Sign of the skull 'points to Nazi gold hoard'

Published on Monday 9 May 2011 17:14

IT WAS the stolen gold bullion that was to fund the 1,000-year Reich and immortalise the achievements of Adolf Hitler. Instead, in the final days of the Second World War, it was hidden and so triggered a treasure hunt that has lasted for 70 years.

Now historians, using RAF surveillance photographs shot from Mosquito fighter-bombers over Germany, believe they are poised to uncover a massive bunker containing the gold reserves of the Third Reich.

Using the photographs and eyewitness reports from the Second World War as clues, a historical dig is to start next month in the Leinawald Forest near Leipzig for the lost underground complex which could contain 500 million in Nazi gold.

One of the photographs taken in August 1944 reveals a man-made construction of sand built to resemble the outline of a human skull, which Hilmar Prosche, a local historian, believes points the way to the bunker entrance.

The SS, whose symbol was the death's head skull and cross-bones, is believed to have been responsible for spiriting the gold away during the collapse of Germany in April 1945.

Rumours of the existence of a giant subterranean installation have fuelled a mania for treasure hunts in the forest over recent years. The evidence to support the rumours are that Nazi archives do show that battalions of Organisation Todt, the Third Reich's main labour organisation, were shipped into the Leinawald in 1944 on the orders of Hitler's armaments minister, Albert Speer. Last weekend human remains were found in the forest and are believed to be those of slave labourers forced to assist the Nazis in the construction of the secret bunker.

Records of the Luftwaffe, dated to 1945, show that a bombing raid was ordered on the site in April 1945, just one month from the end of the war, and at a time when very few German planes were able to fly because of total Allied air supremacy.

Mr Prosche said yesterday: "They obviously thought it was worth the risk to put aircraft into the sky to drop bombs to try to obliterate surface traces of what had been constructed here."

In 1961 the German government dug in the forest looking for the missing gold which was taken by lorry out of Berlin as the capital disintegrated in April and May 1945 under the onslaught of the Red Army.

However the search was abruptly halted when poison gases from old mine workings began seeping to the surface.

Although nothing was found, the authorities did not at the time have access to the RAF reconnaissance photographs, which were still classified.

Another historian involved in the planned dig, but who did not wish to be named, said: "We have Nazi labour battalions digging in the forest assisted by slaves, British warplanes taking photos of the workings, our own side bombing it - and a report from Berlin of trucks leaving the Reichsbank and headed towards Leipzig under SS guard.

"The fact that the government back in 1961 thought it worth digging here makes us certain that the gold is here."

The historians are not alone in their conviction that millions of pounds of gold bullion are hidden in a secret bunker. In 1996 a former US soldier, Norman Scott ,searched in the forest for the gold. He was in Nazi Germany at war's end and claimed a dying SS man had told him the Reichsbank gold was buried in the area, but he too failed to find the bunker.

Should it exist, the booty would certainly be vast. During the Second World War German troops looted the bank reserves of each conquered country and then shipped the gold back to Germany, while victims of the Holocaust were also stripped of any valuables they had, including gold jewellery.

The gold from these sources was then melted down and cast into bars with the mark of the German central bank, the Reichsbank, imprinted on them.

While much of the stolen gold was used to pay for the ongoing war effort, a large portion was still intact and in Nazi hands as Germany's defeat became apparent.

By April of 1945 the Allies were closing in on the German capital and Nazi officials decided to move the remaining contents of the Reichsbank, ostensibly to Oberbayern in southern Bavaria. However the gold never reached there. But Mr Prosche and his backers believe it now lies deep beneath the earth of the Leinawald.There is precedence for such Nazi gold bunkers, as more than 100 tons of gold, as well as stolen art works and other treasures were discovered by the US Third Army, under the command of General Patton, in a salt mine south-west of Gotha in 1945.

The search for Nazi gold has been an ongoing mystery, inspiring films such as Kelly's Heroes, starring Clint Eastwood.

Among those who may have known the whereabouts of any gold and treasure bunkers was Erich Koch, a senior Nazi officer and military governor of East Prussia, who assembled a vast booty in the Baltic port of Konigsberg, which he had shipped back to Germany.

The cargo was destined for Weimar, the hometown of Martin Bormann, the Nazi leader who had helped to co-ordinate the looting across Europe. Although Koch was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes, he consistently refused to assist in the search for Nazi gold and art treasures and died in a Polish prison in 1985.

AMBER MYSTERY

THE most highly sought of all the art, gold and artefacts looted by the Nazis during their rampage across Europe 70 years ago and still missing today is the Amber Room, the magnificent gift of King Frederick I of Prussia to the Russian royal family.

The room, which consisted of 22 wall panels, busts, figures and mirrors all crafted from amber, was installed at the Catherine Palace outside St Petersburg. During the invasion of Russia in 1941, the Nazis dismantled the room and shipped it to Konigsberg.

Yet in 1945, as the Russian army advanced, a convoy of German trucks laden with loot, and according to some, the Amber Room, fled from the city.