Nazi gold

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Much of the focus of the discussion about Nazi gold (German: Raubgold, "stolen gold") concerns how much of it Nazi Germany transferred to overseas banks during World War II. The Nazis looted the assets of their victims (including those in concentration camps) to accumulate wealth. In 1998, a Swiss commission estimated that the Swiss National Bank held $440 million ($8 billion in 2020 currency) of Nazi gold, over half of which is believed to have been looted.

Some of the accumulated wealth was used to finance the war, but the total spending remains unclear. The present whereabouts of the gold has been the subject of several books,

Franciscan Order
, and other defendants.

Acquisition

Merkers
Salt Mine
Buchenwald
victims

The draining of Germany's

command economy barter.[1]

However, this tendency towards

autarkic conservation of foreign reserves concealed a trend of expanding official reserves, which occurred through looting assets from annexed Austria, occupied Czechoslovakia, and Nazi-governed Danzig.[2] It is believed that these three sources boosted German official gold reserves by US$71 million ($1.3 billion in 2020 currency) between 1937 and 1939.[2] To mask the acquisition, the Reichsbank understated its official reserves in 1939 by $40m relative to the Bank of England's estimates.[2]

During the war, Nazi Germany continued the practice on a much larger scale. Germany expropriated some $550m in gold from foreign governments, including $223m from Belgium and $193m from the Netherlands.[2] These figures do not include gold and other instruments stolen from private citizens or companies. The total value of all assets allegedly stolen by Nazi Germany remains uncertain.

Merkers Mine

Advancing north from

displaced persons, with one of them pregnant attempting to find a doctor, the military policemen decided to bring them back to PFC Richard C. Mootz. Luckily for Mootz, he and the women had something in common: they could all speak German. While getting to know them better and escorting them back into the town, they passed the entrance to the Kaiseroda salt mine
in Merkers.

The two women told Mootz[3] that the mine contained gold stored by the Germans, along with other treasures. Once back in his unit, he attempted to tell three other officers, but they weren't interested in listening. He called other military personnel; by noon, the story had passed on up to the chief of staff and the division's G-5 officer, Lt. Col. William A. Russell, who, in a few hours, had the news confirmed by other DPs and by a British sergeant who had been employed in the mine as a prisoner of war and had helped unload the gold. Russell also turned up an assistant director of the National Gallery in Berlin who admitted he was in Merkers to care for paintings stored in the mine.[4]

The next day was Sunday. In the morning, while Colonel

Nazi loot that included valuable artwork.[8]

On Sunday afternoon, Bernstein, after verifying to the fullest the newspaper story with Lt Col R. Tupper Barrett, Chief, Financial Branch, G-5, 12th Army Group, flew to SHAEF Forward at

Eisenhower to check the contents of the mine and arrange to have the treasure taken away. While he was there, orders arrived for him to locate a depository farther back in the SHAEF zone and supervise the moving. (Under the Big Three arrangements, the part of Germany containing Merkers would be taken over by the Soviets for military government control after the fighting ended.)[5]
Bernstein and Barrett spent Tuesday looking for a site and finally settled on the Reichsbank building in Frankfurt.

Disposal

See also: World Jewish Congress lawsuit against Swiss banks and Ratlines (World War II)

According to a late-1990s study for the

Tripartite Gold Commission; almost $15 million of this was from Sweden. That country separately provided about $66m of $100m provided by it, Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey, of about $480m sought for Europe overall.[9] Eizenstat notes that although there were Argentine sympathies to the Axis, it was still unknown whether the country received any actual looted gold. He also recounts that after the war, the U.S. held that nations only had to return looted gold if they had purchased it directly from the Reichsbank, allowing the U.S. to accept such material as collateral for private loans to Spain.[9]

The present whereabouts of the Nazi gold that disappeared into European banking institutions in 1945 has been the subject of several books,

Franciscan Order and other defendants.[10] The suit against the Vatican Bank did not claim that the gold was then in its possession and has since been dismissed.[11][12]

Vatican

On October 21, 1946, the U.S. State Department received a top-secret report from

U.S. Army.[15] The document, referred to as the "Bigelow Report" (oftentimes as the Bigelow dispatch, or Bigelow memo) was declassified on December 31, 1996, and released in 1997.[16]

The report asserted that in 1945, the

Franciscan Order.[17][18][19]

Such claims, however, are denied by the Vatican Bank. Vatican spokesman

Joaquin Navarro-Valls stated that "There is no basis in reality to the [Bigelow] report".[20]

Portugal

During the war, Portugal, with neutral status, was one of the centres of

armour-piercing bullets and shells. The German armaments industry was nearly entirely dependent on the supplies from Portugal.[21]

During the war, Portugal was the second largest recipient of Nazi gold, after Switzerland. Initially the Nazi trade with Portugal was in hard currency, but in 1941 the

Central Bank of Portugal established that much of this was counterfeit and Portuguese leader António de Oliveira Salazar demanded all further payments in gold.[22]

In 2000, Jonathan Diaz, a French bus driver, found documents at the Canfranc International railway station that revealed 78 tonnes (86 short tons) of 'Nazi Gold' had passed through the station.[23][24]

It is estimated that nearly 91 tonnes (100 short tons) of Nazi gold were laundered through Swiss banks, with only 3.6 tonnes (4 short tons) being returned at the end of the war.[25]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ Medlicott, William (1978). The Economic Blockade (Revised ed.). London: HMSO. pp. 25–36.
  2. ^ a b c d UK Treasury correspondence, T 236/931.
  3. ^ "Delaware soldier led 'Monuments Men' to gold, money and art". delawareonline. Retrieved 2017-02-05.
  4. ^ "Nazi Gold: The Merkers Mine Treasure". Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration, Prologue Page, vol. 31, no. 1. Spring 1999. Retrieved 23 December 2016.
  5. ^ a b McKinzie, Richard D. (23 July 1975). "Oral History Interview with Bernard Bernstein, July 23, 1975". Harry S. Truman Library. Retrieved 11 November 2012.
  6. ^ "Stars and Stripes (newspaper), Paris edition, Sunday April 8 1945. Printed at the New York Herald Tribune plant". Archived from the original on 2015-02-27. Retrieved 2015-02-26.
  7. ^ "Stars and Stripes (newspaper), Edition printed in Italy. Monday April 9, 1945. Page 2: See "Nazi Gold Reserves Found In Salt Mine";"US Gets Gold"". Out-of-copyright. 9 April 1945. Retrieved 2023-04-27.
  8. ^ Shannon Marvel (May 18, 2017). "Milford man's role in WWII discovery emerges". Dover Post. Archived from the original on July 4, 2017. Retrieved July 4, 2017.
  9. ^ a b c d e f Eizenstat, Stuart (June 2, 1998). "Eizenstat Special Briefing on Nazi Gold". U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 2023-02-10.
  10. ^ Text of the Civil Action of January 21, 2000: Factual Allegations, nos. 25 – 38.
  11. ^ "United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit" (PDF). Retrieved 2014-07-28.
  12. ^ "Slovodna Dalmacija". Slobodnadalmacija.hr. 22 January 2010. Retrieved 2014-07-28.
  13. ^ "CNN:"Vatican drawn into scandal over Nazi-era gold"". July 22, 1997. Archived from the original on 2012-05-22. Retrieved 2011-04-05.
  14. ^ "Inquiry Into Vatican Link to Looted Gold," The Guardian, July 23, 1997, p. 11
  15. ISBN 0-312-09407-8
    .
  16. ^ "U.S. Document Links Vatican, Nazi Gold.— Tyler Marshall, Times Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times, July 23, 1997". Los Angeles Times. 23 July 1997.
  17. ^ Paris 1961, p. 306.
  18. ISBN 0-312-09407-8
    .
  19. ASIN B000KOOLWE
    .
  20. ^ "The Vatican Pipeline by Frank Pellegrini". Time. July 22, 1997.
  21. ^ Gonçalves, Eduardo (2 April 2000). "Britain allowed Portugal to keep Nazi gold". The Observer. Retrieved 6 June 2011.
  22. ^ Lochery, Neill (17 May 2011). "Portugal's Golden Dilemma". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 6 June 2011.
  23. ^ Morin, Emmanuelle (4 March 2011). "Jonathan Diaz suit le filon de l'Histoire". Le République des Pyrénées. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
  24. ^ Testemale, Jean (4 August 2020). "Gare de Canfranc : des hommes sur la piste de l'or nazi". Sud Ouest. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
  25. ^ Simons, Marlise (10 January 1997). "Nazi Gold and Portugal's Murky Role". New York Times. Retrieved 1 June 2011.

Bibliography

Further reading

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nazi_gold&oldid=1204340149"