A British diver claims to have located Adolf Hitler’s missing £100 million gold hoard at the bottom of the Baltic Sea in a shipwreck.
During World War II, the German government and soldiers stole art and gold worth millions of pounds but to this day, little of it has been found.
The British news outlet the Daily Mail reports that Diver Phil Sayer believes the gold may have been aboard the German ship MV Wilhelm Gustloff, which now lies beneath 450 meters of sea water. The ship was sunk, with the loss 9,500 people, by a Soviet torpedo of Poland’s coast in January 1945.
He claims that a survivor Rudi Lange, a radio operator on the ship that day, told him he saw crates thought to be holding the gold, loaded onto the vessel.
He told the Daily Star newspaper that it’s widely known from eyewitness accounts that a large number of trucks came up alongside the ship and transferred cargo.
Rudi Lange, he said, was at quayside when the gold bullion transport appeared. He didn’t know what the cargo was being transferred. In 1972 he met another survivor, who was one of the guards that had been detailed to look after the gold. He revealed what was in the crates.
Sayers said he explored the ship in 1988 on a diving expedition. He saw the vessel had been fragmented, which would have left the crates on the sea floor. He added he saw bars across some windows, indicating the ship had a strong room.
For years there have been searches for the stolen treasures and art stolen by the Nazis. One hunt has concentrated on Walbrzych in Poland’s southeastern region.
As local legend has it, the Nazis secreted a train loaded with jewels and gold in a hidden tunnel someplace in the area as they retreated from the Soviet Army at the close of the war. A hunt for the treasure earlier this year didn’t locate the train, Mail Online reported.
The legend further states that an armed train laden with treasure disappeared after entering a network of tunnels beneath the Owl Mountains, a secret mission called ‘Riese,’ or ‘Giant.’ The project was never finished.