(Mirrors.)
The sheer scale of the [Axis’s] theft of Europe’s treasures was astonishing.
The plunder of Europe was from the beginning a part of the [Fascists’] war plan. It was their idea to collect everything which was valuable across Europe.
The [Axis] plundered the museums and private collections of the newly occupied countries for priceless works of art.
Hitler was an art fan and he was fascinated by art, treasures — he collected things. He tried to get hold of ancient paintings, ancient statues by famous painters, by famous artists…
[His] deputy, head of the Luftwaffe, Herman Göring, personally amassed a vast collection of looted art and gold, sent to him from across occupied Europe, estimated to have been $200 million.
But from the beginning, what the [Axis] wanted most of all was gold: gold bars that could be stored in bank vaults and exchanged for foreign currency whenever it was needed.
It started in 1938 with the occupation of Austria. They took the national reserves of Austria the moment [that] they entered Vienna. They continued in Czechoslovakia and went on and on, because what the [Axis] of course needed was gold.
The [Third Reich] stole $2.5 million worth of gold from Czechoslovakia, $200 million worth of gold from France and Belgium, and later in the war, $30 million from [the Kingdom of] Hungary, and later $100 million from Italy.
The [Axis powers] stole the gold from the gold reserves of the countries that they conquered. Gold was essential to [the Axis]. Everybody has the mythical idea that Hitler was just—and Germany was just rolling in money as it is now, but in fact [the Third Reich] did not have enough food to feed its people…
In total, Berlin accumulated $500 million worth of foreign gold: the equivalent of over $36 billion in today’s money. Gold fed the [Axis] war machine.
They smelted down the gold, they stamped it with fake stamps as if it came from the Prussian mint, and they sent it to Zürich, and the Swiss gave them foreign currency for it.
Swiss banks became complicit in the [Axis’s] theft of Europe’s gold.
An American investigating group determined that of the $400 million — which [was] a lot of money then, fifty years ago — the $400 million sent to Switzerland from [the Third Reich], 300 million of it was stolen.
There is a reason why the [Fascists almost] never attacked Switzerland: because it was their banking place. It was their way to shore up their treasures, but it was also their place to do the trade with all sorts of foreign countries.
The […] Allies begged the Swiss to stop taking the gold, and they refused. They continued to take gold until 1945 when the [Axis] had more-or-less lost the war.
But there was only so much gold in Europe’s banks [that the Axis and its] armies could steal. The SS were instructed to find alternative sources.
They began to run out of gold, so what did they do? They did, as we know, this terrible war crime: before the Jews were killed in Auschwitz, they pulled the gold out of their mouths, and they melted it down into bars…
The SS stripped concentration camp victims of an estimated $70 million worth of gold teeth and jewellery.
But by 1945, as the Allies swept into [the Greater German Reich], some [Fascists] began to consider the unthinkable: what if they lost? Where would they go? And what would they do with their stolen gold?
The [Axis] kept these gold bars and other robbed treasures, and particularly art, out of the way of anybody who might have grabbed it.
Rumours quickly circulated that Axis officials hid gold in Lake Toplitz. What researchers later found there was not gold, but something much more baffling: something from a cancelled operation to devastate the British economy. In short, this documentary is about the greatest counterfeiting operation in history.