Reply #62: And where did the Dulles gangsters get all their untrackable cash

[Hubert Flottz]

to do all the things they did?




Nazi Gold: The Merkers Mine Treasure

Late on the evening of March 22, 1945, elements of Lt. Gen. George Patton's Third Army crossed the Rhine, and soon thereafter his whole army crossed the river and drove into the heart of Germany. Advancing northeast from Frankfurt, elements of the Third Army cut into the future Soviet Zone and advanced on Gotha. Just before noon on April 4, the village of Merkers fell to the Third Battalion of the 358th Infantry Regiment, Ninetieth Infantry Division, Third Army. During that day and the next the Ninetieth Infantry Division, with its command post at Keiselbach, consolidated its holdings in the Merkers area.

During April 4 and 5, displaced persons in the vicinity interrogated by the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) personnel of the Ninetieth Infantry Division mentioned a recent movement of German Reichsbank gold from Berlin to the Wintershal AG's Kaiseroda potassium mine at Merkers. In all of these instances they quoted rumors, but none stated their own knowledge that gold was present in the mine. But just before noon on April 5, a member of Military Intelligence Team 404-G, attached to the 358th Infantry Regiment, who was in Bad Salzungen, about six miles from Merkers, interviewed French displaced persons who had worked in the mine at Merkers. They told him they had heard that gold had been stored in the mine. The information was passed on to the G-2 (intelligence section) of the Ninetieth Infantry Division, and orders were issued prohibiting all civilians from circulating in the area of the mine.

Early the next morning, two military policemen guarding the road entering Keiselbach from Merkers saw two women approaching and promptly challenged and stopped them. Upon questioning, the women stated that they were French displaced persons. One of the women was pregnant and said she was being accompanied by the other to see a midwife in Keiselbach. After being questioned at the XII Corps Provost Marshal Office, they were driven back into Merkers. Upon entering Merkers, their driver saw the Kaiseroda mine and asked the women what sort of a mine it was. They said it was the mine in which the German gold reserve and valuable artworks had been deposited several weeks before and added that local civilians and displaced persons had been used for labor in unloading and storing the treasure in the mine.

By noon on April 6 the women's story had reached Lt. Col. William A. Russell the Ninetieth Infantry Division's G-5 (civilian affairs) officer. He proceeded to the mine, where interviews with displaced persons in the area confirmed the women's story. They told him that works of art were also stored in the mine and that Dr. Paul Ortwin Rave, curator of the German State Museum in Berlin as well an assistant director of the National Galleries in Berlin, was present to care for the paintings. Russell then confronted mine officials with this information, and they stated they knew that gold and valuable art were stored in the mine and that other mines in the area were likewise used for storing valuables. Russell also questioned Werner Veick, the head cashier of the Reichsbank's Foreign Notes Department who was also at the mine, and Rave. The latter informed Russell that he was in Merkers to care for paintings stored in the mine. Veick indicated that the gold in the mine constituted the entire reserve of the Reichsbank in Berlin. More...........

http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1999/spring/nazi-gold-merkers-mine-treasure.html

How many other stashes like this one above went unreported? What might have happened to the gold that was never found? We know that some of the gold made it to South America aboard U boats.

I once flew past this very mine site, near the old East/West German border on the river Werra, as I was on the way with the rest of my platoon to an LZ, where we began a foot patrol of our section of the border. I got a good look at and a photo of, the above ground part of the operation. The mine is still in operation today.

The CIA had the money to do anything they wanted to do without leaving any trails and without being bothered by any real congressional oversight, IMHO.