The Monetary Men

Everyone’s heard of the monuments men, right? The 2013 movie highlighted their task of recovering artwork stolen by the Germans during World War II.

Did you know there were also monetary men? Their job was to recover tons of gold, silver, and diamonds.

When the Germans invaded their neighboring countries, they quickly relieved the national banks of their gold reserves for the Reichsbank. When the fortunes of war turned against them, the booty in Berlin was hidden elsewhere. Much of it was found in Merkers Mine. The mine and its enormous hoard were portrayed in The Monuments Men: gold, silver, platinum, jewelry, artwork, enough to boggle the mind.

The U.S. Army transported the monetary hoard to a Reichsbank building in Frankfurt requisitioned to serve as the Foreign Exchange Depository.

Large amounts of gold had been moved to southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The U.S. Army put together a task force that, upon learning of stashes, traveled around to secure the gold and valuables. Some was found in bank vaults. Other caches were buried or hidden in cellars.

In Plauen, the bank had been destroyed in an Allied bombing. The vault was undamaged, but required three keys to be opened. One was in the pocket of a cashier killed and buried in the rubble of his apartment. Engineers blasted the vault open.

The team worked around the clock to find the gold in towns that would become part of the Russian Zone of Occupation. When the Russians later inquired about the Plauen gold, the US Finance Division of the Army claimed their investigation yielded no information on those funds.

After several weeks and thousands of miles of travel and exhaustive searches, the task force recovered a large portion of German plunder that would not fall into the hands of advancing Russians or fleeing Nazis.

Germany had buried assets deep in neutral countries. These countries―Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden―claimed ignorance in accepting looted gold from the Reichsbank, and all weren’t willing to recognize the legal liability to restore the stolen wealth.

In 1947, the Tripartite Gold Commission (the United States, England, and France) sent questionnaires to potential claimant countries to help it determine who was entitled to the collected gold. Claims were received from Albania, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, and Yugoslavia. Their claims exceeded the available gold by 35.86%. That much of the total gold reserves in Europe in 1939 had vanished.

Clearly, the Allies had not recovered all the Nazi loot, and numerous former German diplomats were living large in neutral countries.

The Tripartite Gold Commission denied several claims. One rejected claim came from The Netherlands. When Germany attacked The Netherlands, the Dutch tried to move their gold out of German reach. A boat carrying 937 gold bars from Rotterdam, hoping to reach England, struck a mine dropped by German aircraft and sank. The Germans recovered 816 bars. The Tripartite Commission looked upon that as salvage rather than loot.

In 1997, claimant countries agreed to forgo their claims on the remaining sixty million dollars worth of gold still held by the commission and donate it as compensation for victims of Nazi persecution.

Alford, Kenneth D. Monetary Men: The  Allies’ Struggle to Recover and Restore Nazi Gold, Silver & Diamonds, Published by Schiffer Publishing, 2015

Surprising Freedom For 1200 Jews

After Heidi Neumark’s father’s death, she learned he was Jewish. He left Germany in 1938, and his parents ended up in Theresienstadt concentration camp. His father perished there, and his mother got out in February, 1945, when 1,200 Jews were released to go to Switzerland.

Twelve hundred Jews were set free? How did that happen?

In her book, Hidden Inheritance, Heidi notes that the former Swiss president, Jean-Marie Musy, concerned about favoring the losing side in the war, approached SS Chief Heinrich Himmler about releasing the Jews. He agreed, if one million Deutsch Marks were put in a Swiss bank account for him. One train left Theresienstadt when Hitler learned about it and put a stop to the freedom trains.

I dug a little deeper. Despite being little known, 1,200 Jews did receive freedom, and life, before the war’s end. Details get a bit murky. Was the United States involved? Did thousands more survive because Himmler ordered the end of gassing in November, 1944?

Musy had known Himmler since the 1930s, and had been the publisher of a pro-German newspaper. During that time, he favored the removal of Jews from economic and public life. By 1944, he had reversed his position, stopped his publication, and decided that the Nazis were criminals and murderers. Not only had Musy switched his loyalties, he became an emissary of a Zionist movement.

He told his old friend Himmler that the war was lost, and the persecutions of the Jews created a terrible impression abroad. With the war coming to an end, Hitler had ordered the extermination of all remaining Jews in the Nazi death camps throughout Europe. However, if Himmler kept camp inmates alive, stopped the death marches, gassings and executions of the remaining 600,000-800,000 Jews, instead of annihilating them as Hitler ordered, he could expect more favorable treatment from the Allies.

The Nazis were in need of medicine, trucks and other material. Himmler demanded from Musy five million Swiss francs worth of medicine and relief supplies in exchange for freeing and delivering trainloads of Jewish concentration camp prisoners, promising the release of 1,200 to 1,800 Jewish prisoners every week or two from Germany to Switzerland.

Delivery of such materials was seen as aiding the enemy and therefore illegal. Cash payment also posed problems. Himmler wanted to approach the West. In hopes of contact with the Allies, he was willing to make concessions without any economic returns.

Another view is that in 1945, hoping to use the surviving prisoners at Theresienstadt as a bargaining chip for opening negotiations with the western powers, Himmler, and possibly other SS leaders, agreed to release of 1,200 Theresienstadt prisoners in exchange for five million Swiss francs put up by Jewish organizations in an escrowed account in Switzerland.

When Himmler issued orders to release trainloads of Jews, he met with resistance. Minions faithful to Hitler told him of the release of the first trainload of Theresienstadt Jews. Hitler condemned his formerly faithful deputy for betrayal.

Jews still alive in the camps when the war ended were said to be there because Himmler ordered a halt to the murder of Jews and the destruction of the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Death marches, however, continued to the end of the war.

Himmler had been an architect of the Nazi genocidal program. After millions had been murdered, did he really think he could expect leniency?

No more trainloads arrived in Switzerland.

Everyone on that lone freedom train had been given new suitcases, clothes and shoes. They received bread, sausages, and Ovaltine. They were anxious as the train left Theresienstadt. Which way would it really go? West to life, or east to death? As they approached Switzerland, the women were given cosmetics to appear healthy.

Three months later, Theresienstadt was liberated. Did the freedom train make any difference? Had those 1,200 not gone to Switzerland, many would probably have died. To cover up their atrocities, the Germans sent a large influx of prisoners to Theresienstadt. A typhus epidemic broke out and decimated the camp. Hundreds died.

For 1,200 people, Himmler’s bid for favor meant life began again.

Nazis Leave a Mixed Race Child Alone

A little German boy couldn’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to join the Hitler Youth. He wanted to enjoy the activities his friends participated in. And he admired their smart uniforms.

His name was Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi. He was born on January 19, 1926, in Hamburg. His mother was a white German nurse. His father was the son of the Liberian consul in Germany. Hans-Jürgen was one of few black children growing up in the Third Reich. But the regime, while excluding him, did not persecuted him. He was not deported, or worse.

Young Hans-Jürgen wears a swastika emblem

 Growing up in his wealthy grandfather’s villa, surrounded by white servants, young Hans thought being black made him superior. When the Massaquoi family returned to Africa, the privileges ended. Hans and his mother remained in Germany. His father, a college student in Dublin, had never paid much attention to him.

His mother found a poorly paid hospital assistant job, and they moved into a tiny apartment. She brought her son up to believe he was German like everyone else. Yet he suffered racial abuse at school and in his neighborhood and was excluded from the Hitler Youth. In 1936, he went on a school trip to Berlin for the Olympics. There he saw black American Jesse Owens win medals. That inspired him.

As the years passed, he was also barred from the military, further education, and prohibited from all professions. He was a second class citizen of Germany.

He apprenticed as a machinist. At a required visit to a government-run job center, his assigned vocational counselor, a member of the SS, informed that he could be of great service to Germany. There would be a great demand for technically trained Germans to go to Africa to train and develop an African workforce when Germany reclaimed its African colonies.

Of course, they lost the war and didn’t reclaim the colonies. After the war, Hans saved himself and his mother from starving by playing the saxophone for American merchant seamen in Hamburg clubs. In 1947, he immigrated to the United States. He spent two years as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division in Korea, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1950. He gained a degree in journalism under the GI Bill, and eventually became managing editor of Ebony magazine. He died on his 87^th birthday in Jacksonville, Florida.

The Nazis were quick to kill anyone who wasn’t part of their ideal Aryan race. Why do you suppose they left a young black boy alone?