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00:00I'm on the island of Gerber in the south of Tunisia on the 13th of February 1943 the Germans arrived and demanded 50 kilos of gold. Just barefaced robbery. Someone on this island's got to remember that. Someone must have a link to that event. And that's what I'm here to investigate.
00:23At the end of World War II the Allies made a series of shocking discoveries. Hidden in trains, bunkers and deep underground they found mountains of stolen treasure.
00:38That must have been like going into Aladdin's cave.
00:41Hitler and the Nazis had looted an entire continent and committed the greatest theft in history.
00:48Now, a team of investigators is opening up cold case files of Nazi plunder still missing today.
00:55We're talking about things that are worth tens of millions of dollars.
00:58Robert Edsel is author of the best-selling book turned Hollywood movie The Monuments Men and an expert in Nazi looted treasure.
01:07Hundreds of thousands of objects are still missing. Well, we have a lot of digging to do.
01:11Joining him is second World War historian James Holland.
01:15None of this was really his. He'd just taken it.
01:19And investigative journalist Connor Woodman.
01:22And this is a genuine treasure hunt. We dig a hole in the ground and we find those cases.
01:26Their mission? Uncover new clues.
01:29Oh, gosh, this is it.
01:30Explore Nazi hideouts.
01:32Whoever built this brick wall really didn't want anyone to get through to the other side.
01:36Find out how the treasure was stolen and where it might be now.
01:40What a piece of history.
01:42The Monuments Men Foundation Headquarters In Dallas.
01:45The team is assembled to embark on a new investigation.
01:55At the Monuments Men Foundation headquarters in Dallas, the team is assembled to embark
02:02on a new investigation.
02:04This case involves Rommel's Gold, one of the most enduring mysteries of World War II, involving
02:10one of Germany's great war generals, a treasure worth millions of dollars no one's seen in
02:1570 years.
02:18Rommel's Gold is an estimated 50-kilo hoard of gold jewelry seized by the Nazis from the
02:25Jews of Tunisia during the battle for North Africa.
02:30The treasure then disappeared in the maelstrom of Hitler's Reich and has since become the
02:35stuff of legend.
02:36I love this story.
02:38I mean, I've heard this since I was a schoolboy.
02:40It's been doing the rounds for a long time, pretty much since the end of the war.
02:4270 years is a long time for a myth to endure, and I think that's part of the effort here
02:46is to try and kill this thing one way or the other.
02:48Well, it would be absolutely amazing to get to the bottom of this one.
02:52Tell me more about Rommel.
02:53Well, he's the Desert Fox.
02:54He's the most famous of all German commanders.
02:56He's the scourge of the British in North Africa.
03:00In 1942, Erwin Rommel led Hitler's Afrika Korps on a terrifying rampage across the Sahara,
03:10attempting to conquer British-held Egypt and seize the oil fields of the Middle East beyond.
03:15But Britain rallied, and in late October defeated Rommel's army at the Battle of El Alamein,
03:23forcing the Desert Fox to begin a long, desperate retreat back across the Sahara.
03:30Rommel's name looms large over everything that happened in North Africa.
03:35But historian James Holland doesn't believe he was behind the theft.
03:39When he's commanding troops in battle, that is 100% his focus, and that's what he's on.
03:44It's completely out of character for Rommel to go around looting stuff.
03:47So you think it's possible that even though the legend is that it's Rommel's goal, it might not be actually Rommel that's doing the stealing?
03:53Exactly.
03:54Who else was in North Africa at the time while Rommel was there?
03:58We do know there were Alamein SS, you know, police SS, Gestapo and so on.
04:02They were coming to North Africa, particularly into Tunisia.
04:05The SS was a fanatical paramilitary organization that terrorized civilian populations behind the front lines.
04:16And they were notorious looters.
04:19Their commander in Tunisia was Colonel Walter Ralph.
04:26Historian Seth Givens has uncovered an incriminating intelligence profile.
04:30Okay, tell me about Ralph.
04:32Even his colleagues didn't like him.
04:34This is from a 1950 CIA report.
04:35What's that say?
04:36That his German compatriots believed that he was a cold egotist who was capable of anything for personal gain.
04:43We know Ralph, so we know where we start looking then.
04:47Ralph was a driving force behind the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, where his efforts claimed an estimated 100,000 Jewish lives.
04:57In November 1942, he was sent to Tunisia.
05:04Arriving in Tunis, Ralph sees the city landmark for his base of operations.
05:12And it's here James hopes to pick up his trail more than 70 years later.
05:17This is the majestic hotel, central Tunis.
05:22This is where Walter Ralph made his headquarters.
05:26I've got a couple of copies of documents here giving him the authority to take executive measures against the civilian population.
05:34Here, right at the top, is a word that kind of makes the blood run cold.
05:39Even today, it says SS Einsatzkommando.
05:43These are the squads that went in to kind of carry out the Fuhrer's will.
05:50Here, the second document, this is Ralph's handwriting.
05:53And here he says, the Einsatzkommando arrived.
05:56In other words, I'm here to unleash my rule of terror, frankly.
06:00Incredible.
06:01Ralph and his SS henchmen quickly began rounding up thousands of Jews at gunpoint
06:10and shipped them off to perform slave labor in squalid camps set up across the country.
06:17Ralph brutalized Tunisia's Jewish population.
06:21But did he steal from them?
06:23To find out, James has contacted the chief rabbi of Tunis and is meeting with a senior member of his staff.
06:32When you think of the Holocaust, you think of European Jews.
06:35You don't think of it kind of extending all the way to North Africa.
06:39Yes, we had labor camps in Tunisia.
06:42Well, there's a guy I'm really interested in called Walter Ralph.
06:46I've got a photo here.
06:48This is Ralph.
06:50These, I think, are Jewish leaders.
06:53Yes.
06:54And do you know what these guys are doing with Ralph?
06:56I mean, why are they there?
06:58Because he asked them to give 20 million of francs.
07:01So he's saying to them, you've got to give me lots and lots of money.
07:04And they have absolutely no choice in this.
07:05Yes.
07:06If not, they will make the Jewish population suffer.
07:09So the leaders had to pay the price.
07:13Also, they took from Durba, they took some gold there.
07:17Really?
07:1840 or 50 kilos.
07:20Goodness me.
07:21That's a lot.
07:22What happened to it?
07:23We don't know.
07:27Durba is an island off the coast of southern Tunisia and home to an ancient Jewish community.
07:33In February 1943, Ralph dispatched an SS unit to plunder it.
07:40To find out what happened next, Moshe has arranged for James to meet Rafram Shaddad, an artist whose grandfather witnessed the Nazis' arrival in Durba.
07:50My grandfather used to be the president of the Jewish community in the island of Durba.
07:55The Jews in Durba, they are known for craft maker, jewelry maker.
07:59Right.
08:00They all have some kind of gold.
08:01If you go to a traditional Tunisian wedding, you're going to have the bride covered with 20 kilos of gold.
08:05It's like on their ears, on everything.
08:08Really?
08:09Okay, so they came to your grandfather and they came to the chief rabbi and they said, we want 50 kilos of gold and silver and you've got to go and get it.
08:17Yes.
08:18And he didn't really have any choice in the matter.
08:20He didn't have any choice.
08:21They heard about all the stories, what they can do with the Jews and things.
08:23So my grandfather, the chief rabbi, was collecting this gold from house to house.
08:27Mostly jewelry, jewelry from people, from shops.
08:30So did your grandfather have any idea what this gold was for?
08:33No, they just assumed probably that it's for keeping the life of the remaining Jews.
08:37Right, it's sort of like a ransom.
08:39Like a ransom, yes.
08:40It's for saving life.
08:42But do you think there'll be someone still alive who remembers her?
08:45Maybe the oldest man in Jerba or something like that.
08:49Right.
08:51Stage one of the investigation has paid off.
08:55The team now has a treasure linked to its prime suspect.
09:00The true story behind the legend of Rommel's gold is beginning to take shape.
09:06Armed with this new information, James sets out for Jerba to investigate the scene of the crime.
09:13And pick up the trail of Walter Ralph and the stolen gold.
09:29The team is delving into the legend of Rommel's gold.
09:32They now know Rommel wasn't the thief.
09:38Historian James Holland returns to the scene of the crime to find out how the real culprit got his hands on it.
09:45Walter Ralph knows there's an ancient Jewish community on the island of Jerba in the south of Tunisia.
09:51And that they have this reputation for being amazing jewelers and goldsmiths.
09:55And so he sends one of his officers to basically plunder this gold.
10:00And that's what I'm here to investigate.
10:03Ralph's SS thugs had to work fast.
10:06Rommel's Africa Corps was in retreat.
10:11As the thieves pulled into the island's main town of Humet-Essouk on February 13, 1943,
10:18the front line was just a stone's throw away.
10:21Their orders from Ralph were to swoop in, seize 50 kilograms of gold,
10:27and get out before the British overran the area.
10:33To search for eyewitnesses, James has enlisted the help of Moez, a local guide.
10:39So Moez, this is obviously the main town, Humet-Essouk.
10:42Yeah, that's the center of the island and this is the main market area.
10:45And you've got this street map here.
10:46Yeah.
10:47And this is our best chance of finding an eyewitness.
10:49Yeah, that would be the place to go to meet some people who have heard of the story of the stolen gold.
10:55Fantastic.
10:56Well, let's go there then.
11:01At the time of the war, Jerba had been home to a sizable Jewish community for 2,000 years.
11:09Its intricate gold work was renowned throughout the Mediterranean.
11:13Let's go on this way to the area where you have all the goldsmith chops.
11:18But Ralph's gang was about to turn this ancient community upside down.
11:22He originally demanded 10 million francs in cash, but when Jewish leaders could not come up with the money, Ralph insisted on 50 kilograms of gold instead.
11:34God, it goes on and on and on.
11:35It's like an elaborate.
11:36They frantically gathered whatever they could from shops and homes, hoping to prevent deadly retribution.
11:45James is hunting for an eyewitness or anyone else with information.
11:48And James is hunting for an eyewitness or anyone else with information.
11:52Now he has no clue about the gold.
11:58They inquire shop after shop, but time, it seems, has all but erased any clear memory
12:05of the event.
12:06They're making progress, but details are still sketchy.
12:28You've heard the stories of 50 kilograms?
12:39Yes.
12:40I'm interested to get a sort of a sense of how much 50 kilograms of gold is.
12:44It's more than what a shop could have.
12:47Okay, so this is gold and it's traditional.
12:53This is the kind of gold Ralph was after.
12:55That doesn't feel very heavy, does it?
12:58It's about 50 grams.
13:01At 50 grams, Jewish leaders had to gather a thousand such bracelets to meet Ralph's demand.
13:08Even on Jerba, it's hard to imagine how they accomplished it, given so little time.
13:14Seeing this like this, it makes you really realize that 50 kilos is a lot of gold, isn't
13:19it?
13:20It is.
13:21It's becoming clear the market wasn't the only site on Jerba plundered by the Nazis.
13:25There is a cafe where this time of the day we have all the elderly sitting there and they
13:40might be a good source of information.
13:42If that's all, we can hear the stories of the Germans coming here and demanding money.
13:49I don't know what happens.
13:50I've heard that.
13:51I don't know what happened.
13:52But the Jews are not very good.
13:53They don't know what happened.
13:54But they're not very good.
13:55They're not very good.
13:56They're very good, but they're not very good.
13:57We're very good.
13:58He said they didn't do anything to us, but we were scared because we know or we heard of stories of what happened to other Jews and other places.
14:08They went to the synagogue, too.
14:10Really? Is that nearby?
14:12Yeah.
14:12Let's go there.
14:17They set out for the El Griba Synagogue, just outside of Humata Souk, to follow this new twist in the story.
14:24Jews have been worshipping on this site continuously for two millennia.
14:33Inside, James and Moez are meeting with the synagogue's keeper, Perez Tribelsi, whose parents actually witnessed the Nazi's sack of the building.
14:44And we're investigating the pillaging that the Nazis did in 1943, and we know that they came to the synagogue here.
14:50I'm just interested to know if you know anything about that.
14:53That was all gold. It was all taken, replaced by silver.
15:18No.
15:18Oh, yeah.
15:22Gosh, and what are all these?
15:23These are all donations brought by people who lost somebody.
15:27Like here, he said, it's the name of a father who died and so and so and such.
15:31Yes, yes.
15:32And so they just came in and took it all?
15:35Yeah.
15:35They were just today's silver.
15:37That was all gold.
15:38It was a devastating blow to the community.
15:44Centuries of deeply personal expressions of love and faith, painstakingly etched in gold, all gone in a matter of minutes.
15:52This was Rommel's gold.
15:55You can imagine the Nazis coming in, smashing the glass, just ripping it off with just no sense of any respect at all.
16:05I mean, for them, it's just gold.
16:06It's booty.
16:07It's loot.
16:08It's kind of making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, just looking at it now.
16:11It's a terrible thing.
16:15And you just wonder where is it now?
16:16No.
16:17Yeah, yeah, yeah.
16:19He said nobody knows where that storm gold actually ended up.
16:23Well, maybe we can get to the bottom of it.
16:25Who knows?
16:30As quickly as Rolf's men arrived, they were gone.
16:36Racing back to him with his kin's ransom of irreplaceable personal treasures.
16:41In May 1943, the Allies finally drove the Nazis from North Africa.
16:50Walter Rolf was forced to flee back to Europe before he could exterminate Tunisia's Jews.
16:56The community survived, but he had exacted a heavy toll on cash and Jerba's gold.
17:05We started with the legend of Rommel's gold, but since I've been here on Jerba,
17:09I actually met someone who was here when the SS came and stole all that gold.
17:15But the big question is, where did it go from here?
17:19The team has discovered the legend of Rommel's gold is true.
17:36More than 40 kilos of jewelry and religious artifacts were stolen from an ancient Jewish community in Tunisia.
17:43But not by Rommel.
17:46The thief was a high-ranking SS officer, Colonel Walter Rolf.
17:51The question now, what did he do with the treasure?
17:54So, Rolf leaves Tunisia when?
17:56May 10th.
17:57He goes to northern Italy.
17:59Okay.
17:59Rolf shows up in northern Italy.
18:02Do we know whether or not when he gets to Milan he's got the gold?
18:04No, nobody knows, actually.
18:06Following Rolf's escape from Tunisia in May 1943, the treasure simply disappeared from history.
18:14There might be a hint in this.
18:16What's this?
18:17Ian Fleming, actually.
18:18James Bond.
18:19You're kidding me.
18:20He writes,
18:20Then there was this mysterious business of Rommel's treasure supposed to be hidden beneath the sea somewhere off Bastia.
18:27In Corsica.
18:28In Corsica, yeah.
18:28Ian Fleming was the author of the world-famous James Bond series of spy novels, starting with On Her Majesty's Secret Service, that included a mysterious reference to Rommel's treasure.
18:42Earlier, during the Second World War, he was a British naval intelligence officer assigned to the Mediterranean Theater of Operations.
18:50He later drew upon the secret information he gathered as source material for his novels.
18:55A lot of times, where there's smoke, there's fire. So I guess the place to be looking, according to James Bond, is Bastia.
19:07Investigative journalist Connor Woodman hits the ground in Corsica to see if there's any truth to this James Bond connection.
19:15Ian Fleming's book continues to talk about the mysterious business of Rommel's treasure.
19:19He says that it was here in Corsica, and he knows that because a Czech diver called Peter Fleming came here in 1948 with this fantastic story about how Rommel's gold had been buried, sunk off the coast of Bastia, a Corsican town.
19:35Now, was Peter Fleming a real person? Did Ian Fleming make him up? I don't know. That's what I'm here to find out.
19:41Connor's search for answers begins with Terry Hodgkinson, who's been investigating the legend of Rommel's gold in Corsica for over 20 years.
19:55So, Terry, where does Corsica fit into the story of Rommel's gold? Why do we think it was ever in Corsica at all?
20:02Well, in 2005, there was a secret document released by the CIA called the Corsican episode.
20:11If you read from here...
20:13OK, so July 6th, Parsi arrived in Corsica, SS troopers. Oh, Rav is actually named here.
20:19We know then from this paperwork that Rav was here, the SS were here.
20:23It makes sense, as you say, that they brought the gold via this route, but did anyone actually see the gold?
20:29Maybe.
20:29This is a picture of the man who started it all. His name was Peter Fleig, also known as Walter Kierner.
20:38He was a corporal in the Liebstandarte SS, and he was the one who started off the whole legend in Corsica.
20:46And now, Peter Fleig, I recognize that name, because he appears in the Ian Fleming Bond book.
20:50Yeah, on Her Majesty's Secret Service.
20:52But you're saying he was actually a real guy?
20:54He was a real person.
20:55In June 1948, he presented himself to the French consulate to ask for a visa to go and visit Corsica.
21:03And the French said, well, why do you want to go and visit Corsica? You know, it's still a military zone.
21:09Suspicious.
21:10Yeah. So the French actually interrogated him.
21:13This is a copy of the original document.
21:14And it tells a story how Peter Fleig claimed to be a diver who had been forced by the SS to come to Corsica to help sink the treasure of this part of the coast down here.
21:29Wow. That's a hell of a story.
21:31What the French did was effectively arrest him.
21:35And there was a great meeting by the French authorities saying, all this loot has been sunk.
21:39This is one of the people who did it.
21:41We will invest one million francs, which was quite a lot of money at the time, to go and look for it.
21:48Led by Fleig, a French dive team scoured the seafloor off Bastia for over a month, but found nothing.
21:56Did one of Fleig's fellow SS thugs beat him to the treasure?
22:01Or did he simply lie about the gold's true location, intending to return later and retrieve it for himself?
22:09Did Fleig ever write down where he thought the treasure might be buried?
22:12Well, he did, as a matter of fact.
22:15This is a photograph that he carried throughout the war.
22:17This is him. This is his mother and father.
22:19On the back of the photograph are a series of numbers and a series of lines, which appear to indicate where the treasure was buried.
22:30Just off the coast?
22:31Yeah.
22:31Here?
22:32Yeah.
22:35Fleig's cryptic diagram is a tantalizing piece of evidence.
22:41But there's only one way to find out if it really is a map.
22:49Conor is going to use it on an undersea hunt for Rommel's gold.
22:56So this is the coordinates that were drawn on the back of the piece of Fleig's photograph.
23:00Have you seen this before?
23:01Yes, I see Terry send me this position, but I don't understand all the numbers.
23:07Where is the position? I don't know.
23:09Do we have any references?
23:10One reference. I think if you put like this, perhaps Bastia, and this is the coast.
23:16Stefan has a hunch this line on the map is in fact the Corsican coast.
23:24It's a theory backed up by the existence of an intriguing undersea landmark Fleig mentioned in his interrogation.
23:31Perhaps this is the position of the plane.
23:35What is the plane? Tell me more about the plane.
23:37Fleig said the treasure is near a small plane with one motor.
23:43A sunk plane?
23:44Yes, yes, yes. So we dive on this plane.
23:47Okay.
23:48It's an adventure.
23:49It's an adventure. It is, yeah.
23:50Fleig told French authorities the gold was packed in six cases hidden near a sunken plane.
24:18Conor descends, and just as Stefan promised, the ghostly image of a single engine plane emerges from the depths.
24:28The American P-47 Thunderbolt fighter looks like it made a perfect landing on the bottom.
24:36But did Ralph's men stash the jirba gold here, or somewhere nearby?
24:44There's a beautiful single motor plane, I mean, just like Fleig said, intact on the bottom.
24:58And I mean, if X marks the spot, there it is, there's the way to start searching for them.
25:05But then broaden the search out, and suddenly you're looking for a needle in a haystack,
25:10because there's just miles and miles and miles of sea kelp, you know, grasses on the bottom.
25:15And I mean, for six boxes of gold down there, you could be looking for the next 62 years, you might not find them.
25:20Perhaps the gold is hidden somewhere on the seafloor, but there's another possibility.
25:34Newly uncovered evidence is about to shift the hunch to Berlin, the heart of Hitler's Third Reich.
25:40The team is hunting for a horde of gold stolen by the Nazis.
25:56The hunt has taken them from Tunisia...
25:59Nobody knows where that stolen gold actually ended up.
26:02...to Corsica.
26:03All this loot has been sent off this part of the coast down here.
26:07A dive off the Corsican coast came up empty.
26:12But back in Dallas, team member Dorothy Schneider has just uncovered compelling new evidence
26:18presented at the post-war Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.
26:23This statement is about SS loot and what was done with it.
26:27What they did with the stuff that they stole?
26:29Yeah, here is mentioning of this pawn shop.
26:32It says that all jewelry, gold, silver, was...
26:37Delivered to the specific pawn shop in Berlin?
26:40That's right.
26:42At its height in 1942, Hitler's empire covered a vast area.
26:48Personal jewelry and other small items looted from occupied territories
26:53were sent back to the Berlin municipal pawn shop for appraisal.
26:57We're talking about scrap gold, we're talking about poor people's gold.
27:02It was all scraped together and made to money.
27:06So if Ralph's being a good SS officer, what he stole would have gone to the pawn shop.
27:13With this new lead, Connor travels to Berlin to investigate the municipal pawn shop
27:18and find out if the Gerber gold ever passed through its doors.
27:23Christoph.
27:23Hey.
27:24Christoph Krutzmüller is a historian with an in-depth knowledge of Nazi looting during the war.
27:32Christoph, I'm on the trail of the gold that was stolen from Tunisia.
27:35If that gold made its way to Germany, what would have happened to it?
27:38If it went to Germany in 1943, then it would have gone here.
27:45This is the Leihamt der Stadtgemeinde Berlin.
27:49So it's the pawn office of the city of Berlin.
27:56Why a pawnbroker?
27:58Why a pawn office?
27:59Because they were the people who could assess the quality of the gold.
28:05Well, the price would be.
28:06Right. So if the SS, let's say, had taken the Tunisian gold and brought it here to Berlin,
28:11what would have happened to it after that, once it arrived here?
28:14It was just gold in bits and pieces, so it would have been melted down into gold bars,
28:20given a number, an official number, and then traded abroad.
28:25Right. So that Tunisian gold, if it did come through Berlin and it was melted down,
28:29now it could be anywhere.
28:31Yeah.
28:31Or everywhere. I could be wearing it now, for all I know, on my finger.
28:34I'm afraid so.
28:35I mean, it's kind of creepy.
28:39Throughout the war, the Berlin municipal pawn shop quietly processed untold riches
28:45torn from the hands of rightful owners,
28:48turning them into profit for the Reichsbank and funding for the Nazi war machine.
28:52And it was all done with a business-like efficiency.
29:00The question is, did Walter Ralf send his stolen riches back to Berlin?
29:05A few of the pawn shop's wartime records survive, but Christoph has discovered a document from February 1943
29:14that details the processing of a large shipment of gold.
29:18This is a translation of an original document from the Nuremberg trials.
29:22This is February 1943, which suggests that this activity was going on around the same time as the gold was looted from Gerber.
29:33No, it proves.
29:35It actually proves.
29:36Do you think that it's possible that the Gerber gold was being processed here around the same time?
29:43That's what you can see.
29:44That's what you can see.
29:45I wouldn't go any step further.
29:46So we don't know for sure that the Gerber gold passed through here?
29:49No.
29:50According to Christoph, there's a real chance the stolen gold passed through this pawn shop.
29:56But there's no proof.
29:58So the team now switches course and turns its attention to tracking the thief, Walter Ralf.
30:05Is it possible he kept some or even all of the Gerber treasure for himself?
30:11The search for answers takes Connor to a man who knows more about Walter Ralf's life than anyone else.
30:16His biographer, Professor Martin Coopers.
30:22This is Ralf at the end of the war, is it?
30:25Yeah, this is when Ralf surrendered in Milan.
30:31He's just been arrested, end of the war.
30:33Everyone else is hiding their face from the camera, not Ralf.
30:36Ralf's almost looking proud of himself.
30:39He knows that he could face the death penalty, but he shows no remorse in this photograph.
30:43So what happens to him then after the war?
30:45He was interrogated by a British officer.
30:49You've got his interrogation document.
30:51Yeah, exactly.
30:52What I find quite fascinating is the conclusion.
30:56He's cunning and shifty rather than intelligent.
31:00His contempt and everlasting malice towards the Allies are but slightly concealed.
31:05Considered a menace if ever set free and failing actual elimination is recommended for lifelong internment.
31:13Not the like of a guy.
31:15But is he interned for life?
31:16Ralf, no, Ralf, in fact, escaped in late 1946.
31:20And that's the beginning of his lifelong lasting flight all over the world.
31:26Now a fugitive, Ralf boldly embarked on one of the most notorious post-war careers of any Nazi criminal.
31:34In 1948, he surfaced in Syria, joining that nation's war against the emerging state of Israel.
31:43In 1949, he crept back to Europe and arranged secret passage to South America, eventually settling in Chile.
31:52A 1978 letter to relatives back in Germany provides a chilling snapshot of his life there.
32:02Ralf wrote to his nephew that he's drinking and celebrating on April 20th.
32:10Hitler's birthday.
32:11Hitler's birthday, exactly.
32:12He sang with his friends Nazi songs, so we know that Ralf lived a life celebrating the splendid Nazi period.
32:26Not only does he get away with it, but he laughs in the face of it, doesn't he?
32:29He's built a little bit of the Third Reich for himself over there.
32:34He was Nazi until his very end.
32:36Walter Ralf, mass murderer, and the real thief behind Rommel's gold, lived nearly 40 years beyond the end of the Second World War.
32:46The team's task now is to find out if he did it with the help of Jirba's stolen treasures.
32:54How does he get away with it?
32:56The hunt for Rommel's gold presses on, as investigators track the post-war movements of the thief, SS Colonel Walter Ralf.
33:15They've discovered he escaped Allied custody in 1946.
33:19That's the beginning of his lifelong flight all over the world.
33:23And eventually made his way to Chile, where he lived for over 25 years.
33:29On May 14th, 1984, Walter Ralf died of a heart attack at age 77 and was laid to rest in Santiago.
33:39He never faced justice for killing an estimated 100,000 Jews.
33:46And he never stopped believing in Hitler's evil vision.
33:50The team now focuses on how he financed his incredible escape to Chile, and if he did it with the Jirba gold.
34:01Dorothy has just made a stunning discovery.
34:04This is a report by the German secret services on Walter Ralf, where they say,
34:11Ralf, from 1958 to 1962, was working for them.
34:15You've got to be kidding me.
34:17Now he's working for the German intelligence service.
34:20Yes, and there's mentioning of him appearing in Rome after May 45.
34:26Auffallend war, dass er seinerzeit über einen Koffer mit Gold und Schmuck Sachen verfügte.
34:31So he has a suitcase on him with gold and jewelry,
34:37über deren Herkunft er keine Auskunft gab.
34:40He did not want to talk about where they came from.
34:42That very well could be the things he's stolen from Tunisia.
34:46This is a smoking gun that we've been looking for.
34:48I mean, it's the most tangible piece of information that we've got,
34:51that we've found so far as evidence that he might have taken these things.
34:56We've got to head off to Chile and follow this lead.
34:58James picks up the trail in Chile's capital,
35:09where he tracks down a former Allied intelligence officer
35:12who not only served in the Tunisia campaign,
35:15but also kept a watch on Walter Ralf
35:18and other escaped Nazis living in the country.
35:20His name is Rudy Heyman.
35:27So, Rudy, after the war, you were living here in Santiago in Chile,
35:31and you ended up working as an intelligence gatherer on an informal basis.
35:36Oh, yes.
35:36When I came to Chile, I discovered the paying officer of Odessa.
35:41And Odessa was the rat line that was the organization that was set up
35:46to help former SS and Nazi war criminals escape from Europe
35:50into South America and wherever.
35:52Yes.
35:53Aided by SS men working in secret,
35:57thousands of Nazi criminals managed to flee Europe after the war
36:01to avoid prosecution and the hangman's noose.
36:05Among them, Klaus Barbie, the notorious butcher of Lyon.
36:10Dr. Joseph Mengele,
36:13who conducted inhuman experiments on captive Jews in Auschwitz.
36:18Adolf Eichmann,
36:19who organized mass deportations to the death camps.
36:24And now, Walter Ralf.
36:27Concerned these criminals might organize and rise again,
36:31Rudy and other volunteers continued to hound them
36:34long after the war was over.
36:36Rudy's efforts identified a paymaster.
36:38A man responsible for doling out secret Nazi financial support
36:43to fugitive war criminals.
36:46Possibly funded in part by wartime looting.
36:49We covered the paymaster 24 hours a day.
36:53So we find out he had a small office,
36:56which he opened twice a month.
36:59Right.
36:59And then you watch who comes and goes.
37:01Yeah.
37:02So he came to the paymaster's office to collect their money.
37:05But according to Rudy,
37:09the Nazis suspected they were being watched
37:11and sent proxies to pick up their blood money
37:14from the mysterious paymaster.
37:15This made them difficult to identify.
37:21And do you know whether Ralph was directly benefiting
37:24from the monies that the paymaster was handing out?
37:27I don't know.
37:28We suspect, but we don't know.
37:30We know that he got money,
37:33but I don't know whether he brought the money with him
37:35or whether he had some financing through the desert.
37:40For Rudy,
37:41keeping a close eye on escaped Nazis like Ralph
37:44wasn't just a job.
37:46It was deeply personal.
37:48He's a German Jew who escaped Berlin in 1938
37:52and later joined the Allied war effort
37:55against his Nazi oppressors.
37:57Sir Rudy, as a Jew yourself
37:59and someone who was forced to leave their home country,
38:03what did you feel about someone like Ralph
38:05as a free man here in Santiago in Chile?
38:08It was awful, of course.
38:10You think that the war criminal,
38:13he is not being condemned.
38:15It's just awful.
38:16Like, let's hear this.
38:26You know, I'm really struck by the parallel lives
38:29of Rudy Hyman and Walter Ralph.
38:32You know, both were German.
38:33One was a Jew who managed to escape
38:35and then fought for the British.
38:37The other served with the SS.
38:40You know, and both were in Tunisia,
38:42one liberating the Jews,
38:43the other stealing from them
38:45and making their lives a misery
38:47and both end up here in Santiago in Chile.
38:52And we know that Rudy was involved
38:54with intelligence gathering on former Nazis,
38:58but tantalizingly,
39:00we're not yet closer to finding out what happened
39:05to that gold, those riches that Ralph stole.
39:11But there's still one final lead to be investigated,
39:14found here in the 1984 funeral footage.
39:18This is Walter Ralph's grandson, Walter III.
39:27And he still lives here in Santiago.
39:31He's just been given a really good lead.
39:33This is the number of his grandson.
39:38It's ringing.
39:39Hello, is that Walter Ralph?
39:40Walter, the third, has never spoken publicly
39:42about his grandfather's son.
39:43He's been given the phone number of the grandson of the thief,
39:58notorious SS Colonel Walter Ralph.
40:02Hello, is that Walter Ralph?
40:04Walter, the third, has never spoken publicly
40:10about his grandfather before,
40:11but James manages to persuade him to be interviewed.
40:18At the last minute, he refuses to go on camera.
40:23He tells James that he is opposed to Nazism
40:25and wants to distance both himself and his family
40:29from his grandfather's bloody past.
40:32They talk for nearly an hour, and then he's gone,
40:35leaving James to make sense of what he's just heard.
40:40I've come such a long way to talk to Walter Ralph's grandson,
40:44Walter III, and he was at least willing
40:47to tell me about his memories of his grandfather.
40:49The grandfather of his memory
40:52and this notorious war criminal
40:54who has the deaths of perhaps 100,000 Jews on his hands
40:59found it very hard to kind of sort of match the two,
41:05and yet he wasn't denying
41:06what his grandfather had done either.
41:08He said, they cannot avoid what happened,
41:11what he did to the Jews.
41:13He once asked his grandfather about his time in the war,
41:16but his grandfather wouldn't talk to him about it.
41:18It was a sort of forbidden subject,
41:20and he never raised it again.
41:22And he also said that, in his experience,
41:24he never saw any sort of meetings with other Germans
41:27or other suspicious types or anything like that.
41:30You know, he finds the idea that his grandfather
41:34was here in Chile and rich on stolen gold.
41:38I mean, he just found that laughable.
41:40He said he always kept accounts of how much he'd spent,
41:43which implies that here's a man who's careful with money,
41:46but someone who's not particularly well-off either.
41:49You know, it's not the sort of carefree spending
41:52of someone who's got lots of looted gold in their pockets.
41:57The hunt for Rommel's gold has taken the team from Tunisia...
42:06That used to be all gold.
42:09...to Corsica...
42:10Germany...
42:13This does suggest that they were processing looted gold.
42:15That it proves.
42:17...and Chile.
42:18Evidence suggests the treasure may have been buried at sea
42:21or turned into bullion to finance the Nazi war machine.
42:26But other clues uncovered by the investigation...
42:29He has a suitcase on him with gold and jewelry.
42:33...suggests the devious Walter Ralph
42:35may have, in fact, made his escape with it.
42:37You know, when I talked to Ralph's grandson,
42:49he was painting this picture of just an old man,
42:52his grandfather, living out his final years
42:56in a very solitary way.
42:58You know, just a quiet old man, minding his own business.
43:01Not at all political.
43:02But it's hard not to conclude, looking at that,
43:19that this was a man who went to his grave without regrets,
43:25without remorse, and frustrated me for us
43:27with the secrets of Rommel's treasure, too.
43:32Rommel's treasure, too
44:02Transcription by CastingWords