Nazi Gold

by Douglas Botting

  The first delivery to turn up at the house was a truck carrying 11 mysterious oblong boxes. According to the driver, these had been despatched from Berchtesgaden – near which Hitler, Bormann and Goering had their private residences – on the orders of the fugitive Reichsbank President Walther Funk. Each of the 11 boxes weighed approximately 150 kilos and measured about 3 feet in length, 2 feet in width and 1½ feet in depth. When Pfeiffer’s driver, George Hempfling, took a peep into one of the boxes, all he could see was a row of wine bottles, but this, he thought, was probably just camouflage, for the boxes were so extraordinarily heavy that it seemed more likely they contained gold than wine. The boxes were followed by drills and bits and 30 kilos of dynamite which Hempfling had been told to bring over from the Kaserne.

  Shortly afterwards, another truckload of extra gold turned up at the Kaserne, again on Funk’s orders. This consignment, which came from the Reichsbank in Munich, but was not necessarily part of the Reichsbank reserves, consisted of 25 boxes of gold bars (four bars to each box) from the Konstanz branch which the Reichsbank official Rosenberg-Lipinski had collected and had tried to hand over to the Berlin gold convoy at the Peissenberg mine on 22 April. After missing the convoy by 24 hours Rosenberg-Lipinski had finally delivered the 25 boxes to the Munich Reichsbank for safekeeping. Thence they were brought on down to Mittenwald under the charge of another bank official by the name of Mielke. Mielke arrived with orders from Funk to extract $50,000 worth of foreign currency from the sacks now stored in the Kaserne. This he did by simply taking five whole sacks from the pile. (When he got back to Munich with them the next day, the five sacks were found to contain not $50,000 in foreign currency, but over $120,000 in US currency. Some while later it was discovered that $5,000 of this was missing – stolen, it seems, by Mielke.)

  On the afternoon of 25 April, a fatigue party of four Mountain Riflemen began to load up a civilian truck at the Kaserne with the first delivery of Reichsbank treasure, consisting of between 50 and 75 bags of gold and the 25 boxes of gold bullion from Konstanz. One of the riflemen, Vitus Mayr, recalled the occasion well. ‘We were ordered to bring sacks up from the bowling alley and load them on to a lorry,’ he related some years afterwards. ‘The sacks were grey with black printing. The tops were tied up and I think they even had lead seals attached. We soon learned that there were gold bars in the sacks. The gold was brought by the officers to the forester’s lodge in Einsiedl.’ When the first load was ready the truck set off for Einsiedl, accompanied by Mielke, Captain Rüger, who was in charge, of the transport arrangements, and the Reichsbank official George Netzeband, exhausted and nervy after many sleepless nights spent on the road from Berlin. Security does not seem to have been of the highest order. On the road to Einsiedl the gold truck encountered another truck driven by a local pig keeper called Josef Pinzl, a familiar figure who often called at the barracks to collect pig food from the soldiers’ mess. The two drivers stopped briefly to exchange greetings and with bluff good humour the army driver called out: ‘I wouldn’t mind swapping some of the gold in my truck for one of your pigs, Sepp – or even your pig food!’ From that moment the presence of the gold in the vicinity could have been no more than – at best – an open secret in Mittenwald. For this and many other blatant breaches of proper security, Colonel Pfeiffer, who was not present at the transportation or the subsequent burial of the Reichsbank reserves, blamed his deputy, Major Braun, the officer he had placed in overall charge of the operation.

  There was a large, dark, stone-floored room at the back of the Forest House which used to serve as the stable, and this was where the gold was brought and neatly stacked against the walls. The operation not unnaturally caused a degree of excitement in the Neuhauser household and among their lodgers – a civilian refugee from Munich, Halls Forstreicher, and his family, and an attractive 30-year-old Serbian woman from Yugoslavia called Vera de Costra. Hans Neuhauser Sr and his wife were loyal Nazi Party members and considered it an honour to play a part in the salvation of the Third Reich’s reserves. As Frau Neuhauser later admitted: ‘We were proud to have our house selected for such an important purpose.’ Nevertheless, they were all in a fever of nervous tension. The war had so far passed the Mittenwald area by. But now every minute brought news of the rapid advance of the American Army in their direction. The prospect of the imminent arrival of foreign invaders, with their tanks and their flamethrowers and (so the racist Propaganda Minister Dr Goebbels threatened) their black men, filled everyone with extreme apprehension which the presence of the gold and other valuables only served to redouble.

  When the first load of gold had been off-loaded the army truck drove back to the barracks in Mittenwald for more. A local driver called Willi Hormann delivered 20 airtight boxes to Einsiedl. The final load, too, was off-loaded and methodically stacked in the Forest House store-room, a camp bed was moved in and a 24-hour guard of officers and Reichsbank officials made their final inventories before departing the scene. Mielke made one list, and Netzeband made another. Neither list agreed with the other and neither conformed with the truth. The lists acknowledged the loss of two bars of gold from the original Berlin consignment but did not record the requisitioning by Mielke of five sacks of currency, nor the recent addition of 11 boxes of what may have been gold, nor the 20 airtight boxes brought over by Willi Hormann, nor any other assets or valuables from any other source which could not be strictly described as Reichsbank property on a Reichsbank inventory. As far as can be ascertained, what the treasure actually comprised on the eve of its burial was:

  364 bags of gold, each containing 2 bars, making 728 bars in total

  4 boxes thought to contain gold bullion

  25 boxes of gold bars, each box weighing 50 kilos and containing 4 bars

  2 bags of gold coins

  6 cases thought to contain Danish coins

  11 boxes, allegedly containing gold, weighing 150 kilos

  20 airtight boxes, thought to contain gold coin

  89 bags of foreign currency made up as follows:

  US Dollars 2,430,000

  English Pounds 230,500

  French Francs 2,000,000

  Swiss Francs 500,000

  Dutch Guilders 1,000,000

  Norwegian Kroner 2,340,000

  Swedish Kroner 45,000

  Italian Lire 1,000,000

  Portuguese Escudos 69,000

  Egyptian Pounds 40,000

  Turkish Pounds 226,650

  Palestinian Pounds 1,700

  The Reichsbank officials had always intended that Colonel Pfeiffer should sign an official receipt for the treasure now that it had been formally handed over to him. But to their consternation the Colonel refused to sign. ‘In actual fact,’ Pfeiffer explained later, ‘I had not seen the gold, the foreign currency or the jewels. [Existing documentation does not indicate the presence of any jewels in the Reichsbank shipment.] The Reich treasure was certainly delivered by truck from Berlin to my barracks, but there was never any opportunity to count each individual gold bar.’

  The men from the Reichsbank were powerless to insist. In almost their last act in connection with the Reichsbank hoard they took a boat out on to Lake Walchen and tossed the banknote printing plates into its 600-foot-deep waters (where they have remained to this day). They then returned to the Kaserne in Mittenwald.

  For 24 hours the Reichsbank treasure remained in the Forest House while Pfeiffer’s officers prepared the mountain caches in which it would be hidden. Soil does not always lie deep on the steep slopes of the Alps. Only a little way down beneath the pine needles, bracken and spongy black humus lie hard rock and scree. To dig holes big enough to take the voluminous bulk of the Reichsbank reserves required a great deal of grinding, physical, hard labour with picks, shovels and drills – and now and then the judicious application of a little dynamite. For reasons of security only the officers were involved in this work – all of them dressed as private soldiers. All through the night of 25/26 April they toiled away, trusting that an
y noises they made would be attributed to night exercises. By daylight, three or four large holes had been completed high on the Steinriegel and the Klausenkopf.

  The exact locations of the caches do not appear to have been chosen by Colonel Pfeiffer himself but by his subordinate officers in conjunction with Reichsbank official Friedrich Will. Pfeiffer by now was more preoccupied with the deteriorating military situation in his sector than with the treasure and only possessed a very approximate knowledge of the caches in which it was to be buried. In fact, the sites for the gold caches were located on the north-facing slope of the Steinriegel in an area heavily timbered with fir, larch and beech, on the side of a forest track that ran west–east along the main axis of the ridge, some 300 or 400 feet above the level of the lake and some 30 minutes away on foot from the Forest House. There were at least two and possibly three separate holes. The first hole, some six feet to the left of the track, measured about six feet by four feet and was intended as a cache for provisions, medical supplies and ammunition, which might prove necessary if the area came under attack. The second hole was some 30 yards further up the track and about 12 feet to the left. It was a more substantial hole than the first, measuring nine feet by five feet and deep enough for a man to stand up in. This was the main gold hole where the 728 bullion bars were to be buried. It was expertly constructed, with planks to line and reinforce the sides, but no roof. It is possible that there was another, smaller hole in the vicinity for the concealment of a separate, and smaller, consignment of gold.

  Only the heavy valuables which were more difficult to transport up into the mountains were to be buried on the Steinriegel, so close to Einsiedl and the road to Mittenwald. The currency, which was more voluminous but infinitely less weighty, was to be carried farther into the mountains to a big cache dug on the Klausenkopf, in the middle of a forest, between one and two hours’ climb from Einsiedl. This cache was more a bunker than a hole and was a relatively elaborate affair, some nine to 12 feet square, shored with logs and baulks of timber, made watertight inside, with a timber roof and a small hatch for an entrance. Skilfully camouflaged with a covering of moss and grass turves, the currency cache was completely unrecognisable to anyone who did not know what was there. The earth excavated from it was carried to a spot 200 yards away and was also carefully disguised so as not to betray the presence of the main shaft. With the excavation completed, the next step was to bring up the Reichsbank treasure and other valuables that were to be concealed in them.

  The characteristic mode of transport for German mountain troops was the pack animal. The particular species depended on the terrain and the country. In Lapland the Gebirgsjäger used reindeer, in the Caucasus camels and small, frugal donkeys. In the Alps the favoured beast of burden was the mule. The Gebirgsjäger barracks in Mittenwald had about 5,000 of these creatures during the war. Sure-footed on rough and precipitous terrain, and sturdy enough to carry heavy loads in special panniers up tiring slopes, mules were an obvious choice for bumping the treasure, weighing well over 11 tons, up the mountainside to the gold and currency caches on the Steinriegel and Klausenkopf.

  Late on the evening of 26 April, therefore – a dark and cloudy evening, highly suitable for such a clandestine operation – eight of these creatures were assembled outside the Forest House and loaded up. Each mule could carry a maximum of four Zentner or hundredweight (i.e. 200 kilos), in panniers slung from each side of the animal’s wooden saddle. On this occasion each mule was laden with three bags of gold for each trip up into the hills. Just before midnight the heavily laden mules were led behind the Forest House and along the edge of the road at the back, until they reached a rough track that led off to the right into a copse. Here eight dark figures – Gebirgsjäger from the Mittenwald Kaserne – emerged from the shadows and took over the bridles from the first team of drivers. The column then set off again, winding its way through thick forest as stealthily as the darkness and roughness of the track allowed, till it came to a narrow, stony path that led to the crest of the Steinriegel. With a clattering of hoofs, much panting of breath, and an occasional curse or word of encouragement, the mule train struggled up the steep incline until, just before the summit, the officers – each one now dressed in the dark green uniform of a Gebirgsjäger private – took over the mules and their precious cargo and led them to the caches among the trees. So the gold from Berlin was carried up the mountain on the backs of beasts of burden – just three days before American spearhead units reached the valley below.

  All through the night the mule-shuttle continued, as a few bags and boxes at a time were borne off into the darkness and up through the woods to the four caches, where they were tidily stowed by the waiting officers. All concerned believed they were operating in total secrecy and unobserved. Indeed the area around the Forest House had been cordoned off by local Home Guard units on Colonel Pfeiffer’s orders – though the cordon seems simply to have increased public speculation about the strange goings-on in the vicinity. In fact the entire operation was observed from the slopes on the opposite side of the valley by one of the lodgers at the Forest House, the civilian refugee, Hans Forstreicher. Forstreicher had slipped out of the house after the mules had set off and climbed to a vantage point overlooking the flanks of the Steinriegel, where he was able to see the direction in which the mules set off and the mountain track up which they would be climbing. Though it was a dark night, he had no difficulty in following the progress of the mule train into the woods. A low mountain mist and a settling frost made his watch purgatory, however, and he was glad to return to the warmth of the fire in the Forest House.

  For two more nights the mule-shuttle continued. By dawn on 28 April the gold and currency reserves of the Berlin Reichsbank lay snug in their watertight holes in the frost-rimed ground of the Bavarian Alps, all trace of their burial artfully concealed with a cover of turf and grass.

  That same day Colonel Pfeiffer travelled to Walther Funk’s house at Bergerhof (near Bad Tölz) and reported the successful concealment of the Reichsbank reserves near Mittenwald. Funk was surprised to hear that the reserves were already buried and voiced the opinion that it was a pity that they were, since he would gladly have had them at his disposal for later prime-pumping of the economy. In that connection he told Pfeiffer that some Swiss francs might still be particularly useful. Pfeiffer explained that it was not yet too late to retrieve bank-notes from the currency cache – unlike the gold the paper money was stored in a dry, roofed bunker with a proper entrance – and that he could arrange for Funk’s assistant, Dr Schwedler, to be escorted to the currency cache next morning to pick up the francs if Funk so wished.

  The next morning Dr Schwedler drove to Mittenwald, picked up Reichsbank official Netzeband and two of Pfeiffer’s officers (including Major Braun) and carried on to Einsiedl. In pouring rain the party climbed up to the currency cache on the Klausenkopf. ‘It was really difficult,’ Schwedler recalled later. ‘We kept changing course this way and that across the terrain. The climb up took a different path from the one by which we later came down. The hiding place itself was extremely well camouflaged. I came upon it suddenly without noticing it. I was asked whether I could see anything unusual. When I said I could not, I was told that we had arrived. We were in the middle of a forest. The Reichsbank official, to whom I had given the Minister’s [i.e. Funk’s] instructions, went into the cache. Finding the items must have been a pretty laborious affair, because there was a long interval before the official emerged.’

  Netzeband handed up three bags of bank-notes through a hatch in the currency bunker. On subsequent examination these turned out to contain not Swiss francs but 87,000 American dollars and 10,000 English pounds. Their subsequent fate was to prove a curious one.

  Schwedler, Netzeband and the two Gebirgsjäger officers climbed down the mountain with the three bags and returned to Mittenwald. At the Kaserne, Colonel Pfeiffer handed Schwedler the two missing bars of gold. These had been found at the officers’ mess, seemingly by a
ccident and much to everybody’s surprise, during his absence on the mountain. It appears that while awaiting the return of Schwedler and Netzeband from the mountains, Will felt cold and decided to light the stove in the officers’ mess. The wood was laid and the fire kindled, but instead of a cheerful crackling glow all that came out of* the stove was choking blue woodsmoke which seeped from the cracks and joints of the flue-pipe and filled the room. It was immediately obvious that the flue was obstructed and a quick search revealed a well-smoked canvas bag, stencilled with the words REICHSBANK HAUPTKASSE and containing two gold bars numbered 41919 and 41920 worth about $30,000 (or about $120,000 on the black market) at that time. Both Reichsbank officials Netzeband and Will suspected that their colleague, Emil Januszewski, was the culprit, for the two bars had disappeared on the journey between Munich and Mittenwald, when Januszewski was in charge of the consignment. Later, on 13 March 1946, the unfortunate Januszewski – a respectable bank official of advancing years who succumbed to temptation and opportunity in the hope of salting away something against the hard times that were coming – blew out his brains in Munich.

  Schwedler could not bear the thought of trailing up the mountain yet again just to bury two bars with the other 728, so he simply popped them in his brief-case and took them with the three bags of bank-notes to Funk’s house at the Bergerhof, where he placed them, as instructed, in the skittle alley.

  When Dr Schwedler was questioned about these events during an investigation conducted into the Reichsbank affair by the Munich Police Criminal Investigation Department in 1952, he had this pertinent remark to make about Pfeiffer and Funk:

  Colonel Pfeiffer made a remarkable impression on me. He was a holder of the Knight’s Cross and my feeling was that he had provided assistance for patriotic reasons. I had the conviction then, and am of the firm opinion today – I would like to emphasise this – that neither Colonel Pfeiffer nor the Minister had any thought of enriching themselves personally. I think I can assert this very particularly of Herr Funk. He was certainly sincere in his aim to put these assets at the disposal of German industry at the appropriate time. I know that this happened with regard to other assets. I have myself heard how instructions were given to hold such assets in readiness for the re-priming of German industry if the need arose.