Nazi gold: Wikis

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Updated live from Wikipedia, last check: June 02, 2012 20:49 UTC (53 seconds ago)

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"Nazi gold" refers to the assets in gold transferred by Nazi Germany to overseas banks during the Second World War. The regime executed a policy of looting the assets of its victims to finance the war, collecting the looted assets in central depositories. The occasional transfer of gold in return for currency took place in collusion with many individual collaborative institutions. The precise identities of those institutions, as well as the exact extent of the transactions, remain unclear.

The present whereabouts of Nazi gold that disappeared 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 other defendants.

1 Acquisition
2 Disposal
3 Croatia
4 In popular culture
5 See also
6 Notes
7 References
8 External links

Acquisition

The draining of Germany's gold and foreign exchange reserves inhibited the acquisition of war materiel, and the Nazi economy, focused on militarisation, could not afford to deplete the means to procure foreign machinery and parts. Nonetheless, towards the end of the 1930s, Germany's foreign reserves were unsustainably low. By 1939, Germany had defaulted upon its foreign loans and most of its trade relied upon command economy barter.^[1]

However, this tendency towards autarkic conservation of foreign reserves concealed a trend of expanding official reserves, which occurred through looting assets from occupied Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Nazi-governed Danzig.^[2] It is believed that these three sources boosted German official gold reserves by US $71m between 1937 and 1939.^[2] To mask the acquisition, the Reichsbank understated its official reserves in 1939 by $40m relative to the Bank of England's estimates.^[2]. Much gold was also acquired taken from victims of the holocaust, with jewelery and watches taken when the inmates entered, and gold teeth removed after they met their fate at the gas chambers. For those who were executed by other causes, many camp guards and Sonderkommandos did not have time or simply did not bother to remove any teeth, or even just did not notice them.

During the war, Nazi Germany continued the practice, only on a larger scale. Germany expropriated some $550m in gold from foreign governments, including $223m from Belgium and $193m from the Netherlands.^[2] These figures do not include gold and other instruments stolen from private citizens or companies. The total value of all assets stolen by Nazi Germany remains uncertain.

Disposal

The present whereabouts of the Nazi gold that disappeared into European banking institutions in 1945 has been the subject of several books, conspiracy theories, and a civil suit brought in January 2000 in California against the Vatican Bank, the Franciscan Order and other defendants.^[3] The suit against the Vatican Bank did not claim that the gold was then in its possession and has since been dismissed.^[4]^[5]

The Swiss National Bank, the largest gold distribution centre in continental Europe before the war, was the logical venue through which Nazi Germany could dispose of its gold.^[6] During the war, the SNB received $440m in gold from Nazi sources, of which $316m is estimated to have been looted.^[7]

Croatia

Among Nazi puppet regimes, the Ustaše-controlled Independent State of Croatia also maintained concentration camps and confiscated the assets of its victims in a campaign of ethnic cleansing to clear "Greater Croatia" of Serbs, Roma, and Jews. Victims' assets were deposited in the Croatian treasury. On 21 October 1946, the U.S. State Department received a Top Secret report from US Treasury Agent Emerson Bigelow.^[8] The report established that Bigelow received reliable information on the matter from the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and CIC intelligence officials of the US Army.^[9] The document, referred to as the "Bigelow Report", was declassified on 31 December 1996, and released in 1997.

The Bigelow Report asserted that at the time of the collapse of the Ustasha in 1945, the Vatican had confiscated 350 million Swiss francs in Nazi gold for "safekeeping," of which 150 million Swiss francs had been impounded by British authorities at the Austro-Swiss border.^[9]^[10] The report also stated that the balance of the gold was held in one of the Vatican’s numbered Swiss bank accounts. Intelligence reports, which corroborated the Bigelow Report, also suggested that more than 200 million Swiss francs, a sum largely in gold coins, were eventually transferred to Vatican City and to the Institute for Works of Religion (aka the Vatican Bank), with the assistance of Roman Catholic clergy and the Franciscan Order.^[10]^[11]^[12]

Such claims, however, are denied by the Vatican Bank. "There is no basis in reality to the [Bigelow] report", said Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, as reported in Time magazine.^[13]

In popular culture

In the James Bond film Goldfinger, Bond enters a golf match with the titular villain, using a recovered bar of Nazi gold (worth ₤5,000) as the prize. It is stated that the bar was recovered from the bottom of Lake Toplitz; Goldfinger, of course, is very knowledgeable about the Nazi gold holdings.
In Return to Castle Wolfenstein, one of the optional goals in each level is to collect treasure, which mostly appears in the form of Nazi gold bars.
In the first Hellboy film, a scientist is paid with a bar of Nazi gold for helping the main villains find the grave where they could revive Grigori Rasputin.