Merkers Mine Part 2

 In Part 2 of our Merkers Mine mini-series, the secret is out. On April 8, 1945, General George S. Patton learns that his advancing Third Army has stumbled upon the captured gold reserves of the Third Reich. But Patton being Patton, his first instinct isn't to hand it over to the bureaucrats. He orders a strict press blackout, surrounds the mine with tanks, and pitches audacious, off-the-books ideas to his superiors: minting the 250 tons of gold into medallions for his soldiers, or hiding it away to create a secret, self-sustaining financial endowment for his army to bypass congressional appropriations. It is a fascinating, chilling glimpse into how massive, untraceable wealth was viewed by military leaders at the time. 

But the geopolitical stakes are simply too high, as the Merkers area is slated to fall under Soviet control after the war. Supreme Allied Headquarters dispatches financial expert Colonel Bernard Bernstein to take control of the discovery and move it immediately. On April 12, history is made as Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton descend 2,000 feet down a pitch-black mine shaft in a rickety elevator. Behind a blasted steel and brick door in Room No. 8, they come face-to-face with the unimaginably vast treasure. Most devastatingly, they open the suitcases of the SS "Melmer" deliveries, discovering wedding bands, watches, and gold dental fillings systematically ripped from the victims of the Holocaust. 

The staggering scale of the plunder is matched only by the horrors witnessed later that same afternoon. Just hours after standing amidst the greatest concentration of stolen wealth in human history, the generals travel to Ohrdruf, the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by American forces. The horrific juxtaposition of the Third Reich's hoarded treasure and the emaciated corpses of its victims leaves Eisenhower deeply shaken and Patton physically sick. Listen in as we detail this extraordinary day in history, culminating in the frantic, massive logistical operation—Task Force Whitney—launched by the U.S. military to move the treasure out of the darkness and into the American zone.