A hidden train. Buried underground. Filled with gold. By the Nazis. It sounded too good to be true, but at the end of last year, I was transfixed as the Polish government said that two hobbyists in southwest Poland had made an astonishing discovery.
I remembered former British prime minister David Cameron striding around Burma, announcing the discovery of buried Spitfires. There were no Spitfires. A small voice told me this would end in a similar way, but even if the odds were against finding a hidden Nazi tunnel, let alone a train with loot on it, I wanted a piece of it — along with the thousands of treasure-hunting tourists who flocked to the nearby city of Walbrzych.
It was the start of an exciting, frustrating, fascinating and infuriating 10 months which, fairly predictably, did not result in the discovery of a tunnel, a train, or any gold.
But it did allow me to sip the sweet Silesian elixir of Nazi treasure conspiracies and explorers. And there’s no going back.
Silesia is in southwest Poland, but its history is German. Frederick’s seizure of the region in the early 1740s from the Hapsburgs eventually earned him the epithet Der Grosse (“The Great”) and set Prussia on the path to world power. Monarchs holidayed there, it was a centre of German literature and poetry, the Iron Cross was invented there, Silesian coal, lead and zinc sated German industry.
It also happened to be the farthest part of Germany from Allied bombs. British-based heavy bombers destroyed the western cities like Cologne, Hamburg and Dusseldorf, but Silesian cities were twice as far.
As a result, industry was relocated there, treasures sent for safekeeping. Giant building projects were begun under the direction of Albert Speer, the Third Reich’s chief architect; secret weapons programs were rumoured to be relocated.
Then the Eastern Front collapsed. In the summer of 1944, while the Allies focused on Normandy, Stalin launched the greatest offensive in history. Over three million men stormed the German lines and annihilated an entire army group. By Christmas, the frontline was suddenly on hallowed German soil. Silesia, spared for so long the horrors of war, was about to become a battlefield.
In early 1945 the Russians arrived. Noble families buried treasures. Urban populations cowered in bunkers waiting for the fighting to end, and the reckoning of Soviet occupation to begin.
After the war, Stalin wanted territory in the east, so the Allies agreed to shift Poland to the west. It would hand its eastern provinces to Stalin, but receive German territory like Silesia to make up for it. German inhabitants would be expelled, replaced by easterners whose homes were now in the USSR.
Genocide, war, anarchy, ethnic cleansing, social revolution. A human catastrophe engulfed swathes of Europe. Germans fled, hiding valuables in the garden, hoping to return. But then the Iron Curtain cauterized the border. The scars are still livid. Crumbling buildings with German pre-war signage stand empty. Grand homes, picked clean by the Red Army and Polish settlers, are derelict husks.
All this explains why every Silesian is a treasure hunter. The ruins of the Reich demand exploration. I never actually met anyone who had found anything, but everyone has heard of a hoard, a cache, a hidden chamber. The Gold Train was simply its ultimate expression.
I met the two treasure hunters, Piotr Koper and Andreas Richter, in their HQ. Maps and geophysical print-outs lay thick around us as they showed me their findings. The results of ground-penetrating radar and magnetometry surveys looked to me like chaotic, pixelated art coursework. But to them they were gloriously clear evidence of a Nazi-era armoured train. With a sinking feeling, I wished them good luck with the search and we started our own.
What had happened here during the Second World War that had created this febrile atmosphere of secrets and rumour? The answer was: a lot.
The supposed site of the train sits at the heart of one of the most ambitious engineering projects in the Third Reich. Under the mountains of this corner of Silesia, the Nazis were building a gigantic folly. A complex of tunnels that would protect the German leadership and war machine from air attacks, even from nuclear strikes. It was hacked out of the earth by slaves from nearby concentration camps, 5,000 of whom died in months of brutal forced labour. It was called simply Projekt Riese — Project Giant.
Local explorers reckon they have found about 100,000 cubic metres of tunnels. Speer’s diary implies that this is about half of what was hollowed out. He noted that in late 1944, Riese was using more concrete than the construction of every air-raid shelter in the rest of Hitler’s empire.
One of the architects, Siegfried Schmelcher, left notes suggesting that the HQs of the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht, as well as Hitler’s senior government departments, were to be located here. Bombproof tunnels would house staff, and also weapon production. It was going to be the beating heart of the Third Reich.
One rumour is that hundreds of scientists were sent here to work on an atomic bomb. Today the empty, half-completed tunnels provoke more questions than they provide answers.
Among it all is the ancient Ksiaz Castle, confiscated and transformed from 1944 onwards. The magnificent baroque interior was torn out and replaced by stark Nazi neo-classicalism. Many historians believe this was to be Hitler’s palatial residence. Elevators outside the main bedroom connect with tunnels buried deep in the rock below. One room was remodelled to mimic the dimensions of the Amber Room in one of Catherine the Great’s palaces outside St. Petersburg, which was looted during the Nazis’ 900-day siege of the city.
The amber has never been found. Could it have been destined for Ksiaz Castle? It’s probably on the train. With the gold.
Speaking of which, the day of the dig finally dawned. The excitement was palpable. After a day or two there were a lot of broken hearts. Volunteers started to go Awol. Less than a week later nothing had been found. A suspected tunnel roof on the scan turned out to be a glacial deposit. Excavators backfilled giant empty holes. The original treasure hunters were unbowed — they were in the right place, they just had to dig deeper. But that needs a different set of permits. It might take a while …
I had gambled and lost. Yet I had discovered something precious. Well, fairly precious.
The fascinating, unique historical experience of this mountainous and overlooked corner of Europe has created the perfect seedbed in which rumour, myth and speculation can flourish. I doubt there is a train laden with gold, but I am sure there are treasures stashed in those hills, and I can understand why no one will let this setback put them off.
No one out there will ever stop looking for Nazi gold.
Historian Dan Snow is a regular host of documentaries on BBC Television
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