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00:03Summer 1941. Operation Barbarossa.
00:08Hitler launches his massive invasion of the Soviet Union.
00:12Three million soldiers surge east.
00:15An army driven by conquest and greed.
00:19And wherever they go, the Nazis plunder.
00:23Churches, palaces, museums.
00:26Nothing is spared.
00:27Art, gold, icons, all stripped away in the name of the Third Reich.
00:36By September, German forces reach the outskirts of Leningrad.
00:40They never take the city, but they seize its suburbs and surrounding towns.
00:44And in the city of Pushkin, once known as Sarkoi Salo,
00:48they enter the Catherine Palace, home to generations of Russian Tsars.
00:54And there, they discover a masterpiece, unlike any other, the Amber Room.
01:01Walls of glowing amber panels, gilded mouldings and mosaics that shimmer like captured sunlight.
01:08A room so extraordinary, it was called the eighth wonder of the world.
01:14The Nazis dismantle it piece by piece, pack it into crates and ship it west to Königsberg.
01:22Today, Kaliningrad.
01:24For the Nazis, it isn't just art, it's power.
01:30As the war draws to a close, its whereabouts become a mystery.
01:36Now, some say it was sealed in a castle.
01:39Others whisper it was loaded onto a ship that never reached shore.
01:43A treasure so radiant surely could never stay hidden.
01:49And yet, it vanished.
01:59My name is Guy Walters.
02:02I'm a historian and a journalist.
02:05And for the past decades, I have been investigating and researching
02:09the Third Reich and the Second World War.
02:14I'm Justine.
02:15I'm an avid traveller, adventurer,
02:18and I'm here to join Guy on the last hunt for Nazi gold.
02:25In this episode, we'll be following the trail of the elusive Amber Room.
02:32Visiting some of the most sinister sights from the war's final days
02:36to try and unravel one of the greatest of all of World War II's treasure mysteries.
02:43How does six tons of amber just disappear?
03:03In the early 18th century, craftsmen in Prussia
03:07carved, shaped and polished thousands of panels of glowing amber.
03:12It was like capturing sunlight and freezing it
03:15and creating a chamber unlike anything the world had ever seen.
03:24Given to Russia, it became the pride of the Tsars
03:27and it was shimmering inside the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg.
03:35Just think of it.
03:37An entire room made entirely from this, frankly, astonishing material.
03:43Amber comes from the fossilised resin of trees.
03:47And it's been around for millions of years.
03:50And it had mirrors.
03:52And it had carvings of cupids and heraldic crests.
03:57I mean, it was really ostentatious.
03:59And the whole place just glowed gold.
04:08In the middle of 1941, the Germans begin to advance east.
04:17Into the Soviet Union.
04:20When the Germans reached Pushkin in September 1941, they went straight.
04:27For the Catherine Palace.
04:30Top of their list.
04:31The Amber Room.
04:36I think it's really, truly horrible when you think about it.
04:39It's that image of all those kind of oikish German soldiers
04:44spending two days just crowbarring that Amber Room apart.
04:49You know, just stealing it.
04:58What the Nazis did was to take all that plundered amber,
05:02pack it into crates,
05:04and they took it to Königsberg Castle in East Prussia.
05:09And it was there where the local Nazi gauleiter,
05:13a man called Erich Koch,
05:15reassembled it for public viewing.
05:20For the Germans, it wasn't just a room.
05:23It symbolized pride.
05:25It had originally been built for the Charlottenburg Palace
05:28of the Prussian King Frederick I,
05:30before it was given to Tsar Peter the Great.
05:33And it was long enjoyed by his descendants,
05:37including, of course, the ill-fated Nicholas II,
05:40seen here inspecting his troops before the First World War.
05:43The Nazis now saw it as a centerpiece of their thousand-year Third Reich.
05:51It was an object of sheer beauty.
05:56As the Soviets and allies closed in
05:58and the Third Reich began to collapse,
06:00Königsberg burnt, its castles and streets consumed by fire.
06:04With it, perhaps, the last traces of the Amber Room's golden glow.
06:21Here's the big problem.
06:23No-one has found a single scrap of the Amber Room.
06:27And so, when you think about it,
06:29and you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist,
06:31you know, when you've got a treasure this size,
06:33that lack of evidence is frankly really quite strange.
06:38Yesterday, I ran across Santa Fe,
06:42but no-one noticed,
06:43cause I was all dressed in grey.
06:45Keeps on swearing...
06:46First stop, Friedland Castle,
06:49a medieval fortress that became a Nazi stronghold
06:53during the final years of the war.
07:02In the spring of 1945, as the Red Army advanced,
07:06locals whispered about trucks arriving under the cover of darkness.
07:11Convoys unloading heavy crates that vanished into the cellars below.
07:16Were they moving weapons and records,
07:19or something far more valuable?
07:23From there, we'll head to the mine of Heinz-Peter Haustein.
07:27By May 1945, with Allied patrols sweeping through Saxony,
07:31this abandoned shaft became the perfect hiding place.
07:36Rumours tell of gold bars and artworks lowered into the tunnels,
07:40sealed away as the Third Reich took its last breath.
07:44And finally, the Prince's Hole,
07:47a vast cave system hidden deep in the Orr Mountains.
07:50As the Reich collapsed, SS units were said to have driven here,
07:54concealing stolen goods within the twisting corridors of rock.
08:01Three locations.
08:03Three shadows from the dying days of Nazi Germany.
08:08And to uncover the legend,
08:10we'll have to follow the trail underground.
08:14Yeah, why don't we get left up there?
08:15And it might just be slightly interesting.
08:17So, Hotel Sonic, 37 minutes drive, start.
08:21Okay, I'll just have the sat-lab on.
08:23Yeah, let's go up that way.
08:24Okay.
08:24Let's go that way.
08:25And actually, this is a bit more interesting.
08:37We start here at Friedland Castle in the Czech Republic,
08:42a fortress whose walls have witnessed centuries of conflict.
08:47But it's the Second World War that has shrouded it in legend.
08:51Because in the Reich's dying months,
08:53strange stories began to circulate.
08:56Trucks arriving at night.
08:57Engines cut.
08:59Headlights blacked out.
09:00Crates and chests carried through the gates,
09:03vanishing into the vaulted cellars of this medieval stronghold.
09:08Friedland Castle became more than just stone and battlements.
09:12It became, perhaps, a vault.
09:16A hiding place for secrets the Nazis didn't want uncovered.
09:21And for us, it's the first step in following the trail
09:25of what they may have left behind.
09:40As we crossed over into the Czech Republic,
09:43that landscape really changed.
09:44You know, the air got cooler.
09:46And, you know, the hills started to rise around us.
09:49And then, through the trees, something appeared.
10:00There are some people who think that the Amber Room
10:04is just over there in the cellars of the mighty Friedland Castle.
10:09Justine, you know what you're going to do.
10:11Get into that castle.
10:12I'm on a mission.
10:20According to two modern treasure hunters,
10:22Eric Stence and Georg Medra,
10:25hidden within the notes of the march impromptu,
10:27lies a code.
10:30Directions that could point to the Amber Room itself,
10:33right here at Friedland Castle.
10:36Now, their theory suggests that musical patterns
10:39conceal coordinates,
10:41a secret left behind by those
10:43who move the treasure in the chaos of 1945.
10:48Now, it all does sound a bit far-fetched,
10:50but then so many Nazi secrets do.
10:53And every legend has got to start somewhere.
11:04We feel like we're on a little bit of a secret mission here.
11:07The castle didn't want us to go in officially
11:11because they don't want anyone checking whether the Amber Room
11:15is still there or not.
11:16Might be a cover-up, but we're here to find out.
11:21Since the Friedland Castle officials wouldn't grant us filming access,
11:25we had no choice but to split up,
11:27sending Justine in as a regular tourist
11:29to see if she can pick up any hints of the Amber Room.
11:38Treasure hunters Eric Stenz and Georg Mederer once spoke to an elderly woman
11:43who had worked here as a cook in 1945.
11:46Now, she recalled one night when German soldiers arrived
11:50with hundreds of large packing cases,
11:53each said to hold something of immense value.
11:56To Stenz and Mederer, it could only mean one thing.
12:01The fabled Amber Room may have passed through these very halls.
12:06They were convinced it was still right here, sealed behind a wall,
12:11and so they brought in scanners searching for hidden chambers.
12:14And when the reading showed an unexplained anomaly,
12:17they were sure they'd found it.
12:19But when they asked the authorities to investigate, they were denied.
12:24And Justine, she's not having much luck either,
12:27because she's only been allowed access to those areas of the castle
12:31open to tourists.
12:33No, no Amber Room here.
12:35I had a good look around, but there was literally no sign of any Amber Room.
12:42You know what? It really gets my goat
12:44when places like this don't allow you to film.
12:47I mean, why not?
12:48I mean, it's going to encourage tourism,
12:50and that's going to earn some money,
12:51and that's what people want, right?
12:54Because it makes no sense to me.
12:58But no, the doors stay closed.
13:01Is it bureaucracy?
13:03Or is it a cover-up?
13:05Or perhaps it's just how history hides its secrets,
13:08behind silence and behind stone.
13:10You know what? We didn't uncover the Amber Room in Friedland Castle.
13:14Only locked doors, empty halls, and the faint echo of old rumours.
13:17But the stories certainly linger here, and sometimes that's all that history leaves behind.
13:24The search goes on.
13:27Yeah, let's go to the next place.
13:37We're in the Czech Republic in what was once Nazi-ruled Sudetenland on the trail of the fabled Amber Room.
13:44We're being frustrated in our efforts by the local authorities,
13:47who have understandably refused to allow us to dig in areas of historic interest or natural beauty.
13:55Do you think that the local authorities are genuinely stopping people from digging,
14:01apart from the obvious thing of it's a nature reserve and don't dig?
14:04Right, that's entirely the reason.
14:06The reason why these people can't search for things in these areas is because they,
14:11you know, you can't just dig up a nice mountain or dredge a nice lake full of nice,
14:17you know, animals and fish and whatever it is.
14:21You know, you can't just do this.
14:22And, you know, the idea that there's a whole kind of conspiratorial world stopping you doing it is insane.
14:29We are back on the road, heading to a place called Deutsch-Katerinenberg,
14:35to a mine owned by one Heinz-Peter Haustein.
14:39It's a place rumoured to hold what so many have searched for,
14:43and where perhaps the Earth still keeps its secrets.
14:50April 1945. The war is in its final days.
14:54Germany's armies are broken and its leaders are desperate.
14:59And here, deep in the Orr Mountains, chaos has given way to cold calculation.
15:04Because some Nazis begin hiding what they can no longer move.
15:08They begin hiding gold, art, documents, anything that might buy them a future.
15:14And mines like this one have become the perfect cover.
15:19Miles of tunnels, walls of rock and darkness deep enough to swallow secrets whole.
15:27Locals later spoke of SS officers arriving in those final days,
15:31sealing chambers, detonating entrances,
15:35burying the evidence of a fortune meant to survive, the fall of the Third Reich.
15:53As we arrive at the old mine in Deutsch-Katerinenberg,
15:58we meet its keeper, Heinz-Peter Haustein.
16:01A man who believes that somewhere beneath his feet,
16:04Amber Room still lies buried in the dark.
16:11Hines-Peter has spent decades investigating the stories tied to these very mountains.
16:18He's sifted through wartime documents, traced old transport routes
16:22and gathered eyewitness accounts from those who remembered the convoys
16:27that came through here in 1945.
16:33Using modern scanning equipment, he's mapped the tunnels beneath the mine
16:38and the results hint at something sealed very deep below.
16:44Chambers that might still hold the secrets the Nazis try to hide
16:48when the war slipped from their grasp.
16:54All handwritten. It mentions things you'd find in a mine.
17:01That's why it surprises me. Roswell, New Mexico.
17:05Someone sends me a handwritten letter like that.
17:07So, a brief.
17:08This is from Roswell, New Mexico.
17:10When you see the word Roswell on an envelope, you start to raise eyebrows, let's say.
17:15I mean, Roswell. I mean, that's the daddy of, you know, conspiracy stuff.
17:20And you've got, you know, retired American conspiracy theorists writing to you.
17:25You know, it was all way too tin-file hat for my liking.
17:30One of the authors of these letters basically says, you know,
17:33if you think I'm a crackpot and a loony, well, then you're free to do so.
17:37And you know what? I am free to do so.
17:39Dear Mr. Hal Stein, this will be one of the strangest letters you will ever get.
17:43However, please read it through and follow all the directions to stay safe in your quest.
17:47After that, then you can write to me off as a crackpot.
17:49I've been called worse, lots worse, lol.
17:51So this is about the Amber Room?
17:55Only hinted at.
17:55During the interrogations of SS men or Wehrmacht officers, the name Deutschneudorf kept coming up.
18:03The grandfather told this to his granddaughter and she wrote it down for me, including the details he described.
18:09Of course, that was 80 years after the war.
18:15As the allies advanced through Europe, you had a small group of men and women given an extraordinary mission to
18:24protect and to recover the cultural heritage of basically all of Europe.
18:30They were officially known as the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Programme.
18:35But what history remembers them better as is the Monuments Men.
18:42A story so extraordinary that Hollywood would one day bring it to life in a celebrated film, turning their quiet
18:49heroism into something more legendary.
18:53But they never came here.
18:56In Deutschkaterinburg, the mine stayed sealed and silent.
19:01And that's exactly why Heinz Peter believes the Amber Room might still be waiting below.
19:07What do you think about that?
19:09It's a clue, an indication that we're on the right track.
19:13There are always lots of pieces to the puzzle.
19:15Some only fit together much later.
19:18Above all, you need what the miners once had, perseverance, hope and faith in God.
19:25Heinz Peter has displayed remarkable patience and perseverance over three decades.
19:30Despite not managing to come up with any hard evidence in all that time, he still doggedly believes the last
19:37resting place of the Amber Room is just within reach.
19:40And he is keen to show us just why.
19:50We're in the middle of the Orr Mountains, at an altitude of 700 meters, inside an old mine.
19:58It was opened in 1514 and operated until 1882.
20:02This is the wheel chamber.
20:05There used to be a huge water wheel here, 10 meters in diameter.
20:09This is just a model.
20:13Over there was the lift shaft, where the ore was brought up.
20:16The miners climbed up and down ladders here, the so-called Fadenschacht.
20:21The mine we're looking at here actually exists three more times, further down below.
20:26Three more times?
20:27But deeper, we are here.
20:29It's not just this one level, it's an entire labyrinth further below.
20:34Here? Okay.
20:34This is where we're standing, and then further down, further and further.
20:38How many meters altogether?
20:3946 in total.
20:41I got the clue about the treasure being brought to Deutsch-Katharinenberg from my father.
20:48He'd been badly wounded in Russia during the war, and when he came back, he became the scout, the local
20:55guide who led these transports.
20:58Many transports came here.
21:01Shortly before his death, he told me about it.
21:05We'd searched rather casually for about three years, and then suddenly discovered this mine.
21:12It had been closed in 1882, and we found Wehrmacht items there.
21:17And what do you think that might be?
21:19The first clue pointed to the Amber Room, and only to the Amber Room.
21:24That was confirmed by many indications.
21:29The Amber Room was last seen in Königsberg.
21:33And the museum director there was Alfred Rohde.
21:37He came here twice in 1944, not into the mine itself, of course, since it was hidden.
21:43That's not belief or theory. It's known fact.
21:47In the area where we're standing, underground bunkers were built within a two-kilometer radius.
21:52At first, it was only about the Amber Room.
21:56Then came talk of gold, then of diamonds from Theresienstadt.
22:00That was a concentration camp.
22:02And also of weapons, special weapons and documents.
22:06Have you made any effort to look for the Amber Room in this mine?
22:10Is there anything you can do?
22:11Three things.
22:12First, I still receive letters and phone calls from people who were involved back then, or from their descendants.
22:20Second, we now have new measuring technology that didn't exist 20 years ago, allowing us to search more thoroughly.
22:28For example, by looking into the rock with radar.
22:33And third, there are still new clues turning up about this subject.
22:43Peter takes us deeper and deeper into the mine.
22:47The walls begin to kind of close in, and the air is getting colder, and those tunnels are twisting into
22:53this kind of, somewhat scary maze of rocks and shadows.
22:58I'm not a big fan of small dark spaces.
23:01For me, this is a total nightmare.
23:03So, you know, without a lot of reluctance, I have to admit, I make the call.
23:06It's time for us to split up again.
23:09Justine is going to go on with Peter while I wait here, where I can still see some light.
23:14I'll take you to a spot that's been blasted shut, and you'll see how difficult it would be to get
23:20through there.
23:23I'm certain that in the area where we're standing, within a radius of more than a kilometer, the crates containing
23:29the amber are buried.
23:30Yes.
23:32I'm convinced of that.
23:34I've even received threats, death threats all sorts, telling me to stop searching.
23:38I only know that crates filled with amber were unloaded here.
23:42That's a fact.
23:43By train, and also by lorry.
23:45A three-axle truck.
23:47That much we know.
23:48But where exactly they were hidden in this labyrinth, we don't know.
23:53Whilst Heinz Peter takes Justine further down his mine to the area where he thinks the amber must be hidden,
24:00I take stock of what we've learnt, and where that might take us next.
24:06The Nazis used mines, you know, not just for war production like anyone else, but they also used mines as
24:13these kind of vast underground vaults, if you like, to hide all that plundered wealth.
24:19And it was in mines where they hid vast amounts of looted gold, priceless artworks, stolen treasure.
24:26And, obviously, the mines are going to make these things safe from bombing and from being discovered.
24:32Now, while some of those caches were found, others remain missing.
24:37So, the big question is this.
24:40Could some of these treasures lie right under our feet?
24:44It's very slippery.
24:48So, we're now going through the tunnels, and we're going to enter a tunnel that's actually full of water, and
24:59it gets smaller and smaller, so it gets harder the closer we get to the potential amber room that could
25:07be hidden at the end of one of these tunnels.
25:23This is getting tighter and tighter.
25:26Oh, my God, we have no light here.
25:29No wonder Guy didn't want to come here.
25:32He sends me off.
25:35What does that mean?
25:37Will stop danger.
25:38Danger.
25:39There's a lot of water here.
25:41Don't drop it.
25:44So, it's quite sticky.
25:48Also, not easy to walk.
25:51My back is hurting.
25:53I'm full of mud everywhere.
26:03Jesus Christ.
26:05I'm literally, my head is beating the ceiling every time.
26:12Okay, we've found something.
26:14This is a cross cut.
26:19That always means the miners came from this side. It also suggests there's another entrance over there. One we need
26:25to look for from the other side.
26:29They would open it up like this, and at the end of the year they'd say, that's how far we
26:33got.
26:35The Nazis were meticulous record keepers, even underground. They'd marked where tunnels were sealed, where crates were stored, where not
26:43to go. And in places like this, those marks might be the only whispers left of what was hidden, and
26:51why.
26:56We're on the hunt for one of the largest and most elusive of all Nazi war treasures, the Amber Room.
27:04Built in the early 18th century for King Frederick I of Prussia, before being given to the Tsars of Russia
27:10and kept at their Catherine Palace outside St Petersburg, it was stolen by the Nazis in October 1941 and brought
27:18to Germany.
27:20In the final days of the war, it mysteriously vanished, never to be seen again.
27:27We are now hunting for it in a disused mine, deep in the Orr Mountains in Lower Saxony, near the
27:34German-Czech border.
27:35Now, I say we, because it's actually Justine who has disappeared into the darkness with mine owner, Hans-Peter Haustein,
27:44to hunt for clues, while I remain above ground.
27:52That's where we'd have to go through. You can climb up there. That's what I meant when we were climbing
27:57up earlier.
27:58Ah, okay. Basically, this is the end.
28:01Over the back. You can look down there, but you can't get back down again.
28:04So, the end of this tunnel, it does go further in, but hypothetically, this is, I think, as close as
28:13we'll get to the Amber Room.
28:31I think we've got as close as possible to the Amber Room. I'm wondering what God will think about this.
28:40You know, to come so tantalizingly close to what could be the resting place of the legendary Amber Room, and
28:48then only to be stopped at the final moment.
28:51You know, it's that kind of frustration that drives you mad. It kind of leaves you speechless.
28:57You know what? I mean, history really hides her secrets well.
29:21Leaving Heinz-Peter's mine in Saxony, we push through the quiet forest towards the Prince's Hole.
29:27Somewhere along the way, Justine's intuition tingles.
29:32She's convinced we're closing in on a place that could still conceal a fragment of the Amber Room.
29:43We've been driving together all day, but by the time we'd reached some random forest in the middle of Saxony,
29:49Justine had just vanished on some kind of secret errand.
29:52So I'm just sitting here all by myself in a parking area in some woods,
29:58and I'm just scratching my head wondering whether this isn't just some sort of crazy plan,
30:02or whether Justine isn't just late again.
30:05I wouldn't really mind that, but I have a confession. It's a special day for me.
30:10It's my birthday, and I hadn't planned to spend it all by myself on the side of a road.
30:21February 1945. The Reich is collapsing. Cities are reduced to ash, and the Nazis, well, they're running out of time.
30:33As Allied forces close in from the west and the Red Army pushes from the east,
30:37orders go out to evacuate Germany's most precious loot.
30:41Now, some say the crates containing the Amber Room were sent underground,
30:46hidden in salt mines or sealed within tunnels in East Prussia.
30:50Others, meanwhile, insist that they were loaded onto convoys bound for Saxony to be buried in the safety of its
30:58forests and mountains.
31:00But from that moment, the trail goes cold.
31:04No manifests, no receipts, no record of the Amber Room ever reaching Saxony.
31:11Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
31:14What remains are only stories and the knowledge that in their final desperate hours,
31:19the Nazis could have become masters at making treasure disappear.
31:29Finally, Justine arrives. I have been twiddling my thumbs for a whole hour.
31:36She just rocks up, looking, you know, without a care in the world.
31:39Where have you been?
31:41But you know what? She's got a surprise for me.
31:45Bless her. It's not gold, it's not the Amber Room, but it's something sweet enough.
31:52I thought you'd forgotten it was my birthday. I really thought you had.
31:55Come on, I would never forget your birthday.
31:57Believe it or not, the Amber Room might be just there.
32:01It's called Prinzenhöhle, in English, Prince's Hole.
32:05Let's go up the Prince's Hole.
32:09Once again, hunting for Nazi treasure involved walking up a hill.
32:15And for some of us, that proved a little too much.
32:19How are you finding it?
32:20Oh, this is tough.
32:21Come on, this is easy. We've only done, we've done 0.08 miles up the hill.
32:27But it's up the hill.
32:28So, however the gentleman, I decided to help.
32:31Go. No, that's it.
32:34Right, that is much easier and quicker.
32:37How does that feel?
32:38That feels fine. Absolutely fine.
32:47I see a side of the Prince's Hole.
32:49Right, I'm trying to make the bend. I'm going to do this.
32:54Right, I'm dismounting you.
32:55Is that it?
32:57That's as far as you go.
32:59OK, up we go.
33:01Come on, Justine.
33:01Hang on, hang on.
33:02Easy, easy, easy.
33:04You're so...
33:04Chop, chop.
33:05So quick.
33:09Take your time.
33:10You take your time.
33:12This is hard.
33:13I hope it will be worth it up there.
33:15Come on!
33:17It gets over there.
33:18That's where we go.
33:18Let's go up.
33:19OK.
33:22I've been following Justine through the woods for a good half an hour
33:26and she swore she knew the way to the Prince's Hole,
33:29but judging by these kind of circles we're going in,
33:32I'm starting to think that her sense of direction
33:35is about as reliable as the legends we're chasing.
33:41Let's go down.
33:42This is wrong, this is wrong.
33:44It's just for your benefit.
33:46Right, for my benefit.
33:50Come down here now.
33:51Very...
33:51Very...
33:52Come on, Guy.
33:53OK.
33:53How are we doing?
33:54Final push.
33:55Clang, clang, clang.
33:57OK, we're feeling pretty warm here.
33:58I do love this rock, though.
33:59These are great.
34:00This is...
34:01I can see why this...
34:02Makes sense.
34:03It has a kind of mystical feel to it, doesn't it?
34:05It does.
34:05It really does.
34:07Just round the bend...
34:09OK.
34:11..is the entrance.
34:12OK.
34:13Wow.
34:14OK, this is a proper, proper cave.
34:17Right, did you bring a torch?
34:21I've got a phone with a torch.
34:23You...
34:24No, you bought the...
34:25You were meant to bring the hard hats and the torches.
34:28Have you brought them?
34:30No.
34:32So, it's your job.
34:34My blood was, frankly, boiling.
34:36I mean, I'd climbed up that hill twice already,
34:39and this so-called woman of adventure,
34:42I mean, she's just resting her feet,
34:43having a nice chat outside the prince's hole.
34:46I was doing all the hard work,
34:48and to make matters worse,
34:49it was my birthday.
34:50So, thanks for the birthday present, Justine.
34:53But even as I contemplate going back down the hill
34:55to fetch our equipment,
34:57it's got me thinking.
34:58Is it really feasible the fleeing Nazis
35:01could have hidden their precious loot
35:03in a place as visible as this?
35:09In April 1945, Germany is on her knees.
35:12The Reich is sort of crumbling completely.
35:15There is chaos everywhere.
35:18But you know what?
35:19Deep in these forests, things are going on
35:21because witnesses spoke of explosions ripping through the valleys,
35:26tunnels being sealed up overnight,
35:27and convoys moving under the cover of darkness.
35:31Soldiers march these same narrow paths we're walking today,
35:35and they are leaving traces of a desperate attempt
35:38to safeguard treasures, documents, you name it.
35:41Perhaps even the Amber Room itself.
35:45Over the years, locals have stitched together fragments of this story,
35:49the rumours of German troops, eyewitness accounts,
35:52and even a supposed radio transmission from a nearby town
35:56claiming the Amber Room had been secured right here.
36:00It could only mean one thing.
36:03Whatever was hidden, whatever was sealed,
36:05could still lie somewhere in that dark hole beneath our feet.
36:15After climbing that hill twice just to fetch our gear,
36:18thank you Justine,
36:20I'm starting to think that the real treasure to have
36:22is a working pair of legs.
36:31The reason why I'm sweating is because I have climbed up this hill
36:36and back again a whole kilometre
36:39to get the things that Justine should have brought.
36:42God damn.
36:44Here we go, you are doing all this stuff.
36:46Thank you so much.
36:47Torches, hardhat, go.
36:49I'm going to sit here and do nothing.
36:52Okay, Justine's ability to walk up hills was frankly,
36:55it wasn't great.
36:56But I have to take a bit of the rap myself
36:58because my ability to go into small spaces
37:01is frankly equally parlous.
37:06I'm going in on my own because Guy's just afraid of everything.
37:10So this little cave is quite tight and quite slippery also.
37:20I can just about stand here.
37:22Oh, there's some cobwebs.
37:23So let's see if we've got friends here.
37:26There might be bats, there might be spiners.
37:29Apparently the treasure isn't exactly in this cave.
37:32But at the very end, just behind the boulders,
37:37that's where it's all hiding.
37:39All the tunnels, all the amber, all the gold.
37:45Need to walk slowly because it's getting tighter and tighter.
37:51Bloody hell.
37:56Sorry.
37:57Oh, we've got a friend here.
38:01You were wondering how a black widow looks like.
38:05Here it is.
38:11The cave kind of ends here.
38:14So if we had a few more million,
38:18we could drill through there.
38:21And apparently that's where the tunnels are and our amber room.
38:27Three local researchers have spent years chasing the truth beneath this cave.
38:32They've used ground penetrating radar, electromagnetic scans.
38:36I think every tool modern science can offer.
38:39And they've been looking for what history has tried to conceal.
38:42Now, they say that the data is filled with all sorts of anomalies.
38:46You know, hollows, voids, shapes that suggest hidden tunnels.
38:49Maybe even the final resting place of the amber room itself.
38:55And so I guess some hope does linger here.
38:58It's pretty thin.
38:59It's pretty stubborn.
39:00And it could be golden.
39:01But to dig, they've got to uncover a lot of rock.
39:05And they're going to need a lot of funding.
39:08And they're going to need some serious mining machinery.
39:10And they're going to need permission from the authorities.
39:13And I don't think that's ever going to happen.
39:22We're close to the Czech-German border.
39:24And we are searching in a cave system called the Prince's Hole
39:27for the fabled amber room.
39:29Justine has been venturing deep into the darkness
39:31to see if she can get a fix on any Nazi treasure.
39:36Sadly, she's returned empty-handed.
39:41The intrepid adventurer returns.
39:44Do you like spiders?
39:46No.
39:46I hate spiders.
39:47I hate small spaces.
39:48And I hate heights.
39:49Well, there's plenty there.
39:50No.
39:51Really?
39:52Yeah.
39:52Spiders, loads.
39:53I didn't hear you shriek.
39:54I'm not afraid of spiders.
39:56Come on, Guy.
39:57I'm impressed.
39:57I'm impressed.
39:58Do you want me to bring a little spider for you?
40:01No.
40:01I don't want a little spider.
40:02I don't want anything with more than two legs for my birthday.
40:06Thank you very much.
40:10The Prince's Hole may not have given up her treasures today,
40:13but following its trail has revealed, I think, something more valuable.
40:17A proper glimpse into the past.
40:20Now, we've had a chance to walk the paths of history, if you like,
40:24and we've touched the stories that generations have buried
40:27because, in the end, that's what every hunt for lost treasure,
40:30I think, is really about.
40:31Not the gold itself, but for the truth that lies beneath it.
40:38You're afraid of spiders, also.
40:40I am afraid of spiders.
40:42What about snakes?
40:43I'm not talking about that.
40:44I'm not talking about...
40:45Spiders, snakes, scorpions...
40:47No, I'm not talking about...
40:47Everything that starts with an S.
40:49Yes.
40:50Everything that starts with an S.
40:51Yes, exactly.
40:53Okay.
40:54That's enough of that.
41:05In the 1970s, the Russians actually started reconstructing the Amber Room.
41:10And, of course, they had to do it from scratch.
41:12And it took decades.
41:14Finally, in 2003, the replica was unveiled in St. Petersburg.
41:20And it is absolutely stunning.
41:23I mean, I've seen it for myself.
41:25And it is breathtaking.
41:27I mean, it is the eighth wonder of the world, for my money.
41:36But it's also a reminder, because the original, the one touched by Peter the Great himself,
41:43the one looted by the Nazis, the one with all the history, it's still missing.
41:55For my money, that's what makes it just so powerful.
41:59Because at the same time, the Amber Room is both real, and it's also a myth.
42:04People have seen it.
42:05People have touched it.
42:07And yet today, it is now a ghost.
42:26We didn't find the Amber Room.
42:28And I don't think that's very fair, because it was my birthday.
42:31And actually, you know, the least I could have got on my birthday was,
42:34you know, a little drop of amber, rather than some horrible cake that Justine gave me.
42:39But look, never mind that.
42:41You know, I've got to put that disappointment aside.
42:43Because next time, we are going to look, and we're going to find,
42:47we're so going to find, some missing, looted art.
42:52The Nazis stole a lot of art.
42:55And we are going to look for it.
42:58Now, that is going to take us to the very, very depths,
43:01and the heights of the Austrian Alps.
43:04It's also going to take us to Saxony in Germany,
43:06where we're going to meet a very unusual man indeed,
43:09who has a very disturbing story to tell.
43:14Because he thinks his treasure hunting has drawn the attention
43:18of the evil followers of the Fourth Reich.
43:25Stay tuned.
43:28The
43:29Wives Were
43:29Body
43:29The
43:29The
43:29Another
43:29The
43:41The
43:42The
44:09We'll see you next time.
44:13We'll see you next time.
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