Nazi Gold

by Douglas Botting

  ‘Okay, Hap,’ Patton ordered Gay. ‘Gimme the sta-goddamn-tistics! How much is this hoard worth all told?’

  Gay told him what he thought.

  ‘Does the press know about this?’ Patton asked.

  ‘No, Sir.’

  ‘How many people do!’

  ‘Well, Sir,’ said Gay, ‘Major Allgeier is cognisant, of course, as is Lieutenant Murphy, and Captain Niederpreum, and . . .’

  ‘Don’t ackack, Hap!’ barked Patton. ‘You esti-goddamn-mate, General Gay! How many people know about this fuckin’ hoard?’

  ‘I’d say a hundred, maybe more.’

  ‘You mean the entire Third Army. That’s about a hundred too many, Hap. Tell Milliken [Divisional Finance Officer] to pack up this fuckin’ find, all of it, and order Conway to send it to Frankfurt, right away. I want the padre to go along to pray all the way that it gets there safely, and Colonel Cheever [Divisional Judge Advocate] should also go to see to it that the receipt we get is legal.’

  As Gay turned to leave, Patton had another thought.

  ‘And hear this, Hap, I want those civilian bastards handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department, and see to it, Hap, that an investigation is started to find out what happened to the rest of this hoard. I don’t want anybody ever to say that sonuvabitch Patton had stole any part of it.

  ‘Peanuts, Hap,’ grinned Patton as they went out. ‘A million bucks won’t buy thirty seconds of war in the black market.’

  Nine days later the gold and currency were shipped by Third Army from Bad Tölz to the FED in Frankfurt. The 72 bags and six boxes of foreign currency and the four boxes and two bags of gold coin, revealed by Colonel Rauch, were listed as Shipment 52A. The 20 boxes of gold coin revealed by Captain Neuhauser were listed as Shipment 52B. Third Army had always assumed that both shipments represented parts of the same original German consignment and this is what the Third Army memo accompanying the shipments to Frankfurt suggested: ‘Documents attached represent available information concerning origin of these shipments. In the opinion of this HQ, Shipments 1 and 2 (52A and 52B) are part of the same cache uncovered by the 10th Armored Division and shipped to you on 10 June.’ (This referred to the 728 bars recovered on the Steinriegel on 7 June.) However, an examination of this documentation at the FED evinced a completely different interpretation. On 10 July the Deputy Chief of the Currency Section at the FED sent a memo to the Assistant Director, Financial Division, US Group Control Council, stating that he was unable to find ‘any indication in the papers supporting the shipment of the 20 boxes that they are connected with the 72 bags and 6 boxes of foreign currency or the 4 boxes and 2 bags of gold coin recovered in the same area.’

  This was very astute of the FED official, for the 20 boxes of gold coin undoubtedly were not connected with the original consignment of Reichsbank gold reserves from Berlin and Munich to Mittenwald. But for various reasons – by accident, or design, or both – those 20 boxes utterly confused the Americans’ perception of what they had and had not recovered from the Walchensee hills. And this confusion in turn permitted them to overlook a major shortfall in their gold recoveries from that area.

  By July 1945 the FED would undoubtedly have had in their possession the inventory of gold and currency assets prepared by Reichsbank official Mielke at the Forest House, Einsiedl, shortly before their burial by the officers of the Mittenwald Mountain Infantry School. This inventory listed the following ostensibly gold items:

  364 bags containing 728 bars

  6 cases of Danish coins

  25 boxes of bullion

  Of these items the 728 bars had been recovered on 7 June and safely received intact at the FED shortly afterwards. The six cases of Danish coins recovered on 28 June turned out to contain not Danish coins but Danish currency which was itemised as such on arrival at the FED. That left 25 boxes of gold bullion, containing four bars to each box, weighing nearly 1.25 tons and worth over $1,400,000 ($11,760,000 today). These 25 boxes of bullion had been described as such when they were taken from the Konstanz Reichsbank on 22 April and added to the main Mittenwald consignment; they had been signed for as such on the receipt given by the scrupulously conscientious Reichsbank official George Netzeband when they were delivered to the Forest House at Einsiedl; they were inventoried as such by Mielke before he returned with his list to Munich; and they were buried as such by the officers from the Mittenwald Kaserne. It was these same 25 boxes of gold bullion which Tiger’s Tales reported to have been made known to the American authorities by a German General in early June.

  However, it was not 25 boxes of gold bullion that were recovered from the caches at the end of the month but 20 boxes of gold coin from one cache and four boxes and two bags from another. Though the FED doubted that these two caches were in any way connected, the temptation to balance the books by identifying the 25 boxes and two bags of gold coin on the Third Army’s list was apparently irresistible. After the 24 boxes and two bags had been received at the FED the contents of the two bags were resacked in one bag during processing by bullion experts, thereby producing the figure of 25 containers of gold. Magically, the books now appeared, after a fashion, to balance. The Germans had buried 25 containers of gold and the Americans had recovered 25 containers of gold. No matter that one lot of containers contained coins when they were supposed to contain bars. That could be put down to an error of nomenclature on the part of the banking bureaucracy of the defunct Third Reich. The important thing from the point of view of the Americans’ bank ledger was that there were 25 of them. They could thus be said to have been accounted for. But in fact, of course, 25 boxes containing 100 bars of gold bullion were still missing.

  That more gold and currency had been buried in the Walchensee hills than was officially acknowledged by the Reichsbank officials and Wehrmacht officers responsible seems practically certain. For example, in addition to the 25 boxes of gold bullion delivered to the Forest House by Mielke – which were put on the official Reichsbank inventory – a further 20 boxes were taken there from the Casino by Willi Hormann, but were not put on the inventory. It was in all probability these same 20 boxes which were (according to Neuhauser’s testimony) dug up and reburied by a Reichsbank official and an SS officer on the night of 28 April and subsequently recovered by the Americans and found to be full of gold coins.

  Moreover, in addition to six boxes officially listed on the Reichsbank inventory as containing Danish gold coins, there were four boxes and two bags which were not listed. Yet it was the latter which contained the gold coins, the former only Danish paper currency, a source of understandable confusion and potential exploitation.

  Finally there were the 11 oblong wooden boxes which were delivered to the Forest House from Berchtesgaden, which according to Pfeiffer’s driver were so heavy they could only have contained gold (though all he could see when he peeped inside was a layer of wine bottles at the top). These too never appeared on any official inventory and were never heard of again. Did they contain gold, or the weapons and ammunition later found in the caches, or even wine for Funk (who had a drink problem) when he still planned to find refuge in one of the mountain huts in the area? We shall never know. The point is that the 11 boxes were never listed – but they did exist.

  As for the paper currency, more US dollars had been picked up by Major Rawley in early June on the Oberau road alone than were listed on the inventory of Reichsbank currency drawn up by Netzeband and Will in the Forest House on the day before the burial. For years afterwards the rumour persisted that Abwehr, Brandenburg Division and other non-accountable funds and secret assets had been brought down to Mittenwald along with the Reichsbank reserves. It is therefore possible that while Reichsbank assets and holdings appeared on the Reichsbank inventory, other funds did not, because they could not or need not be so registered.

  The possibility that the Germans had buried more gold and currency than they had listed in the official Reichsbank inventory does not seem to have crossed the minds of the A
merican fiscal authorities in Germany, or at any rate left no abiding furrow. They were extremely persistent in rounding up assets which they knew existed and knew to be missing – as their remorseless hounding of Neuhauser, Pfeiffer, Netzeband, Will and Rüger had shown. But they were less enthusiastic when it came to sorting out leads to assets whose existence was not definitely proven by documentation or could only be suspected, if not detected, as a result of painstaking cross-referencing of known facts in a high-calibre fiscal intelligence operation.

  One handicap for the American finance experts was the absence of a complete inventory giving full details of exactly what had been hidden. Another was the lack of co-ordination and exchange of information between the various tactical units and investigative bodies who were involved in each of the three different recovery operations. Another was a crippling lack of staff at the FED. So grievous was this shortage that the currency recovered from Walchensee (known as Shipment 52A) had to wait a whole year in a corner of the FED vaults before anyone actually got round to counting it. Not until 18 July 1946 was the Head of the Depository Section at the FED, Edwin P. Keller, able to send a progress report to his immediate superior. ‘The currency in Shipment 52A,’ he wrote, ‘includes a considerable amount of US Dollars, including many old bills. A one-dollar note of the series 1875 and a Silver Dollar note of the series 1896 are attached for your information. Count of currency in Shipment 52A is currently in progress (72 bags and six boxes). The Section is operating at increasing tempo as additional personnel is gradually secured. Inventory is being confined to currency pending the securing of technical experts on jewellery, precious metals and precious stones.’

  Not until March 1947, nearly two years after the Reichsbank currency had first been put in the ground at Walchensee, did the FED wake up to the shock that there was a huge discrepancy in the contents of Shipment 52A. This inordinate time gap between digging up the Reichsbank reserves and counting them was to prove a fourth and fatal handicap for the financial authorities in Frankfurt. For it could have enabled certain highly placed persons at a certain strategic point in the financial transmission line to make use of their key position and inside information to plunder parts of the recovered funds at their leisure – and gave them ample time to cover their tracks and throw any bloodhounds off the scent. By the time official investigators began to probe what came to be known as the ‘gold affair’ many of those responsible for the robbery of the Reichsbank reserves (and associated funds) had left the scene and many of the trails had long gone cold.

  One thing the Americans were sure of, though, even in the summer of 1945–17 bags of foreign currency were unaccounted for. Eighty-nine bags had been put in the ground, they knew; but only 72 had been taken out. So where were the missing bags? The brunt of the Americans’ not inconsiderable curiosity in this matter fell on the man who had spent the longest time at the currency caches but probably had the least idea of what had ultimately befallen their contents – Hans Neuhauser. Amazingly, Colonel Rauch – whom the Americans knew had dug up some of the currency on the night of 28 June – went scot free, even though his Nazi past should have ensured his automatic arrest. The same was true for his associate, Karl Warth, and for Schreiber and Groeger, who had been allowed to handle the currency in the privacy of Schreiber’s home in Garmisch in the early hours of 29 June. Did Rauch come to an arrangement with the Americans on behalf of himself and his colleagues? If so, it seems to have been honoured in deed if not in word. Poor Neuhauser was to enjoy no such privilege.

  By his own account, Neuhauser was given a rough time by the Allied investigators working on the case, even after he had led them to the 20 boxes of gold cached on the mountains. The first of his many interrogations began at Einsiedl. In the Forest House he was confronted by two American officers, Major Clarence A. Brown (Public Safety Officer of the Munich Military Detachment) and Lieutenant Peter I. Pollack of the CIC (alias Wasyl Maldo, Peter Malko, Peter Lukawskij and ‘Pete the Polack’). Lieutenant Pollack, an Austrian Jew by birth, spoke fluent German.

  ‘You were in the HJ, the Hitler Youth!’ he accused Neuhauser.

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘You were a member of the Nazi Party!’

  ‘Parteianwärter,’ Neuhauser corrected him. ‘Candidate only.’

  ‘You were in the SS!’

  ‘Nein!’

  ‘Doch, you were!’

  ‘Nein!’

  ‘You were an officer. You know what will happen to you if you tell lies. Where is the gold?’

  ‘The Americans took it away,’ Neuhauser replied, apparently puzzled that they should ask such a question, since as far as he could see the Americans had located all the gold caches.

  ‘Where is the currency?’

  ‘In the Tyrol.’ He was going to stick to the agreed cover story – that the SS had come and taken the stuff farther into the National Redoubt.

  They left the villa and drove up the Steinriegel to the main gold hole where the 728 bars had been hidden. The hole was empty, of course. So was the original currency cache, 200 metres away.

  ‘There, you can see for yourselves,’ Neuhauser said to the Americans by way of confirmation. ‘Can you let me go now?’

  Lieutenant Pollack, who took every opportunity to let it be known that he hated all Germans, gave a non-committal reply. ‘Tomorrow,’ he told Neuhauser. Tomorrow was to last the best part of two months.

  From Walchensee Hans Neuhauser was driven to Garmisch and thrown in the police prison, where he was searched and his stomach pills taken from him in case they were poison. Neuhauser’s three-man cell contained 20 inmates, stacked like herrings, under the charge of a former corporal. Here Neuhauser was confined off and on for six weeks.

  The following Sunday Neuhauser was taken out for further interrogation by Pollack. This time there was also a colonel and two interpreters (one of them a woman) present. All the names of the people involved in the Reichsbank business were read out to him but he remained evasive and un-cooperative, and continued to maintain that the remaining treasure had been taken into the Tyrol. The investigators were obviously dissatisfied with his answers and returned him to the prison.

  Two weeks later he was ordered by an American lieutenant who spoke fluent German to pack his things and he was then taken from the police cells in Garmisch to the Post Hotel in Mittenwald, then being used as a Special Incident Interrogation Center. Neuhauser noticed that an English General (Brigadier Waring) of the ‘Royal Army’ was a member of this unit. To Neuhauser he seemed typically English – lean and lanky (hager) and with baggy trousers. Remorselessly, day after day, this ‘general’ and his American colleagues, a colonel and a lieutenant, subjected Neuhauser to a ceaseless grilling. He was questioned about Lammers. He was confronted with Major Braun and Friedrich Will, all to no avail. He had nothing further to say.

  Neuhauser was now taken to the Hotel Ertl and confined in the cellar for two days with nothing to eat and only water to drink and with armed guards outside the door day and night. He was interrogated again, and then taken with the ‘general’ to the Klausenkopf, where he had to wander around pushing a stick into the ground to find any soft spots which might indicate the presence of a treasure cache. ‘Are you going to run off from here?’ the ‘general’ asked him. ‘Nein,’ Neuhauser replied, and added: ‘I have shown good will.’ Needless to say, he was unable to oblige the ‘general’ with any new caches of Reichsbank treasure and the party returned empty-handed to Mittenwald.

  After this tough approach at the Hotel Ertl, Neuhauser’s interrogators tried the soft touch in the Hotel Wetterstein. This time Neuhauser was confined not in the cellar but in a decent room on the second floor. He was given good food to eat and kept in this cosy environment for two days. It was probably the first comfortable billet he had known since his convalescent leave at the Forest House had been brusquely interrupted three months before when he was sent up the mountain to keep watch over the Reichsbank reserves. Since then he had slept in the undergrowth l
ike a fawn, been packed in a prison like a herring and holed up in a cellar like the Count of Monte Cristo. The guest room in the Hotel Wetterstein in Dekan-Karl-Platz was a profound change. Sleep between sheets, all mod cons, decent grub – he began to feel almost human again. His interrogators clearly hoped that they might catch him off guard. According to Neuhauser, they failed. On the third day he was led before the inquisition again. This time there was a little blonde to translate for him, but her presence made no difference, he still wouldn’t talk. The interrogators decided that he was a hopeless case and that he would have to be thrown back among the herrings in the gaol in Garmisch and put back on hard tack again.

  For the last time Brigadier Waring, Major Braun and another CIC officer whom Neuhauser had not seen before tried to break him down. There was really only one thing Neuhauser knew which his interrogators did not: the fate of the missing bags of currency. Almost certainly Neuhauser knew very well that Colonel Pfeiffer and Colonel Rauch had exhumed some of the bags in May and taken them off to hide elsewhere. Indeed, since neither Pfeiffer nor Rauch had been present when the currency had been buried on the Klausenkopf, they could only have found the currency with Neuhauser’s help. Neuhauser claims he told his interrogators nothing. But somebody did. For by the beginning of August 1945 a significant change had taken place in the progress of the investigation. Though no more gold was ever found, more currency from the Reichsbank treasure was soon to come to light, and in impressive abundance.

  10. The Men from the Dilla Ostler

  While Hans Neuhauser was being alternately fattened and starved in various pre-war holiday hotels in Mittenwald, or left to twiddle his thumbs in unison with 20 other prisoners in the police cells of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the tireless Brigadier Waring, who was as assiduous as he was courteous, had still not given up the hunt for Colonel Pfeiffer. The dollar pick-ups on the Oberau road had left many questions unanswered. It was clear that much of the currency and perhaps some of the gold was still missing. Waring was anxious to interview Pfeiffer about this and the American CIC lent a hand in the chase.