of gold from Jewish citizens, just citizens,
Speaker 1: like you said, oh yeah, and that's um, those are
Speaker 1: just people. So the Central Bank of Austria they got
Speaker 1: a hundred tons of gold, so right there, four times
Speaker 1: what they had in reserve. And then they said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know that six tons of gold that you're trying
Speaker 1: to send away to England to keep safe from us.
Speaker 1: We're bring that back here to we want that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did so just from Austria alone, they got a
Speaker 1: hundred and uh what twenty one tons, yes, to add
Speaker 1: to their existing twenty five tons. It was a huge deal.
Speaker 1: That kicks started the Nazi war machine into high gear.
Speaker 1: It was a big coup. Austria wasn't expecting it. No
Speaker 1: one was expecting it, and so other countries in Europe
Speaker 1: suddenly like gulped and they were like, we need to
Speaker 1: we needed to take this as advanced warning. Basically, we
Speaker 1: don't want to become like Austria. And they triggered chuck
Speaker 1: the largest physical transfer of wealth that the the world,
Speaker 1: the planet has ever seen. Yeah, because I didn't know this,
Speaker 1: And it's kind of cool that, um, you know, countries
Speaker 1: that are are friendly to one another will help each
Speaker 1: other out like this. You can say, hey us, you've
Speaker 1: got Fort Knox there. I've heard that's a pretty safe
Speaker 1: place to keep gold. Um where England? So can we
Speaker 1: send you a bunch of that to keep for us?
Speaker 1: And just you know, uh, we'll make a receipt out
Speaker 1: so we know how much there is and you promised
Speaker 1: not to spend any of it. And the the US
Speaker 1: and Canada UM early on at least did things like this.
Speaker 1: They accepted huge gold shipments. There was a operation in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty called Project Fish where the UK was sending
Speaker 1: or Britain was sending fift hundred metric metric tons of
Speaker 1: gold UH to the US to store in Fort Knox. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in two thousand nineteen dollars. The amount that they
Speaker 1: sent on slow boats through the Atlantic, which by the way,
Speaker 1: we're infested with U boats by ninety was worth a
Speaker 1: hundred and sixties six billion dollars in today's dollars. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not one of those ships was sunk astoundingly and that
Speaker 1: nuts we so UM they they sent so Britain sent
Speaker 1: that metric tons. Russia They're like, we're just gonna take
Speaker 1: care of ourselves. They evacuated a bunch of stuff from
Speaker 1: UM their stockpiles. They sent twenty eight hundred tons of
Speaker 1: gold from its banks to a location in the Ural
Speaker 1: Mountains for safe keeping. They also sent two other national
Speaker 1: treasures to the embalmed corpse of Nikolai Lennon and UM
Speaker 1: artwork from the Hermitage Museum those three, those were the
Speaker 1: three things they prized the most too, to transferred by
Speaker 1: train to the Ural mountains to stash until the war
Speaker 1: was over. So all told, if you want to add
Speaker 1: it up, during the course of World War two, the
Speaker 1: Nazis stole at least that we know of four hundred
Speaker 1: million American dollars in gold from countries they occupied, and
Speaker 1: another hundred and forty million dollars in gold from people,
Speaker 1: largely Um Jewish people, from their homes, people that it
Speaker 1: were imprisoned in concentration camps. They stole. It was a
Speaker 1: very meticulous thing that they did. They would raid their homes.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't just round people up, They would go to
Speaker 1: their safety deposit boxes. They would rip their dental fillings
Speaker 1: out of their teeth, such that it even got the
Speaker 1: name tooth golds on gold Um and not that. Didn't
Speaker 1: you know, that covered everything that they stole from people,
Speaker 1: not just the gold from teeth. That covered people's wedding
Speaker 1: rings and their jewelry and their parts of eyeglasses and
Speaker 1: other things like that. It's just unbelievable how much gold
Speaker 1: they looted from concentration camp victims. Yeah, especially when you
Speaker 1: step back and look at it like that Germany really
Speaker 1: needed the money, the Third Reich needed the money. They
Speaker 1: were just robbing, robbing and murdering, that's what they were doing.
Speaker 1: You know. It really kind of puts it into perspective more.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Nazis were the worst, dude, and still are.
Speaker 1: Nazis are the worst. So most of that gold that
Speaker 1: was stolen um from occupied countries. UM. I didn't see
Speaker 1: how many tons it was, but what'd you say? Generally
Speaker 1: the figure I've seen is about five six hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars in nineteen forties dollars um stolen, and most of
Speaker 1: it was put into the reichs Bank, which is Germany's
Speaker 1: central bank. UM kind of like it's federal reserve, and
Speaker 1: there are different branches throughout the country, and you know,
Speaker 1: the gold was kind of distributed here there, but um,
Speaker 1: as as the war kind of moved on, it was
Speaker 1: moved more and more into the central reichs Bank in
Speaker 1: Berlin until ninety and there was a bombing raid on
Speaker 1: Berlin on Germany and they said, we need to get
Speaker 1: this gold out of here and into secret locations. And
Speaker 1: so the gold from the reichs Bank UM hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions today, billions and billions worth of dollars worth of
Speaker 1: gold was moved to places where no one had any idea,
Speaker 1: secret locations that weren't banks in Germany. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: would set off um. I mean people are still looking
Speaker 1: for Nazi gold today, and and not just walking around
Speaker 1: with the metal detector, but people are some people are
Speaker 1: putting a lot of money into looking for Nazi gold.
Speaker 1: And one of the big reasons is a like you
Speaker 1: just said, they we know that they moved it at
Speaker 1: some point and be in April, there were some military
Speaker 1: police uh patrolling around the town of Merkers. They questioned
Speaker 1: a couple of French women who had been displaced and
Speaker 1: they said in French, I would imagine that they saw
Speaker 1: gold being stored in a potest mine near the town,
Speaker 1: and the piece said soccer blue, I mean holy Cow.
Speaker 1: And the army investigates this and they found the us
Speaker 1: It's famous now the Mrkers Mind Treasure, which was a
Speaker 1: horde of gold that was a room covered in seven
Speaker 1: thousand marked bags of gold coins, gold bars, gold jewelry
Speaker 1: valued at about two hundred and thirty eight million dollars.
Speaker 1: So this was a signal to everyone like wow, the
Speaker 1: legend of Curly's gold is real. Yeah, yeah, because this
Speaker 1: is only about half the money. So uh, let's let's
Speaker 1: get our metal detectors out. Yeah. I mean, this idea
Speaker 1: that the Nazis hid gold in mine chats are all
Speaker 1: sorts of different places was proven by that Mrker's Mind Treasure,
Speaker 1: that they did this and there were substantial amounts to
Speaker 1: be found. That was two hundred and thirty eight million
Speaker 1: dollars worth, but they stole five hundred to six hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars worth, which means that there is a substant
Speaker 1: antial amount of gold unaccounted for, and that is what
Speaker 1: has fueled treasure hunters to look for what today would
Speaker 1: be billions of dollars worth of gold that was lost
Speaker 1: and scattered and spread after World War Two. And I say, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I have a proposal for you. I bet I know
Speaker 1: what it is. Ye, what kind of what's your favorite
Speaker 1: kind of pie? Oh? I really love a key lime.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's hard not to go with key lime, Okay,
Speaker 1: but what about just like a standard traditional fruit pie.
Speaker 1: They're really tough to beat, like a good cherry pie.
Speaker 1: If I'm going fruit pie, it's gonna be an apple
Speaker 1: crumble for sure. Okay. I used to be in that
Speaker 1: same group with you until you had the sweetest cherry pie. Yeah, Warrant.
Speaker 1: Warrant talked to me into trying, and I loved it.
Speaker 1: Cherry pie is actually as good as the song makes
Speaker 1: it sound. Wow, all right, we'll be right back, Okay.
Speaker 1: I want to learn about a rosicl how to take
Speaker 1: a perfect with all about fractal getting kiscon n the
Speaker 1: Lizzie Border murders that they kind of all runs on
Speaker 1: the plane, everything that we should know. Squard up jerry
Speaker 1: cheese much cherry pie. Yeah, I've tried it with cheese,
Speaker 1: like they say, but it's not very good. I think
Speaker 1: that's typically apple pie that's supposed to have cheese on it.
Speaker 1: So it's just like straight cherry pie. Cherry pie. Uh,
Speaker 1: cool drink of water, it's a sweet surprise. Yep. I've
Speaker 1: tried it with the cool drink of water too. It's good.
Speaker 1: It's better with just water than say, like coke, because
Speaker 1: coke's sweet taste competes with the sweetness of the cherry pie.
Speaker 1: So they're they're pretty much right on, except for the cheese.
Speaker 1: They say it'll make a grown man cry. I'm here
Speaker 1: to tell you that's the truth. Oh boy, that song
Speaker 1: and that video so dumb but also very titillating for
Speaker 1: a very young Chuck. You know, um, have you seen
Speaker 1: the Rush documentary? Oh? Sure, did you know that Sebastian
Speaker 1: Bach from skid Row? It was skid Row, right, he
Speaker 1: was well Warrant saying cherry Pie. But yeah, okay, but
Speaker 1: like it's just a huge leap from skid Row to Warrant.
Speaker 1: Give me a break. But Sebastian Bach was from Warrant, right,
Speaker 1: Uh no, no, no, he was skid Row. Oh that's
Speaker 1: what I mean. Yeah, Warrant was Janie Lane mistaken? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, man, you got it. The poor man's Bret Michaels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a way so and sorry, Janey. I I really
Speaker 1: didn't mean that, but I couldn't leave it. Um the
Speaker 1: the But Sebastian Bach from skid Row is one of
Speaker 1: the greatest and longest standing Rush fans of all time.
Speaker 1: That's right. He was all over that, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he was. He joined their fan club in like seventh
Speaker 1: or eighth grade, he said, and I loved it. Right now,
Speaker 1: somewhere Brett Michaels is walking around playing that on repeat
Speaker 1: to his family. Did you hear that? Did you hear
Speaker 1: what Josh said? He thinks I'm better than the skid
Speaker 1: mo guy? No, you mean warrant. It doesn't matter, all right. So, um,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Nazi gold. And we were saying before
Speaker 1: we started talking about warrant and everything that, um, that
Speaker 1: there is gold that is on accounted for that was
Speaker 1: stolen by the Nazis that just kind of vaporized after
Speaker 1: the war. Goal is not supposed to do that. It's
Speaker 1: one of the things that people love about gold is
Speaker 1: it doesn't just vaporize into thin air. It's really easy
Speaker 1: to keep track of if you want to. And so
Speaker 1: people started looking for gold or looking for clues. And
Speaker 1: one of the big clues that people started following was
Speaker 1: local rumors and legends. Like in Murkers, there were plenty
Speaker 1: of rumors and legends that there was gold hidden in
Speaker 1: a mind nearby exactly and they so the people people
Speaker 1: hearing local legends is really kind of fueled hunt for
Speaker 1: hunts for Nazi treasures for almost a century now. Yeah, So, um,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go through a bunch of these. There's one
Speaker 1: called Lake Toplets, Uh, like it's a very lovely place.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you looked up pictures, um. But people and
Speaker 1: treasure hunters have been looking for this golden Lake Toplets
Speaker 1: ever since uh. And this was very much fact A
Speaker 1: bunch of Nazis retreated there in the Austrian Alps in
Speaker 1: the final months of the war. US troops were closing
Speaker 1: in fast and Germany was about to collapse, and so
Speaker 1: they transported a bunch of boxes to this lake military
Speaker 1: military vehicles and then horse drawn wagons even and they
Speaker 1: dumped them in the lake. So I think that part
Speaker 1: is definitely true, right, there's yes, from what I could tell,
Speaker 1: it was reported on like that is in fact what
Speaker 1: was in the boxes? What's up for for debate exactly.
Speaker 1: Some people say that's the Nazi gold about five and
Speaker 1: a half billion dollars worth. Other people said, um, no,
Speaker 1: I think some of this stuff are documents, um where
Speaker 1: they uh, they were basically confiscated from Jewish victims, about
Speaker 1: where their assets were hidden and what Swiss bank accounts
Speaker 1: they could loot. Maybe I saw, and I saw also artwork.
Speaker 1: Sure they think that was sealed artwork. Um. Also there's
Speaker 1: a rumor that there's three hundred pounds of morphine in
Speaker 1: in those boxes. That was contributed by I think Albania's
Speaker 1: president Um because he didn't want it to fall into
Speaker 1: the hands of the Allies. Well, one thing they know
Speaker 1: was down there, because they actually found some of these
Speaker 1: three was Hitler had the idea at one point, Hey,
Speaker 1: let's sabotage various countries by creating counterfeit money of those countries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty smart plan for a dirty Nazi I know.
Speaker 1: So they created, um just hundreds of million dollars worth
Speaker 1: of British pound notes and in nineteen eighty three a
Speaker 1: German biologists by accident discovered a lot of these British
Speaker 1: pounds in the lake. What did we talk about that
Speaker 1: and like how counterfeiting works. Maybe maybe it does sound
Speaker 1: familiar though for sure, we definitely talked about that plan.
Speaker 1: And remember there was like a a Jewish printer who
Speaker 1: was a Holocaust um prisoner, a prisoner of a concentration camp.
Speaker 1: We can't remember which one, who turned out to be
Speaker 1: like this master counterfeitter. Yeah, like because the Nazis trained
Speaker 1: him to her forced them to it was, if I
Speaker 1: remember correctly, it was our counterfeiting episode. Yeah, And in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine. I talked about the nineteen eighty three fine,
Speaker 1: but in fifty nine, uh, they recovered seven hundred million
Speaker 1: pounds of these counterfeit notes from that lake. So some
Speaker 1: people say that's all that was down there. Um, other
Speaker 1: will say there may still be gold down there, And
Speaker 1: Austria actually still to this day has a problem about
Speaker 1: tin divers a year illegally dive in that lake looking
Speaker 1: for that treasure. Yeah, and what's interesting about this lake
Speaker 1: aside from the fact that there might be Nazi treasure
Speaker 1: in it, which is interesting enough to make the lake
Speaker 1: remarkable and noteworthy, but in addition to that, this lake
Speaker 1: has a kind of a strange hydrology, and that the
Speaker 1: top half of it is freshwater the bottom half of
Speaker 1: salt water, and they're separated by density. And in the
Speaker 1: middle of these two layers is a like a layer
Speaker 1: of floating layer of ancient logs that have fallen in
Speaker 1: the lake and been preserved over time. And so you
Speaker 1: can only dive so far before you hit this layer
Speaker 1: of logs. And some divers, I think five divers have
Speaker 1: at least have died in this lake looking for Nazi gold,
Speaker 1: and at least one of them got tangled up in
Speaker 1: this layer of logs. It's a really dangerous place to dive.
Speaker 1: But the fact that you can't really see past this
Speaker 1: layer of logs is one of the things that keeps
Speaker 1: people coming back and keeps this legend alive because they
Speaker 1: can't thoroughly search this lake and show conclusively, no, there's
Speaker 1: no gold here. Leave this place alone, stay away. Amazing.
Speaker 1: It is pretty amazing. And then the other thing about
Speaker 1: it too is this is a really remote location that
Speaker 1: was used by Nazi officers, high ranking Nazi officers, and
Speaker 1: for missile testing. It seems like a really odd place
Speaker 1: just to dump counterfeit pound notes. Yeah, like you could
Speaker 1: dump those just about anywhere, So I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: there is something to it. You're gonna get your Skiba
Speaker 1: gear ready. I got my flippers on already. You can't see,
Speaker 1: but I've got them on alright. We're gonna move now
Speaker 1: to um an eastern German town along the check border
Speaker 1: called Deutsche Catherinenburg. It's it sort of looks like the
Speaker 1: alphabet when it's on a on a page. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of letters in a row. But there are people
Speaker 1: there that think, not only is there gold here, but uh,
Speaker 1: possibly the amber room, which was this. You just look
Speaker 1: up pictures of the amber room. It's pretty amazing, this
Speaker 1: chamber of um, honey and lindseed and kannak confused, amber panels,
Speaker 1: gold frame mosaics, marble, precious stones. And it was a
Speaker 1: gift of Prussian King Frederick Wilhelm, the first two Russia's
Speaker 1: Peter the Great once called the eighth Wonder of the World.
Speaker 1: And it disappeared during World War two. Yeah, the Nazis
Speaker 1: plundered it from Russia from the U s. S R.
Speaker 1: And they took it back to Germany, back to Kunnigsberg
Speaker 1: or Kunigsberg, which was I think now a time or
Speaker 1: part of um of Russia again, but at the time
Speaker 1: during World War two was part of Germany or Prussia,
Speaker 1: and they had it on public exhibit for like four
Speaker 1: or five years, and then at the end of the
Speaker 1: war it just anished and no one's seen it since.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of people who say, well, it
Speaker 1: was destroyed in air raids. Other people say it was
Speaker 1: sunk on the you know, on a ship that was
Speaker 1: secretly carrying it. Um, it's just lost. But there's a
Speaker 1: pair of treasure hunters at Deutsche Catherinenburg Um who searched
Speaker 1: in the area because they were sure that, among other things,
Speaker 1: the amber room panels were buried there in that town. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is um. This is probably the worst ending
Speaker 1: to a potentially cool story ever, But that was there
Speaker 1: was a pair of searchers um searching for this stuff.
Speaker 1: One of them's father was a German Air Force officer
Speaker 1: in World War Two, and in his personal notes, this
Speaker 1: son thought that he'd found the exact coordinates of this treasure.
Speaker 1: So he got together with another treasure hunter who was
Speaker 1: another German. He was a mayor in fact of a
Speaker 1: nearby town, and they thought that they had discovered through
Speaker 1: radar this big rectangular underground on space about sixty ft down.
Speaker 1: And when I was reading this, dude, it was so juicy,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh boy, what happened? They didn't never
Speaker 1: tell anyone that no one knows if they found any treasure.
Speaker 1: They didn't say anything about it. Apparently they had an
Speaker 1: acrimonious split in two thousand eight, and that's just sort
Speaker 1: of the end of this story. Yeah, I guess the
Speaker 1: other treasure hunter was staying in the mayor's town and
Speaker 1: the mayor kicked him out of town. It was that acrimonious. Wow,
Speaker 1: So that's it. The last I heard was that they
Speaker 1: didn't find anything in two thousand eight, or they didn't
Speaker 1: never search for it, right, So yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: little name, but worth putting in there. I think, Oh, no,
Speaker 1: it's worth putting in there. It's just has no good resolution. No,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, no, But you read a lot of fiction,
Speaker 1: so you can deal with that, right, that's right. Okay,
Speaker 1: So in Poland, south southeastern southwestern Poland and a little
Speaker 1: corner down there, there's something. There's a range of mountains
Speaker 1: called Owl Mountains, and there's a long standing and widespread
Speaker 1: rumor that's that's been there for a very long time.
Speaker 1: I would say roughly since around the end of the
Speaker 1: world the Second World War. That would be my guess,
Speaker 1: that there is a ghost train and Nazi ghost train
Speaker 1: loaded with jewels, gold, weapons, art, basically everything you can
Speaker 1: think of that the Nazis would have plundered or pillaged
Speaker 1: loaded onto this train, driven into a tunnel in the
Speaker 1: mountain and left there hidden, and that it's still there,
Speaker 1: and um people have been looking for it for a
Speaker 1: very long time again since probably about the end of
Speaker 1: World War two. But the thing that's kept this treasure
Speaker 1: hunt alive, Chuck, is there really is a vast, unmapped
Speaker 1: network of tunnels in the Owl Mountains that the Nazis
Speaker 1: dug there in World War two. Yeah. So again, some
Speaker 1: of this is based in fact. So that's what will
Speaker 1: keep any sort of urban legend alive if if part
Speaker 1: of it is true. And they did. They dug these
Speaker 1: tunnels of mine chats between forty three and forty five.
Speaker 1: It was called the Raisa project, which means giant in German,
Speaker 1: and no one knows why. Some people say it might
Speaker 1: have been in one of their weird secret weapons programs. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some people say it may have been potentially where Hitler
Speaker 1: was going to hold up for his last stand. But
Speaker 1: it was very, very secretive, even among the s S.
Speaker 1: Because if you worked on this tunnel, you had to
Speaker 1: sign a confident confidentiality agreement, which just sounds funny. For
Speaker 1: some reason, I thought everything about the s S was
Speaker 1: so secretive it would just be implicit. But what and
Speaker 1: where are they gonna do, like take you to court
Speaker 1: that you violated your n DA or something. It's it
Speaker 1: is odd, isn't it. You know what they would do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they just shoot you. I wouldn't think they would need
Speaker 1: a signed agreement for that. I think there's the Nazis
Speaker 1: we're talking about, you know. Yeah, so they were not
Speaker 1: allowed to have their family members within uh forty KOs
Speaker 1: radius of this area, and these tunnels were dug by
Speaker 1: forced labor concentration camps nearby. And it might have been
Speaker 1: a place for gold and may still be, but the
Speaker 1: Soviets ruined all that in when they came knocking at
Speaker 1: the door, and the Nazis fled and basically blew up
Speaker 1: their own tunnels behind them. Yeah, and I want to say,
Speaker 1: there's a really good New Yorker article about the hunt.
Speaker 1: I can think it's even called the Hunt for Nazi Gold,
Speaker 1: about this particular legend and people looking for it and
Speaker 1: they take a second. I think it's really worth UM
Speaker 1: pointing out here too. Is um. You know, people who
Speaker 1: get who start looking for treasure, no matter what the
Speaker 1: providence of the treasure is, UM just gets so wrapped
Speaker 1: up in the treasure and the legends and the myths
Speaker 1: and everything that it's easy to forget things like, well,
Speaker 1: you're running around a tunnel network that was dug by
Speaker 1: people who were literally worked to death over the course
Speaker 1: of weeks. They were worked that hard. They died digging
Speaker 1: these tunnels that hold maybe this legendary treasure. That is
Speaker 1: the only thing you can focus on, what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: That And that's definitely like a part of the problem
Speaker 1: that comes along with the job is you know, forgetting
Speaker 1: like look, having blinders on that you forget the reality
Speaker 1: of the situation. It's definitely it's important to remember this that,
Speaker 1: you know, some of this gold we're talking about was
Speaker 1: pulled from the teeth of dead Holocaust victims. You know,
Speaker 1: remember that too. It's like Bill Paxson and Titanic. He
Speaker 1: needed that reminder from the old lady, like, you're all
Speaker 1: pumped up looking for this jewel. Yeah, people die, people
Speaker 1: died here, man. Yeah, let's get it together, Paxxton r
Speaker 1: I P. Yeah, that was so jarring when you told
Speaker 1: me that that first time a few few months back.
Speaker 1: Did I break you that news? You did? You broke
Speaker 1: it hard. So according to this legend, as far as
Speaker 1: the al Mountains go, there was this ghost train, like
Speaker 1: you said, and it was a freight train loaded with
Speaker 1: all kinds of valuables, artwork, jewels, gold, bully on bars
Speaker 1: of gold and that they drove that thing in this
Speaker 1: thing and it never came out in those tunnels. And Uh.
Speaker 1: The other part of this um story that is rooted
Speaker 1: in fact is there were Nazi trains that carried tons
Speaker 1: and tons of gold and valuables and jewelry and paintings.
Speaker 1: There was one in particular called the Hungarian Gold Train
Speaker 1: that was intercepted by Allied forces in so you got
Speaker 1: a real train that happened. You've got these real tunnels
Speaker 1: that were dug, and all of a sudden, this rumor
Speaker 1: of the ghost train takes route. Yeah, the idea that
Speaker 1: those two things are have come together in the Owl Mountains, though,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that's never been shown to be true.
Speaker 1: That's right, And not from a lack of looking, No,
Speaker 1: not at all. No, there's a lot of people looking
Speaker 1: for that there. Um the Uh, this one's actually my favorite, weirdly,
Speaker 1: probably because it's a shipwreck. I'm just so fascinated by shipwrecks.
Speaker 1: So the ship I'm talking about is called the S S. Minden,
Speaker 1: and it was a German merchant vessel and back in
Speaker 1: I think nineteen thirty nine it was disabled by the
Speaker 1: British Royal Navy off of the coast of Iceland, right.
Speaker 1: And what what's so mysterious about this is that the
Speaker 1: Minden's ship register shows that it was just carrying um
Speaker 1: resin from Brazil. I didn't see what kind of resin.
Speaker 1: But you can do all sorts of industrial stuff with
Speaker 1: the resident from making adhesives to plastics to whatever um
Speaker 1: and then that was it. Right. But the thing that
Speaker 1: makes the sinking of the men and some as serious
Speaker 1: is that the ship's captain, rather than let it fall
Speaker 1: into British hands, sunk it himself. And he sunk it
Speaker 1: in seventy feet of water off the Icelandic coast, and
Speaker 1: that's where it lay undiscovered until I believe two thousand
Speaker 1: and seventeen, when a mysterious ship showed up and started
Speaker 1: um looking around the Icelandic coast and it believes that
Speaker 1: it found it. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a little
Speaker 1: odd to sink a ship full of resin. Only it
Speaker 1: raises a little bit of suspicion, Like you said, even
Speaker 1: though you can do some things with it, it kind
Speaker 1: of stuck out to me. It's like, what else is
Speaker 1: on that boat? But yeah, in two thousand seventeen, the
Speaker 1: Coast Guard in Iceland bordered a vessel of the CBED Constructor.
Speaker 1: It's like an unnervingly bland name. It's so boring. It's
Speaker 1: not like the Uh well now I can't all boat
Speaker 1: names are kind of dumb. Hercules of the sea. That's
Speaker 1: what I would name in my boat. Yeah. Um, So
Speaker 1: they intercepted it. They said, hey, what are you guys
Speaker 1: doing here? And they said, oh, well, um, this boat
Speaker 1: has been leased by a group of British folks who
Speaker 1: are such searching for the wreck of the S S.
Speaker 1: Menden And they were like what They're like, haven't you
Speaker 1: heard that? That was just full of resin And they said,
Speaker 1: clearly not, because we're spending a hundred thousand dollars a
Speaker 1: day to least this boat, which frankly is not that
Speaker 1: great of a deal. But we couldn't talk him down
Speaker 1: any So that I mean, if someone is spending a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars a day, that means that makes me
Speaker 1: think they know something that we don't know. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so the Icelandic press actually reported that they think that
Speaker 1: they know something we don't know, so much so that
Speaker 1: they interviewed the crew and the crew said. The official
Speaker 1: story is that they're looking for a couple of hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars worth of gold that they believe was hidden
Speaker 1: in the safe on that ship, but that the real story,
Speaker 1: the real prize for what they're looking for, is only
Speaker 1: known to a handful of people, high ranking people on
Speaker 1: the boat and left at that which, man, the Icelandic
Speaker 1: press knows how to how to spin a mystery, if
Speaker 1: you ask me. Yeah, I mean that really added this
Speaker 1: extra air of mystery on top of everything else, which is, oh,
Speaker 1: sure we think there's a hundred million dollars plus in gold,
Speaker 1: but we're really there for another secret reason. Yeah. If
Speaker 1: if a hundred million dollars worth of gold is your
Speaker 1: decoy cover story, man, you're onto something impressive. I can't
Speaker 1: wait until they raised that thing, because from what I
Speaker 1: could tell, everything everything pointed to the fact that they
Speaker 1: did successfully find the minden. That that is the minden
Speaker 1: they found. But as far as I know, they have
Speaker 1: not gone down and salvaged it at all. Get James
Speaker 1: Cameron on it. Who knows. Maybe, I mean the amber
Speaker 1: room was sunk and maybe it happened to be on
Speaker 1: the s S. Menden, So maybe we'll have the Amber
Speaker 1: room back in the next ten years. Um. Well, hey man,
Speaker 1: you said today's magic second ad break word James Cameron,
Speaker 1: which means we're now obligated to take our second message break.
Speaker 1: Do you want to take it now or shall we
Speaker 1: have taken it three minutes ago? Now let's take it now. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back everybody. I want to learn about
Speaker 1: how to take a perfect but all about fractal thinks, hun,
Speaker 1: the Lizzie Border murders that they runs on the plane,
Speaker 1: everything we should know. Wear it up, Jerry. All right, Chuck.
Speaker 1: So there's places where you can physically go to search
Speaker 1: for legendary gold. You can also just enter the international
Speaker 1: gold trade and you can turn up, alarmingly Nazi gold
Speaker 1: that was kind of lost you could put it after
Speaker 1: the war. Yeah, this is really interesting. As part of
Speaker 1: reconstruction and restoration all over Europe, there was a committee
Speaker 1: for him called the Tripartite Gold Commission or the Tripartite
Speaker 1: Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold. And this was
Speaker 1: formed in by the US, by the French, and by
Speaker 1: the Brits, and basically the whole jam here was let's
Speaker 1: find all this goal, let's account for all this gold
Speaker 1: that we discovered as allies, and then let's redistribute it
Speaker 1: back to where we if we can trace it such
Speaker 1: to where it was looted, um to the banks and
Speaker 1: central banks, and even if we can find out human individuals,
Speaker 1: that would be even better that and that it was
Speaker 1: strictly too, I believe, strictly to the European central banks
Speaker 1: that had a claim to have having been looted from.
Speaker 1: After the war, and then in the late nineties there
Speaker 1: was a real push to try to um compensate the
Speaker 1: survivors and the heirs of the Holocaust who also had
Speaker 1: been robbed too. So a lot of gold that some
Speaker 1: countries still had claim on as part of this um
Speaker 1: UH London Conference on Nazi Gold that was held UH
Speaker 1: some of some of the countries that said, well, actually
Speaker 1: we're still owed a lot of this gold. They said, okay,
Speaker 1: well we'll take a portion of this gold and diverted
Speaker 1: to humanitarian groups who will UM use it to to
Speaker 1: UM for reparations to Holocaust victims, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: The big outlier in this was a little tiny country
Speaker 1: there remained neutral during World War Two, at least on
Speaker 1: paper um Switzerland, who not only it turns out, was
Speaker 1: secretly assisting the Nazis and laundering their gold in exchange
Speaker 1: for money that the Nazis could go used to fund
Speaker 1: its war machine. They hung on to this Nazi gold
Speaker 1: and from what I can tell, still have all of
Speaker 1: the Nazi gold that they had after World War Two,
Speaker 1: including gold that was made from that zon gold melted down,
Speaker 1: personal effects and gold teeth um that Switzerland apparently still
Speaker 1: has in its gold reserves and is not willing to
Speaker 1: give up. Yeah, that was really surprising. This all came
Speaker 1: out because of a historical paper that was part of
Speaker 1: that conference. Um. It showed that the US had a
Speaker 1: lot of this gold, uh, that they melted down after
Speaker 1: the war and did return to the central banks in
Speaker 1: Europe um as part of an effort to stabilize their
Speaker 1: economy there um. But finding out that Switzerland did this,
Speaker 1: and that Switzerland was neutral, and that the Geneva Convention,
Speaker 1: which which explicitly bars this kind of thing comes from
Speaker 1: Geneva Switzerland is like the ultimate irony here, and it's
Speaker 1: I just want to know if there's more to this.
Speaker 1: There's got to be something else, right. They're they're good people, sure,
Speaker 1: but I mean, countries do bad things for sure, you know,
Speaker 1: even if there are good people that live there, there's
Speaker 1: I mean from everything I could tell, it came out
Speaker 1: in the nineties that it was pretty clear Switzerland had
Speaker 1: served as money launderers for the Nazis without anybody realizing
Speaker 1: it for decades. Wow. Yeah, it's it is pretty shocking
Speaker 1: for sure. UM. I think the thing that gets me though,
Speaker 1: is the idea that there's a lot of gold in
Speaker 1: the internet national gold trade today that can be traced
Speaker 1: back to missing Nazi gold, that it's not necessarily buried
Speaker 1: in the side of a mountain in Poland or under
Speaker 1: a small town along the German Chech border. That it's
Speaker 1: it's out and about. It's being used as currency or
Speaker 1: as a commodity today in the in the international gold trade.
Speaker 1: That to me is the most astounding part of all
Speaker 1: of this. Yeah, how do you trace gold? They have
Speaker 1: a very strict system for it, but it's only as
Speaker 1: strict as UM how it's observed. So like, for example,
Speaker 1: in two thousand nineteen, the Simon Weisenthal Center, which UM
Speaker 1: has spent a lot of time hunting down Nazi war criminals. UM.
Speaker 1: In the I think starting in the sixties, seventies and eighties. UM,
Speaker 1: they accused of Venezuela and specifically the administration of Nicholas
Speaker 1: Maduro of trafficking in Nazi gold that he's so old
Speaker 1: over the course of his administration so far something like
Speaker 1: seventy seven tons of gold. And they're like, you know what,
Speaker 1: we're pretty sure that that was Nazi gold that was
Speaker 1: transferred late in the war to Spain and then on
Speaker 1: to South America to help fund a fourth Reich, a
Speaker 1: rebuilding of the Nazi regime among the war criminals living there,
Speaker 1: and they think that this was some of that gold
Speaker 1: and that Maduro has been selling it to kind of
Speaker 1: bankroll his his country and his his um his regime. Wow,
Speaker 1: isn't that nuts a whole? Yeah? It is absolutely the
Speaker 1: Like I can't remember how I came across as I
Speaker 1: think it was a house stuff works article. There's a
Speaker 1: couple on them, and it just started digging further and further,
Speaker 1: and it's just one of those things where it's it
Speaker 1: just takes such a great left turn, great meaning like
Speaker 1: just surprising and unexpected, where it's like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: going from treasure hunters arguing and kicking one another out
Speaker 1: of little towns and in kicking around mountains and Poland
Speaker 1: to the international gold trade, trafficking and Nazi gold. Still
Speaker 1: it's it's just just a crazy story. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty mind blowing and disappointing in a lot of ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, because again, remember a lot of that gold,
Speaker 1: those gold bars are melted down gold teeth taken from
Speaker 1: Holocaust victims or gold wedding rings taken from Holocaust victims,
Speaker 1: and now they're used to um as as part of
Speaker 1: an international form of currency. Yeah bo um, Well that's it.
Speaker 1: You got anything else? I got nothing else. If you
Speaker 1: want to know more about um Nazi gold, there's a
Speaker 1: lot you can read. It's quite a rabbit hole you
Speaker 1: can go down if you want to. Um. So you
Speaker 1: could start by going to how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: and checking out their articles on it. And since I
Speaker 1: said how stuff works, it's been a while, that means
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener. May all that's right? Uh.
Speaker 1: I was thinking that would be a good movie about
Speaker 1: World War two era Nazi gold hunters, but it's sort
Speaker 1: of like Three Kings already did that, but that was
Speaker 1: a Gulf war. Yeah. Um. And then also there was
Speaker 1: that one museum. Men. I think they were brought into
Speaker 1: kind of make sure that the paintings that were looted
Speaker 1: were not or whatever. I didn't see that. What was
Speaker 1: it called? One called museum? And what was it? Almost
Speaker 1: positive it was museum? And was it what? You look
Speaker 1: that up while I read listener mail? All right, because
Speaker 1: that's a terrible name. I agree. I'm gonna call this.
Speaker 1: We cited someone that we probably shouldn't have cited, and
Speaker 1: this is from anonymous. Hey, guys, really enjoyed this show
Speaker 1: this week on universal basic income. Just a heads up,
Speaker 1: you cited the conservative economist Charles Murray and his justifications
Speaker 1: for introducing UBI to the American economy. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: didn't realize this, but Murray is a particular favorite of
Speaker 1: white supremacist oh Boy for his views on genetics and
Speaker 1: their contribution to social inequality between whites and people of color. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is a book called the Bell Curve that is often
Speaker 1: cited as a data proven evidence for white supremacy. It's
Speaker 1: also largely been debunked as pseudo science. Uh wow. He
Speaker 1: links to a Southern poverty law centers right up for
Speaker 1: our own reference, and he says I will, no doubt
Speaker 1: keep on listening. Guys, I'm sure it was unintentional. Please
Speaker 1: take more care though and curating your sources, especially if
Speaker 1: it might throw your narrative for a loop. And that
Speaker 1: is from anonymous, and boy Anonymous, you're right, we had
Speaker 1: no idea. UM should have done a little bit more
Speaker 1: digging there. So please everyone realize, and anyone that listens
Speaker 1: to the show probably realizes we certainly did not mean
Speaker 1: for that to be the case when we cited Mr Murray.
Speaker 1: Now we kind of bift that one big time. H
Speaker 1: no offense intended. Hopefully you didn't take it, and thank
Speaker 1: you for a very measured and level and even handed correction.
Speaker 1: That's right, it was very kind. And by the way, Chuck,
Speaker 1: it's monuments man. Yeah. I knew though something about it
Speaker 1: that didn't sound right. But there is show called museum
Speaker 1: Men that's been on since two thousand fourteen. But they
Speaker 1: they kind of they make um displays from museums. Ah,
Speaker 1: they're craftsmen, craft people. Okay, okay, So museum man monuments
Speaker 1: men two different things. And if you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us, you can join us on the internet,
Speaker 1: send us an email. Wrap it up, spanking on the
Speaker 1: bottom and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
Speaker 1: my heart Radios at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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