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00:01In 1945, U.S. military intelligence gathered a confidential and disturbing piece of information.
00:09Hitler had gotten hold of the Imperial Regalia, the treasures of the Holy Roman Empire,
00:14symbols of power and dominion over Europe, and these treasures had disappeared.
00:19Three months ahead of the Nuremberg Trials, where the most important Nazi war criminals would be tried,
00:24the Americans thought it vital to recover the Regalia.
00:27But who had stolen Hitler's holy treasure, and where was it hidden?
01:041945. World War II was virtually over. The Third Reich was in freefall. In June 1944, the Allies landed on
01:14the Normandy beaches and pushed eastwards.
01:16On their way, liberating the capitals of Western Europe, like Paris and Brussels.
01:22Meanwhile, the Soviets marched westwards. The two Allied forces were to meet in Berlin, and force what remained of the
01:29German army to surrender.
01:34By March 1945, the war had realistically been lost for a long time.
01:40But in Berlin, the Nazi government was still dreaming of some kind of miracle.
01:51It was crazy to see that right at the end, right up until mid-April, they were still trying to
01:57resuscitate a feeling of revolt and of victory.
02:02It was pure madness, almost laughable, if it hadn't cost the lives of so many people.
02:10On the different fronts, German soldiers surrendered and were taken prisoner in their thousands.
02:17Naturally, German soldiers were interrogated. That's always the case in every army in the world.
02:23A soldier who's taken prisoner should only give his name, rank, and regiment when under interrogation.
02:33But what the Americans really wanted to know was just how deeply Nazi ideology had infiltrated into the German army.
02:50In September 1944, the Americans liberated the city of Namor in Belgium during the Battle of the Ardennes.
02:58As always, they set up a prisoner of war camp.
03:01It was there that U.S. Army Lieutenant Walter Horn, an art historian in civilian life,
03:07was ordered to carry out the systematic interrogation of German soldiers.
03:10He was chosen because he was of German origin and spoke the language perfectly.
03:18There were lots of Germans in the U.S. Army, guys who had emigrated there.
03:23And a good number of them were specially recruited for that reason.
03:27These German immigrants were welcomed into the American army to liberate Germany.
03:35One morning in February 1945, sitting opposite Walter Horn was an exhausted soldier who began telling a curious story.
03:46He was from the city of Nuremberg in Bavaria.
03:49And next door to his parents' antique store, in the old town not far from the castle and city hall,
03:56the Nazis had converted an old beer cellar into a secret bunker.
04:01Following orders from high up, works of art stolen from across Europe were hidden there.
04:07Including the imperial regalia, the insignia and jewels of the Holy Roman Empire.
04:16When they started to install the bunker in the old former beer cellar in 1939 and in 1940, they tried
04:24to keep this secret.
04:25There must have been people knowing about the place because they had to reconstruct it.
04:32And I'm pretty sure that the people living in the vicinity of the place knew somebody was working in here
04:37for a long time.
04:39And that there were trucks appearing every once in a while.
04:42And that there were workers going in and they were coming out again.
04:45So it was officially top secret, but I'm pretty sure that the locals in the vicinity knew that there was
04:50something going on here.
04:51And then later they would notice that church windows are missing, were replaced with regular window glass,
04:59that some other artworks from churches and museums were going missing.
05:03Unless you were, as we say in German, living behind the moon, you probably could put two and two together
05:09and come up with four.
05:10Things there go missing, they start construction here, maybe the stuff is in here.
05:18In 1941 and 1942, at that time, they couldn't keep it secret any longer.
05:25So people in NĂĽrnberg knew about the art bunker then.
05:29Most of them didn't know exactly where the art bunker was.
05:35During the war, well, the art bunker was considered to be the safest place for artwork in all over Germany.
05:44Lieutenant Horn, and notably the expert in European medieval art history that he was,
05:50immediately understood the importance of this information,
05:53and wrote a report which he hoped would reach the very top of the US military hierarchy.
06:02July 1945, a few months later, Nazi high command was decimated.
06:07Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels had committed suicide.
06:12Goering was captured, and surviving members were either on the run or awaiting trial.
06:17Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had his base in Frankfurt, to which Walter Horn was summoned.
06:24His report had been taken very seriously and handed to the Monuments Men, an Allied Army Corps established in 1943,
06:31comprising 350 service members of 13 different nationalities.
06:36Their mission, to safeguard the art, archives, and monuments, pillaged by the Nazis.
06:40These curators, historians, and archivists, whom Walter Horn was about to join,
06:45were driven by a fierce desire to do the right thing.
07:01For the Monuments Men, for the people that the US Army sent here for the artwork, for them it was
07:06a moral obligation.
07:08I'm pretty sure that those people were idealists, something that a German at the time could never understand.
07:13What was important for them, when we conquer something, and we find something in Germany that the Germans stole from
07:20somebody else,
07:21that they wouldn't just say, oh, we keep it to ourselves.
07:24We have the moral obligation to give it back to them.
07:27But at that time, specifically Germans, could never imagine that somebody might conquer something and give it back?
07:34How stupid must they have been?
07:38The US Army High Command updated Walter Horn on the situation.
07:43Following the information he had gathered from the German soldier in Naumur, three months earlier,
07:48the Monuments Men had found the secret bunker in Nuremberg.
07:52Treasures stolen from all over Europe, notably from Poland, had been discovered there, along with a large vault.
07:59It contained Hitler's personal treasure, the most precious in Europe,
08:03including the renowned imperial regalia, an insignia of the Holy Roman Empire.
08:08But they also noticed that part of the treasure was missing,
08:11including the crown worn by the emperors for over a thousand years.
08:17The regalia come from different periods.
08:20It's not being founded at one certain point of time.
08:24Actually, the date from 800 up to 1500.
08:29So it's more than 700 years that they came together from different emperors,
08:35from different monarchs who decided to have added things to this treasury.
08:42In the year 800, Charlemagne was the first to be elected Holy Roman Emperor.
08:47For the first time, he was adorned, as were all of his successors,
08:51with the cloak, the scepter, the orb, the imperial sword, the ceremonial sword, and the crown.
08:57Later added to these was the Holy Lance, the spear which pierced Christ's side during the crucifixion.
09:04The Holy Roman Empire was set together from many different territories,
09:10were located in the center of Europe, but also went up to the western parts of Europe.
09:17During all these years, the regalia, they also have been kept at different places,
09:23in castles throughout the Holy Roman Empire.
09:27Only in 1423, so rather late in the history,
09:32the decision was taken to bring them to Nuremberg,
09:35and to keep them there on a permanent base.
09:40But it was the French who decided that the regalia should be moved.
09:44The regalia came to Vienna in the time around 1800,
09:50because the decision was taken that it wouldn't be safe anymore in Nuremberg.
09:55With the beginning of the French Revolutionary Wars,
10:00there was a fear that Napoleon would like to come to Nuremberg
10:05and take the crown to crown himself as an heir to Charlemagne, actually.
10:10So the decision was taken to take the entire set of regalia,
10:14bring it to Vienna, which was the residence of the head of the Holy Roman Empire at this time.
10:24Vienna, 1907. Adolf Hitler was 18 years old.
10:28He had left the city of Linz, where he had grown up,
10:31and moved to Vienna to try to enter the School of Fine Arts.
10:35But in vain. For almost three years, he would remain idle, bitter, and directionless,
10:40as he wandered the streets of the Austrian capital,
10:43for which he would soon develop a deep aversion.
10:49But it was during one of his typical days, filled with ennui,
10:52that he walked into the Schatzkammer and found himself face to face with the regalia.
10:57Hitler lived in Vienna, so it's rather possible that he came here
11:02because it was a public presentation and open to the public.
11:06Everyone could come here paying entrance fee
11:09and visiting the regalia of the Holy Roman Empire.
11:14The regalia and insignia of the Holy Roman Empire
11:18have a touch of mystery and myth about them, of sacredness too,
11:22which notably interested and fascinated Hitler.
11:25Because the regalia includes the Holy Lance,
11:30the spear with which the Roman soldier Longinus
11:33pierced the side of Jesus when he was on the cross.
11:36So this aura of sacredness gives all these objects extra prestige and desirability.
11:44Aesthetic wonderment, a revelation, a calling?
11:47We'll never know.
11:49But maybe Hitler believed that the regalia had magical powers,
11:53or were at least the symbol of eternal power.
11:56He wrote in Mein Kampf, the insignia of former imperial glory, preserved in Vienna,
12:01still seem to cast a magic spell.
12:04They stand as a pledge that these twofold destinies are eternally won.
12:08For him, with the passage that he has in his Mein Kampf,
12:12and also the understanding of the time, of course,
12:15they have been always seen as symbols of this old German glory,
12:21and the time and the period and these 1,000 years of an important past.
12:27So they were symbols of, yes, this ancient glory of the German nation.
12:36Vienna, 1938.
12:38Hitler's hatred for the Austrian state had not faded.
12:41Taking full advantage of the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria into the German Reich,
12:46and under pressure from the mayor of Nuremberg, Hitler repatriated the regalia with great pomp to Nuremberg,
12:52exhibiting them in St. Catherine's Church as part of a huge propaganda campaign.
12:57In Nazi politics, myths and symbolism played a very big role.
13:01They gave the Nazis the possibility to use the ideology behind these myths and symbols
13:07for their own political intentions.
13:11We know that Willy Liebel, the Lord Mayor of Nuremberg,
13:16was the one who addressed Hitler to bring the regalia back to Nuremberg.
13:22The mayor might have been interested, but Hitler was the one who had final say.
13:29It was definitely Hitler who wanted it brought here.
13:32The transfer of the regalia from Vienna to Nuremberg
13:36was a settling of scores with his own past and his little homeland.
13:41Hitler took his revenge on Austria, which had rejected him as a painter,
13:46and he decided to consecrate Nuremberg as one of the capitals of his own new empire.
13:51Firstly, Hitler loved Bavaria because it reminded him of his homeland.
13:55It's in southern Germany, it has the same culture and pretty much the same dialect and accent.
14:00At the time, Nuremberg was in the center of Germany.
14:05It's important to note that all the railroad lines converged on Nuremberg,
14:10so it was a very practical city.
14:15He chose Nuremberg because it looked so German and had such a nice history.
14:21It was an imperial city, so he decided to turn Nuremberg into the stage for his own political shows.
14:29And the regalia was restored here for centuries as well, so that fit in as well.
14:34And that's why the Nazis wanted Nuremberg to be the place where every year more than one million people should
14:41swear to follow Hitler.
14:43That's why they used to run their big, big propaganda shows here.
14:56To stage his rallies, Hitler ordered a vast program of construction.
15:00Here, too, he drew his inspiration from an empire, this time ancient Rome.
15:16In Hitler's mind, the prime example of a perfect empire and political system was ancient Rome,
15:22which was universal and which dominated the world for a thousand years.
15:26And this Roman Empire had in some way been resuscitated by Charlemagne and his Germanic successors.
15:34If you look at the symbols they used, the banners, the flags, the way they organized their rallies,
15:42a lot of that goes back basically centuries and millennia.
15:47The Nuremberg rallies had a specific symbolic function.
15:52In Nuremberg, the Nazis wanted to show their might to the rest of the world.
16:00Everyone was standing up, embodying the solidarity of the German people, the body of the German people.
16:08And the ideology was that from this vast body of people, great decisions would emerge.
16:20Hitler wanted to show that not only could he resuscitate the past empire, but he could make it bigger and
16:26more beautiful.
16:26And proof of this success was possession of the Regalia, which materialized Germany's future 1,000-year-long reign announced
16:35by the Nazis.
16:39But as early as 1940, the Regalia were already in danger.
16:43Nuremberg became the number one target of the Royal Air Force.
16:47The British were intent on destroying the city that hosted the great Nazi rallies.
16:51So the mayor of Nuremberg, with Hitler's agreement, decided to protect the Regalia of the Holy Roman Empire by transferring
16:59the treasure to the bunker under the castle.
17:02It would never be shown in public in Germany again.
17:07July 1945. Headquarters of the Monuments Men.
17:12Lieutenant Walter Horn had been given a crucial mission.
17:16To find the insignia missing from the imperial treasure.
17:19For the Americans, the stakes were high.
17:22They had to find the Regalia before the start of the Nuremberg trials planned for November.
17:28And it was out of the question that these vanished relics should be used as a real or fantastical symbol
17:34of Nazi resistance.
17:35So Walter Horn had only three months to lead his investigation.
17:51When Walter Horn arrived at Nuremberg, the city of Nuremberg was a desert of rubble.
17:58Nearly completely destroyed.
18:0091% of all buildings in Nuremberg were destroyed or damaged by the bombs.
18:05There was a five-day battle of Nuremberg, obviously completely useless, loss of life.
18:11They could have surrendered, but fanatics held out.
18:16The situation, the life conditions were disastrous.
18:20No water, no food.
18:23350,000 people were homeless when the war was over here in Nuremberg.
18:29It was in ruins.
18:30Little loss of life, though, compared to other cities, because a lot of Nurembergers took shelter in beer cellars during
18:37air raids and during the battle.
18:38It was against this backdrop of desolation that Walter Horn and his team finally entered the bunker close to the
18:45imposing city hall and castle.
19:03In 1940, they started putting artwork in here.
19:07And from that point on, there were always six guards and technicians in the bunker to guard the artwork, but
19:13also to take care of the technology.
19:16And among these works of art, Horn found statuettes pillaged by the Nazis in Krakow.
19:21They were perfectly preserved, thanks to an ingenious and sophisticated air conditioning system.
19:27There was an emergency generator in here, because they did use the public power grid usually.
19:34But during an air raid, they turned off the public power system so that there wouldn't be a power failure
19:39afterwards.
19:40In here, though, they still needed an emergency generator to create power, so they kept the air conditioning going.
19:46They kept the heating going so that they would still have the radio working and so on.
19:51So they needed that technology in here to make sure it wouldn't get too cold, too wet, and that might
19:58damage the artwork.
19:59They spared no expense. The Nazis were never shy about spending money because they figured in the long run somebody
20:06else is going to pay for it anyway.
20:08The bunker had been converted at great expense to ensure the security of the treasure, even in the event of
20:14a direct hit by a bomb and the obstruction of the main entrance.
20:17Back there was an emergency exit. A very challenging one, because you would have to crawl in there and then
20:27climb up an unsecured ladder about 15, 16 meters until you would reach the real exit much higher up in
20:34the hill.
20:35In case bombs detonate at the entrance, the building above it collapses and then they would be buried.
20:42But this way they could still leave and get help.
20:44Unlikely that they would take the regalia this route because I doubt that they had space enough to carry some
20:54of the bigger pieces up this ladder.
20:58Also, if the entrance is blocked, that also means the exit is blocked. So if they can go outside, nobody
21:05can come inside either.
21:06So it's enough to send one or two people out, let somebody else know, please clear the exit, help us,
21:14dig us out.
21:15Horne finally discovered a huge armoured door that opened onto a vault.
21:29So this is where they stored the treasure, the imperial regalia.
21:40This room was only for the regalia. That was considered the most valuable treasure in the bunker.
21:45More valuable than the other pieces in here, even though some of them were quite important historically, culturally, were quite
21:52expensive.
21:57When the monumentsmen came in here, they made an inventory, of course.
22:03And after a while they noticed, ah, strange.
22:05Oops, the crown is missing. The golden orb is missing. The scepter and two swords.
22:12The holy lands, I believe, were still in here. So the symbols of power were missing.
22:16Hitler, as far as I know, was not quite that interested in the relics that much.
22:21He wanted the symbols of power, not the religious symbols.
22:25The crown, the orb, the scepter, the swords, those have been the parts that have been really used during the
22:32coronation ceremonies.
22:33It was the beginning of a detective job Walter Horn had to accomplish to find the crown, the golden orb,
22:42the scepter, and these two swords.
22:44They were vanished. They were hidden somewhere else, obviously.
22:48Who took it? Where did it end up? Yes, that was the question.
22:53After these first observations, Walter Horn could begin his real investigation.
22:58He would have to start by questioning those at City Hall who were in charge of the bunker, unless they
23:04were on the run or had already committed suicide.
23:08When the regalia were brought here from Vienna and then later during the war brought into the bunker,
23:14there were three men from the city administration in charge, reporting basically to the mayor.
23:22The mayor of Nuremberg committed suicide on April 20, 1945, when Nuremberg was deliberated by the US Army.
23:31And these three men responsible for the art bunker, they were employed by the city.
23:37Their names were Fries, Schmeissner, and Linke. Two of them were architects. The third was a lawyer.
23:45Two of them were caught by the Americans. One was not here in Nuremberg. He was searching for his family.
23:50Mr. Linke, he wasn't here.
23:52So Schmeissner and Fries, two of these two men responsible for the art bunker, they were put in prison by
23:59the Americans and they were interrogated.
24:05The first interviews with Fries and Schmeissner didn't produce much.
24:09But one famous name kept cropping up in the conversations, that of Heinrich Himmler.
24:15In July 1945, when Walter Horn was starting his investigation, Himmler was already dead, having bitten into a cyanide pill
24:24after his arrest by the British.
24:26But the Americans knew how influential he had been on Hitler, especially regarding all things symbolic, which could reinforce the
24:33power and glory of the Third Reich.
24:36But more importantly, he had been the Reichsfuhrer, the head of the SS, the elite unit with unlimited powers which
24:43it used to spread terror.
24:46Himmler soon became the prime suspect.
24:55Himmler was one of the highest ranked men in the Nazi regime. As the overall chief of the German police
25:00and minister of the interior, he embodied the horrors of the Reich on his own.
25:04He's considered to be the greatest criminal of the 20th century, as being responsible for the death of tens of
25:10millions of people.
25:12Himmler was the son of the deputy principal of a Catholic high school, and later studied agronomy at Technical University.
25:20He also had an interest in the natural sciences.
25:24Nothing from these formative years suggested that he would turn into such a cruel and unscrupulous man.
25:32He was just a young, out-of-work agronomy graduate.
25:36He looked like the guy at the neighboring desk. Discreet, boring, pale, cold, but polite enough.
25:42But this future-bringer of death made up for his physical and military frailties with an obsession for racial purity.
25:48Between Himmler and Hitler, there was difference in historical culture and fascination, and in artistic taste.
25:55What counted most to Himmler was German prehistory.
25:59Himmler was highly infatuated with German Romantic culture.
26:03He dreamed of a German Romantic antiquity, but it was pure invention.
26:08And he tried to transplant this fantastical German history onto a real historical context.
26:16When you read the biography of the young Himmler, you see he suffered from a very strong emotional deficit.
26:23He never really learned how to behave around others, and he was unable to handle his own feelings when with
26:30others.
26:30And the things he invented later was an attempt to create a different world, a world of wonderment, if you
26:37like.
26:38You could think of him as being a bit simple, given how his mind zoomed off into reverie and fantasy,
26:45which was very folkloric and very esoteric.
26:48He believed in everything. Parallel medicine, apparitions in the forest, German ancestral traditions.
26:58He was in search of beliefs, in search of esoteric knowledge.
27:02And he was surrounded by a gang of swindlers and charlatans who smelled a good customer.
27:13In their idealized Germanic world, Himmler and Hitler replaced politics with myths and insignia, so possessing the regalia of the
27:22Holy Roman Empire made even more sense.
27:24Driven by a love for the esoteric, absolute power and megalomania, for Walter Horn, it was with the ambiguous Himmler
27:32and his fake German ancestry cronies that the investigation would have to begin.
27:36He already had in his hands two men, Freis and Schmeissner, who had been advisors to a fanatical Nazi, the
27:43former mayor of Nuremberg, Willy Liebel.
27:45By squeezing them hard during the first session of questioning, he managed to obtain their version of events.
27:52So they had some SS guys walk in, carry out a couple of crates.
27:57They don't know where they have gone. There was a car coming up just some weeks before the end of
28:02the war and they were taking things and nobody knows.
28:06So people in the vicinity would see it, could confirm the story that the SS took something out of the
28:13bunker.
28:13And that was supposedly on Himmler's orders.
28:16And the car was apparently Himmler's private Mercedes, departing for an unknown destination.
28:21For Horn, this seemed like a very solid lead.
28:24Towards the end of the war, as the Allies were dangerously approaching the center of Germany, Himmler hurriedly started trying
28:31to preserve Germanic heritage.
28:33And the regalia was part of this.
28:35He needed to protect all of these items, fundamental to German heritage, from the hands of the Allies.
28:43The most probable destination to hide the regalia was Himmler's castle, brimming with secrets and fantasies of the SS.
28:50There was no time to lose. He had to get there fast.
29:02Northern Germany in the forests of Westphalia.
29:06Walter Horn had to reach the village of Buren before finally coming face to face with the dark and impressive
29:11Wevelsberg castle.
29:24Constructed in the early 17th century, it was the secondary residence of the prince-bishops of the region and was
29:30rarely used.
29:31In the 1920s, the castle survived by becoming a museum.
29:35But this very agricultural district had trouble maintaining this triangular colossus.
29:41When Himmler chose it for the SS in 1933, the local population was happy for someone else to finally take
29:47charge of it.
29:48The SS didn't actually purchase the castle. It was rented to the organization for a nominal fee of one Reichsmark
29:58a year.
29:58But to all intents and purposes, the occupants of the castle between 1934 and 1945 were the SS.
30:09The choice of the castle wasn't down to chance. It was located close to two highly symbolic sites for Himmler
30:16and his pan-German ideology.
30:19Himmler made his first visit to the castle on November 3, 1933.
30:26He stopped off while visiting an archaeological dig, being carried out by the SS in the region.
30:34Around the Hermannsdenkmal monument and the Exerstein rock formation.
30:43Sites like the Exerstein were held up as proof of ancient Germanic genius.
30:48In fact, man-made structures at these sites are quite recent in historical terms.
30:54But Himmler's archaeologists decided that they dated from several thousand years ago,
30:59in order to show how advanced and creative the Germanic race was.
31:05For Himmler and his ideology advisor, Richard Walter Dare,
31:10this region should be considered as the heartland of Germanic Saxonists.
31:19After Himmler's visit, Wevelsberg Castle was turned into a so-called SS leadership school.
31:27The people working at Wevelsberg were totally convinced they were helping to construct an elite school of the Nordic soul.
31:38Both Hitler and Himmler were intent on showing that the Germanic race was the most prestigious and the greatest creators
31:46of culture. Powerful, fertile, creative.
31:48It was a gigantic project, a vast complex which also included service buildings for the SS school that promoted pan
31:56-Germanic race, culture and ideology.
31:58And also an entire new village solely designed to welcome visiting SS officers.
32:04A way of building a center of power within the grandiose Reich governed by Germanic law.
32:09But teaching stopped there in 1939 when war broke out.
32:17It was also around this time that Himmler started announcing detailed plans for what was supposed to happen at Wevelsberg.
32:25For example, that every spring an annual general assembly of SS section leaders was to be held at the castle.
32:35In fact, we're not entirely sure what Wevelsberg was truly supposed to represent.
32:41There were great ambitions. It was to be an SS center and certain rituals were to be performed there.
32:49Himmler also said he wanted to compile a kind of reliquary in which he would preserve the skull and crossbones
32:55rings of dead SS officers.
32:58The SS chose the skull and crossbones as their emblem themselves.
33:04It was meant to signify, we're not afraid of death.
33:07We're an organization that instills fear and horror in others.
33:11But we fear nothing.
33:13They were kind of creating a brand image for the organization.
33:16Wevelsberg Castle, the funerary sanctuary.
33:19When Walter Horn arrived, he was greeted by British soldiers who had captured the castle.
33:23To his astonishment, he discovered that the village contained a concentration camp, which had supplied labor for the conversion of
33:31the castle since 1939.
33:32The majority of the prisoners were Jehovah's Witnesses, exploited for their excellent know-how as craftsmen.
33:40The British tried to help Walter Horn as best they could.
33:43They took him to see what they had discovered in the North Tower, a place which could be a good
33:48stash for the regalia.
33:50Two austere rooms which, according to eyewitnesses, were designed for strange and terrifying ceremonies.
33:58The architect Bartels, who oversaw work at Wevelsberg in 1933 and 1934, designated the room as a crypt for burials.
34:08And it was almost certainly during these burials or ceremonies that through some occult rite or another,
34:15the souls of dead SS officers were supposedly seen off as they entered the afterlife to join the Germanic gods.
34:23For Himmler, this was all very serious, or deadly serious, as they say in German, Todernst.
34:29The rites had to be carried out with strict discipline by all members of the SS,
34:34starting with a dozen or so ObergrubenfĂĽhrers, who had their graves reserved in the Wevelsberg crypt.
34:42They had to meet up regularly to carry out these rituals which united the community of the living,
34:47while forming a bond with the huge community of the dead.
34:51One representation of this esoteric culture was the Black Sun, the gigantic metastatic swastika on the floor.
35:02This was apparently to establish a bridge between the present and the most ancient times of Germanic culture.
35:15During the last two years of the war, there was neither the time nor the opportunity to use these rooms
35:21for their intended purpose,
35:22or for anything else for that matter. There are no eyewitness accounts at all. Everything else was invented after the
35:29war.
35:30The rooms were used, but it's not really clear what for. But as far as I know, no rituals were
35:36carried out there. Stories about that appeared later.
35:40When the end was nigh in 1945, Himmler gave orders to wipe out all traces of what had gone on
35:47at Wevelsberg.
35:48But the SS officer charged with blowing up the castle realized there wasn't enough dynamite.
35:55So he focused on the castle's two south towers. The southwest tower contained the Himmler's private apartments.
36:05And it suffered a lot of damage caused by the fire that followed the explosions.
36:14Lieutenant Horn was immensely disappointed to find that the fire had destroyed nearly everything.
36:20And his visit to the rest of the north tower produced nothing.
36:24Nothing remained, either, of Himmler's personal belongings or archives.
36:28After a few hours, he was forced to face the facts. The imperial regalia wasn't there.
36:34The castle had been pretty much abandoned by the SS in 1943.
36:40The attempt to create an SS ideology and cult was never seen through.
36:47We know a few things, but we don't really know what the full extent of the project was.
36:54And I don't think Himmler really knew, either.
36:59The northern Germany lead had fizzled out. Himmler had hidden nothing at Wevelsberg.
37:05Walter Horn returned to Nuremberg, forced to start from scratch.
37:11His investigation had been going on for ten days, and the trials were to begin in a month.
37:17The pressure on Lieutenant Horn to find a serious lead was increasing.
37:20But a helping hand from fate would point the American investigator in the right direction.
37:26The Nazis systematically pillaged artifacts all over Europe.
37:42The thefts were clearly targeted and ordered in the occupied regions.
37:48Everywhere.
37:54And during the last days of the war, someone had to take care of this treasure.
38:08Zellamsee in the Austrian Alps near Salzburg.
38:11It's in this ski resort, which was very popular with the Nazis, that Fishhorn Castle stands.
38:17An SS headquarters, with its horse-riding school ordered by Himmler.
38:21And where, throughout the war, Hermann Goring kept his collection of stolen artworks.
38:26When the Russians arrived, Goring sought refuge with his family at Fishhorn.
38:30And it was there that he was arrested.
38:33It was also near Zellamsee that the Americans caught Joseph Spatzil, Himmler's laundered money treasurer.
38:39This fanatical SS member was notably tasked with hiding the tons of gold stolen from all over Europe, which was
38:47intended to finance a hypothetical Fourth Reich.
38:50In exchange for his life, Spatzil agreed to give information about his superiors and started spilling the beans.
38:56He gave the exact location of where he had stashed the gold, in the salt mines in the Austrian Alps.
39:02He also told a story that would interest Walter Horn.
39:05While in Berlin, Spatzil had overheard a conversation during which his senior officer, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, spoke about Himmler sending his
39:14Mercedes to Nuremberg in March.
39:16The SS loaded it with the Imperial Regalia and headed off towards Austria.
39:22When they arrived in Zellamsee, they drove to the south shore of the lake, the closest to Fishhorn Castle, and
39:29sank the Mercedes with the Regalia on board.
39:32This revelation was so believable that the Americans sent down divers to explore the lake bed.
39:43The Americans had been finding stashes of gold pretty much everywhere since 1945.
39:52There were so many stashes discovered that in the end, nobody knows how much it amounted to exactly.
40:02There are still stories told about a huge treasure lying on the bed of Lake Constance or another lake.
40:12Zellamsee contained all the elements to suggest that Horn was on the right track.
40:17Spatzil's story matched the version of events told by the two city officials Freis and Schmeissner.
40:23Himmler's Mercedes, SS men carrying out crates, and now the lake.
40:27But the divers found nothing.
40:29Now even Walter Horn began to doubt.
40:32Why sink a treasure that was so precious, so deep in a lake that it was almost irretrievable?
40:38Especially since Nazi gold was so easily accessible in the salt mines.
40:43Time was pressing.
40:44He would have to use what he already had and attempt one final bluff.
40:55After the disappointments of Wevelsberg and Zellamsee, Horn returned to Nuremberg.
41:02Pressure was mounting with the preparations for the upcoming trials.
41:06The Palace of Justice would unwittingly play a crucial role in the strategy that Lieutenant Horn would deploy to trap
41:13Freis and Schmeissner.
41:16The two former advisors to the mayor.
41:18He had a feeling they weren't telling the whole truth and needed to scare them.
41:23Walter used the ingredients he had at hand to make them crack.
41:26The threat of the defendants box at the Nuremberg trials with execution as the probable verdict.
41:32The plan itself was simple.
41:35To arrest the two men, throw them in separate cells,
41:38and have them believe they would be confronted by an SS lieutenant
41:42who had been present during the loading of the regalia into Himmler's Mercedes.
41:48And why not Spatzill?
41:50Walter Horn started with whom he believed was the weaker of the two men, Conrad Freis.
41:57The prospect of standing trial terrified him almost as much as being thrown in jail.
42:02One of them apparently gave up and showed the Americans the real location of the treasure.
42:12Conrad Freis decided to confess.
42:15Everything he previously said were lies.
42:20On March 31, 1945, the Imperial Regalia was taken to an air raid shelter in the cellar of the Panierplatz
42:28Kindergarten,
42:29placed in a recess in a wall and bricked up.
42:32To cover the tracks on the mayor's orders, he and Schmeissner made up a story to tell the Americans.
42:41Consequently, the confrontation with Spatzill was pointless.
42:45Lieutenant Horn finally had what he needed.
42:51The next day, guided by Freis and Schmeissner, the Monuments Men headed to the Kindergarten,
42:57just a few minutes' walk from their bunker.
43:00They crossed the hallway, then entered a maze of dark corridors situated underneath the schoolyard.
43:13During the war, all these old, former beer cellars were converted into air raid shelters.
43:18These rooms were for civilians, for the inhabitants of the city.
43:23We estimate that about 50,000 people escaped into these beer cellars during the bombing raids,
43:30when the bombs were dropped on Nuremberg.
43:33We estimate that there was a big maze.
43:36A big maze.
43:40You can get lost in here.
43:43A maze ideal for stashing the artifacts of offices of the Nazi regime.
43:49This is where the bosses of Nuremberg had their bunkers.
43:54This one is the room where the mayor of Nuremberg had his office.
44:01End of March 1945, they put the crown and everything into backpacks with bicycles.
44:08They brought the imperial regalia into this cellar, and somewhere here the imperial regalia were hidden.
44:17Liebel, the BĂĽrgermeister, the mayor, he was the boss, and he said to them,
44:20let's bring them away from here because they wanted to prevent the Americans to take the imperial regalia into the
44:27States.
44:28The man who gave up the location later claimed he only gave it up after he was promised that the
44:35treasure would not go to the US,
44:37but would end up back in Vienna, that it would be given back to Austria.
44:41Naturally, Himmler's Mercedes never came here, nor did any SS officer.
44:47Himmler probably didn't have much to do with it except as they used him as an excuse at the end
44:55of the war
44:55to pretend that the most important pieces had been taken away by the SS on orders of Himmler.
45:02It was a lie. I think Himmler had other things to do at the end of the war.
45:06Himmler was busy doing other things in those last weeks and months of the war.
45:11I don't believe he systematically set out to save the substance and symbols of the Third Reich or whatever.
45:18He was otherwise occupied leading an armed group and trying to ensure the survival of the SS.
45:24There is a tiny hint of truth to this notion that you see in the Indiana Jones movies
45:28that Himmler was hunting for these old symbols of power.
45:32And it was not completely out of the question that he might have done that. Of course.
45:37It was a precious victory for the monument's men.
45:41The missing pieces of the Holy Roman Empire treasure.
45:44The crown, the scepter, the orb, and the two swords had been found.
45:56The 1,000-year-old Imperial Regalia was once again complete.
46:04In the end, for a large part of the war, they had been safely stored in Nuremberg,
46:10a stone's throw from their original location.
46:13The motivation of the mayor and his Nazi accomplices in the disappearance of the Regalia
46:18raised the question of a Fourth Reich.
46:20We don't know, maybe the Lord Mayor, when he took the decision to bring them in a different place,
46:26that he, maybe he had the idea to keep them for another empire to come.
46:32The Americans suspected these people to be part of the Nazi resistance against the Allies,
46:39the crown, the golden orb, the scepter.
46:42These were symbols of power.
46:44And with these symbols of power, they would be the head of the resistance against the Allies.
46:51Naturally, there was speculation over a Fourth Reich.
46:54But after 1945, there were no consequent efforts to establish German resistance of any kind.
47:01The astonishing thing is, even Himmler was unable to form an underground organization which,
47:07having survived the war, could have launched a new Nazi or SS movement.
47:12Unable to rise again militarily, the remaining Nazis would have to count on the grandeur of symbolism
47:19to disappear but having planted the seeds of a future Reich.
47:24It was a matter of creating motivation for future generations who, while strolling among the ruins of Nuremberg,
47:33reclaimed by grasses and vines, would see firsthand the gigantic nature, prestige and beauty
47:40of what was started by the Third Reich, but was left unfinished.
47:46Okay, we lost, we died, but we will still be remembered in 1,000 years' time.
47:54Walter Horn's investigation was over.
47:57He had accomplished his mission.
48:00When Fritz showed them the place where the imperial regalia were hidden,
48:05the monuments men did what they always did.
48:09All pieces of art taken away by the Nazis from any places anywhere in Europe
48:14were brought back to that place.
48:19It was by plane, and with scarcely any publicity, that on January 4th, 1946,
48:25the regalia of the Holy Roman Empire was taken to Vienna and handed over by American soldiers
48:31to the then President of the Austrian Republic, Karl Renner.
48:36The imperial treasure would return to the Schatzkammer, where it is still on show today,
48:41in the very spot that Hitler first set eyes on it.
48:53Three months later, the Nuremberg trials could start in peace on November 20th, 1945.
49:06Joseph Spatzel never went to prison.
49:09He testified against his superior, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and was released.
49:14He returned to his hometown of Munich and lived a quiet life as an office worker.
49:19This former Nazi fanatic died aged 60.
49:23Mayoral advisor Conrad Fries was ordered to pay a fine for lying to the Americans during the Regalia investigation.
49:31He became a lawyer in Nuremberg, and in 1960 was once again elected to the Municipal Council.
49:37He died aged 85.
49:39His fellow advisor Heinz Schmeissner, the architect, was sentenced to two years imprisonment by a military tribunal.
49:46On his release in 1947, he continued his career.
49:50In 1949, he was elected once again as City Hall's construction advisor,
49:55and took part in the rebuilding of Nuremberg.
49:58He died aged 92.
50:00Walter Horne returned to the United States, where he enjoyed a prestigious career
50:04at the University of California, Berkeley, co-founding the History of Art department.
50:09He died aged 87.
50:13Nobody has ever found Himmler's Mercedes.
50:23He died aged 90 year old today, who is a Il chats Sims.
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