US General George S. Patton commanded the 3rd Army Group to enter the village of Merkers on April 4, 1945, where the “Hitler treasure” was located.

The 3rd Army Group under the command of US General George S. Patton entered Thuringia and on April 4, 1945 reached the village of Merkers.

A few days after entering the village, US soldiers discovered the largest treasure trove of Nazi Germany. The US army went down to a Kaiseroda mine several hundred meters underground and searched the tunnels until they discovered a giant, extremely sturdy iron door.

Unable to break down this sturdy iron door, the US soldiers used explosives to destroy the thick brick wall. A group of soldiers was sent to explore the newly opened tunnel and were dazzled by a giant treasure that sparkled under the flashlights.

Before their eyes were thousands of large and small bags, many wooden boxes and a series of suitcases stacked on top of each other. In this 15 meter wide and 60 meter long cellar is a huge treasure.

In this 15-meter wide and 60-meter long cellar is a huge treasure trove.

According to the inventory list, the cellar contains up to 8,198 gold pieces, 55 suitcases containing gold bars (each suitcase contains 2 bars, each bar weighs 10 kg), hundreds of sacks containing gold objects, more than 1,300 sacks containing gold coins from Germany, France and England, 711 sacks containing 20 USD US gold coins and hundreds of other sacks containing gold coins from more than 15 other countries. According to estimates, the gold in the “Hitler treasure” is worth up to 262 million USD (calculated at 1945 prices).

In addition, there were hundreds of sacks containing foreign currencies, 9 sacks containing ancient gold coins, 2,380 sacks and 1,300 suitcases containing Reichsmark (German Mark used from 1924 to 1945, abbreviated as RM), totaling up to 2.7 billion RM. Among the precious metals were 20 silver bars each weighing 200 kilograms, a sack containing 6 platinum bars and 110 sacks containing jewels and diamonds that the Nazis had looted from countries they had occupied.

In other branches of the tunnel, people also discovered a large number of valuable works of art that the Nazis had looted from European museums, including paintings, statues and antiques…

Who told the Americans about the “Hitler treasure”?

In fact, the “Hitler treasure” in Merkers village was only a few weeks old. After the Allied planes bombed Berlin Castle, the Chancellery and the Red City Hall, the President of the Reichsbank (the name of the German Central Bank from 1876 to 1945) Walther Funk decided to move most of the bank’s reserves out of Berlin. Hitler secretly ordered all of the Reichsbank’s gold, silver, banknotes, coins and foreign currency to be hidden in a mine in the village of Merkers, Thuringia, hundreds of kilometers away from the capital Berlin. On March 6, 1945, the Chief of Staff of the Nazi Chancellory, Hans Heinrich Lammers, on Adolf Hitler’s orders, decided to hide many priceless works of art in that mine. At the end of March 1945, German soldiers secretly used many trucks and even buses to transport many artifacts displayed in the museum to hide in the salt mine in the village of Merkers. To this day, it is still unclear who revealed the “Hitler treasure” to the US military. In the village of Merkers, it is rumored that a French female forced laborer did this. The manager of the Merkers mine at that time, Hartmut Ruck, did not rule out this possibility. Mr. Ruck said: “Most of the miners at that time were prisoners of war and it is very possible that the secret transports to the Kaiseroda mine were discovered by them.”

An American soldier looks at a masterpiece by Albrecht Dürer found in the “Hitler treasure” in the village of Merkers.

Speculations about the fate of the “Hitler treasure” after the war

After being discovered, the “Hitler treasure” was quickly removed from the village of Merkers. The commander of the Allied forces in Western Europe, US General Dwight D. Eisenhower, immediately went to Merkers to inspect the Nazi treasure. Under the orders of the then US Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, General Eisenhower urgently ordered the treasure to be transferred to West Germany because according to the Yalta Agreement signed in February 1945, the US army had to hand over the Merkers mine intact (with everything in it) to the Soviet Red Army.

The US army hastily moved the gold, paper money and works of art to the surface and loaded them onto large trucks. On April 17, the convoy set off for Frankfurt/Main, 170 kilometers from Merkers.

There is still much speculation about the fate of the “Hitler treasure.” It is rumored that the US military transported the gold and artworks captured to Argentina by submarine. But there are also rumors that the treasure was used to implement the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after the war. It is even said that General Dwight D. Eisenhower kept some of the paintings seized from Merkers to decorate his bedroom.

The commander of the Allied forces in Western Europe, US General Dwight D. Eisenhower, immediately went to Merkers to inspect the Nazi treasure and ordered its rapid transfer to West Germany.

The process of returning the “Hitler treasure” to its owners

Experts do not believe these rumors. Historians and bankers believe that most of the Reichsbank money was returned to its original owners. The gold looted by the Nazis was distributed to the affected central banks and refugee relief organizations. In the mid-1950s, museums in Berlin also received paintings and sculptures that had been buried by the Nazis in Merkers.

In the 1990s, the US government commissioned a commission of historians to investigate the return of property looted by the Nazis during World War II.

In its 1997 report, the commission, headed by US Undersecretary of the Treasury Stuart E. Eizenstat, said that a large amount of precious metals and paper money from the “Hitler Treasure” had fallen into the hands of the US military. The wooden crates in the warehouse contained priceless works of art such as the head of the ancient Egyptian Queen Nofretete. Among the paintings seized were masterpieces by Rembrandt, Dürer and Riemenschneider. In addition to the above items, the US military also found many boxes of jewelry and even gold teeth that the Nazi SS had looted from Jews. The Nazis planned to melt this gold into gold bars, but before they could do so, the US military confiscated it.