Nazi Gold – The Theft, the Recovery, and the Missing Millions

In 1945, Allied forces found 8,198 gold bars worth £238 million hidden in a German salt mine. The Nazis stole over £600 million in gold from occupied countries. Allied forces recovered about £293 million. That leaves hundreds of millions unaccounted for.

The numbers tell a stark story. Germany started the war with roughly £120 million in gold reserves and stole over £600 million more from central banks alone. When you add in the estimated £400 million that neutral countries received during the war, basic arithmetic says that accounts for £693 million against the £720 million total. But these are minimum figures, and they assume perfect record-keeping during the chaos of war.

The point is in the accounting. How the gold moved, who handled it, and why the records from 1939–1948 still do not balance.

The Scale of the Theft

The Nazi regime didn’t just steal gold. They industrialised theft on a scale never seen before.

Start with the central banks. When German forces rolled into Austria in 1938, they took £71 million in gold before the war even began. Belgium lost £223 million. The Netherlands, £193 million. Poland, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia, Greece: every occupied nation saw its treasury emptied. The 1997 Eizenstat Report documented at least £580 million stolen from central banks alone. In today’s money, that’s about £19 billion.

But state reserves were just the beginning. Jewish citizens across occupied Europe were systematically stripped of everything. Bank accounts frozen. Businesses ‘Aryanised’. Safe deposit boxes plundered. Homes ransacked for art, jewellery, anything of value.

Then came the most chilling part… victim gold.

The SS Economic and Administrative Main Office ran this operation like a business. Between August 1942 and January 1945, they made 76 to 78 documented deliveries to the Reichsbank. These shipments contained wedding rings, dental gold, coins, jewellery, all taken from concentration camp victims. The deliveries went into accounts under code names like ‘Melmer’ and ‘Max Heiliger’.

The Reichsbank (Germany’s central bank) processed it all methodically. Gold and silver coins went straight into the bank’s holdings. Small items like rings and dental gold were sent to the Prussian State Mint for smelting. Once melted down, these bars became indistinguishable from any other gold in the Reich’s reserves. Larger jewellery pieces were sold abroad for foreign currency.

Private firms got involved too. Degussa, the German gold refining company, processed material they sometimes labelled ‘Judengold’ in their records. Near the war’s end, they destroyed certain documents. Draw your own conclusions about why.

The deliberate mixing of victim gold with state reserves created a problem that haunts us today. Once smelted together, you couldn’t tell which bar came from a Belgian bank vault and which came from Auschwitz. The Nazis knew exactly what they were doing. By contaminating their entire gold supply with the proceeds of mass murder, they made every transaction morally tainted and practically untraceable.

The Neutral Lifeline

Gold became oxygen for the Nazi war machine. As the Reichsmark collapsed and nobody would accept German currency, the regime needed hard cash to buy tungsten, chromite, ball bearings, all the materials that keep tanks rolling and planes flying.

Enter the neutral countries.

Switzerland topped the list. Between 1939 and 1945, the Reichsbank transferred about £400 million in gold to the Swiss National Bank. The SNB bought three-quarters of it outright, roughly £276 million. The rest went into accounts for other countries trading with Germany.

The Swiss knew what they were handling.

The Bergier Commission, Switzerland’s own investigation decades later, concluded the SNB must have been aware that much of this gold was stolen. But they kept buying. They even perfected a system called ‘triangular transactions’, a laundering method in which German gold bought Swiss francs, suppliers were paid in francs, then those suppliers bought gold back from the SNB. Here’s how it worked… Germany sends gold to Switzerland, gets Swiss francs. Germany uses francs to pay Portugal for tungsten. Portugal uses francs to buy gold from Switzerland. The same stolen gold gets laundered through multiple transactions until its origin disappears.

Portugal ranked second in the Nazi gold trade. Under Salazar’s dictatorship, Portuguese gold reserves swelled nearly sixfold during the war. They received at least 123.8 tonnes, worth £139.9 million. Why? Tungsten. A metal essential for hardening steel and making armour-piercing shells. Portugal controlled most of Europe’s supply, and German weapons production couldn’t function without it. Initially, Portugal accepted other payment methods. Then they encountered German counterfeit notes. After that, Salazar demanded gold only.

Spain, under Franco, had its own reasons for cooperation. The regime owed debts from the Spanish Civil War when Germany backed Franco. Spain supplied tungsten, food, and other materials. Allied estimates suggest Spain and Portugal together received as much as £204 million in looted gold. Spain even let the ‘Blue Division’, a Spanish volunteer unit on the Eastern Front, fight alongside the Wehrmacht.

Sweden played all sides while claiming neutrality. They supplied Germany with iron ore, up to 100% of German needs in some years, plus ball bearings. Over £20 million of this trade was financed with gold. Swedish naval vessels escorted German convoys in the Baltic. Only under Allied pressure in 1943 did they withdraw these privileges.

Turkey provided the chromite that hardened German steel. Chromite is a mineral that, when added to steel, makes it strong enough for tank armour and weapons. In 1943, Turkey supplied virtually all of Germany’s chromite needs. Albert Speer, Hitler’s armaments minister, later testified the German war machine would have ground to a halt without Turkish chromite.

Turkey’s gold reserves jumped from 27 to 216 tonnes during the war. While much came through commercial markets rather than direct government deals, investigators found victim gold from the Melmer accounts had been sold on Turkish markets by German banks.

‘The acceptance of looted gold by neutrals, primarily Switzerland but also Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey, in exchange for critical war materials and hard currency, was essential to financing the German war machine and ultimately helped prolong the conflict.’

— U.S. and Allied Efforts to Recover and Restore Gold (The Eizenstat Report)

These weren’t innocent business transactions. The Allies repeatedly warned neutral countries they were handling stolen goods. The warnings were ignored. The Eizenstat Report’s conclusion was blunt. Neutral countries prolonged the war by providing Germany with essential materials in exchange for looted gold.

The Great Discovery

In early April 1945, women who’d worked in the Kaiseroda salt mine near Merkers, Germany, told American soldiers about something hidden deep underground. What the 90th Infantry Division found there remains one of the most spectacular discoveries of the war.

Two thousand one hundred feet below ground, behind a massive vault door in Room 8, sat the bulk of the Reichsbank’s remaining wealth. The inventory reads like something from a film. 8,198 gold bars. Fifty-five boxes of gold bullion. Over 1,300 bags of gold coins, Reichsmarks, pounds, francs. Another 711 bags contained American twenty-dollar gold pieces. Hundreds more bags held gold and silver coins, including eight bags of gold rings and nine bags of rare coins.

The currency haul was staggering. 2.76 billion Reichsmarks in 2,380 bags and 1,200 boxes, plus hundreds of bags of foreign currency. They found silver bars, silver plate, even six platinum bars in a single bag.

But it’s what else they found that tells the real story. At least 207 bags and containers held loot from concentration camps. The Melmer deliveries, SS deposits of victim assets into the Reichsbank, included gold teeth, cigarette cases, jewellery and diamonds. The personal possessions of the murdered, stored alongside national treasures. In separate tunnels, hundreds of paintings from Berlin’s state museums, including works by Manet and Dürer.

The mine’s location created urgency. Merkers sat in what would soon be the Soviet occupation zone. Eisenhower ordered an immediate evacuation. Under heavy guard, the entire hoard was loaded onto trucks and moved to Frankfurt. The gold alone was valued at £238.5 million, equivalent to approximately £3.5 billion in 2025 prices.

Allied forces found more caches in the following weeks. Another £14 million in gold at other Reichsbank branches. Nearly £10 million from miscellaneous sources. Each discovery reinforced the scale of Nazi plunder, but also highlighted a problem… even these massive finds didn’t account for everything stolen.

The Reckoning That Never Came

Returning stolen gold should have been straightforward. It wasn’t.

The Tripartite Gold Commission (a three-nation body set up to return stolen gold), established in 1946, took charge of redistributing recovered monetary gold to countries whose central banks had been looted. Ten nations filed claims. But the recovered gold covered only 65% of what was stolen. Every claimant got the same proportion. 65 pence on the pound.

The process dragged on for decades. Albania didn’t receive its final payment until 1996. When the Commission finally closed in 1998, about 5.5 tonnes of gold worth £60 million remained in its accounts. Why? Because investigators had proved this leftover gold was “tainted”, mixed with victim gold from concentration camps. The moral question of what to do with gold potentially smelted from wedding rings and dental fillings paralysed the process.

Switzerland’s post-war reckoning was equally incomplete. Under the 1946 Washington Accord, the Swiss agreed to return just £58 million worth of gold, a fraction of the £400 million they’d received. For decades after, Swiss banks denied holding significant dormant accounts belonging to Holocaust victims. They demanded death certificates the Nazis never issued. They cited banking secrecy laws. They stonewalled.

This changed in the 1990s. Political pressure from Jewish organisations, media scrutiny, and the Eizenstat Report’s revelations forced a reassessment. Suddenly, Swiss banks ‘discovered’ thousands of dormant accounts. Class-action lawsuits followed. In 1998, facing mounting pressure, major Swiss banks agreed to pay £1.25 billion to settle all Holocaust-era claims. They admitted no wrongdoing.

The Hungarian Gold Train represents perhaps the worst failure of Allied restitution efforts. In May 1945, US forces captured a train carrying valuables looted from Hungarian Jews, gold, diamonds, paintings, Persian rugs, and silverware. Estimates of its value ranged from £50 million to £350 million.

What happened next was shameful.

US military authorities declared the property ‘unidentifiable’ and ‘non-repatriable’, despite evidence suggesting otherwise. High-ranking officers, including Major General Harry J. Collins, requisitioned items for personal use, furnishing homes and offices with stolen silverware, china, and rugs. The remaining goods were sold through Army stores or auctioned in New York, proceeds going to general refugee funds rather than Hungarian Jewish survivors.

An “egregious failure” to follow established restitution policies.

— 1999 Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States

A 1999 US government report called this “an egregious failure”. Survivors sued. In 2005, a settlement provided £25.5 million, mostly for social services. Too little, too late.

Other neutral countries fared better in avoiding consequences. Portugal returned just £4.5 million despite receiving £139.9 million. Spain gave back £115,000 out of an estimated £138 million received. Turkey claimed its late entry into the war on the Allied side exempted it from any restitution. They returned nothing.

The Missing Millions

Here’s where the arithmetic gets uncomfortable.

Let’s start with what we know. Germany began the war with about £120 million in gold reserves. They stole at least £600 million from occupied countries. That’s £720 million minimum.

The Allies recovered roughly £293 million. Neutral countries received an estimated £400 million during the war. Basic maths says that accounts for £693 million. These are conservative estimates that assume perfect wartime record-keeping.

The gap could be explained several ways. Some gold was certainly lost or destroyed during transport. Individual officers and units likely stole portions during the Reich’s collapse. Swiss laundering operations successfully converted gold into other assets that became untraceable. The Safehaven programme (the Allied effort to track assets moved abroad) admittedly had limited success.

But persistent legends suggest other possibilities. Stories of gold-laden trains hidden in Polish tunnels. U-boats supposedly carrying bullion to South America. The Vatican allegedly holding Nazi funds for ‘safekeeping’ a claim from wartime intelligence reports that remains unproven. Lake Toplitz in Austria, where the SS definitely dumped Operation Bernhard’s counterfeit currency, supposedly holds gold too.

Most of these stories dissolve under scrutiny. The famous Polish “gold train” attracted international attention in 2015 when treasure hunters claimed to find it using ground-penetrating radar. After extensive excavation, they found nothing. The radar anomaly was probably ice formations.

Lake Toplitz tells a different story. We know the SS dumped millions in counterfeit British pounds there as part of Operation Bernhard, the Nazi sterling counterfeiting programme. Their plan was to destabilise the British economy with fake currency. Divers have recovered boxes of fake notes and printing plates. But the lake’s oxygen-free depths and floating log layers make thorough exploration nearly impossible. Could gold be down there too? Maybe. But after decades of searching, nobody’s found any.

The Merkers mine inventory provides one tantalising clue. Just before American forces arrived, German officials were moving currency out of the mine for distribution elsewhere. The process was interrupted. How much had already been moved? Where was it going? The records don’t say.

Still Searching

Modern restitution efforts (attempts to return stolen property to rightful owners) focus less on gold and more on other stolen assets like art, insurance policies, and real estate. The 1998 Washington Conference Principles established guidelines for returning Nazi-looted art. The 2009 Terezin Declaration expanded these commitments. But implementation varies wildly between countries.

The maths of Nazi gold may never balance. Too many records were destroyed. Too many people who knew the truth are dead. Too much time has passed. What remains is a patchwork of partial recoveries, incomplete justice, and unanswered questions.

Some see this as a tale of hidden treasure waiting to be found. They’re missing the point. Every missing bar represents theft on an industrial scale. Every gap in the records represents a family destroyed, a community erased. The gold’s origins make it blood money in the most literal sense.

The Swiss National Bank’s vaults once held gold bars that could have come from the Belgian central bank or from the mouths of Auschwitz victims. Thanks to Nazi processing methods, nobody could tell the difference. That deliberate confusion continues to frustrate justice today.

Modern treasure hunters, equipped with metal detectors and ground-penetrating radar, continue to search for the missing millions. They usually find nothing. When they do make discoveries, like the counterfeit notes in Lake Toplitz, they confirm what we already suspected… the Nazis were very good at hiding their crimes.

The real mystery isn’t where the missing gold went. It’s how neutral nations could accept payment they knew was stolen, how Allied officers could furnish their homes with Holocaust victims’ possessions, and how it took until 1998 for major Swiss banks to agree a settlement.

That’s the contradiction at the heart of this story. We have meticulous records of the theft, the Nazis documented everything. We have evidence of massive transfers to neutral countries. We have spectacular discoveries like Merkers. But we also have gaps you could drive a train through. A Hungarian Gold Train, to be exact. One that arrived full of stolen wealth and left empty, its contents “requisitioned” by the very forces meant to ensure justice.

The numbers don’t add up. They never have. And until someone explains why hundreds of millions in gold vanished between the theft and the recovery, they never will.

Sources

Sources include: declassified US State Department reports (Eizenstat Reports 1997-1998); National Archives records of Allied gold discoveries and Safehaven operations; Swiss government Bergier Commission files and Independent Commission of Experts investigations; Federal Reserve Bank records from Tripartite Gold Commission operations (1946-1998); federal court documentation from Holocaust-era class-action lawsuits against Swiss banks; Reichsbank transfer records and SS Economic Administrative Main Office files; OSS intelligence reports including the controversial “Bigelow Report” on Vatican holdings; Swiss National Bank transaction logs and audit records; US Army field reports from Merkers mine discovery and Monuments Men operations; Hungarian Gold Train seizure documentation and Presidential Advisory Commission findings; Operation Bernhard counterfeiting files and concentration camp victim asset processing records; Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish central bank archives; Claims Conference restitution files and World Jewish Congress lawsuit documentation.