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The Last Hunt for Nazi Gold (2026) Season 1 Episode 1
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00:10Spring 1945. The Third Reich is collapsing. Berlin is falling apart. The Red Army is pushing in from
00:19the east. The other allies are closing in from the west. And the Nazis, a lot of them, are not
00:25thinking about fighting anymore. They're thinking about escape, but not with weapons or with soldiers,
00:32but with crates packed with gold bars, foreign banknotes, jewellery, wedding rings and gold made
00:40from the teeth of the victims of the Holocaust. They know the war is lost, but they believe gold
00:49can still buy them a future. So in the chaos of those final days, they hide it everywhere. Salt
00:57mines, bunkers carved into rock, remote alpine forests, you name it. This is where the legend begins,
01:07because the hiding of that gold kind of extended the war and it lit a fire that still burns today.
01:14You have treasure hunts, rumours, conspiracy theories that refuse to die. And that's the trail we're
01:24following, because if you really want to understand the last days of Nazi Germany, you follow the gold.
01:44My name is Guy Walters and I'm a historian and a journalist. And I specialise in writing and
01:55researching about the Second World War and the whole Nazi period. There's been lots of new research,
02:02new records released. And I've been looking, and I've been digging, and it's made me think this could
02:11be worth a try. It could be worth having one last hunt for Nazi gold.
02:30The question I get asked almost every week is, do you know where there is any Nazi gold? I always
02:38laugh at this question, and I always respond, if I knew where there was any Nazi gold, you'd be talking
02:43to me on my private island. But to navigate today's Europe and talk my way into all those kinds of
02:51places where Nazi gold is going to be hidden, I need someone both savvy and adventurous and who
02:58knows the territory. And that is where my friend Justine comes in.
03:09I'm an avid traveller, adventurer, and I'm here to join Guy on the last hunt for Nazi gold.
03:21And just to clarify, this is my very, very first time as a professional gold digger.
03:31Now Justine is brilliant. She speaks six languages. She is a woman of adventure. So she's going to do
03:39all the adventurous stuff, and I'm going to do all the boring history stuff. But without her,
03:43there is no way we're going to find a single ingot.
03:59So what are we doing? What's the plan? Well, we're here in Prague, which is just the perfect place to
04:04start to bang in the middle of Europe and bang in the middle of where we need to go.
04:09And I think we've got a map of that somewhere here.
04:11First stop, Merkersmine in Churingia. April 1945. The Americans crack open a salt cavern and they
04:22find the motherlode. Over 100 tons of Reichsbank gold, crates of currency, looted art, proof that the
04:31Nazis were hiding their fortune as the Reich collapsed. Next stop, Lake Valkensee in Bavaria.
04:41By late April, American troops have liberated Munich. But up here in the mountains,
04:47SS couriers are rumoured to have buried sacks of gold along forest trails.
04:53And near the Obanac power plant, chaos was the perfect cover.
05:00And finally, the Bavarian Alps. In May 1945, this was the last refuge of the regime,
05:08the so-called Alpine Redoubt. Now, the Allies swept through, but stories linger of fortunes never
05:15recovered. Three stops, three stories from the dying days of Nazi Germany. To test the legend,
05:23we've got to follow the gold. OK, how sure are you that the gold is there?
05:29I think that, you know, if anyone's got a good chance, it's going to be us.
05:55Right, we'd better go. Let's go.
06:12First stop, the Merkersmines in Tsuringia, east central Germany, not that far from Berlin.
06:22In those frantic last weeks of the war, the Nazis turned these caverns into a treasure vault,
06:29packing them with Reichsbank gold, foreign currency and looted art they hoped would never be found.
06:35In April 1945, US troops broke in and they uncovered crates of bars,
06:42piles of cash and masterpieces from Berlin's museums.
06:47Those senior Nazis, they knew it. The war was lost. Berlin was falling apart and the Red Army
06:58was closing in. I pictured them kind of slipping away amongst those crowds of refugees,
07:05carrying their golden cash, you know, plotting their escape. These guys are saving their skins.
07:12At some point, I think they just thought, you know what, the game's up. From then on, it wasn't about
07:20fighting.
07:23It was about moving gold, treasure, looted art, foreign money, you name it. Get that out before the Allies arrived.
07:37These guys were thieves. They were feathering their nests. You've got to remember, the Nazis were gangsters.
07:47Merkers was the Reich's last treasure house, hidden underground, and it's the starting point of our hunt.
08:01Now, whilst we won't be allowed to dig at Merkers, it should at least give us an insight into the
08:07lengths the Nazis went to hide their loot.
08:11We've got a lot of driving to do. You realise that, don't you? And we've done about, you know, nothing
08:16so far.
08:17I do. And this is a toy car that reminds you. I'm already stuck behind a bloody bus.
08:21Um, I... Oh, there's traffic already, and we've got thousands of kilometres to go.
08:29Into East Germany, the road narrows, the kind of hills close in, and ahead lies our first real destination.
08:40Now, it's a lovely day, but I'm afraid we've got to go underground, because we are going to go into
08:45the Merkers mine.
08:49We've got a date with our guide, Johannes.
08:53He is going to take us deep inside that mine. Buckled up and ready, we're set to follow him into
09:00the depths.
09:08This is scary.
09:09I'm not... This is scary.
09:11Oh, yeah. Right.
09:12I'm not sure how I feel about this.
09:14This is... This is... So, 510 metres, Johannes.
09:16Yes.
09:18Only takes us a few seconds.
09:22As soon as those lift doors opened, and we walked into that room, I just went, wow.
09:32We're on a journey to see whether we can uncover the final resting place of some Nazi gold.
09:39Oh, wow.
09:40So, how do they get these down here?
09:41They've dismantled them, then built them here.
09:44Yes, they must have done.
09:45No, I think this one is actually small enough to get through the shaft in one piece.
09:49Really?
09:50Yeah.
09:52Yes, okay, we're down there.
09:54And that's where we are.
09:55And we go to number three.
09:56Shaft three is gold room.
09:59Yes, it's close to another shaft.
10:01And it's, as you can see, it's a little bit higher.
10:03From here, where we are, to here, the gold room is about, what, two kilometres?
10:07It's about two kilometres.
10:08So, that gives you an idea of the whole rate of scale of it.
10:10Yeah.
10:11Yeah.
10:11So, in total, we're mining on an area that is about the size of the city of Munich.
10:18Although the Merckers mine was decommissioned in 1993, stopping that central activity of mining
10:25salt and potassium, what it remains is a huge attraction for those of us wanting to find
10:32out more about looting and smuggling of untold wealth by those fleeing Nazis at the end of the
10:40Second World War.
10:41I'm excited in the first place, and you're going to show me some gold.
10:44Hopefully, there'll be a little bit of gold left here.
10:47Something left for us.
10:48I think there's just a couple of ingots that Johannes has kindly arranged for us.
10:52Right, that's a scary-sounding door.
10:55Look at that.
10:56Look how long that is.
10:58So, we're about to drive, drive underground to the gold room, which is a two-kilometre drive.
11:04Merckers is largely a salt mine.
11:07It's cool.
11:08It's dry.
11:09Nothing really decays down there.
11:10So, it is perfect for hiding treasure.
11:12And even today, racing through those tunnels, it feels unreal.
11:17You know, it's full of chills and a rush of adrenaline.
11:20Bloody hell.
11:24There we go.
11:26What's the speed limit in the mine?
11:28Thirty.
11:41Biggest underground machine ever built.
11:43That's the biggest underground machine ever built?
11:46Yeah.
11:46For all you mining aficionados, that I can reveal is the Bagger 293 excavator.
11:51And that weighs in at over 14,000 tons.
12:12Yeah, so behind the wall, there's the shaft where the gold was entering.
12:22We are now getting close to the gold room.
12:30Oh, we've arrived.
12:48I'd seen that gold room in the Merckers Mine so many times in photographs, archive footage, you name it.
12:57And yet, you know, to walk into that place, to see it for real, you know what?
13:03That was something else.
13:13Oh, wow.
13:15It's huge.
13:17It is absolutely vast.
13:24As Patton's Third Army was rapidly advancing towards the mine in early 45,
13:29the Nazis had deployed hundreds of Polish slave laborers to start moving the currency and bullion to safety.
13:36But Patton's forces were too quick for them.
13:39And no sooner had they started the transports than they were ordered to turn back
13:44and restore all the treasure to the mine.
13:47Or so they claimed.
13:51That gold room is buried so far underground,
13:55it's actually remarkable that the officers from the US Third Army's 19th Infantry Division
14:01ever managed to recover it.
14:04And you know what?
14:05Without fairly detailed instructions from captured Nazis, you know, hoping for clemency,
14:10you know, saving their necks, they wouldn't have ever found it.
14:14So how much gold was here?
14:15More than 8,600 gold bars, we had 200 bags of gold coins in all foreign currencies,
14:233 billion cash reserves, Reichsmark.
14:26Wow.
14:28That's right.
14:29You've got it.
14:30The haul was immense.
14:33You have over 8,000 gold bars, 55 boxes a bullion, and more than 1,300 bags of cash from
14:41all over Europe.
14:42So what exactly went down on the 12th of February when all that treasure showed up?
14:48How did they uncover it?
14:50How did the secret finally come out?
14:57On February 12th, 20 wagons full of gold and currency arrived here in Merkaz.
15:03The people in Merkaz, in the village, the inhabitants, were not allowed to go outdoors.
15:08In the end of March, the Americans were quickly advancing.
15:14They entered Merkaz on April 4th.
15:17It took them about two to three days to actually recognize what they got here.
15:22Then they heard rumors of forced laborers about a gold treasure in the mine,
15:26and they didn't believe it.
15:28But they entered the mine on April 7th.
15:30Right.
15:31And what they found was the door.
15:37They did not dare to open the door because they thought the door was trapped somehow.
15:41So they dynamited their way in here.
15:42Yeah.
15:44And then it was ordered to evacuate the treasure.
15:47The Americans, the British, and the Soviets, they agreed on how to split up Germany.
15:52So, theoretically, this treasure here belonged to the Soviet Union,
15:56because it was found in the sector of the Soviet Union.
15:58But the Americans decided to evacuate it.
16:01So, on April 14th, the evacuation was started.
16:07And from there, what then happens to the gold?
16:10It then just enters into the world's gold supply, I suppose?
16:13It was quite interesting because the Americans quickly noticed that most of the gold was robbed.
16:20It was robbed from subjugated countries or from Jews.
16:23So they started to find out who the righteous owner was.
16:27For example, central banks of the conquered countries.
16:3080% of the Reichsbank gold was found here.
16:33That leaves 20%. Where was that?
16:36I suspect a lot of it was shifted and slipped out of the country.
16:41They packed up vast amounts of gold, jewellery, including wedding rings, silver plates, platinum.
16:47All of that was crammed into crates and then hammered flat to save space.
16:54Next, Johannes decides to guide us deeper into the Mirka's mine.
17:00As we go down, the air kind of feels heavier and heavier.
17:04You like little tunnels like this.
17:07This is feeling a little bit small and dark.
17:09I'm not impressed, Johannes. This is not anything special.
17:12You're looking for treasures and you will find one.
17:16Okay.
17:17You've taken us into a dark room 800 meters below ground.
17:20I'm distinctly unimpressed.
17:27Oh, wow.
17:29Wow.
17:32It's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful.
17:36Nature is the biggest master.
17:38Whilst I had nothing like the monetary value of the gold once hidden there,
17:43you know, this incredible grotto of salt crystals, you know, taken about 18 million years to make,
17:51is now as much of an attraction to visitors to Mirka's as that vast gold room.
18:01Nazi treasure astonishes Yank's probing salt mine.
18:07That was the type of headline that went all around the world when this place was discovered.
18:15It's quite amazing being in this place and all the effort that went into kind of hiding the gold.
18:21A lot of it obviously belonging to Germany, but some obviously looted from other countries.
18:27The great thing about Germany is that they open a bar just about everywhere.
18:30And I mean everywhere because we had a beer in the Mirka's mine at 800 meters below the ground.
18:38We think it's the deepest bar in the world to get a beer. So cheers.
18:44Cheers.
18:44Cheers.
18:47What we've also got to remember is that the gold found here, although it was the vast proportion,
18:54there was a lot that was missing.
19:00Sure, visiting the Mirka's salt mine, it was something else. It was unique.
19:05But the road is calling. We've still found no gold and just the stories it left behind. So on we
19:12go.
19:19But before we hit the road, we need a breather to regroup and consider our next destination.
19:25And I found myself somewhere pretty cool to do that, even if I say so myself.
19:31What I'm going to introduce you to is this joy of some sort of weird hydrotherapy thing
19:36that they do in this place called Bad Liebenstein, where we've been staying.
19:40Anyway, so this is going to cleanse us from all that salt and fumes that we had down in the
19:45mine.
19:45But there's another reason why I'm getting you in here, because I want to talk to you.
19:48Oh, it's so cold. It's so cold.
19:51It's freezing.
19:53Tomorrow, we're going to be driving 460 kilometres, that's what, 300 miles, all the way down to Bavaria.
20:01Now, you thought that basically what was in that gold room today was basically all the gold the
20:06Reichsbank had, but it wasn't.
20:11February 1945.
20:16The Reich is on the verge of collapse.
20:24Walter Funk, the Reich's economics chief and head of the Reichsbank, knows the game is up.
20:31Berlin is about to fall, but the faults are still stuffed with gold, foreign cash, even the wealth
20:39stripped from the victims of the Holocaust. His solution? Get it out fast. The plan? Send
20:46it south to the so-called Alpine Redoubt. A mythical last stand the Nazis bragged about,
20:53although in truth, it was more fantasy than actual fortress.
21:00By mid-April, the trail leads to Mittenwald, a quiet Bavarian town, where 730 bars of bullion
21:09secretly roll in.
21:15From there, on the 24th of April, the convoy pushes on to Einziedel by Lake Valkensee.
21:23Secret caves, forest hideouts, even power plant tunnels. Perfect places to stash a fortune in the
21:31chaos of war's final days. A hidden treasure waiting for history to decide its fate.
21:39Tomorrow, we're going to drive down to Einziedel and we are going to try and find those hiding places.
21:45Let's get out of here.
21:46Get out, get out, get out. It's so cold, so cold. Where is our Jeep?
21:50Where are we? What have you done with it?
21:51We need a Jeep. Can't walk like this.
22:02From Bad Liebenstein to the Bavarian Alpine Retreat where the Nazis hid their next cache of gold,
22:08it's nearly 500 kilometres south. Once again, Justine takes the wheel as we weigh up the
22:15enormity of what we've just seen and our chance to uncover the truth about the gold that vanished
22:22into history.
22:24I was blown away by that place. I've been down to a coal mine before in Wales many years ago
22:29and I just remember being bored and I was really hung over and there was nowhere worse to be
22:34than hung over than in a bloody mine in Wales.
22:36It's a place like I've never seen before. I mean, just
22:41the sheer fact that there's so many tunnels you can actually drive through.
22:47Keep running, keep running, keep running. Keep trying to get back to getting started.
22:52I'll get back to...
22:57Now, we are standing on the banks of Lake Valkensee. We know that we're in this little village called
23:04Einsiedel. It's here that we know that the gold arrives 24th of April, something like that.
23:11Put in the forester's house and we need to try and find the forester's house.
23:20Our key contact here is a professional treasure hunter who knows the Nazi gold story inside out.
23:29Cornelia Osler.
23:31My dad was a famous treasure hunter. He wrote many books about treasure hunting and he was an expert
23:37in this business. He was on the mountain hundreds of times and he did a lot of research for the
23:45rice bank gold and he knew everything about that. He passed away in 2010. Now I step into his
23:53foots and go on with his life works. I can show you where the gold was hidden here in the
23:59forester's
23:59house. I can show you where it was on the mountain and I can tell you the whole story about
24:05the rice bank
24:06gold here on the lake wall. We have got some walking to do today, yes? You're ready for it.
24:10Yes, although can we take a pedal? No, you're not. You can take a pedal later. The first place we're
24:15going to go to is the forester's house. Right. Okay, let's go there.
24:25This is the old forester's house, which was owned by the family Neuhauser. They brought all the gold and
24:33currencies and coins, everything from the Mittenwald barracks to this place and they started in the back
24:41of the building and collected everything. They did an inventory list and they prepared everything here
24:50to bring it up to the mountain. It was the perfect place because it's next to the mountain and it's
24:56not
24:56far too gold. This place once belonged to Franz Neuhausen, a high-ranking Nazi official who built
25:06his fortune during the war and left a family name that still hangs in the air here. So just finally,
25:14before we then start heading up the hills, we know that the gold must have been here for just a
25:20few days
25:20in this house behind us. And then it was moved up the hills by Neuhauser. Yeah, yeah, the gold was
25:29was moved from here by mules to the mountain by soldiers from Mittenwald. They didn't want anyone to
25:37to get to know what's happening here. They want to do it quietly. How long a walk have we got
25:42now? Maybe
25:43about 30 minutes. 30 minute walk. Well, I need my fan today. When you're hunting for Nazi gold, you've got
25:51to climb up a lot of hills and mountains. And for some of us at least, this proved to be
25:57quite
25:57physically demanding. I don't know what's happened to the rest of them, Cornelia. We are ahead. We are
26:02ahead. We are super fit, clearly. So a little secret, I absolutely hate hiking. I love cars, motorbikes,
26:11bolts, but not walking up a hill for 30 minutes. So yeah, this is not a good start. I hope
26:20there's gold up there.
26:27We're near Mittenwald in the heart of the Bavarian Alps on the hunt for Nazi gold. You have got to
26:34imagine what it would have been like for those poor mules carrying all that heavy gold up those steep
26:40hillsides. It was at night because they didn't want anyone to see what was going on and the
26:46conditions were kind of heavy because there was snow, it was night, the gold was heavy. It wasn't
26:51that easy. It was tough. It's also tough today.
26:57Is it really worth this climb? All this sweat just to follow a mountain trail? Absolutely. Because we don't
27:06just want to hear the story. We want to see it with our own eyes. We want to see the
27:09very spot where
27:10the Nazis are said to have hidden their gold. And from what I gather, Cornelia really does know
27:18where that place is. Imagine here can be everywhere a gold ball. What, everywhere around here a gold ball?
27:24Maybe some Americans, some American soldiers help themselves. I would so help myself to a gold ball.
27:31Me too. Okay, I'm so glad you agreed with me as well. At last the climb eases off and I
27:42know we've
27:43reached it. The place where the gold was hidden, right here. Now it was here that you had members of
27:50the German Alpine elite regiments, the Bergsejäger. They had dug pits in which they had hidden over
27:56700 bars of Nazi gold bullion.
28:04Here we have one empty pit. It's smaller than it was, 1945, because over the years it gets
28:13much smaller. Gold was buried in here? Yeah. We know that 730 bars around that were buried up here. How
28:27many of those were recovered and how were they recovered? How were they discovered? In June 1945,
28:35uh, the Allies, the Americans came and they, someone, uh, showed them, uh, one pit on the Klausenkopf and
28:44they found 364 bags with two gold bars. That's right, you heard it. Two gold bars turned up and that
28:54begs
28:55the question, where are the rest? It pains me to say that we found no Nazi gold on the top
29:02of that hill,
29:02but we did find something else, because one of our cameramen made a very painful discovery, indeed.
29:10Bye, Narek.
29:11No, hold it!
29:12Hold it?
29:13Oh my God, I'm sorry.
29:14What's that?
29:17Are you all right?
29:18Yeah, that really bit me.
29:19Oh no!
29:20Jay, you OK?
29:25Back on the road, and this time a short hop north to the mountain retreat at Blomberg.
29:32In the hope we can finally get to do some digging.
29:38Having seen Justine's performance on our little hike up a hill, I'm a wee bit concerned she may not
29:45be physically cut out for the rugged terrain that awaits.
29:49Yeah, I'm not too sure about a mountain. You basically like sports that involve motors and power.
29:59Yeah, but I genuinely love trying all sorts of sports. Some I love more, some I love
30:06No, I know. Adventure sports is just key for sports for lazy people.
30:11No, I'm not too sure about it.
30:55He's promised to guide us along the Blomberg ridge to an old mountain hut where the trail begins.
31:01So Sebastian, how long have you been hunting for gold?
31:05Oh, ten years.
31:06Ten years?
31:06Yes.
31:07Just here on the Blomberg or all around?
31:09All around of the area.
31:11What sort of size area are we talking about?
31:13Um, 24 to 30 kilometres.
31:17Okay, so that's a huge area.
31:18Yes.
31:19I can't shake the feeling that this place has something to give us.
31:23Maybe not gold, but that's not the point.
31:27What matters is that a piece of history was written right here.
31:30And even if we do walk away empty-handed, we'll still uncover the truth of what really happened
31:36in these mountains 80 years ago.
31:42April 1945 and Germany is collapsing like a house of cards in the wind.
31:48Amid all this chaos, you have some SS convoys racing down to Bavaria, trucks packed with Reichsbank gold, bundles of
31:55cash, looted art.
31:57This was a place that Hitler always loved.
32:00He loved these mountains.
32:01His famous Berghof retreat was high up.
32:04And a lot of his cronies knew this territory very well.
32:08And so, you know, in some senses, it's not a surprise that they kind of chose this area to hide
32:14their treasure in the mountains, in caves, in valleys, forests.
32:18It is a place almost kind of built by the gods for secrets.
32:22And that is why we're here.
32:24Because as the story goes, a massive haul was brought into these very mountains.
32:30Men like SS officer Joseph Spassel ran the show and he carved out hiding spots along forest tracks and mountain
32:38trails.
32:39The Nazis last row of the dice.
32:42Bury all that treasure and hope no one will ever find it.
32:54After another solid mountain hike, much to our relief, we've made it to the hut.
33:01Waiting for us there is Jürgen sporting a great hat.
33:04And where there's a great hat, there's always a great story.
33:09Right, so today we have walked all the way up here.
33:12We are now going to go down somewhere into the woods.
33:15Right.
33:15With the metal detectors.
33:17And we're going to hunt for gold.
33:19We're going to hunt for gold.
33:21And secondly, we're going to hunt for equipment of the Wehrmacht.
33:24Because where the Wehrmacht was, there was also gold.
33:27We transported the gold from the Walchensee, Lake Walchen.
33:32Yes, we've been there.
33:33You've been there already.
33:35Down here.
33:36And it was the Panzergrenadier-Division Götz von Berlichingen.
33:40Yes.
33:40Who passed the Walchensee, made little battles down there and came back here to the Blomberg.
33:49We're going to hunt for gold and secondly we're going to hunt for equipment of the Wehrmacht.
33:53Because where the Wehrmacht was, there was also gold.
33:56They transported the gold from the Walchensee.
34:01Yeah.
34:02So, how much gold do you think there is missing?
34:06Well, the Americans are told that they are missing 150 kilos of gold.
34:12Because they had a list where it's said that there were 7.8 tons of gold down there in the
34:22Walchensee.
34:23And coming down from Berlin, you know, from the central branch of the Reichsbrang.
34:30And these 150 kilos, where have they gone to?
34:33Okay, I think we need to start getting ready to go on our hunt.
34:38Okay, let's do that.
34:39Let's find some Nartigl.
34:39Yeah.
34:40Right, finally.
34:41Let's pick it up.
34:41I'm excited.
34:42We've been all over Germany, it feels like.
34:44And this spot could be it, where we'll dig and find, or look, for some Nartigl.
34:58We are searching in a very secret area and we're not allowed to reveal,
35:02otherwise Jürgen will be very angry with me if I tell you all exactly where we are.
35:08I see that this is all fenced off.
35:10How do we climb over?
35:11We have to break into the woods?
35:13We have to overcome the barbed wire down there.
35:16I'm feeling this is great, Jürgen.
35:18I feel like we're genuinely going somewhere where people haven't been before.
35:22Some people have dogs that hunt for truffles, you know truffles?
35:25No.
35:26Like the fungus.
35:27Yeah, yeah.
35:28Maybe Lupo is good for hunting, a gold hunting nose.
35:32Yeah, I have to write it, you know.
35:33Know what I did?
35:34I wrapped a gold coin in a salami.
35:38And one bite, it was gone.
35:40And so I have to check his poop for three days to get my gold point.
35:45Yeah, I got it.
35:46And learn from the actual professional gold digger.
35:49This is looking like a proper metal detector in here.
35:53This is a proper metal detector.
35:55Look at that.
35:55A fast multi-frequency Nazi gold hunter, it says.
36:01So which direction do we go now?
36:03We start this direction towards the hut.
36:05And you know that the Waffen SS unit was embedded here in April 1945.
36:23With professional treasure hunters Jürgen and Sebastian, Justine and I are heading into
36:28the woods near the Bavarian Alpine retreat of Blomberg.
36:33Here in April 1945, SS soldiers are thought to have hidden over 700 bars of Nazi gold.
36:40We're hoping they might have left just a little bit of it behind.
36:44Or at least a relic or two.
36:47Come, come, I have one signal.
36:49I think Sebastian has just had a reading on his gold and metal detector.
36:56So I'm coming to join him to see whether we found gold.
37:00Yeah, yeah.
37:00I dig for gold, man.
37:01I dig, but a little bit.
37:06Yeah.
37:07But that looks like something big.
37:13What if it's explosive?
37:14Well, a part of a shell.
37:17A part of a shell?
37:19Well, a shell that was launched from here.
37:21No.
37:23The Americans shot this area, you know, because they tried to avoid that the SS started to make
37:30a resistance line.
37:31And so they had artillery down there in Bartels and shot at the mountains up here.
37:38And these are granite, parts of a granite.
37:41So do you...
37:43Will you keep this?
37:45Or just...
37:46It's very rusty.
37:48So you'll just throw it away?
37:49I think we'll keep it, let it here.
37:53You know, this is broken.
37:54What do you want to do with it?
37:56No, it's a paperweight.
37:57Yeah.
37:57Yeah, okay.
38:01I'm going to do the next one.
38:03The prospect of gold has got Justine really excited.
38:07She's getting fed up with all the hiking up and down hills.
38:10And she wants her reward.
38:11She wants to get her hands on some loot.
38:14And she tells me she's not a gold digger.
38:17I'm not too sure I believe that anymore.
38:25We need a shovel.
38:30Justine, have you found something?
38:31Yes, potentially I've found something and I've got to dig.
38:34Dig carefully, because it also could be a grenade, a hand grenade or something like this.
38:39Now you're telling me about the grenade.
38:40Yeah.
38:43You have listened.
38:44You have heard the stick.
38:45Here.
38:46It's a tick.
38:47Okay, you can show.
38:49It's just here.
38:50I need your expert opinion, Jürgen.
38:54You can see it's round.
38:55It's quite big.
38:56It's round and big.
38:57And so I think it's the remains of a shell.
39:02Did I do something?
39:04Sorry.
39:04That's no explosive.
39:06What's that?
39:07That looks like a bit of gun.
39:11That looks like a magazine.
39:13It's a gun.
39:13It's a gun.
39:14Yeah, it's a gun.
39:15Yeah.
39:16Look at that.
39:17Look at that.
39:17A submachine gun.
39:18It's a submachine gun.
39:20Justine, you have found a submachine gun.
39:23That is super cool.
39:24But it doesn't look like German weapons.
39:27It looks like British, you know.
39:29Yes.
39:29Yes.
39:30Because the magazine goes in there.
39:32Yeah.
39:33Turns out I'm a bit of a weapons ignoramus.
39:35And it wasn't a Sten gun.
39:37It was actually a German MP28.
39:41It was a good find.
39:42So just to be clear, we need to take this, or you need to take this to the police.
39:47Yeah.
39:48Because it is a weapon.
39:49Because it is a weapon.
39:50A war weapon.
39:51A war weapon.
39:51I'm just happy that I found something.
39:54So now I have real hopes for gold, if I've managed to find this.
39:58Yeah.
39:58We're definitely going to find gold now.
40:00We're definitely going to find gold.
40:01Now we've found part of a submachine gun.
40:03I mean, how hard can it be to find gold?
40:06It turns out I was wrong.
40:08Well, for the time being at least.
40:11Because three hours in those thorny woods of the Blomberg gave us nothing but rusted grenade fragments.
40:19Tangles of barbed wire and more bloody barbed wire.
40:24A beautiful second world war, whatever it is.
40:28Ah.
40:29I don't know.
40:30Maybe.
40:30We give you a piece of bent metal.
40:42Until finally, that unforgiving forest spat out the unexpected.
40:47This feels quite big.
40:49You got this?
40:49It's a weapon.
40:51Oh, that is so a weapon.
40:54It's a gun.
40:55Well, I mean, I think that was worth getting my legs scratched for.
40:58It's not gold, but that is a rifle.
41:02You can even see it's still got the trigger.
41:05I don't want to pull it.
41:06Woof, woof, woof.
41:07I think.
41:08And it's...
41:09It's a carabine.
41:10It's a carabine.
41:11It's...
41:11Yeah.
41:12It's the...
41:13It's the...
41:14Yeah.
41:15There's the cocking handle.
41:16There's the breech.
41:18Another weapon left behind from the Wehrmacht's desperate rear guard action.
41:26In May 1945, the Nazis abandoned these mountains.
41:30And many believe they took their stolen treasure with them.
41:34But for hunters like Jürgen and Sebastian, that chase is far from over.
41:40Every inch of this land could still hold a glint of gold.
41:57I think we had a pretty good start for our hunt for Nazi gold.
42:03You know, we found some weaponry.
42:05I mean, that is not a bad start.
42:07But we have got a long way to go.
42:10And we have got bigger treasures to find than mere rusty guns.
42:16But we need to build up our strength for the next leg of our treasure hunt.
42:21And there's one local delicacy you can rely on for that.
42:26And that is currywurst.
42:29And there's nothing better than a bit of currywurst on top of a beautiful mountain.
42:36This is gold.
42:40Cheers.
42:45Joking aside, you know what I want to look for?
42:48I want to look for perhaps the biggest missing treasure of all.
42:52Something that was looted by the Nazis and something that may still be missing.
42:58That is the Amber Room.
43:02And to look for that, we're going to have to go to the Czech Republic.
43:07We're going to have to go back to Germany.
43:09We're going to have to go down mines.
43:13We're going to have to go into castles.
43:15And we're even going to go down a place called the Prince's Hole.
43:20Wish me luck.
43:22Wish me luck!
43:34In
43:52Jeremy
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