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Chilling entry focuses on the real-life monsters of evil, the Nazis, who plundered their subjugated lands for their riches.
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00:00April 1945, as Allied forces obliterate German cities, Nazi party functionaries scramble for
00:19cover, carrying with them far more than their own worldly goods.
00:30From D-Day the 6th of June to the complete collapse of German military strength, a brief eight
00:41months had gone by.
00:43There had been little time for the looters to hide their ill-gotten wealth.
00:54By war's end, hundreds of millions of dollars in jewels, gold and artworks were being stuffed
00:59into strong boxes to be hidden in the most unlikely places.
01:07The plunder set off one of the greatest treasure hunts in history.
01:29Some of the treasures were buried in an Austrian salt mine during World War II.
01:42Some were recovered.
01:43Many remain unfound to this day.
01:53This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.
01:57The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only
02:03ones to the mysteries we will examine.
02:18From the east, Russian forces hammer Berlin in the last days of World War II.
02:24In the spring of 1945, Adolf Hitler ordered the German army to defend Berlin to the death
02:39of the last man.
02:47Russian soldiers sealed off Berlin as American troops mopped up the scattered pockets of German
02:52resistance east of the Rhine River.
02:55In the closing days of the war, every foot of land was paid for with a life.
03:05The once haughty German legions defended Hitler's capital city with companies made up of old
03:22men and young boys.
03:24Russian infantrymen poured into the marble halls of the capital and sounded the death knoll
03:29of the so-called Thousand Year Reich.
03:39Even as the Allied armies were writing an end to the Third Reich in Berlin, Hitler's henchmen
03:43were scurrying to save themselves.
03:46Men like Martin Bormann, the architects of Nazi power for a dozen years, weren't about
03:50to surrender or commit suicide as their leader had done.
03:54They had access to the plunder of Europe.
03:57They had an old bullion worth hundreds of millions of dollars and priceless works of painting
04:01and sculpture.
04:02They snatched what they could and ran for their lives.
04:05Some to be caught later, others never to be seen again.
04:09Their disappearance touched off the greatest manhunt in history and the greatest search
04:14for treasure.
04:23As Berlin fell, more than 500 top-ranking Nazis disappeared from sight.
04:30They took to the roads, wearing civilian clothes and using any means of transportation they could
04:35beg, borrow or steal.
04:40The stolen treasures they carried were to be passports to a new life.
04:46The departure from Berlin of Nazi leaders was a far cry from their triumphant marches through
04:51conquered cities just six years earlier.
04:55the streets of Paris played host to a strange caravan.
05:05Riding in an open staff car, selected officers accompanied Adolf Hitler on a tour of the City
05:10of Light.
05:14In less than eight hours, Adolf Hitler would leave Paris, never to return.
05:21Himself a frustrated artist, he would order his troops to confiscate the great art treasures
05:26of private and public collections and bring them back to the Third Reich.
05:36Nazi historians have often attempted to trace the plundering that occurred during the Nazi
05:41occupation of Western Europe.
05:43But an impossible jungle of documents has subverted most of their attempts.
05:51With children playing with newfound toys, Hitler and Goring examined each new collection that
05:56was brought to Germany.
06:08Countless hundreds of millions of dollars in paintings and sculpture adorned the walls of
06:13the Nazi Museum in Munich.
06:23Still other great treasures were hidden in a 15th century castle called Neuschwanstein.
06:29The castle was the creation of Ludwig the Second, the Mad King of Bavaria.
06:35In a sense, one madman's monument had become a storehouse for the greed and fantasies of another.
06:42For a time, Ludwig's collection of cheap glass and plaster fixtures was dignified by some
06:48of the finest works of Europe's old masters.
06:55As World War II ended, American G.I.s were sent to the castle to recover its treasures.
07:02What they found were the works of incomparable artists haphazardly grouped with paintings of
07:07little or no merit.
07:28The salt mine had been the Nazi treasure repository.
07:40In the perfectly controlled humidifier, an elaborate vault had been created in which the paintings
07:46could be safely housed.
07:48To this day, the salt mine remains.
07:53It is possible to enter each of the wood-clad rooms and conjure up images of rack upon rack
07:59filled with priceless art.
08:11The search for treasure taken from the salt mine was assigned to men like Walter Hall, who
08:13was a treasure of treasure.
08:14The search for treasure taken from the salt mine was assigned to men like Walter Hall, who
08:15was a treasure of treasure of treasure.
08:16a German-born art historian who worked with U.S. military intelligence.
08:37The search for treasure taken from the salt mine was assigned to men like Walter Hall, a German-born
08:43historian who worked with U.S. military intelligence after the war.
08:50I was assigned to an intelligence unit which was in charge of the recovery of treasures, art
08:56treasures that had been displaced or stolen.
08:59There were two very interesting cases.
09:02One of them was the recovery of the crown jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, five of the most
09:10important pieces of which had disappeared.
09:13The other one, psychologically perhaps more interesting, because the key figure in that
09:17story was a woman, was the disappearance of two million dollars worth of gold coins from
09:25the salt mines of Alt-Aussi.
09:30The only thing that was known about them was that they were last in the hands of an SS
09:37major called von Hummel, who was the right-hand man of Martin Bormann, who was the right-hand
09:43man of Adolf Hitler.
09:45The problem was to find a man who had disappeared six months earlier.
09:51Disappeared from a Berlin under fire.
09:53Martin Bormann left the bunker where Hitler was to die and made a frantic race for freedom.
10:05Years later, his chauffeur retraced the escape route used by Bormann and his men.
10:11As Russian tanks bombarded the area around the Reichstag, they made their way across the
10:16Spree River.
10:17In the very center of the city, they took refuge in an underground train station.
10:23In the subway tunnel, wearing civilian clothes, they mingled with frightened Berliners, praying
10:29that their meager concrete roof would stand up under the bombardment.
10:37Once they reached the western edge of the city, they took temporary refuge in a broken ruin,
10:43hoping to last out the day.
10:47I went onto the normal, using the normal methods of searching for a man by trying to meet the
10:53people who saw him last and see whether his tracks disappeared or did not disappear.
10:58They disappeared.
11:00Apparently, the escapees weathered that night in an abandoned building and the next day set
11:06out on a prearranged escape route south.
11:09Bormann's face was well known to almost every German.
11:13In the chaos surrounding war's end, however, he slipped out of Berlin and made his way to
11:18the Alps.
11:20After about two weeks in the Austrian mountains, including a search in the Alpine huts and a
11:29search in sawmills all the way down from the high Alps to the valley of Salzburg, I had come
11:35to the conclusion that he was lost.
11:38Were it not for the dedication of the hunter, the treasure might have been forever lost.
11:44I had no other choice now than to approach Mrs. von Hummer.
11:48At the end of a conversation, rather than interrogation of about 45 minutes, she admitted that she knew where he was
11:57and declared her willingness to go and see him and to inquire about the whereabouts of the coins.
12:04I left her alone for three days, saw her again, and she declared,
12:09Lieutenant Horne, I am happy to report that the coins are in the hands of the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg.
12:17I said, this is fine, Mrs. von Hummer, my mission is accomplished.
12:24Other pieces of treasure, however, were not found, and years later would become the subject of life and death struggles.
12:31Train loads of priceless treasure rolled across the German countryside.
12:44Hitler's officers made sure the plunder of Europe was complete.
12:48It included the most precious thing of all, humanity.
12:53Hundreds of thousands of Jews would be herded aboard Hitler's trains.
12:57Many would die of starvation along the way.
13:01The trains leaving collection centers throughout Europe were expressions of fundamental Nazi philosophy.
13:07To be other than German was to be inferior.
13:10To be Jewish was to be despised.
13:14At the end of the line were the concentration camps.
13:18They were foul stockyards of humanity stripped of hope.
13:27With the Jews, Hitler found the scapegoat he needed to explain Germany's failures between the wars.
13:34The Nazis were stealing lives now, and they weren't above making a profit at it.
13:40Grizzly crimes were committed by the Nazis in their dozen-year reign of terror in Europe.
13:46Worst of these were the assaults on human dignity, typified by the robbing of gold from the mouths of murdered Jews.
13:52Another atrocity was the collection of huge sums in gold and diamonds from concentration camp inmates who thought they could buy back their lives.
14:00They couldn't, but they made their killers rich trying.
14:05The horror of it struck home when the Allies took over the camps.
14:10They entered as liberators, but there were no cheering crowds.
14:15They beheld instead a tragic spectacle.
14:22Combat hadn't prepared them for this.
14:25The ovens.
14:26Hitler's final solution.
14:29Human bones piled everywhere.
14:32Clearly, the horrors invented by the Nazis were beyond comprehension, beyond words.
14:39Treasure could be recovered, but lives could not.
14:42The task would be enormous.
14:44Perhaps it would never be completed.
14:47The great bulk of Nazi plunder would be recovered immediately after the war.
14:52Uncounted millions, however, disappeared with Hitler's henchmen.
14:56Men who, like Martin Bormann, are still at large.
15:00Among them, Dr. Joseph Mengele.
15:03He conducted unspeakable research on the inmates of concentration camps.
15:07Inmates would have sooner faced the ovens than Mengele's knife.
15:14At Nuremberg, the Allies tried top Nazi leaders captured at war's end.
15:21But the colonels and mages of the Third Reich carried their treasures with them into peacetime Europe.
15:26Austria's lake Toplize.
15:31Gold bars and hundreds of thousands of counterfeit English pounds were recovered from the lake in 1957.
15:38What better place for hiding treasure quickly than a deep alpine lake?
15:43How much remains to be discovered?
15:45Two men have disappeared trying to answer that question.
15:55The search goes on in spite of the lake's ominous history.
15:59The Austrian government tries to discourage treasure hunters.
16:02But the lure of Nazi gold is powerful.
16:09Two volunteer firemen from a nearby city have dreamed of the riches that may lie beneath the lake.
16:15The dream brings them to Toplize again and again.
16:19Perhaps this will be the day.
16:21The quest is exhilarating, but not without danger.
16:26Vigilance is important.
16:28Treasure hunters are optimists.
16:36And it is a fine day for a dive.
16:39Optimists, yes.
16:51But the treasure hunters know other hunters may be abroad.
16:55The men who hid the gold were not strangers to killing.
16:59Who knows where they are now?
17:05The water is deep and cold.
17:07It is easy to see how it has kept its secret for more than 30 years.
17:12The divers are spurred by the knowledge that the quest paid off once.
17:30There was another time when blood may have been spilled to keep the secret of the lake.
17:37The secret was born in 1945.
17:40The Nazi hierarchy, not killed outright, was in flight.
17:44If they were caught, they might lie their way out of long prison sentences.
17:49But not if they were caught with treasure.
17:52Fortunes must have been hidden in haste.
18:02Lakes along the escape route beckoned.
18:09Almost 20 years later, some of the treasure has already been found.
18:13Perhaps someone was there to make sure no more would be.
18:22Did the divers find something?
18:24Something that cost them their lives?
18:26We only know that they vanished.
18:28Some think the underground Nazi movement called Odessa was involved.
18:35It is 1976.
18:50No one will vanish on this dive.
18:52There will be no treasure either.
18:54It is possible that the gold remaining in Toplice was moved years ago when its guardians felt others closing in.
19:04There are many other lakes and many secret bank accounts.
19:07Sirius investigators don't dismiss the notion that there are still men in hiding who would see Hitler's nightmare world reborn.
19:20Great treasure would have to be close at hand to once again unleash the dogs of war.
19:26That prospect alone may be enough to drive men to continue the search for Nazi plunder.
19:39Florence, the capital of Renaissance culture, is the center for the continuing search for the plundered art treasures of Europe.
19:55Rudolfo Severo is the most active of the art detectives.
20:02He stayed on the trail of Nazi art thieves long after others had given up.
20:09Severo has searched thousands of German documents for clues.
20:15With them, he has recovered dozens of stolen masterpieces.
20:20Manifests, bills of lading, army memos, reminders of past outrages.
20:29The collections of the Uffizi Gallery and the Pitti Palace in Florence have been reconstructed through the work of Severo and his colleagues.
20:42Yet Severo estimates that a third of Italy's plundered art is still missing.
20:49He thinks much of it is hidden behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany.
20:53One of his hardest tasks has been to root out the fake masterpieces that began showing up after the war.
21:03Museums, anxious to restore their collections, often fell victim to swindles.
21:08The flood of copies has made it even harder to trace the fate of the originals.
21:19Severo remains dedicated to restoring his nation's art heritage, no matter how difficult the task.
21:26It is important for men like Severo to believe that beauty can endure.
21:48It must endure if man is to banish the ugliness of war.
21:53Perhaps, if beauty endures, the flaming destruction of the past can finally be cast aside.
22:01Lost civilizations, extraterrestrials, myths and monsters, missing persons, magic and witchcraft, unexplained phenomena.
22:19In search of cameras are traveling the world seeking out these great mysteries.
22:24This program was the result of the work of scientists, researchers and a group of highly skilled technicians.
22:31Highly skilled technicians.
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