Nazi Gold Read online

  At first it was assumed that Albert Singleton’s assumption was correct. But in the course of two lengthy interviews, at both of which Singleton’s story remained in all significant details unchanged, it became increasingly clear that what he had been involved in was a totally different incident which had culminated in the commission of a major crime. Albert Singleton’s story in his own words, is as follows.

  In about June 1945 I was serving in A Company, 61st Armored Infantry Battalion,1 10th Armored Division, when I was made acting Provost Marshal for Mittenwald. I was the only Provost Marshal in the US Army in Europe that was not a commissioned officer. I’d been in the Air Corps before World War Two, and when the war came and I went back in I was offered a commission. But though there were quite a few times when I ended up with officer duties I never was commissioned. You see, I was a perfect foul-up; I was in trouble more often than you can ever possibly imagine. Anyway, some officers and myself were interviewed for Provost Marshal and because I am three-quarters German – even though I’ve got an English name – I was the only one who got the job. I understand these people, you see. As Provost Marshal I was responsible not just for Mittenwald, but for Wallgau and Krün and a couple of other little towns around there, and I reported directly to Captain Craig, who was the S-2 officer.

  One afternoon about six weeks after the end of the war Captain Craig told me that he had had orders from Divisional Headquarters up in Garmisch-Partenkirchen to detail myself, as Provost Marshal of the area, and a couple of guards and a half-track to go up in the mountains with five German officers who lived in Mittenwald and get a load of gold that was reported to have been buried there. The five German officers were a colonel and four captains from the 54th Mountain Engineer Battalion which had been based in Mittenwald near the Kaserne. I can’t remember these officers’ names now, but they were the same men who had buried the gold in the first place on the instructions of a General Strack. [In fact, the ‘Colonel’ was probably 39-year-old Major Adolf (‘Adi’) Weiss, who lived at Fernchenseestrasse Nr 7, Mittenwald. Weiss died in Garmisch in 1979 before he could be questioned about the gold incident.] The officers were supposed to go up and guard the gold from time to time, but they only did it for a week and then they quit. They figured that someone might tip someone else off about where the gold was hidden and then they would be killed, just for knowing. They weren’t in the Wehrmacht now, of course. Their homes were in Mittenwald and they just went around in civilian clothes, Lederhosen, and stayed with their wives and families at night. For two weeks or so I had them working for me clearing up the area. Whenever I had a clean-up detail I called them out. Every day I used to collect them to work for me. The colonel loathed my guts. See, being basically German myself, I knew that if you make the top man work for you you’ve got control, and the other Germans, the captains, enjoyed it because the superior officer was made to work along with them. Oh, he and I used to get into some pretty good debates, me being only a sergeant and all. He could speak very good English. They all could.

  Well, the next morning we went up to pick up the gold. We met up on the road leading out of Mittenwald with two American intelligence officers from the OSS, or something similar, that had come down to Mittenwald with a couple of trucks – stakebodies, you know, six by six, the regular Army two-and-a-half tonners – and a couple of drivers from Garmisch. So with the five Germans and myself and my half-track driver and my two guards that made twelve of us altogether. We followed the intelligence officers’ trucks and they led us back through the mountain heading north in the direction of Krün and eventually we came to a creek maybe 5 or 6 feet wide on our right and not more than 15 feet from the side of the road. We got out of the trucks and went down into the creek, across and up the side of a mountain at an incline of about – oh – 30 degrees for about 600 feet upwards. Then there was a level spot.

  You wouldn’t know for looking around right there that there was anything there at all. The cache had not been disturbed before, we got there. In fact I was standing right on it without knowing it and the German officers were all laughing. They walked right over to the spot, kicked the leaves and other covering aside and revealed a square hole, like a trap-door that led down into the bunker. We pulled the trap-door off and then we went down into a hole in the ground about 10 to 12 foot square, about 9 foot deep, with logs over the top, and an opening about 2½ foot square. Inside, to guard the gold, were six full-size Mauser rifles, four carbines – I still have one of the rifles and one of the carbines – and four Schmeisser machine pistols (sub-machine-guns). In the centre of this pit, this bunker, the gold was stacked about 3 feet high, 3 feet square, in I would say about four stacks – anyway it was about 3 foot wide and 3 foot high and it was in the very centre of the bunker stacked up criss-crossed like bricks, not in boxes and not in sacks.

  Well, we passed the gold up, and took it to the edge. We were supposed to carry it down that incline, but a couple of my men fell down trying to carry the gold down the side of the mountain, it was so heavy. So I told them: ‘Now look, we are going to divide this up. I want you fellers lifting the gold out of the hole here, and the rest of you fellers down at the foot of the hill ’cos we gonna slide the gold down that incline into the creek. Then you fellers pick it up and put it into the trucks.’

  My men carried the gold through the creek and put it on the trucks as I had told them. It was a very hot day and hard work but by about noon we were done. The last time I saw the gold it was in the two trucks with the two drivers and the two intelligence officers. They did at least put the gold in burlap bags, but I remember making the comment: ‘Well, you sure as hell don’t have many guards to guard this!’ And they said: ‘Look, we don’t want to attract any attention.’ Then they drove away and I never saw them or the gold again.

  While the gold trucks were driving away I had to go back with the Germans, pick up the rifles and sub-machine-guns from the mountain and put them in the half-track. As we were driving back to Mittenwald, the German colonel, who hated my guts, said to me:

  ‘Singleton, you know, those rifles are loaded.’

  I said: ‘I know. I didn’t say anything about unloading ’em when we came up here to move the gold.’

  He said: ‘Well, you know, we could start a war right here.’

  ‘Yeah? Just about right – with five of you and three of us.’

  He looked at me and he said: ‘You ready?’

  ‘I’m always ready for a fight.’

  Then he said to me: ‘You know, you’re an arrogant son-of-a-bitch.’

  ‘You know what? I’ve got some respect for you.’

  ‘What makes you so damn sure why the American soldiers won the war?’

  ‘Because we could outfight yer.’

  ‘Well, you know, I’ve heard you talking. How good are you?’

  I picked up one of the German rifles and I said, ‘Driver, stop the half-track.’ Then I turned to the German colonel and I said: ‘Look, none of your drivers were ever trained to shoot, were they?’

  ‘No.’

  I told the colonel to carry a pop bottle down the road and put it on a post. He did that and then he came back to the half-track, and I said: ‘Now, driver, shoot that bottle off that post.’

  The colonel said: ‘He’s not going to hit that, that’s too long a range.’

  ‘Look, he doesn’t even know the rifle. That’s a German rifle, right?’

  The kid shot the bottle off the post.

  ‘Now give me the rifle,’ I said.

  There was still a part of the bottle on the post and I shot that off. ‘Here,’ I said to the German colonel, ‘you do that.’

  ‘Oh, we can’t shoot like that.’

  ‘Alright, now,’ I said to him. ‘I’m ready for yer any time you’re ready.’

  Well, when we got back to headquarters, my colonel, Colonel Hankins [Lieutenant-Colonel Curtis L. Hankins, CC 61st AIB, 10th Armored Division] heard about it all afterwards.

  He said: ‘Out o
f the whole damned American Army we got the one man who would throw gold around like kindling wood. I don’t know of anybody that would slide gold down a mountain.’

  So I said to the colonel: ‘Look, what the hell, it wasn’t even mine. I just didn’t want the men to get hurt.’

  The very next day, I was told to go to General Strack’s home in Mittenwald, where he was living with his daughter and his wife, and pick him up and take him to the internment camp in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The reason they hadn’t touched General Strack previously, so I was told, was because he was the man who’d been responsible for putting the gold up in the mountain and it was through him that they found out where the gold was at. He was the senior officer over the colonel and the captains who had put the gold there just before the end of the war. I remember this very vividly – the American officers, including Captain Craig, had piled up all the silverware in the middle of General Strack’s living-room floor. That pile was at least three feet high and six feet in diameter and it was laid out on a bedspread. They were starting to sort through it, so I reached over and said: “What the hell, I’ll take a silver pitcher as a souvenir.’ Then the officers told me: ‘Hey. You put that back. We’re not really taking this. This belongs to the family.’ Over along the wall was the Alpenstock – you know, a climbing stick – so I reached over and said: ‘By God, this isn’t anybody else’s, I’m taking this as a souvenir.’ (I have it at home now.)2 So I loaded General Strack into the half-track to take up to Garmisch, and his daughter – oh, his daughter called me everything but a white man. She went back into my ancestry and everything else. She was a little cat, about 25, 27 years old.

  That same day I got a telegram from Divisional Headquarters in Garmisch-Partenkirchen saying that all of the gold was back in the right spot in Munich. Not one bar was missing. I had just taken it as an Army operation. We did it and that was it. As far as I’m concerned it was just one of those duties I performed and forgot – and that was it.

  A few weeks later, on 29 July 1945, Singleton sent home to his wife some of the photographs he had taken at the gold location, and wrote in a covering letter:

  Here are more negatives. 2 through 10 is going up to the gold hole a few weeks ago after the weapons that were left there. Three of the men helped put the gold here from the Casino. One colonel and two captains from the 54th German Engineers stationed at the camp before the surrender. 11 and 12 are of coming down the last steep hill with the weapons.

  Both the letter and the photographs indicate that Singleton’s memory of the gold incident more than 35 years before was essentially accurate.

  It is already clear that in many respects Singleton’s account of his gold recovery differed substantially from that of 7 June. The location, the weather, the description of the hole, the army unit detailed for the job, the numbers and nationality of the personnel involved, the vehicles and the method employed to retrieve the gold – all were different. As an acid test, Singleton was sent prints of the photos taken during the 7 June operation and in return he sent the photos he had himself taken of his gold hole and of the German officers involved in his own operation. His response was quite positive.

  I’ll be honest with you. I can’t connect up anything with the gold that I picked up – either in the description of the gold or anything else – with that other gold find the local hunter was involved with. It just doesn’t make sense. There are those men holding bars of gold and I don’t recognise any one of them and I know damn well who was up there on the mountain with me. I don’t recognise any of the Americans in that photograph, not a one. I never saw ’em before, and I couldn’t recognise the spot. And there wasn’t nearly that number of men on the operation I was on, and there was no German like that hunter.

  The June 7 pictures do not relate to the same incident. The only thing I can think of is that there must have been two caches of gold.

  I feel stupid now. Patton had real strict orders that we were not to loot any of the cathedrals or anything in our area. I mean, he was strict as hell, and I never gave it a thought that anybody with an officer’s uniform would even think of such a thing. And there were so many people involved! I mean, the order had to go to Captain Craig to tell me to provide guards and Germans. There must be records in Munich to show the gold got there safely or not. And there must be records in 10th Armored otherwise how the hell did they get in there with the authority.

  Mind you, the orders were not in writing – and I never got a receipt [apart from the telegram, that is].

  The circumstantial evidence that the gold recovered by Major Geiler of the 55th Armored Engineering Battalion and the gold recovered by Sergeant Singleton of the 61st Armored Infantry Battalion were from two separate caches is overwhelming. Even if the general locality was the same, the particular location of Singleton’s gold hole simply was not the same as Geiler’s. Singleton, 32 years after the event, was under the impression that his gold hole was located in the mountains not far past the Kaserne at Mittenwald, perhaps in the vicinity of Krün. Actually the valley widens at Krün and the terrain there is flat. But just north of Krün’s twin village of Wallgau the land begins to rise steeply to form the southern slopes of the mountains whose several summits and ridges include the Klausenkopf and Steinriegl where virtually all the gold and currency brought to Mittenwald in the Reichsbank shipment was buried. Quite possibly Singleton’s gold had been buried in this area too, but the approach to his gold hole was quite different from the approach to Geiler’s gold hole. Geiler’s men drove most of the way up to their hole by jeep on a firm, serviceable, forest track. They did not have to cross a creek to get there, as Singleton’s men did, nor were they ever on a slope so steep that they ran the risk of falling and injuring themselves, as Singleton’s men apparently did when they tried to carry the bullion down on foot. Singleton found the ground so precipitate that he had to instruct his party to slide the gold bars down the hill to the creek at the bottom. It is difficult to imagine how this could possibly be done at the Geiler gold hole, or why anyone should want to do it. Even if there were no jeeps to carry the gold down (as in Singleton’s case), it would be simple enough to bring the gold down on foot by just following the track. That Singleton and his party were able to follow a proper track at least some of the way up to their hole is clear from his photos. In some of the photos the track quite closely resembles the one that leads up to the Steinriegel, and one must presume the reason Singleton did not drive at least some of the way up the mountainside was because the path was too narrow for his half-track and the two-and-a-half tonners, and he had no jeeps. However, a closer examination of his photos, taken in bright sunshine around the middle of a summer’s day, makes clear from the shadows cast by the sun that the track followed by Singleton led in a completely different direction from the one on the Steinriegel. To reach the gold hole where Geiler’s men disinterred 728 bars of bullion you must first ascend from north to south and then, after bearing sharply left at a fork, continue to ascend west to east. The men in Singleton’s photographs were ascending from east to west. This means that in order to reach the same spot as the one where the 728 bars were buried they would have to come along a different track from the opposite direction – an approach which the lie of the land and a glance at a map would immediately indicate to be nonsense.

  Nor was the gold hole itself the same. Singleton’s was a proper bunker, like a weapon pit – a substantial affair measuring 10 to 12 feet square, deep enough for a man to go down into, with a trap-door and a log roof. By comparison the cache containing the 728 bars on the Steinriegel, was merely a hole in the ground, only six feet square, and filled in with earth. In fact in size and construction Singleton’s gold hole most closely resembled the original currency hole on the Steinriegel, but this had been emptied more than six weeks previously and its contents reburied elsewhere. From a comparison of photographs it is clear that the Singleton hole was located on steeply shelving ground and that the men standing by the hole had to brace thei
r legs to remain upright. The Geiler hole, on the other hand, was situated on relatively flat ground, where a man could stand up straight in a perfectly normal way. The Geiler hole, too, had been covered with a tree stump. Singleton recalled no such object at his cache. Nor did he use mine detectors to find the gold or jeeps to transport it; nor was the gold he found wrapped in bags, as it had been at the Geiler cache.

  Finally, there was the decisive matter of the people involved in the two recoveries. The gold from the Geiler cache was loaded by a platoon of American GIs from the 55th Armored Engineering Battalion. The gold from the Singleton cache was loaded by a handful of German officers from the 54th Mountain Engineer Battalion. There was only one German officer at the Geiler recovery, and he was from a different unit, the Mountain Infantry School. There were no German civilians at the Singleton hole, but there were two at the Geiler one. Singleton himself does not recognise the names or the faces of any of the Americans or Germans in the Geiler recovery. Nor do any of the Americans in those photographs recognise Singleton’s name or the faces of any of the Germans in the photos taken at his recovery – and neither, for that matter, do Colonel Pfeiffer or Captain Neuhauser.

  If the circumstantial evidence for the existence of two separate gold caches is overwhelming, the documentary evidence that the contents of one of the caches reached its right destination and the other did not is conclusive. The 728 bullion bars exhumed by Major Geiler were duly included on the inventory of the FED at Frankfurt. The bullion bars exhumed by Sergeant Singleton were not.

  There is no reason to doubt Albert Singleton’s word when he says that the gold he dug up was safely delivered to Munich and that not a bar was missing. As far as he and the 10th Armored Division were concerned, that was the end of the matter. But the gold never made the next leg of its journey to its proper destination. Though it was possibly non-Reichsbank gold it was still bound by occupation law to be forwarded for depositing at the FED vaults in the Frankfurt Reichsbank building, where it would be entered, with its relevant shipment identification number, on the inventory of the gold held by the FED. But Singleton’s gold was never entered on any inventory. It was never entered because it never reached Frankfurt. It never reached Frankfurt because all of it – worth many millions of dollars by today’s standards – was in all probability stolen.