Where did the Czech gold go at the end of the Second World War? Part 1 - Introduction and the Dead End

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The Nazis (apart from war operations) looted valuables from all occupied territories. It was not only Jewish property that was arized, but private and public property and valuables were systematically looted. Most of it went to the Reichsbank in Berlin, where liquid assets amounting to 80 billion Reichsmarks in gold and currency were concentrated at the end of the war. Most of this deposit was found in a graphite mine in Merkers on 7 April 1945.

In addition to this huge hoard, smaller deposits were found mostly in the Austrian Alps (We are dealing with gold and currencies, not works of art in the salt mine in Altaussee).

However, far from all the valuables from the occupied territories were downloaded to the Reichsbank, let's just remember the gold train, which is still found in Ksiaz (we wrote about it here: Where did the Nazi gold go? The gold train in Poland | HuntingTreasure.cz, or the Amber Chamber.

As in other European countries, these Nazi treasures are being searched for in the Czech Republic. Decades after the war, they were searched for by a specialised STB department (the "Explorers" were dedicated to this and have a number of videos on stream.cz, for example here: Treasure at Konopiště and the StB search | Badatelé | Stream

Immediately after the revolution, two people - Mr. Mužik and Mr. Gaensel - started searching for a huge treasure near the village of Hradiště near Štěchovice. ( Slušný, jaromír: Štěchovická trap, 2010 - Antikvariát Jirásek a spol. (antik-jirasek.cz)), it was also covered in Researchers Štěchovický treasure and interview | Josef Mužík and Helmut Gaensel | Stream

The history of the search for Nazi treasures in Bohemia is nicely summarized in the book "Hruška Emil - Nazis and Czech Treasures. Nazis and Czech Treasures - Antikvariát Radhošt' (antiqari.at)

All these searches have one common denominator - nobody has ever found anything.

Certainly the Nazis looted many valuables and jewels in Bohemia that were never found. Let's take for example the historical insignia of Charles University.(Charles University has been searching for stolen insignia for 67 years. So far in vain | iROZHLAS - reliable news), or the gold of the National Bank for Bohemia and Moravia. Karl Hermann Frank decided to move some of the documents in the Štěchovice vaults to other locations in the southern part of Germany. The deputy director of the National Bank for Bohemia and Moravia has sent an inquiry as to where to take the last remnants of the bank's gold hoard, weighing one ton of pure gold and other valuables. http://natura.baf.cz/natura/2004/2/20040203.html

Where did all the gold go? I've been tracking this gold for about ten years now. It started quietly enough. Sometime in early 2014, I responded to a comment in a chat room. A person with the nickname Čuřil wrote that in mid-April 1945, Otto Skorzeny, the commander of Hitler's troops, robbed the museum in Mikulov. At the time, I personally was very uncomfortable with this and responded by saying that (then) SS Lieutenant Colonel (SS-Obersturmbannführer) Skorzeny, whose area of operations was all over occupied Europe, personal friendtel of Hitler, an expert in special operations, commander of SS fighter units of several thousand men, that he would be involved in the looting of a district museum in the Protectorate? Perhaps along the way while performing other tasks he could pick up light and valuable things that's for sure. But his tasks were probably on a different level.

The easiest way to refute such a rumor seemed to me to be to ask a google friend to find where Skorzeny was in mid-April 1945. If he was demonstrably somewhere other than South Moravia, then drop the whole story. For Skorzeny was a hard-to-miss figure, nearly two meters tall and with a scarred face. Everybody knew this face from the autumn of 1943, because Skorzeny had pulled off a hussar stunt to free Mussolini, and this was a great gift to Nazi propaganda. So Skorzeny's unforgettable face was in all the papers.

First I started his own autobiographical biography. It's a very interesting book called "My Command Operations". My Command Operations - Antikvariát Dlážděná (adplus.cz)

In this book, Skorzeny actually describes his journey from Hitler's bunker in Berlin towards Vellichovky, where he was chief ofb of the Mitte Army Group under Marshal Schörner, then on to Kroměříž, where he wanted to save his troops inKroměříž from the advancing Red Army troops, then on to Vienna, where he was on 11 April (certainly, he sent a telegram from there to Hitler, who was found with the date), then on to the Alpine Fortress, where he met his officers who had arrived by train. Here he stayed until the end of the war and surrendered to the Americans. In addition, there are records (probably false) that he participated in and commanded the burning and murder of the inhabitants in the settlements of Prlov and Ploshchina (19.4. and 23.4.1945), but in any case he was prosecuted by the Czechoslovak courts after the war. So he was definitely physically in Moravia at the incriminated time.

Things got interesting and I set out on the trail. This trail took me first to the Austrian side of the Šumava, which was and probably still is a dead end. I kept on searching and today I have a story composed in such a way that everything fits together like gears. I was even able to add a specific name to the account of Mr. Houska, who described a nameless SS colonel.

The problem is that the story is multi-source and very complicated. I had to decode many purposeful lies within the story, especially from Skorzeny. Unfortunately, Skorzeny was no fool (like Peter Fleig in the Rommel's Treasure story) and therefore his lies are very difficult to unravel. He lies believably. Sometimes cross information can be traced that proves the lie. This is the case when he claims to have met Schörner in Velichovka on 10 April 1945, when I found out that Schörner did not arrive in Velichovka from Berlin until 15 April. Seemingly a triviality, but absolutely essential information for the later interpretation of the repatriation of gold from Bohemia.

This was the easier option to prove a lie. In some cases I had to rely on my knowledge of Skorzeny's personality, where he claimed to have done something normal and obvious, which I would have done or any normal person would have done, but the act explicitly contradicted Skorzeny's personality. Therefore, in the next piece I will write excerpts from Skorzeny's biography that I consider essential to an evaluation of his personality and without knowledge of which some of his actions or claims would be incomprehensible.

This text will be long; I will describe his every move and every thought. If anyone does not enjoy it, let him read only the fourth part. There I will clearly, briefly and simply describe the journey of Czech gold through the Protectorate and where it apparently ended up. I would especially recommend it to the lady with the nickname "Steel" who commented on the rather simple structure of the description of Rommel's treasure with the comment "An article called chaos:,-(" So unfortunately, here it gets even a class worse 😊.

Blind road (I guess)

As part of one of the first packages offered to me by "uncle google" was this article (the link still works after ten years, oddly enough) : http://gilg.webnode.cz/news/byl-otto-skorzeny-pri-trasportu-pisemnosti-koncem-valky-na-sumave-/

Here was one very interesting piece of information that came from the testimony of Mr. Houska, a prisoner who survived the transport:

"In the area of the villages of Vacov, Borové Lady, Kvilda, Františkov, Kubova Hutě and Bučina, columns of German army cars were moving at the end of the war, carrying boxes of written and other material. A transport of cars and crates, allegedly by the Reichsicherhitsamt, moving from Berlin to Bavaria, moved through the area. Mr. Houska, who wrote about the whole incident in his articlein an article in the World in Pictures in 1982 and stated that he was supposed to have been a prisoner in the original column, which was separated from another column led by Otto Skorzený.

This was to pass through Čkyně, Vacov, Vimperk, Kubová Huta, Borová Lada, Františkov, Kvilda, and Bučina in the direction of Pasov. However, it did NOT go to Pasov! It was supposed to turn around somewhere in the area of Bučina, where it was supposedly to be unloaded and left in the direction of Strakonice, passed through Volyně, where they spent the night somewhere nearby, and the next day the column was supposed to get lost somewhere behind Vimperk in the direction of Strážné. No one has heard from this column since."

From this account many local patriotic people of Šumava took it that Skorzeny must have been carrying some treasure, which he buried somewhere near Borové Lad. This is quite a common mental shortcut. When anyone learns of the transport of a treasure, they construct the idea that it must be buried somewhere on their own doorstep, grab a shovel and a pickaxe and go looking.

However, there are some things about this account that are a little strange. How would any con man know what they were carrying (supposedly RSHA documents)? The thing about the documents seems more like purposeful misinformation for the escort. To give away valuable cargo is asking for a mutiny by the crew. Galleon captains knew that half a millennium ago. So here I would lean towards the authors idea that this was not a waste of the best Special Forces commander's crate of documents, but really something very, very valuable. I wonder who would be the commander of an entire column when a bigwig like Skorzeny was only the commander of part of it? Why were they even bringing any torturers with them if there was a prison camp on site? It makes sense. If they took the local disposable tormentors and then shot them, it would be clear that they weren't allowed to talk and that there was something worth digging up buried right here. If they shoot tormentors imported from Ústí nad Labem, nobody in the place needs them. After all, they can also shoot them a hundred kilometers away. It won't give away the location of the depot.

From all this, I have formed the following hypothesis of the transport and hiding of the treasure:

They're all running towards the Alpine fortress. Even Kaltenbrunner (Chief of the RSHA and Skorzeny's direct superior) rented a house here in Alt Ausee for Christmas 1944. Later, the Americans dug up $3 million worth of gold, jewels and valuable stamps in the vicinity, which was a lot of money back then. Dozens of treasures were buried in the Alps at the end of the war, and most of them were collected by the Anglo-Saxons in the first days after the occupation. The Alps are densely populated and the population was quite cooperative. On the other hand, the higher parts of the Bohemian Forest are quite ideal for hiding. There are gentle slopes, you can hardly go anywhere by car, there are a lot of forests so little visibility of who is doing what and sparse population.

The Böhmerwald Fortress was created as an alternative to the Alpenfestung, a plan by Karl Hermann Frank in cooperation with the Munich Gauleiter. The fortress was "built" in a similar way to the Alpine Fortress. Trenches, bunkers, shelters, weapons and ammunition caches were built in the forests and mountains of the Bohemian Forest. There were key factories for the production of jet engines for the ME 262 and also the Luftwaffe headquarters was being built here, which was visited by 21.Herman Göring himself visited the Luftwaffe on April 4, 1945, but found that it would not be ready by the end of the war. http://natura.baf.cz/natura/2004/2/20040203.html

This date is very important - later when tracing Skorzeny we found out that Skorzeny was also here on 21.4.1945 and it can be considered very likely that they met here.

It is clear to Skorzeny that he will be tracked down after the war. And not only him, all convoys from March and April will be suspect. So which way to the Bohemian Forest to leave as few tracks as possible? The most direct route is through the Protectorate. It's also the safest, there's considerably less bombing than in Germany. And it has another advantage. And that's the genius of his plan. He's going to go through territory that is absolutely certain to be occupied by the Soviets in a few days. But the treasure, if he wants to dig it up sometime in the future, must be in the American or British occupation zone. It is clear that Skorzeny will not be able to move in the Russian zone in the foreseeable future, much less organize the retrieval of any deposits there. He was under the illusion that the Americans would release him as an ordinary soldier and then that there wouldn't be much policing. So he needed the treasure to be hidden in the future American zone, but to get there through the future Russian occupation zone. So in April 1945 Skorzeny quite logically assumed that Austria and Bohemia would fall to the Russians and the demarcation line with the American zone in Bavaria would be on the ridge of the Bohemian Forest.

Look at the map. The road through Bohemia, which is guaranteed to be occupied by the Soviets in a few days. The last mentioned settlement, Buchina, is right at the crossing of the Sumava River into Bavaria towards Passau on a still forgotten small road with almost zero settlement around it. The column entered the desolate Bavarian Forest, which for the reasons mentioned above was again 100% certain to be under American administration. There it unloaded and hid the cargo, turned around and drove in the direction of Strakonice - Volyn - Vimperk - Strážné. Apparently, she then crossed the Sumava River by some other crossing further west, made her way through the Danube Valley between the American and Red armies, and ended up in the Alps. But it was empty. With this ingenious move Skorzeny achieved that whoever would follow him across Bohemia would reach the border. And the assumption of perfect interplay between the Russians and the Americans at the border was clearly beyond reality. On the contrary, it was assumed that they would attack each other and the war would continue. Anyway, on the Bavarian side, they couldn't trace the treasure because there were simply no tracks leading to it. No one came to it at the critical time, no column, no Skorzeny. It couldn't have been better.

Figure 1 Route Čkyně, Vacov, Vimperk, Kubova Hut', Borová Lada, Františkov, Kvilda, Bučina

This hypothesis looks quite logical and even today I cannot exclude that it is also true. However, I have pursued my search for information further and today I believe that there is a better documented and more probable version. In other words, that Skorzeny went to Šumava not to store something there, but to take something away, and everything is stored elsewhere.

Continued next time...