THE GREAT NAZI GOLD BULLION ROBBERY

As the Third Reich collapsed, senior German soldiers filled their jackboots with loot and set about hiding it. Even now huge wealth remains hidden around Europe, claims historian Guy Walters who's hot on the trail

- By James Rampton

IT was the largest heist in human history. During the Second World War, the Nazis stole more than £600million of gold from occupied countries and their own citizens. This included treasure robbed from the victims of the Holocaust.

Theft on such a scale had never been seen before. But as the Third Reich began to collapse in early 1945, panicked senior Nazis realised the writing was on the wall and started to hide their ill-gotten gains.

"A lot of Nazis are not thinking about fighting anymore," explains historian Guy Walters of those final months of the war.

"They're thinking about escape - not with weapons or soldiers, but with crates packed with gold bars, foreign banknotes, jewellery, wedding rings and gold from the teeth of victims of the Holocaust.

"They know the war is lost. But they believe gold can still buy them a future. So in the chaos of those final days, they hide it everywhere - salt mines, bunkers carved into rock, remote Alpine forests, you name it."

At that point, senior Nazis "were slipping away, melting into crowds of refugees and plotting their escape. These guys were saving their skin. They just thought, 'The game's up' and wanted to get their loot out before the Allies arrived".

This crime on an industrial level underscored the sheer venality of the Nazis.

Walters, 54, continues: "I don't need to tell anybody how vile the regime was. Nazi Germany was a gangster state.

"It was a larcenous, amoral nation that had the same values as Al Capone - enrich yourselves, kill people.

"There's no doubt that, like a medieval army, the Nazis thought that plunder was fair game. If you go anywhere, you take all the treasures. Believe you me, if Britain had been invaded, Nelson's Column and all our other treasures would have been moved to Berlin as a way of humiliating us."

Much of the Nazi booty was discovered by the Allies in the aftermath of the war.