Nazi Millionaires: The Allied Search for Hidden SS Gold

During the final days of World War II, German SS officers crammed trains, cars, and trucks full of gold, currency, and jewels, and headed for the mountains of Austria. Fearful of arrest and determined to keep the stolen loot out of Allied hands, they concealed their treasures and fled. Most of these men were eventually apprehended, but many managed to evade capture. The intensive postwar Allied investigation that followed recovered only a sliver of this mountain of gold. What happened to the rest of it, and what fate befell these men?

Authors Alford and Savas answer these questions and many more in this fast-paced and well-written new book. Their groundbreaking study is based upon thousands of pages of previously unpublished and recently declassified documents. The result is a fresh and absolutely original reading experience that offers insights into the minds and methods of these SS thieves, the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) within which they labored, how they achieved their positions of near-absolute power, the complex Allied investigation into their activities, and what happened to the vast sums of wealth they looted from Europe's Jews.

Nazi Millionaires deftly captures the high drama surrounding these men and women and the secrets they carried with them during the closing days of World War II - and in some cases, to the grave. It is a remarkable tale of greed, lust, fraud, deceit, treachery, and murder. And it is one you will long remember.

About the Authors: Kenneth D. Alford, of Richmond, Virginia, is the author of Great Treasure Stories of World War II and The Spoils of World War II. Theodore P. Savas has written or edited a dozen books, including Silent Hunters: German U-Boat Commanders of World War II. He lives in El Dorado Hills, California.

Table of Contents

Preface / Acknowledgments
Dramatis Personae
Introduction: The Rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany

Chapter 1: The Devil’s Duo: Heinrich Himmler and Ernst Röhm
Chapter 2: Hitler’s Rogues: Reinhard Heydrich and Ernst Kaltenbrunner
Chapter 3: Franz Konrad: The King of the Ghetto
Chapter 4: Playing God in Budapest: The Kastner-Becher Faustian Bargain
Chapter 5: Fischhorn Castle: The Last SS Headquarters
Chapter 6: The Moneymakers
Chapter 7: A Bureaucrat and His Gold: Josef Spacil’s Final Days of World War II
Chapter 8: Betrayal: The Discovery of Josef Spacil
Chapter 9: Ghetto Konrad’s Hidden Wealth
Chapter 10: Walter Hirschfeld and the Search for Eva Braun’s Jewels
Chapter 11: Kurt Becher: The Only White Sheep in the Black SS?
Chapter 12: Fall From Grace: Walter Hirschfeld and the Counter Intelligence Corps
Chapter 13: Ernst Kaltenbrunner’s Missing Sacks of Gold
Chapter 14: Adolf Eichmann’s Blaa Alm Gold
Chapter 15: The Frau Connection: Iris Scheidler and Elfriede H_ttl
Chapter 16: The Gold Trade in Upper Austria
Chapter 17: The Bloody Red Cross? Walter Schellenberg’s “External Assets”

Postscript: Loose Ends
Bibliography
Index