Chasing Gold: The Incredible Story of How the Nazis Stole Europe's Bullion Read Free Page B

Kolynos toothpaste and refill them with gold coins from his grandfather’s collection. Two years later, when Rohatyn finally arrived in New York City to end his long escape odyssey, the gold was still in the toothpaste tubes. 16
    In a similar but less successful tale, Prime Minister Paul Reynaud, who had led his country’s battle against Hitler, fled France after the armistice and was trying to get into Spain in June 1940. Spanish customs officers at the border inspected the luggage of his mistress Helène de Portes and found $2 million worth of gold. 17
    The world’s central banks are the traditional home for most gold. That is where the vast majority of it is stored, and the biggest trades in the metal have traditionally been made among national financial institutions. Governments looked to central bankers to run their economies, and for most of history nations settled their foreign trade exchanges with gold. Countries buying more than they were selling usually made up their trade gap with bullion. Sweden established the first central bank in 1664 following the failure of a prominent private financial institution. The Bank of England was established thirty years later and was the preeminent one for nearly three centuries. During that time, it was the custodian of gold. The New York Federal Reserve, the American central bank, took over that international role during World War II.
    Adolf Hitler knew nothing about economics and cared little for gold. He wrote in his opus
Mein Kampf
, “It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god.” 18 The people working for Hitler, such as Hjalmar Schacht and Hermann Göring, however, believed strongly in bullion. Schacht wrote in his book
Gold for Europe
, “With all peoples and at all times gold has always been a welcome means of exchange, and it was possible to acquire all other goods in current commercial use with gold long before rulers and governments took control of the monetary system by legal measures.” They used the precious metal as an important way to finance Nazi wars and achieve their goal of dominating Europe. The Nazis systematically attempted to steal gold from each of the nearly two-dozen countries they invaded. Sometimes they succeeded; other times they failed. Nations made heroic efforts to safeguard the national treasury. The most despicable gold thefts were the tons of dental gold that elite
SS (Schutzstaffel)
guards ripped from the mouths of people who had died in the gas chambers. That, however, represented only a small portion of total Nazi theft. Willy Sutton, the Depression era crook, apocryphally said that he robbed banks because that’s where the money was. The Nazis robbed central banks because that’s where the gold was. Between 1938 and 1944, the government in Berlin stole some 600 tons from Europe’s national depositories. 19
    Gold was the centerpiece of the Nazi economic policy and war strategy during World War II. They stole it, and then used the booty to finance their war machine. They could have been taking their marching orders from King Ferdinand of Spain, who in the sixteenth century told his conquistadores: “Get gold humanly if possible, but at all hazards get gold.” 20
    Chapter Two
    SPANISH PRELUDE
    The Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939 set the stage for World War II and left a half million people dead. 1 Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union used Spain as a real live testing ground for their soldiers, weapons, and tactics. The first urban carpet-bombing, which would be used extensively in the battles of Britain and Berlin, was the German attack of April 26, 1937 on the Basque town of Guernica, a tragedy that Picasso immortalized in a painting. Tank combat, while first seen in World War I, was vastly improved in Spain. The first airlift of war materiel took place when Germany landed caches of weapons and men to help anti-government forces.
    The