HIDDEN SECRETS: The Secret History Of Gold - World Documentary Channel

Nazi gold (German: Raubgold, "stolen gold") is the gold transferred by Nazi Germany to overseas banks throughout World War II. The regimen carried out a policy of looting the possessions of its targets to fund the battle, gathering the looted possessions in main depositories. The periodic transfer of gold in return for money took place in collusion with numerous individual collective establishments. The specific identifications of those institutions, in addition to the exact level of the deals, remain vague.
Today whereabouts of Nazi gold that vanished right into European banking institutions in 1945 has been the subject of several books, conspiracy theories, and a civil suit brought in January 2000 against the Vatican Bank, the Franciscan Order, and also various other defendants.
The draining of Germany's gold and foreign exchange reserves hindered the purchase of materiel, as well as the Nazi economic climate, concentrated on militarisation, might not manage to exhaust the means to procure foreign machines and also parts. Nonetheless, in the direction of completion of the 1930s, Germany's foreign reserves were unsustainably reduced. By 1939, Germany had skipped after its foreign financings as well as the majority of its trade counted after command economic climate barter.

HIDDEN SECRETS: The Secret History Of Gold

Nonetheless, this tendency to autarkic conservation of foreign reserves hid a style of broadening official reserves, which occurred with robbery properties from annexed Austria, took up Czechoslovakia, as well as Nazi-governed Danzig. It is believed that these 3 sources enhanced German main gold reserves by US $71m in between 1937 and 1939. To mask the acquisition, the Reichsbank undervalued its main reserves in 1939 by $40m about the Bank of England's estimations.
Germany expropriated some $550m in gold from international governments, consisting of $223m from Belgium and also $193m from the Netherlands. These amounts do not consist of gold as well as various other tools stolen from exclusive people or companies.
An expanding source of precious metal came from Nazi focus camps and fatality camps, where all property was drawned from the victims, and also consisted of individual effects such as wedding rings, watch, cigarette situations, jewelry and gold teeth. (All other significant property, such as properties, paints, bonds, and shares, were taken from the targets prior to they entered the camps.) The gold was accumulated at the camps and sent out to the Reichsbank under the false-name Max Heiliger make up melting down for bullion.
Much of the gold bullion was saved in abandoned mines in Germany, such as the Merkers my own, where it was located by United States soldiers towards completion of the battle in 1945. Various other sources such as the individual properties of the targets of Nazi mistreatment, were found in the attention camps on freedom.
The present location of the Nazi gold that went away right into European financial institutions in 1945 has actually been the topic of several publications, conspiracy theory theories, and also a civil suit brought in January 2000 in California against the Vatican Bank, the Franciscan Order as well as other defendants. The fit against the Vatican Bank did not case that the gold was then in its belongings as well as has actually considering that been dismissed.
The Swiss National Bank, the biggest gold circulation centre in continental Europe just before the battle, was the logical place where Nazi Germany can deal with its gold. During the battle, the SNB received $440m in gold from Nazi sources, of which $316m is estimated to have actually been appropriated.