The Nazi Gold

**Discussion begins at 3:15**

World War II was a global conflict that lasted from 1939 to 1945, involving the Allies (primarily the U.S, UK, and Soviet Union) fighting against the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. The war resulted in massive destruction, the Holocaust, and the reshaping of international power dynamics, ultimately leading to the formation of the United Nations and the beginning of the Cold War.  During the war, the Nazis looted vast amounts of wealth, including gold, art, jewelry, and other precious materials. Much of the gold came from the central banks of occupied countries, particularly Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Poland. They also seized gold from Jewish families, including rings, teeth fillings, and other personal items.  As Germany faced inevitable defeat, high-ranking Nazi officials began to move large amounts of this looted wealth, including gold, out of sight. There were reports that huge amounts of gold were secretly stored in vaults, and some Nazi leaders began transferring the gold to places like Switzerland, where neutral banks could hold it safely.  There are also theories that gold was hidden in underground bunkers, caves, or remote locations across Europe, either to be recovered later or to be kept out of the hands of the Allies.  What do we know about the Nazi Gold, and is there more still out there?

Transcript

Hi.

Hey.

Welcome back.

Hello, hello.

So Kait is back from Disney.

Oh, yeah.

Disney and flew hell.

You from The Yeti.

Yeah, in Disney World.

Yeah.

Do you see it on the ride?

I don't even remember now.

Yeah, you do see it on the ride.

So is it time for our drink check?

Drink check.

Today, we're drinking some gold rushes.

What do you guys think?

Oh, I think it's delicious.

Yeah, I tasted it and I said, what's in this bourbon?

And she said, yeah, it's like a really cold hot toddy.

Yeah.

Delicious.

Is this my favorite?

Megan has some ice balls.

Is this Wild Turkey 101?

Oh, hell yeah.

We got some Wild Turkey 101.

Can you sponsor us Wild Turkey?

Some I got.

That would be great.

Yeah, we got some Wild Turkey 101.

We got some honey syrup.

I used the honey that Colleen brought from Savannah.

Savannah Bee Company.

And some fresh squeezed lemon juice.

So it's kind of like a hot toddy.

It is.

On ice.

Yeah.

On ice, which is my preferred method.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We've been drinking a lot of hot toddies the last week, huh?

We love hot toddies.

Can I get my hot toddy on a cold ball?

So why a gold rush, you guys might ask?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why?

Because you don't like a gold rush.

I don't like a gold rush.

Gold rush.

I don't know.

That's one of her songs where I just kind of mumble along.

Okay.

So why a gold rush, you may ask?

Yeah.

Why?

Because today we're talking about the Nazi gold.

That's real.

Well, we'll find out.

Oh, okay.

I sure hope my mom's listening to this.

This is a throwback to some previous conversations we had maybe a year ago.

My entire family has made fun of me for this.

So yeah, as you guys recall, we had kind of made reference in previous episodes to the Nazi gold and people made fun of me.

While Kait and Colleen asked about the funding for something, I don't even remember what it was.

And I said, oh, I'm sure it was the Nazi gold.

And I was being sarcastic.

And they said, and they said, let me believe you.

Yeah, I was like, that makes sense.

And then and my brother and my mother were like, Colleen, the Nazi gold is not real.

And I'm like, well, the way I interpreted it, it's stolen money, but the Nazis used it.

So Nazi gold.

Well, so let's talk about this today.

And we'll see if maybe we can get some vindication.

Yeah, Colleen.

It's real.

All right.

So World War II was a global conflict that lasted from 1939 to 1945 involving the Allies, which was primarily the US, UK and the Soviet Union, fighting against the Axis powers led by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy.

The war resulted in massive destruction, the Holocaust and the reshaping of international power dynamics, ultimately leading to the formation of the United Nations and the beginning of the Cold War.

During the war, the Nazis looted vast amounts of wealth, including gold, art, jewelry and other precious things.

So it is real.

Okay.

Much of the gold came from the central banks of occupied countries, particularly Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Poland.

They also seized gold from Jewish families, including rings, teeth fillings and other personal items.

As Germany faced an inevitable defeat, high-ranking Nazi officials began to move large amounts of this looted wealth, including gold, out of sight.

There were reports that huge amounts of gold were secretly stored in vaults, and some Nazi leaders began transferring the gold to places like Switzerland, where neutral banks could hold it safely.

Somebody was just telling me that Switzerland is not neutral.

Oh, it was!

There are also theories that gold was hidden in underground bunkers, caves or remote locations across Europe, either to be recovered later or to be kept out of the hands of the Allies.

We should go digging.

So what do we know about the Nazi gold?

And is there more still out there?

Oh, my gosh.

So it's real.

Yeah, I mean, it's all stolen.

That's what we thought.

Yeah, I never didn't think it was stolen.

I swear my family has made fun of me the entire time.

I'm like, I never thought it wasn't stolen.

I thought it was stolen too, but we were asking where it was from.

And we say something about mines and a train.

I'm going to tell you.

Oh, yeah, I remember that now.

Wait, maybe I believe that I probably did.

I'm going to tell you guys about all of that.

Because it connected to Captain America with Bucky, because Bucky was on a train with the Nazis, and he fell off the train.

It always goes back to Marvel.

I think the deal is I'm going to talk about the trains, planes and automobiles.

The fact that there was Nazi gold, there was gold and other things stolen from the Nazis.

We have proof, proof of that.

The conspiracy theory really gets more into like, is there more still out there?

Oh, but who would have it?

Okay, guys.

So, yes.

Where did all these theories come from?

Now, didn't we all grow up thinking that the Swiss were neutral?

Oh, yeah.

I only really understood that because I never took world history.

I only ever took American history.

And like World War II, like, I mean, I never took world history.

So I don't know.

I don't even think we got to that point in AP US history because Bella is always saying, I'm Switzerland.

I'm Switzerland.

I can't choose between Edward and Jacob because I'm Switzerland.

And she goes into like a whole spiel about how Switzerland was neutral.

That's exactly what I was going to say.

I said that as a child.

Yeah, I think that was always the same.

I'm Swiss.

No, I've never heard anybody.

Yeah, I'm not getting involved in Switzerland.

But I love that you're like, oh, I know that saying from from Twilight.

I never knew anybody else say that saying until I read it in Twilight.

Well, what I learned researching this is that the Swiss were not so neutral.

So I feel like the Swiss do things that benefit themselves.

Yeah.

The biggest buck.

Bingo.

So is that why everyone says they have Swiss bank accounts?

The Swiss bank in africa of 1934 protects the privacy of banking customers and allows them to maintain anonymity.

Anonymity.

I see an anonymity.

In addition to their neutrality, it makes them a prime place to store your money.

So the deal is like this is how they really became famous for banking is because they're like, yeah, we've passed this law and we're going to protect the privacy of anyone who banks with us.

And this also allowed them to continue to accept gold and do business with all the countries during the war.

Oh, so yes.

Are you going to get into the fact that they're also a part of like security for the Pope and things like that?

There is a Pope theory in here.

There is, okay.

They control the church and the money, it's all the money.

So after World War I, Germany was in massive debt.

And so Hitler began looting and it all started with art.

And this goes back to our Hitler episode, where we talked about is Hitler alive and well in South Korea.

Yeah, painting away.

And and remember, Colleen was like, the one fact I do know about Hitler is that he was an artist.

Yeah.

And nobody fed that in that.

And you thought that that's right.

That's why he went on.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, that's an NTB.

That's a common Internet theory that if we just promoted his artistic abilities, he would have never become who he became.

We had talked about how Adolf Hitler wanted to be an artist.

Right.

And he had really strong opinions about art.

So he wrote in Mein Kampf about how much he detested modern art.

This is where I'm like, what was what was modern art then?

What?

In like the 40s?

I think of modern art as like abstract.

Like that's what I'm like.

What is he actually despite?

That's OK.

Go ahead, Megan.

I'm sorry.

I just I'm like, what was modern art in the 1940s?

I just really wonder which artists he was.

Yeah.

Like who is he despising?

Because what is the art depicting like freedom?

Do you know what I mean?

Like, what is he trying to shush?

This is just one more question that is completely relevant.

I'm sorry.

Is it one more question?

When does art stop becoming modern?

Like how old does it have to be to not be considered modern anymore?

It's probably based on trend.

Right?

You know what I mean?

Like, is 80s art modern still?

Modern art describes art produced between the 1860s to the 1970s.

Oh.

So what's today's?

Characterized by rejection of traditional academic rules and a willingness to experiment with new ideas of it.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

I also have to ask a question about art.

Was it Picasso?

When did Picasso died recently?

I feel like he lived in the 1800s.

He died in the 80s.

I'm fairly, yes, like 1980s.

So Picasso was in the 40s.

Picasso died in 1973.

I was close.

That was close.

Yeah.

I could have sworn it was 88.

I swear Picasso lived.

There's one other person.

It's like Picasso and somebody else that every time I learn their time frame blows my mind.

OK, so in 1983, he became Chancellor of Germany, and he had the modern art in German and all the German museums destroyed.

Oh, they wanted to establish new museums and began looting art from occupied countries and targeting Jewish property.

So at the end of the war, the US government estimated that the Nazis had seized or coerced the sale of one fifth of all Western art that in existence, which is approximately a quarter of a million pieces of art, and over a hundred thousand of those are still missing today.

What started as looting of art progressed to looting of gold, silver and other collectibles.

We estimate the Nazis started the war with a hundred and twenty million dollars and had seized at least six hundred million dollars in gold from occupied countries, which would be like eleven billion dollars today.

OK, so when you're talking about gold, are they like gold bars?

Yes, I think she's going to get into that.

OK, is it like gold that they mined?

I think it's from like the wedding bands, the teeth melted down.

Oh, into gold bars.

Yeah.

OK.

All right.

And gold bars, gold bars and any gold that they could steal from these.

Yeah.

OK.

Jewelry.

But I'm saying that when they would take over a country, they would go into the banks of this country that they were now occupying.

Take the gold.

Take the gold.

Yeah.

So Nazi gold is real, Colleen.

At least 600 million dollars in gold was seized from occupied countries, which is about 11 billion dollars today.

That is so much money.

Particularly Belgium and the Netherlands.

11 billion dollars.

Maybe they could loan that to the United States and they could help us get out of debt a little bit.

So they determined that the Nazis had sold 300 million dollars to Swiss banks and had laundered 140 million dollars through Swiss banks for payment to Portugal and Spain.

And 61 million dollars to Sweden and Romania.

Technically, these countries shouldn't be accepting gold from them, right?

Because they'll be fighting the war.

Right.

So then they used the Swiss francs, which were received from the Swiss to purchase materials.

And then the countries would use the francs to buy gold from the Swiss banks.

So it's just all this big money laundering operation that the Swiss were in on.

And yeah, they knew.

They understood.

Yes.

Then in 1940, he progressed from just looting banks to making it legal to appropriate property of the Jews.

The Swiss continued to purchase gold that came from the two sources, the gold reserves of the central banks of the occupied countries, and the gold taken from individuals, including gold dental fillings extracted from corpses.

Right.

We mentioned the wedding rings.

We mentioned candlesticks, all of the gold that the Jews had.

Awful.

In 1944, the US government, so the end of the war, right?

The US government became concerned about the fact that Germany may be hiding assets to help rebuild and that they were using these hidden assets to pay neutral companies in exchange for supplies.

Yeah, because they owed a lot of money, right?

That was a part of the end of the war.

Germany had to pay a lot of money.

Correct.

Yeah.

So the US developed the Safe Haven Project.

The goal was to identify and stop the movement of Nazi assets out of Germany and then to locate, recover and restitute them.

So despite the fact that we have proof, proof that the Swiss laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen assets, they were able to avoid paying restitution because they have this whole law protecting their.

Wow.

That's great.

They were smart.

In the Washington Agreement of 1946, the Swiss agreed to return 12 percent of the stolen gold, which is about $60 million.

That's crazy.

To like the family members?

Correct.

That's insane.

Only 12 percent.

So we already have the Nazis using the Swiss banks, right?

At the same time during the war, Jews are like, they're coming for us and we need to put our money somewhere.

So they start depositing their money into the Swiss banks.

Oh, I would have pulled it all out.

Well, I guess they were being physically captured, never mind.

Yeah.

And they were like, we need to put our money in the banks.

We don't want the Nazis to go find our money, right?

And we know the Swiss banks have promised anonymity.

So we will deposit our money into the Swiss banks and they will protect it for us.

They were protecting the Jews and the Nazis.

The Swiss are just smart.

I'm sorry.

We're just mad about the Swiss being smart.

So they said, hold on, I'm not going to get involved with the war, but I'm going to profit off the war.

I'm going to be sneaky.

You're asking, yes, did they protect the money of the Jews?

Well, after the war, the Swiss banks still had access to all these accounts that hadn't been emptied, like perhaps because the account holders hadn't survived.

So if anyone wanted to access their ancestors' money, they would have to provide a death certificate.

But if you die in a concentration camp, there's no death certificate.

So now the Swiss have all this money in their bank that Jews and other victims of the Holocaust deposited.

What happened to that money?

It's still in the Swiss bank because no one has access to it.

Because the only way to get access to it is to have proof that your family member died.

And if there's no proof, then you can't access it.

So you're thinking there's money still sitting in an account?

Oh, the interest on that must be insane.

Wait a second.

Okay, guys.

So as a result, there was a law passed that the banks needed to identify dormant accounts and pay the families of Jewish victims back.

Yeah.

But they were only able to recover $15 million that way.

So most of that money never got returned to family members of victims.

And so yes, this all goes into what happened to this money, which is the big mystery, the conspiracy theories we're gonna talk about.

Okay.

In 1999, the Swiss government formed a commission in response to accusations from the World Jewish Congress that the Swiss banks were withholding money that was stolen from the Holocaust victims.

Okay.

The commission made the following discoveries.

The Swiss National Bank held $440 million in Nazi gold, which is over $8 billion today.

Over half of that is believed to have been stolen directly from Holocaust victims.

That's awful.

The Nazis had smuggled 100 tons of gold through Switzerland, but only 4 tons had ever been recovered.

What?

And so there was a big lawsuit against this.

The Swiss Bank settled for $1.25 million to the victims, which again is like nothing.

That's really not a lot.

Nothing in comparison to all of the money they have.

Right.

Wait, so what you're telling me is that somebody sent them their money, and then they just couldn't account for where the money was.

That's weird.

Okay, so I'm gonna give you some instances that do have some factual history to them that maybe have precipitated some of these theories about where some of this gold could go.

Because the deal is, we know that there was all this stolen gold, but we haven't accounted for all of it, so where is it, right?

So if we rewind to April 1945, it's kind of the end of the war.

The US Army gets word from some locals that within the previous weeks, the Nazis had stolen gold and other valuables in the Merkers mine.

So the Army goes to this mine, and when they get there, they locate stacks of gold bars, bags of gold coins, millions of dollars worth of foreign currencies, art treasures and other valuable assets.

Oh my gosh.

You know what I'm thinking of when you keep saying vaults?

I keep thinking of Gringotts.

Oh, that's what I picture the Swiss banks like.

Yeah.

Little gremlins.

Yeah, the goblins, and you got to go, you got to have like special key.

Yeah.

And they'll give vaults to the bad people and the good.

Right.

Was JK.

Rowling onto something?

Yeah.

Wait, did JK.

Rowling know about the Swiss banks?

This is interesting.

OK, keep on.

Probably.

I don't know.

Yeah, but this is like Harry going down, saying like, oh my gosh, I'm a millionaire.

Yeah, he was he was fat rich.

Yeah.

The US.

Army and the US.

Treasury Department did an appraisal of all of these findings in the mine.

Yeah.

They said that the gold alone was worth about two hundred and thirty eight point five million dollars, which is about two point five billion dollars today.

Some sources estimated to be worth even more.

A few of the other items they found eight thousand bars of gold, fifty five boxes of gold, bouillon, hundreds of bales of foreign currency, art masterpieces, including Manet, I do know Manet, Impressionism.

Some engravings, some silverware, and then as we mentioned, dental fillings, wedding rings, other personal effects from death camp inmates.

I can't believe they collect fillings.

That's disgusting.

And they had to take, it took sixty truckloads to clear this mine out of all of them.

And this was just one mine.

Right.

Wait, does it get on the train and get lost?

I'm going to talk about the train next.

If there's one, there's more.

How did they find the mine again?

Who does locals were like, they just stumbled across.

This is where I start getting interested in.

Was there the mine there before the war or did they start mining to hide these things?

I think it was a mine that was already there, a pre-existing mine.

So like an actual physical mine where you like get in the caves and things.

It was just an underground cave.

Oh, yeah.

That they that they filled up with all of these things they had stolen.

Like national treasure.

That was in Switzerland.

Oh, okay.

This is a Germany thing.

Yeah.

Oh, this is not Grinkatz.

No, this that was a separate conspiracy.

We're on to a different one.

I'm giving you these facts here.

Okay.

So fact, the banks were hiding the money.

A German mine.

Mines were found with gold.

That the Germans were hiding.

That the Germans were hiding, found by the locals.

Third fact, let's talk about the trains.

Boom.

Okay.

So there were pro-German Hungarians looting from the Hungarian Jews.

And loot was loaded on a train in 1944.

The freight train had 46 cars.

So 24 of these 46 cars were just full of loot.

They carried confiscated and looted items like gold, jewelry, other precious stones, paintings, rugs, slipware and china, US dollars and francs and other valuables.

There were 15 cars that were full of Hungarian and Nazi Germany troops guarding the train, plus their supplies of ammunition, food and drinks.

And then seven cars to carry a designated group of coal miners who were there to bury the items should the need arise.

It was heading to Germany via Austria, but the train stopped for 92 days at the border to catalog all of the items.

So as a result, we are now able to value the contents of this train at $350 million, which is $4 billion today.

So on arrival to Austria, because again, I said, it was sitting, it was going Germany to Austria, it stopped at the border, they make this whole catalog over three months of what these items are.

And when it arrives in Austria, the US Army took custody of the train.

But when they took custody of the train, there was only about $3 million in items on the train.

That's a big difference.

Yeah.

This is literally Captain America.

It always goes back to Marvel.

So there's a terrible story here about how the Americans refused to return the money to the Hungarian Jews because they weren't sure who it belonged to.

They had no problem, however, helping themselves to some of these items.

So the Americans were not all in.

Yeah, I was just going to say, sorry, I don't know about that.

Anybody be interested if they were like, wait a second.

You're just a dead people driving a train full of gold around.

There's gold here just for the taken.

And so if they talk about how like the US Army personnel would steal like silverware, other items, they took them home with them and people were like, oh, we grew up using like this fancy silverware at like holidays.

And it was probably from the Junos.

Wow, that's great.

That's sad.

And this, but the fact that the United States did help themselves a little bit only came to light in like 1999.

But again, what happened to like the other three hundred and forty seven million dollars in items, right?

The rest of these valuables.

We know that Colonel Told, he was a man in charge, knew that the war was coming to an end.

So he started selling off loot along the train route.

On March 30th, he took a group of people and they left the train with the most valuable loot.

So everything we've discussed up to this point is proof.

Proof, this all happened.

We know this all happened.

But you can see probably how there was so much theft and so much unaccounted loot that it would lead to all these conspiracy theories that like what happened to the money.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Show me the money.

One of the theories that we discussed in the previous episode was a theory that Hitler and other high ranking Nazis fled to Argentina after the war.

But if you if you do believe that conspiracy theory, which like spoiler alert, I think we didn't really.

Yeah, we thought he was a druggy.

Yeah.

He was like too ill.

We thought to make that.

Yeah.

But with all those pills, there's no way.

But if you believe that he and other high ranking officials did make it to Argentina, then you would think they probably took a lot of this gold gold fund their life.

Right.

So that's one of the theories.

Well, we do have facts that like some Nazis went to Argentina.

We do.

Yeah.

So maybe they brought their own little serving them.

Yeah.

And then back in 1945, as the war was ending, the Germans were trying to transport valuable items to prevent them from being seized by the Allies.

Like I mentioned this, we talked about this train.

And there are reports that Nazi soldiers were actually hiding a train filled with golden valuables in the Owl Mountains of Poland.

Oh.

The rumor was that the train was either buried or hidden in a tunnel before the Nazis fled the region.

The Polish authorities and various treasure hunters have launched multiple expeditions over the years in search of this supposed train, but no concrete evidence of its existence has been found.

In the early 1990s, two treasure hunters, Kopar and Richter, claimed to have discovered the location of a Nazi train in southwest Poland using ground-penetrating radar.

Whoa.

They agreed to share the location in exchange for a 10 percent finders fee.

But despite excavations over the next few decades, no train or tunnel was ever found.

As a result, many theorize that there's still a missing train buried somewhere in Poland full of...

Nazi gold.

But no proof proof of it.

Wait, did they get paid the 10 percent?

No, they didn't find anything.

No, it's finders fee.

That's interesting.

Okay.

You asked about the Vatican.

Yeah, because the Swiss are like the protection service for the Vatican, right?

The Swiss Guard?

I don't know.

I'm pretty certain.

So I'm like, I don't trust a country that has their hands with Nazi gold and then also has their hands with a very controlling religion.

Wait a second.

I do have a question.

How can we say that Switzerland isn't neutral if literally they were doing everything for all the countries?

Like, isn't that the definition of neutrality?

Well, they kept the Nazi money secret.

They also kept the money for the Jews secret.

But they were helping to fund.

Yeah, who do you think got it?

The Swiss banks.

Yeah, but like the people that own the banks?

Yeah.

They scrape off from the interests.

Like, the Nazis wouldn't have been able to fund the war if it weren't for the Swiss.

Yeah.

Because no one would have accepted their money.

But instead, they're like, well, we're going to give you the gold.

You're going to give us Swiss francs.

Swiss money is acceptable to be used, and we're going to use that to buy all of our supplies and everything.

And if the Swiss hadn't helped them launder their money and just been like, they wouldn't have.

We're not going to do business with you because we're staying out of this war.

They wouldn't have been able to fund.

Okay, valid, valid, valid.

I give up.

You're right.

The Vatican.

There's a theory involving the Vatican.

In 1945, the Bigelow Report claimed that the Vatican had confiscated 350 million Swiss francs, 1.5 billion, in Nazi gold for safekeeping.

This remained classified until 1997.

It is also reported the Vatican had traded the Nazis 37.3 kilograms in gold in exchange for not imprisoning 300 Jews.

So the Vatican, allegedly, they're like paying off the Nazis to try to protect the Jews.

The Nazis took the money, but they still deported over 1,000 Jews to concentration camps where many of them died.

And did the Church know that they still did that, I would assume?

Well, the Vatican denies this, but the Church did come out in 2020 and admit that they were complicit in the Nazi atrocities.

They sent hundreds of priests to the front lines to provide spiritual guidance to Nazi soldiers.

They converted churches into hospitals.

They told followers to support the Nazi regime in an attempt to avoid confrontation with the Nazis and preserve the Church.

Some conspiracy theorists believe the Vatican had secret vaults that were used to store some of the looted treasures, including Nazi gold, as part of a deal to protect Nazi war criminals who fled Europe after the war.

Again, though, the Vatican denies it, and their records are sealed.

I'm sure they are, yeah.

And nobody has any control of them other than them.

So it's like, we'll never see that.

I'm like, yeah, protect one church while ending another completely.

Like, well, it's like, it's like, that's how, you know, that's like the how the red light district worked is like the the red light district is like in Amsterdam is like a port.

Right.

And at the at the end of the red light district is a church.

It's a big Catholic church.

And so it because people came in and like sailors would come into port.

And so the red light district was where the women like, you know, posed in the windows and the church allowed it to happen because, you know, you go to confession and you pay for your sins.

Well, they paid with money to the church.

So the church just let it happen because they were profiting off the prostitutes.

They were like pimps.

Borrow the money and it will lead you to two places, governmental issues and the church.

Yeah.

So another theory is that there might be hidden treasure under the sea.

Under the sea.

You knew I was gonna do that.

So there was, I have shot-

Something better.

We had, Kait has done a Titanic episode in the past, and I think you're gonna do another one for us in April.

Did you guys know that there was a bigger tragedy than the Titanic?

What?

Give me a hint.

The Wilhelm Gustloff.

No.

Is that the balloon?

Was a germ?

No.

Oh.

The Hindenburg?

The Hindenburg?

Wait, I don't think I knew about-

You don't know about the Hindenburg?

Wait, I might-

It's the helium blimp that went up in flames.

The alien blimp?

The helium blimp.

Hindenburg did that.

How many people?

Not nearly as many as the Titanic.

36 people.

Yeah.

The Hindenburg burst into flames while attempting to land in New Jersey in 1937.

You never heard of it?

36 people.

No.

And it's the era of commercial, rigid airship.

That was definitely in-

You definitely, you've definitely heard of it.

Yeah.

Okay, tell me about the-

Maybe not at that Clemson education.

I told you, I didn't get, I didn't do world history at Clemson.

But you didn't do history in high school either.

This history class was in junior year of high school.

Mine too, actually.

If you took a high school history class, you learned about the Hindenburg.

You definitely did.

Let me tell you about my high school history class.

It was a hot teacher, hot male.

Did not have a hot-

Had a crush on her.

I did.

Oh my God.

I sat next to her.

So she learned nothing.

Yeah.

Tell us about, what is it called again?

Under the sea.

So the Wilhelm Gustav-

Gustav.

Gustav.

Gustav was a German cruise ship that had been converted to a military transport ship.

It was evacuating over 10,000 German civilians and military personnel.

So there was this radio operator who was taking a smoke break, and he reported that he witnessed tons of crates being loaded onto the ship, which he presumed to be gold.

Then, January 1945, the ship took off, but it was sunk by the Soviets, killing 9,400 of the 10,600 passengers.

I mean, we're talking like, I can't even do the math right now, like seven times, six times more people than were lost in the Titanic, and we don't talk about.

So 9,400 out of the 10,600 passengers died, and of those, 5,000 were children.

I think they were purposely killed.

So that radio operator that I told you saw all the gold getting, allegedly, allegedly saw gold.

Yeah, he survives.

Of course he did.

And so again, as I mentioned, this is actually far worse than Titanic based on the numbers, but very similar in the sense that like they were insufficient lifeboats.

The ship was actually overloaded.

So passengers were supposed to be wearing life vests, but it was so crowded.

They weren't enough.

They took them off.

Like they were like, it was, they were just jam-packed together like sardines.

And the rescue ships didn't have the capacity to rescue all of the survivors.

Oh, that's awful.

Where were they going?

Wait, Germany does touch the Baltic Sea, and it touches the North Sea and the English Channel.

I had no freaking clue.

It was German refugees who were being evacuated from the ports of East Prussia, which had been cut off from Germany by the advancement of the Soviet armies.

Prussia.

It's in, Prussia no longer exists.

Prussia is now...

It's eaten up by Poland and Russia.

Don't you watch...

Anastasia.

No, I was thinking the other ship, the Empress.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Anastasia.

I love that movie.

That's a good conspiracy.

So a few decades...

That is a good conspiracy.

Add that to the list.

Sorry, Megan, keep going.

So a few decades later, that radio operator reports that he was speaking to another survivor who told him that he was tasked with guarding the gold and it all clicks for this guy.

So this diver decides he's going to go hunting.

He dives down 450 meters in the Baltic Sea.

So this boat was five football feet deep in the water.

He said that the structure was a pile of rubble on the seabed.

So the crates would have to be buried below.

But he did note that there were bars over windows leading him to speculate that there was likely a strong room where they were storing the valuables.

Interesting.

Okay.

He also said, quote, you could clearly see there were holes cut in the hall and there were places where people had been at work with heavy duty cutting gear.

Oh, it looked to me as though it had been blown apart with explosives, unquote.

So was something that someone they already trying to get it out.

Yeah.

So they took some portholes that they were going to donate to a museum, but they were stopped on return to shore and arrested for pillaging.

Oh, they were released.

But then the Polish government imposed an exclusion zone claiming it was a war grave.

No one can dive down here because this is a grave.

Oh, they know what's down there.

Right.

A diver went down in 2003 and confirmed that it has been completely stripped bare.

So that leads to a theory that there could be some gold buried under the sea or there could have been gold under the sea.

That they already grabbed.

Yeah.

Do you think it's just random divers or people that knew?

That's a good question.

I bet it's a mix of both.

I also like there's just so many people that were on the ship.

Nobody thought.

I've never heard about this.

How come we've never heard about the ship?

Because we're a little centrist Americans, I guess.

I guess.

But if it was the girl who said, We don't have accents.

Everyone else has accents.

We are.

I mean, you know what I was saying?

Apparently, we are the original English accent and they changed their accents.

British changed how they speak because.

Look it up.

Look, you know, I swear to God, but they because they were they didn't want to be like us.

No, because I feel like I feel like British accents sound like that old Savannah accent, too.

So you think that like Boston is really the original?

Not Boston, but just the American accent.

But what's the American accent?

What we are speaking?

Uh, you know what?

Colleen is correct.

Mic drop.

I knew I was.

AI says that the British accent has changed significantly over time with the most notable changes occurring in the last few centuries, meaning the way people speak in Britain today is quite different from how they spoke hundreds of years ago.

In comparison, the American accent has evolved at a much slower pace, preserving some older pronunciation features that have changed in British English.

Boom.

English.

Wait a second.

So they just decided one day to talk like that?

They were.

Yes.

They were like, fuck the Americans.

What I'm saying.

I think majority of accents are a choice.

I really do.

Like the thick Bostonian accent.

I like that.

That's a choice.

You don't have to talk like that, like.

British accents?

I just feel like that's a choice.

Like, I'm like, but hello, pronounce your H.

Hello.

Do you know what I mean?

I learned something new today.

You're welcome.

Yeah.

Wait, so we are, is that the first thing you learned today?

No, there's other thing.

I believed in the Nazi gold.

So you don't have to tell me.

But you didn't know anything about it.

I just knew about a train.

I'm getting back on this boat.

Well, boat.

How did they?

The Soviets sunk them.

Oh.

But do they think the Soviets think, because you're saying the Soviets, oh, wait, Soviet was on our side.

I'm so confused about Russia.

So Russia was not America's enemy until the 70s.

But now they're still our enemy, sort of.

Kind of.

Kind of.

They're like our frenemy.

Yeah.

I don't know if I would describe them as a frenemy.

I don't think we talk to them.

I think we fund Ukraine.

So I don't think not anymore.

Yeah.

I think Trump Putin are frenemies.

Yeah.

But buddies.

Okay.

So then we've got, we have two more possible locations for some gold, okay?

Okay.

Okay.

Let me guess.

I wouldn't.

Okay.

I don't think you will.

I'm gonna guess Poland again.

Oh, okay.

The Alps near Lake Toplitz.

Toplitz Mountain.

Right.

So this retreat for the German Armed Forces became a naval testing station where they experimented with different explosives during the war.

Of course.

There are rumors that two high-ranking SS officers stashed boxes of gold and classified document, perhaps containing information regarding Swiss bank accounts.

The rumors estimate that there are $5.6 billion in stolen gold in lake tubs.

In the water.

In, like, they boxed it up and they put it in the lake.

How deep is the lake?

To hide it.

The lake is only accessible by foot via a private mile long track.

It is 300 feet deep with layers of logs.

300 feet deep with layers of logs seems like not a great place to stash something that you're hoping to go back and get, right?

Right.

Unless you have donkeys.

Right.

We do have some proof proof that the Nazis did hide things there.

So during the war, the Nazis were working on Operation Bernhard.

Their plan was to drop forged British banknotes over Britain in hopes of collapsing their economy.

Oh, right.

So people would just pick these up and be like, oh, so they would, it would be funny.

And they'd be like, oh my gosh, I'm going to go buy some candy.

They really thought the Brits were stupid.

They never actually put this plan into action.

But in 1959, investigators did recover 700 million pounds of counterfeit notes in the lake.

So, whoa, whoa.

So they were planning that.

My point was that none of the Nazi gold was ever discovered in Lake Toplitz, but we do know that at least five divers died looking for it.

Wait, I, oh, I wonder if there's booby traps.

Oh my gosh, it could be like the goonies.

And then there's one more conspiracy theory for me to share with you.

Oh God.

If I was going to tell you that there's a group of Americans who may have been involved in securing Nazi gold during the Cold War, who would your guess be?

Free Freemasons.

The KKK.

Hold on, hold on.

The CIA.

Oh, I'm thinking, who would agree with Nazis?

The KKK.

So some conspiracy theorists claim the CIA might have been involved in securing Nazi gold during the Cold War.

The theory is that the US government might have struck a deal with Nazis or their allies to use the gold as part of a covert operation, either to fund anti-communist movements or to finance Black Ops mission.

I believe this.

Dom even suggested the CIA used Nazi gold as a bargaining chip in the early years of the Cold War, hiding it in offshore accounts or foreign banks.

Wonder if it funded Montauk.

There is no proof proof.

I mean, we know the Americans were involved in the Safe Haven project, but was it all altruistic?

No, we know US soldiers helped themselves to some of those items discovered, as we mentioned.

So, I mean, no, I can we put it past them?

And we know, like Nazi scientists were involved in American experiments.

Operation Paperclip.

Yeah.

So it's like I would not put it past.

Slum Island.

I would not put it past them.

Yeah.

It makes me think how much money went to America.

Yeah, probably a lot.

How much money went to our politicians in America?

Okay, guys.

So that's all the information I have.

So given the fact that we know at some point there was money hidden in banks.

Given the fact that we know that the Nazi gold is real.

Yeah.

Do we think that there's still Nazi gold out there?

Do we think that people have found it?

What do we think?

I don't know.

I think there's still money out there, and I think it belongs to the present day Jews who are relative.

We should find it and give it back to them.

Yeah.

Where do you think it is?

Do you think it's in a train in the water?

I think a lot of it is in the bank and spread within governments.

I think it's gone into the government system.

Yeah.

Well, we know that there's still plenty of it in the Swiss banks.

And I'll tell you this much, it's not real.

I think that the gold existed, as we know.

Okay.

I think it still is in the Swiss banks.

Right.

And I think that the Swiss banks have been using it as like bargaining chips with governments.

Which is not even a conspiracy that we talked about.

Well, what about like-

Switzerland is really small and like surrounded by really strong countries.

Really rich.

No, well, rich off Jewish money.

They're just rich because they benefit off everybody who's rich in other countries.

Well, what about like the $350 million that was on the train that just vanished?

Do you think that's in the Swiss bank?

We only have one first person.

But we know the train detail of the train with the money.

The train stopped for 92 days and they in catalogued it.

Yeah.

Do we think that it wasn't like, was it inventoried and like slowly like disperse at the same time?

Yeah.

Like, let's inventory this, but really disperse it.

Right.

And then move the train along.

Right.

Oh, I bet that's what happened.

What did you say that they were like selling some people along the way because they really got to get rid of this?

Right.

I know that several of them took off with boxes of stuff.

I just think, like, we are going to be learning about things that were done during these years by, like, the Nazis and by all of the countries.

I also think that the CIA probably could have been involved.

We are not innocent.

I don't think anybody was innocent.

Not a way.

Can you imagine you're, like, cleaning out your grandpa's attic one day after he dies and you just find, like, Nazi gold?

It was in the chimney.

My grandfather used to keep his money in the chimney because he didn't trust the banks.

But now, I'm just thinking of, like, any, like, vintage jewelry that we find.

Like, what if that jewelry was started as a Jewish person's tooth filling and melted down by a Nazi into a diamond ring?

I don't like that.

That makes me feel bad.

I'm not into vintage jewelry, so I am.

I know.

But I think the money's real.

I think a lot of it's in the government.

I think we'll never get it back.

We, by we, I mean, I think the Jewish population will never get it back.

I mean, I just can't believe that there's still some very, I think it's all been picked over.

And yeah, maybe some of it went to South America.

It's gone.

But like, I just all these people who have spent decades of their life, like treasure hunting, I'm just I'm sure it's not still there.

Yeah, I feel like enough people knew about this stuff that somebody went back and got it.

Right.

Oh, you know, decades ago or sure.

It's not.

Yeah, it's not like going to be this like pocket of gold.

No, it's not some national treasure moment.

Yeah, it's not a national treasure moment.

It's been dispersed.

People knew about it.

Nobody keeps money to themselves.

You know what I mean?

Like, no, it's just become generational wealth.

At this point, it's really sad.

OK, but to be clear, the Nazi gold is real.

And it's like I call it Nazi gold, but I am very aware that it's stolen Jewish gold and money.

Well, we just and we talk about all the Jewish.

Right.

It's not just all.

No, and we tell.

No, they took more than just Jews.

Yeah.

But we talk about the Jewish people being the victims of the Holocaust.

But I would just like to reiterate in the video where or the episode where my mom and brothers all made fun of me.

Listen to this one.

Yeah, there you go.

Redemption, vindication for Colleen.

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Kait, what should the people do?

Kait, if you believe in the Nazi gold, which you should after this, but if you also want to talk about it, and you know people that like to talk about the Nazi gold, take out your phone right now, text three of them.

There could be three people.

There could be one, but also just text three people that you think would like this episode.

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See you next Tuesday.