Gold is where You Hide it - What Happened to the Reichsbank Treasure?

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Old IS

Where You Hide it What happened to the Reichsbank Treasure?

Authorof JLL-MET

W. Stanley Moss

GOLD YOU

IS WHERE HIDE IT

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REICHSBANK TREASURE? When

Walter Funk, ex-Nazi

Minister

of Finance still in Spandau gaol, asked what had happened to the Reichsbank treasure buried in Bavaria on Germany’s collapse, nobody gave him an answer. This silence intrigued Mr Moss. He was in Bavaria at the time and, after

listening to a good deal of wild surmise on the subject, he and his friend Andrew Kennedy decided to undertake a private investigation. In the course of it they travelled hundreds of miles and interviewed scores of people - and this book is the story of what they discovered. Yes, the treasure had been buried by the Germans - several million pounds worth; yes the American Army had come and dug it up; but after that, what had happened? It gradualiy became clear that ‘private enterprise’ had stepped in to some effect, and from the confusion of interwoven trails, contradictory statements and shadowy figures appearing under one name and vanishing under another, Mr. Moss has built up a pretty clear picture of how it did so. This is a thoroughly disturbing story: all the more so in that a number of the people concerned are still at large.

Illustrated

—

12s 6d net

Gold is Where You Hide It

By the same author *

THE ILL

HOUR MET

BATS

BY

WITH

A WAR THREE

OF

OF

FLIGHT

MOONLIGHT BABY

FACES

SHADOWS PLAGUES

W. STANLEY

MOSS

Gold i Where You Hide It WHAT THE

HAPPENED

REICHSBANK

TO

TREASURE?

*

ANDRE

DEUTSCH

FIRST PUBLISHED 1956 BY ANDRE DEUTSCH LIMITED I2-I14 CARLISLE STREET SOHO SQUARE LONDON WI ALL

RIGHTS

RESERVED

PRINTED IN GREAT EBENEZER BAYLIS WORCESTER

&

BRITAIN BY & SON LTD LONDON

This book ts for

ANDREW

KENNEDY

CONTENTS page 11

Preface

Author’s Note

21

Key to Map

22 23

TO

THE

MEN

GOLDEN

MOUNTAIN

RUNNING

25 45

EXODUS

59

AFTERMATH

74 88

OVER

THE

BORDER

AND

BACK

AGAIN

THE

NEW

DESTINY

LOOK IN

DIAMONDS

2 107 124

GARMISCH

REVISITED

130

SUMMING

UP

142

THE

SUPER

RACE

158

ILLUSTRATIONS [between pages 80 and 81]

The author with a sack Reichsbank bullion

which

once

contained

Andrew Kennedy

A GI unearthing Red Cross boxes intended for the Werewolf resistance Counting the treasure at Oberau The author with Ivar Buxell

Colonel van Buskirk displaying the document granting him the freedom of Garmisch-Partenkirchen Lebensborn mothers

Lebensborn children

PREFACE

Tus book tells the story, which to the best of my belief is true in every detail, of a treasure-hunt upon which I embarked four winters ago with Andrew Kennedy, an old friend and colleague of mine since wartime days. Sure enough, it has been a hunt with a difference, for we have entertained no

illusions about ultimately discovering any buried fortune: the objects of our chase have been animal (human) rather than vegetable (banknotes) or mineral (gold, platinum, uranium, and precious stones), and its purpose has been to try and discover exactly what became of several million pounds worth of Nazi treasure after the collapse of Germany in 1945. Our curiosity was first aroused during the winter of 1952 /3 while we were staying with a mutual friend, Eric Knight, at his delightful Bavarian retreat overlooking the old Olympic ski-jumping stadium at Garmisch-Partenkirchen. It had all started as dinner-table gossip. Vast sums of money, we were told, said to represent the entire Reichsbank and Abwehr reserves allocated for the continuation of German resistance in the Bavarian alps, had mysteriously disappeared soon after the district was over-run by the invading American forces. A considerable bulk of these funds had actually been concealed in the grounds of the villa next door—the property of the aristocratic von Heinrichstein family—and our informants (who were residents of Garmisch) could well remember the strange goings-on which had attended both its burial and disinterment. Strange, we decided, was not the word for it: the story was fantastic. In a nutshell, we were given to understand that none

of the money in question had ever reached rightful or honest

12

PREFACE

hands, whether German or American. Such chit-chat, however improbable it may have sounded, could scarcely have failed to intrigue us, and we sat up till all hours before a crackling peat-and-log fire discussing and speculating upon it. When finally I went up to bed, I did not turn on the lights in my bedroom, but crossed to the window and peered out at the von Heinrichstein villa, which was plainly visible through the trees across the way. A light was still burning in a mullioned window in one of the ground-floor rooms. Icicles, hanging like candy walkingsticks from the low-reaching roof, caught the light and diffused it, blurring the projected image of the window as it sprawled outwards across the hump-backed snow-dunes in the

garden. The silhouette of the villa was clear through the leafless trees, standing out in sharp relief from a backcloth of stars so frost-bitten that they flashed slowly and intermittently like the revolving lamp of a lighthouse. Every now and then a cushion of snow, dislodged by the night wind or grown too heavy for the branch that supported it, would fall with a slither and a rush to the ground, followed by a drizzle of powder as the branch shook itself free and swung back to its natural position. Shortly after dinner it had stopped snowing, but the shape and expression of the sky betokened only a brief respite. Tomorrow morning the wind would be howling up the valley again. It had been like this every day for the past week, and already the roof was groaning and straining under the pressure of snow. A shadow,

enlarged to enormity over the drifts, swung

across the mullioned window. Looking out from my darkened room, I saw the figure of a man appear within the rectangle of light and reach for the curtains on either hand. He was

PREFACE

13

no more than fifty yards away—an old man, but upright of bearing and peculiarly aristocratic (or was that my imagination?) even in his movements.

He, I guessed, must be von

Heinrichstein the elder, head of the family and now sole occupant, save the servants, of the villa next door. For a moment he

stood there, looking out across the snow. What was he thinking? I wondered. Was he merely contemplating the weather? Or was he pondering, as I was, on the past—the immediate past—which had left him a lonely old man, alone with memories that could have brought him little that did not nag him with bitterness and revulsion? He drew his hands together, and the curtains closed. The silhouette of the villa, now unpunctured by light, stood out ever more clearly against the transluscent sky. It was as though old von Heinrichstein had rung down the curtain—the final curtain—on a show which his every instinct had always despised and revolted against. As I went to bed that night, I felt almost a cheat, ashamed at having failed to respect his emotions— because for me, I reckoned, this was just the beginning... . Next morning, however, when Andrew

and I looked out

at the apparently innocent facade of the villa next door, the

subject of the previous evening’s entertainment seemed to us somehow to have been too far-fetched for words: the story had been drained of its colour and plausibility as surely as the starry sky had given place to a sleet-streaked greyness so opaque as totally to obscure the farther side of the valley. If there had been any truth in the story, we argued, surely such events could not have remained unrevealed for nigh on ten years? And why had not our informants themselves volunteered the information to the appropriate authorities a long time since? The answer to the latter question was, in fact,

4

PREFACE

readily supplied for us by our host, who pointed out that almost everyone who had been in Garmisch at the time in question had been obliged in some way or another, if only for reasons of self-preservation, to become involved with the black market or similar post-war institutions: they nearly all had excellent reasons not to encourage investigation into their private affairs. Andrew and I, nevertheless, remained sceptical. The house party had by now swelled in numbers. The snow was falling thick and fast as the Fasching celebrations gathered momentum, and while the carnival gaiety whirled us into a succession

of balls, parties, and excursions,

Andrew

and I

allowed the story of the vanished treasure to slip alongside the myriad other entertaining after-dinner tales in the recesses of our memories. Six months were to pass before we received a sharp reminder that we had, perhaps, been over-hasty in our judgment of the stories we had heard in Garmisch. It was during one of our periodic treks along the Autobahns of Germany that we pulled up one evening at a charming wayside inn near Ulm. (It is incidental to mention that this was the selfsame inn at which Napoleon had stayed on the eve of the

Battle of Ulm. The inn-keeper, having ordered our baggage to be taken to the imperial suite, mentioned en passant that Hitler, who could rarely resist the temptation of following in Napoleon’s tracks, had also once stayed in the same rooms; but, whereas an illuminated scroll was prominently displayed in honour of the emperor’s visit, there remained no token, appreciative or otherwise, of the Fiihrer’s passage.) While waiting to be served with dinner, Andrew was browsing through an illustrated German magazine. Presently, with an amused look in his eye, he pushed the magazine across the

PREFACE

15

table to me and pointed out the headline. “Take a look at that,’ he said. Under the banner, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REICHSBANK GOLD? there followed an account of how Walter Funk,

Hitler’s Reichsminister of Economics, who was still serving a life sentence for war crimes in Spandau gaol, had inquired, with comprehensible curiosity, what had become of the vast Reichsbank treasure-hoard at the end of the war. With typical Teutonic thoroughness (for the Germans are married to bureaucracy and form-filling, dictatorship or no dictatorship, to an even greater extent than the British), Funk still felt himself responsible for the enormous wealth which had been entrusted to him by the Fiihrer, and now he simply wished to know if the treasure, captured by the Allies, had ever reached the right hands. Moreover, he was worried because he had never been given a receipt for it! The article went on to say that no one so far had provided a satisfactory answer to his questions. The country was rife with rumours as to the fate of the treasure, it continued, and most of them were of a noisome flavour. What, then, was the truth of the matter?

Andrew and J ate royally, slept comfortably (albeit beneath one of those impossible contrivances which, if they remain on top of you, leave you nearly as well smothered as the hapless princes, or, if they become but slightly dislodged, abandon you entirely to the elements), and after an early breakfast continued on our way to Bonn. Upon arriving at our destination, though we were still of the opinion that there must exist some perfectly straightforward solution to the Reichsbank affair, we nevertheless took

the trouble of inquiring at the offices of Ministers Erhard and Schaffer, Funk’s post-war equivalents in the current ministry,

16

PREFACE

if they had any idea of what had eventually become of the money. To our surprise, we drew a complete blank. The entire matter, we were informed, rested in the hands of the

Americans. Next, therefore, we paid a visit to HICOG,

headquarters

of the U.S. Aministration situated in Bad Godesberg. From department to department in this massive, stilted building we were led, from the desk of one friendly colonel to another,

but we soon realized that we were getting nowhere. Despite ourselves, we were being made victims of that time-honoured and undoubtedly effective military pastime of ‘passing the

buck’. It availed us little that we had a goodly number of American friends in Bonn. They either could not, or would not, tell us anything beyond the fact that all records dealing with such matters must long ago have been forwarded to Washington. We had come to a dead end—and we knew

it. Consequently, though still not at all convinced that we were not wasting our time, we started digging over the old story which we had heard on that winter’s night in Garmisch. And presently, as we covered the ground, we gradually found ourselves agreeing, to our satisfaction and surprise, that the bits and pieces of information which we remembered or had since picked up seemed somehow to be falling into place in the general pattern of the jig-saw—not all of them, to be sure, and the story was still as full of holes as a sieve; but, instead of having qualified simply as a good after-dinner tale, it now became something vastly more intriguing and very much more specious. It was with regret, therefore, that we found ourselves obliged to shelve the matter for the time being owing to our various business or literary commitments; and thus per-

PREFACE

17

force it remained, pigeon-holed but not forgotten, until the following winter. I should not proceed further, I think, without offering a few words of explanation as to how and why Andrew Kennedy and I (the former a business man who cannot spell, the latter a writer who can scarcely add two and two together) ever found ourselves with the time and inclination, beyond the ordinary bounds of friendship, to remain so constantly in each other’s company during the time of which I am writing. Andrew, who is a naturalized Briton and Polish by birth, lives permanently in Bonn—in so far as he may be said to live permanently anywhere. His flat there is treated by him as a basic convenience—a transit camp—in which sometimes to hang a suit or have a hot bath. For the most part, he spends his time travelling about the Continent in fast cars, of which he has two, staying with friends, of whom he has legion, or in favourite small hotels, of which he seems to know one especially good one in any town, village, or hamlet where he happens to find himself. Before the war, in Poland, where he was known

as Andrew Kowerski, he was heir to one of the most delightful smaller estates; but, having lost his home and both his parents at the hands of the Germans, he is now little concerned with

the acquisition of static personal possessions. During the war, despite the fact that he had lost a leg in a shooting accident, he saw service, first, as a cavalry officer, then as chief

of an escape organization in Hungary, and finally, with the rank of major in the British Army, as a parachutist with Special Operations Executive. Throughout that time, and further until June 1952, his closest friend and constant companion had been Christine Granville, who, I think without a doubt,

was the greatest secret agent to have operated for the Allies in

18

PREFACE

either World War. And it was mainly due to this last-mentioned fact, because I am engaged in writing Christine’s biography, that he and I had spent—and continue to spend— such a great deal of our time together. I can only speculate with mute reserve what purgatory such close and unremittent proximity might have entailed had not Andy been the person and companion he 1s. | In order that Andrew might remain in Germany, which was essential for his business affairs, and that I might be in a position to continue pestering him with requests for information concerning the biography, we agreed that we could not arrange ourselves better for the winter of 1953/4 than to repeat our practice of the previous year by returning to Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Eric Knight had graciously asked us once again to join the house-party at his villa, and we could

imagine no more attractive way of mingling business with pleasure than to avail ourselves of his invitation. Accordingly, having spent Christmas and the New Year with my wife and family in London, I set off to meet Andy in Bavaria. On this occasion, however, there was an added spice to the prospects of my journey, for it was our intention, as I have said, to indulge in a very private treasure-hunt. With the stage so set, I would like to take this opportunity of expressing my especial gratitude to Eric and Gusti Knight, whose constant generosity and kindness have made possible so much that is to follow; to Ivar and Nora Buxell and Anne

Marie Rousselle for their hospitality and combined efforts on our behalf in Garmisch-Partenkirchen; to Erich Diisterwald, for his help in dealing with translation and bureaucrats; to Jerry Taylor, not only for the best companionship, but also

very real assistance in bar and government office alike; to Joe

PREFACE

Carter, Tom

Hodges,

John Slocum,

19

Jerry Schroeder,

and

those others of the American fraternity in Bonn who helped to make life so pleasant there; to Dave and Judy Nicoll and Ray Tute, for having so often and so splendidly sustained this voyager; to Susan Cardozo, for having sown the first seed of

curiosity concerning the Lebensborn infants: and finally, but with particular emphasis,toAndrew Kennedy. And if, in this narrative, Andy’s character appears but a shadow, it is for the twin reasons that, first, Iam currently occupied in telling both of him and much of his story elsewhere, and, secondly, neither

he nor I are any more an integral part of the events which are here described than simply the camera eye and the recording machine. Neither of us belongs to this story: we were on the outside looking in, as if through the wrong end of a telescope pointing ten years back. W.S.M.

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AUTHOR’S

NOTE

This book, as I have been at pains to emphasize throughout the following narrative, is an indictment directed only against a handful of individuals who became criminals as a result of the situation in which they found themselves when the last World War came to an end. It merely so happens that they were all serving officers in the German and American armies. W.S.M.

KEY

TO

MAP

1 Partenkirchen

Von Heinrichstein cache

2 Oberau

Dollar cache

3 Garmisch

H.Q. Military Government : Zenta Hauser murdered

4 Starnbergersee

Body in lake

5 Munich

Police officer Brunner drowned

nN

Einsiedel (Walchensee)

Villa: Dollar

Reichsbank treasure buried

7 Mittenwald

Platinum cache

8 Tegernsee (Rottach)

Arnhem diamonds submerged

g Kreuzeck Mountain

Uranium research laboratories

1o R. Loisach

Uranium dumped

11 Karwendel Mountain

Werewolves surrender

12 Steinhoring

Lebensbornheim

13, Dachau

Concentration camp

14 To Passau

Triple murder

15 To Austria and Switzerland

Escape route

12. 14. To Passau

eS

MAP

OF

BAVARIA

QO

os

O =Z -

> |

= >

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Alberto Denti di Pirajno

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