What Patton Wanted to Do With Hitler’s Gold (That Shocked Eisenhower) DD

April 4th, 1945. The village of Murkers, Germany. It was late at night. Two American military police officers were on patrol. They were tired. They were bored. They were enforcing a curfew in a town that had surrendered hours ago. They saw two women walking down the street. The MPs stopped them. Halt. Curfew is in effect.

Where are you going? The women were terrified. They were midwives. They were going to help a woman give birth. The MPs decided to escort them just to be safe. As they walked past the entrance of a massive salt mine, one of the women pointed at the dark tunnel. She whispered something that would change history.

That is where the gold is. The MP stopped. What gold? He asked. The woman looked around to make sure no SS were listening. All of it, she said. The gold from Berlin, the money, the art. It is all down there. The MP didn’t know it yet, but he was standing on top of the richest treasure horde in the history of mankind. $600 million in 1945 currency.

Billions today. Gold bars, platinum, diamonds, masterpieces by Rimbrandt and Raphael, and something else. Something much darker. Suitcases filled with the gold teeth of Holocaust victims. When General George S. Patton heard the news. He didn’t wait for permission. He raced to the mine.

And when he saw what was inside, he didn’t talk about returning it to the banks. He looked at the gold. He looked at his soldiers. And he made a suggestion that shocked General Eisenhower. This is the story of the Murker’s mine treasure. It is the story of the greatest heist of the 20th century. It is the story of how the Americans stole the Nazi fortune right from under the nose of the Russian Red Army.

and what Patent really wanted to do with Hitler’s gold. To understand why the gold was in a hole in the ground, we have to look at Berlin in February 1945. The city was burning. American bombers by day, British bombers by night, the Reichkes Bank, the central bank of Nazi Germany was crumbling.

In Spank, the central bank of Nazi Germany was crumbling. Inside its vaults sat the entire wealth of the Third Reich, the stolen wealth of Europe. Walther Funk, the president of the Reich’s Bank, was panicked. He knew the Russians were coming. He knew that if the Red Army captured the gold, it would disappear into Moscow forever.

He had to move it. But where? He needed a place that was bomb-proof, fireproof, and thief proof. He chose the Kaiser salt mine in Murkers. It was perfect. The tunnels were 2100 ft deep. That is twice the height of the Eiffel Tower underground. The salt rock absorbed shock waves. No bomb could touch it. And it was deep in the heart of Germany.

So in total secrecy, trains loaded with bags of gold bars left Berlin. Trucks carrying the most valuable paintings from the Berlin museums drove south. They packed the mine floor to ceiling and then they sealed the doors. They thought it was safe. They thought the Americans would never find it, but they made one mistake.

They let the local civilians see the trucks. April 8th, 1945. The US 90th Infantry Division secured the area around the mine. The rumor from the midwife had traveled up the chain of command, from the MP to the lieutenant to the colonel, and finally to General Patton. Patton was skeptical. He had heard rumors of Nazi gold before.

Usually, it was just a few watches and rings, but his intelligence officers insisted. General, the locals say the Reichkes Bank is down there. Patton ordered the mine to be opened. The entrance was guarded by a massive steel blast door. The Americans didn’t have the key, so they used the universal key. Dynamite, sound of explosion.

When the smoke cleared, the soldiers walked into the darkness with flashlights. They found themselves in a cavern as big as a cathedral. It was the gold room. Sacks of gold marks, stacks of gold bars, crates of platinum. [clears throat] It stretched as far as the flashlight beams could see. Patton arrived the next day.

He called General Omar Bradley. Brad, he said, you better get down here. We have found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But there was a problem, a political problem, the map. The Yelta Conference had already decided the postwar borders. Mkers was in the state of Theia. Theia was assigned to the Soviet zone. In a few weeks, the American army would have to withdraw and the Russians would take over this territory.

If the gold was still here when the Russians arrived, Stalin would get it all. Patton knew this. Eisenhower knew this, and they decided that wasn’t going to happen. April 12th, 1945, a remarkable scene took place at the mine entrance. Three of the most powerful men in the world stood in the mud. General Dwight D.

Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander. General Omar Bradley, the Soldiers General. General George S. Patton, the warrior. They were about to go underground. The elevator was old. It was rickety. It was a cage meant for miners, not fourstar generals. As they stepped inside, a German mine operator stood by the controls. Patton looked at the German.

He looked at the single cable holding them up. He grinned at Eisenhower. Ike. If that cable snaps, the Germans will win the war after all. They’ll get three for the price of one. Eisenhower didn’t laugh. He hated small spaces. He hated being underground. But he had to see it. The elevator dropped down, down 21, 100 ft.

The air got hotter. The pressure built in their ears. Finally, it stopped. They stepped out into a surreal underworld. The walls were sparkling white salt. The lights were dim, and everywhere there was treasure. They walked into room number eight, the main vault. It was staggering. 8,37 gold bars each stamped with the Nazi eagle, bags of gold coins from France, Belgium, Norway, millions of US dollars, billions of German marks.

Bradley looked at it and shook his head. He was a practical man. To him, this wasn’t wealth. It was a logistics headache. But Patton Patton’s eyes lit up. He walked over to a stack of gold bars. He picked one up. It was heavy. He felt the weight of history in his hand. He turned to Eisenhower and Bradley. He had an idea. A classic patent idea.

Ike, I have a suggestion. Let’s not tell Washington about this. Let’s keep it. Eisenhower looked at him. Keep it. Patton nodded. This gold pays for the war, but why give it to the politicians? They’ll just waste it. He pointed to the bags of gold coins. I say we cut this gold up. We make medallions.

One solid gold medallion for every son of a in the Third Army. Bradley laughed. He turned to Patton. George, if these were the old free booting days when a soldier kept his loot, you’d be the richest man in the world. Patton smiled. He wasn’t joking. In his mind, to the victor belong the spoils. His men had fought for this ground.

Why should they give the gold to bureaucrats in suits? But Eisenhower cut the conversation short. He wasn’t interested in loot. He was looking at something else in the corner of the room. Something that wiped the smile off everyone’s face. In the back of the vault, there were suitcases. Ordinary leather suitcases. They didn’t look like bank property.

Eisenhower ordered one to be opened. Inside, there were no gold bars. There was no money. There were wedding rings, thousands of them, gold wedding bands, silver lockets, eyeglasses with gold rims, and gold teeth, piles of gold fillings torn from human mouths. The mood in the cavern changed instantly.

The excitement of the treasure hunt vanished. This wasn’t just stolen wealth. This was murder. These were the possessions of the Jews killed in the gas chambers. The SS had stripped them of everything, even the gold in their teeth. >> They had melted it down to pay for the war. Eisenhower picked up a handful of rings. His face went pale.

He realized the magnitude of the crime. This wasn’t just a bank robbery. It was an industrialcale looting of the dead. He dropped the rings back into the suitcase. He turned to Patton. His voice was cold, hard. George, we are not keeping this. We are not making medallions. We are going to catalog every ounce, and we are going to show the world what these bastards did.

Patton nodded. Even he was silenced by the sight of the teeth. He hated the Germans in that moment more than he ever had on the battlefield. He reportedly said, “I hope we hang every one of them.” Now, a new problem emerged. The Russians. Eisenhower and his staff looked at the map.

Murkers was deep inside the zone assigned to the Soviet Union. According to the treaty, the Americans had to pull back. If they left the gold, the Soviets would claim it. Stalin needed money. Russia was bankrupt. If Stalin got his hands on $600 million in gold, he would use it to build tanks, to build bombs, to threaten the West.

Eisenhower made a decision. It was technically a violation of the spirit of the treaty, but he didn’t care. He ordered Operation Air Mail. “Get it out,” he said. “Get it all out now.” The Third Army became a moving company. They mobilized every truck they could find. Day and night, the soldiers hauled the heavy gold bars up the elevator. They loaded them onto convoys.

It was a race against time. Soviet scouts were already in the area. If the Russians found out what was in the mine, they might demand it. They might attack to get it. Patton supervised the loading. He urged the men to move faster. Don’t leave a single coin for the commies. Within 48 hours, the mine was empty.

The gold was gone. It was driven west deep into the American zone to the city of Frankfurt. It was locked in the vaults of the Federal Reserve. When the Red Army finally arrived in Murkers a few weeks later, they found an empty hole in the ground. The Americans had pulled off the heist of the century. But the gold wasn’t the only thing.

In the other tunnels they found the soul of Europe. Hundreds of paintings. The winter garden by Manet. Works by Durer by Tishon. The greatest art of the German museums. Patton looked at the art. He was a man of culture, but he was also a soldier. He looked at a painting worth millions of dollars. He shrucked.

It’s pretty, he said, but it won’t stop a tank. He was more interested in the museum curators who were hiding in the mine. He interrogated them. Why did you hide them here? They replied, “To save them from your bombs, General.” Patton ordered the art to be saved, too. He knew that if the art was lost, German culture would be destroyed, or worse, stolen by Stalin.

The discovery at Murker’s mine was the end of the Nazi dream. Hitler had claimed he would build a thousand-year Reich, but all that was left was a pile of stolen gold in a dark hole. The gold was eventually returned. The rings were melted down. The money was used to rebuild Europe. But the story of that day remains legendary.

The day three generals stood in a salt mine. And George Patton suggested they should just keep it all. It was a moment that showed the difference between the commanders. Eisenhower saw the responsibility. Bradley saw the logistics. But Patton, Patton saw the glory. He wanted to reward his men. He wanted to stick it to the politicians.

And he wanted to make sure that the soldiers who had walked through hell got a little piece of heaven to take home. He didn’t get his wish, but he did get the satisfaction of knowing that he stole Hitler’s wallet and he didn’t leave a dime for Stalin. Patton wanted to give the gold to the soldiers.

Eisenhower wanted to return it. Who do you think was right? >> Should the soldiers have kept the spoils of war?

April 4th, 1945. The village of Murkers, Germany. It was late at night. Two American military police officers were on patrol. They were tired. They were bored. They were enforcing a curfew in a town that had surrendered hours ago. They saw two women walking down the street. The MPs stopped them. Halt. Curfew is in effect.

Where are you going? The women were terrified. They were midwives. They were going to help a woman give birth. The MPs decided to escort them just to be safe. As they walked past the entrance of a massive salt mine, one of the women pointed at the dark tunnel. She whispered something that would change history.

That is where the gold is. The MP stopped. What gold? He asked. The woman looked around to make sure no SS were listening. All of it, she said. The gold from Berlin, the money, the art. It is all down there. The MP didn’t know it yet, but he was standing on top of the richest treasure horde in the history of mankind. $600 million in 1945 currency.

Billions today. Gold bars, platinum, diamonds, masterpieces by Rimbrandt and Raphael, and something else. Something much darker. Suitcases filled with the gold teeth of Holocaust victims. When General George S. Patton heard the news. He didn’t wait for permission. He raced to the mine.

And when he saw what was inside, he didn’t talk about returning it to the banks. He looked at the gold. He looked at his soldiers. And he made a suggestion that shocked General Eisenhower. This is the story of the Murker’s mine treasure. It is the story of the greatest heist of the 20th century. It is the story of how the Americans stole the Nazi fortune right from under the nose of the Russian Red Army.

and what Patent really wanted to do with Hitler’s gold. To understand why the gold was in a hole in the ground, we have to look at Berlin in February 1945. The city was burning. American bombers by day, British bombers by night, the Reichkes Bank, the central bank of Nazi Germany was crumbling.

In Spank, the central bank of Nazi Germany was crumbling. Inside its vaults sat the entire wealth of the Third Reich, the stolen wealth of Europe. Walther Funk, the president of the Reich’s Bank, was panicked. He knew the Russians were coming. He knew that if the Red Army captured the gold, it would disappear into Moscow forever.

He had to move it. But where? He needed a place that was bomb-proof, fireproof, and thief proof. He chose the Kaiser salt mine in Murkers. It was perfect. The tunnels were 2100 ft deep. That is twice the height of the Eiffel Tower underground. The salt rock absorbed shock waves. No bomb could touch it. And it was deep in the heart of Germany.

So in total secrecy, trains loaded with bags of gold bars left Berlin. Trucks carrying the most valuable paintings from the Berlin museums drove south. They packed the mine floor to ceiling and then they sealed the doors. They thought it was safe. They thought the Americans would never find it, but they made one mistake.

They let the local civilians see the trucks. April 8th, 1945. The US 90th Infantry Division secured the area around the mine. The rumor from the midwife had traveled up the chain of command, from the MP to the lieutenant to the colonel, and finally to General Patton. Patton was skeptical. He had heard rumors of Nazi gold before.

Usually, it was just a few watches and rings, but his intelligence officers insisted. General, the locals say the Reichkes Bank is down there. Patton ordered the mine to be opened. The entrance was guarded by a massive steel blast door. The Americans didn’t have the key, so they used the universal key. Dynamite, sound of explosion.

When the smoke cleared, the soldiers walked into the darkness with flashlights. They found themselves in a cavern as big as a cathedral. It was the gold room. Sacks of gold marks, stacks of gold bars, crates of platinum. [clears throat] It stretched as far as the flashlight beams could see. Patton arrived the next day.

He called General Omar Bradley. Brad, he said, you better get down here. We have found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But there was a problem, a political problem, the map. The Yelta Conference had already decided the postwar borders. Mkers was in the state of Theia. Theia was assigned to the Soviet zone. In a few weeks, the American army would have to withdraw and the Russians would take over this territory.

If the gold was still here when the Russians arrived, Stalin would get it all. Patton knew this. Eisenhower knew this, and they decided that wasn’t going to happen. April 12th, 1945, a remarkable scene took place at the mine entrance. Three of the most powerful men in the world stood in the mud. General Dwight D.

Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander. General Omar Bradley, the Soldiers General. General George S. Patton, the warrior. They were about to go underground. The elevator was old. It was rickety. It was a cage meant for miners, not fourstar generals. As they stepped inside, a German mine operator stood by the controls. Patton looked at the German.

He looked at the single cable holding them up. He grinned at Eisenhower. Ike. If that cable snaps, the Germans will win the war after all. They’ll get three for the price of one. Eisenhower didn’t laugh. He hated small spaces. He hated being underground. But he had to see it. The elevator dropped down, down 21, 100 ft.

The air got hotter. The pressure built in their ears. Finally, it stopped. They stepped out into a surreal underworld. The walls were sparkling white salt. The lights were dim, and everywhere there was treasure. They walked into room number eight, the main vault. It was staggering. 8,37 gold bars each stamped with the Nazi eagle, bags of gold coins from France, Belgium, Norway, millions of US dollars, billions of German marks.

Bradley looked at it and shook his head. He was a practical man. To him, this wasn’t wealth. It was a logistics headache. But Patton Patton’s eyes lit up. He walked over to a stack of gold bars. He picked one up. It was heavy. He felt the weight of history in his hand. He turned to Eisenhower and Bradley. He had an idea. A classic patent idea.

Ike, I have a suggestion. Let’s not tell Washington about this. Let’s keep it. Eisenhower looked at him. Keep it. Patton nodded. This gold pays for the war, but why give it to the politicians? They’ll just waste it. He pointed to the bags of gold coins. I say we cut this gold up. We make medallions.

One solid gold medallion for every son of a in the Third Army. Bradley laughed. He turned to Patton. George, if these were the old free booting days when a soldier kept his loot, you’d be the richest man in the world. Patton smiled. He wasn’t joking. In his mind, to the victor belong the spoils. His men had fought for this ground.

Why should they give the gold to bureaucrats in suits? But Eisenhower cut the conversation short. He wasn’t interested in loot. He was looking at something else in the corner of the room. Something that wiped the smile off everyone’s face. In the back of the vault, there were suitcases. Ordinary leather suitcases. They didn’t look like bank property.

Eisenhower ordered one to be opened. Inside, there were no gold bars. There was no money. There were wedding rings, thousands of them, gold wedding bands, silver lockets, eyeglasses with gold rims, and gold teeth, piles of gold fillings torn from human mouths. The mood in the cavern changed instantly.

The excitement of the treasure hunt vanished. This wasn’t just stolen wealth. This was murder. These were the possessions of the Jews killed in the gas chambers. The SS had stripped them of everything, even the gold in their teeth. >> They had melted it down to pay for the war. Eisenhower picked up a handful of rings. His face went pale.

He realized the magnitude of the crime. This wasn’t just a bank robbery. It was an industrialcale looting of the dead. He dropped the rings back into the suitcase. He turned to Patton. His voice was cold, hard. George, we are not keeping this. We are not making medallions. We are going to catalog every ounce, and we are going to show the world what these bastards did.

Patton nodded. Even he was silenced by the sight of the teeth. He hated the Germans in that moment more than he ever had on the battlefield. He reportedly said, “I hope we hang every one of them.” Now, a new problem emerged. The Russians. Eisenhower and his staff looked at the map.

Murkers was deep inside the zone assigned to the Soviet Union. According to the treaty, the Americans had to pull back. If they left the gold, the Soviets would claim it. Stalin needed money. Russia was bankrupt. If Stalin got his hands on $600 million in gold, he would use it to build tanks, to build bombs, to threaten the West.

Eisenhower made a decision. It was technically a violation of the spirit of the treaty, but he didn’t care. He ordered Operation Air Mail. “Get it out,” he said. “Get it all out now.” The Third Army became a moving company. They mobilized every truck they could find. Day and night, the soldiers hauled the heavy gold bars up the elevator. They loaded them onto convoys.

It was a race against time. Soviet scouts were already in the area. If the Russians found out what was in the mine, they might demand it. They might attack to get it. Patton supervised the loading. He urged the men to move faster. Don’t leave a single coin for the commies. Within 48 hours, the mine was empty.

The gold was gone. It was driven west deep into the American zone to the city of Frankfurt. It was locked in the vaults of the Federal Reserve. When the Red Army finally arrived in Murkers a few weeks later, they found an empty hole in the ground. The Americans had pulled off the heist of the century. But the gold wasn’t the only thing.

In the other tunnels they found the soul of Europe. Hundreds of paintings. The winter garden by Manet. Works by Durer by Tishon. The greatest art of the German museums. Patton looked at the art. He was a man of culture, but he was also a soldier. He looked at a painting worth millions of dollars. He shrucked.

It’s pretty, he said, but it won’t stop a tank. He was more interested in the museum curators who were hiding in the mine. He interrogated them. Why did you hide them here? They replied, “To save them from your bombs, General.” Patton ordered the art to be saved, too. He knew that if the art was lost, German culture would be destroyed, or worse, stolen by Stalin.

The discovery at Murker’s mine was the end of the Nazi dream. Hitler had claimed he would build a thousand-year Reich, but all that was left was a pile of stolen gold in a dark hole. The gold was eventually returned. The rings were melted down. The money was used to rebuild Europe. But the story of that day remains legendary.

The day three generals stood in a salt mine. And George Patton suggested they should just keep it all. It was a moment that showed the difference between the commanders. Eisenhower saw the responsibility. Bradley saw the logistics. But Patton, Patton saw the glory. He wanted to reward his men. He wanted to stick it to the politicians.

And he wanted to make sure that the soldiers who had walked through hell got a little piece of heaven to take home. He didn’t get his wish, but he did get the satisfaction of knowing that he stole Hitler’s wallet and he didn’t leave a dime for Stalin. Patton wanted to give the gold to the soldiers.

Eisenhower wanted to return it. Who do you think was right? >> Should the soldiers have kept the spoils of war?

April 4th, 1945. The village of Murkers, Germany. It was late at night. Two American military police officers were on patrol. They were tired. They were bored. They were enforcing a curfew in a town that had surrendered hours ago. They saw two women walking down the street. The MPs stopped them. Halt. Curfew is in effect.

Where are you going? The women were terrified. They were midwives. They were going to help a woman give birth. The MPs decided to escort them just to be safe. As they walked past the entrance of a massive salt mine, one of the women pointed at the dark tunnel. She whispered something that would change history.

That is where the gold is. The MP stopped. What gold? He asked. The woman looked around to make sure no SS were listening. All of it, she said. The gold from Berlin, the money, the art. It is all down there. The MP didn’t know it yet, but he was standing on top of the richest treasure horde in the history of mankind. $600 million in 1945 currency.

Billions today. Gold bars, platinum, diamonds, masterpieces by Rimbrandt and Raphael, and something else. Something much darker. Suitcases filled with the gold teeth of Holocaust victims. When General George S. Patton heard the news. He didn’t wait for permission. He raced to the mine.

And when he saw what was inside, he didn’t talk about returning it to the banks. He looked at the gold. He looked at his soldiers. And he made a suggestion that shocked General Eisenhower. This is the story of the Murker’s mine treasure. It is the story of the greatest heist of the 20th century. It is the story of how the Americans stole the Nazi fortune right from under the nose of the Russian Red Army.

and what Patent really wanted to do with Hitler’s gold. To understand why the gold was in a hole in the ground, we have to look at Berlin in February 1945. The city was burning. American bombers by day, British bombers by night, the Reichkes Bank, the central bank of Nazi Germany was crumbling.

In Spank, the central bank of Nazi Germany was crumbling. Inside its vaults sat the entire wealth of the Third Reich, the stolen wealth of Europe. Walther Funk, the president of the Reich’s Bank, was panicked. He knew the Russians were coming. He knew that if the Red Army captured the gold, it would disappear into Moscow forever.

He had to move it. But where? He needed a place that was bomb-proof, fireproof, and thief proof. He chose the Kaiser salt mine in Murkers. It was perfect. The tunnels were 2100 ft deep. That is twice the height of the Eiffel Tower underground. The salt rock absorbed shock waves. No bomb could touch it. And it was deep in the heart of Germany.

So in total secrecy, trains loaded with bags of gold bars left Berlin. Trucks carrying the most valuable paintings from the Berlin museums drove south. They packed the mine floor to ceiling and then they sealed the doors. They thought it was safe. They thought the Americans would never find it, but they made one mistake.

They let the local civilians see the trucks. April 8th, 1945. The US 90th Infantry Division secured the area around the mine. The rumor from the midwife had traveled up the chain of command, from the MP to the lieutenant to the colonel, and finally to General Patton. Patton was skeptical. He had heard rumors of Nazi gold before.

Usually, it was just a few watches and rings, but his intelligence officers insisted. General, the locals say the Reichkes Bank is down there. Patton ordered the mine to be opened. The entrance was guarded by a massive steel blast door. The Americans didn’t have the key, so they used the universal key. Dynamite, sound of explosion.

When the smoke cleared, the soldiers walked into the darkness with flashlights. They found themselves in a cavern as big as a cathedral. It was the gold room. Sacks of gold marks, stacks of gold bars, crates of platinum. [clears throat] It stretched as far as the flashlight beams could see. Patton arrived the next day.

He called General Omar Bradley. Brad, he said, you better get down here. We have found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But there was a problem, a political problem, the map. The Yelta Conference had already decided the postwar borders. Mkers was in the state of Theia. Theia was assigned to the Soviet zone. In a few weeks, the American army would have to withdraw and the Russians would take over this territory.

If the gold was still here when the Russians arrived, Stalin would get it all. Patton knew this. Eisenhower knew this, and they decided that wasn’t going to happen. April 12th, 1945, a remarkable scene took place at the mine entrance. Three of the most powerful men in the world stood in the mud. General Dwight D.

Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander. General Omar Bradley, the Soldiers General. General George S. Patton, the warrior. They were about to go underground. The elevator was old. It was rickety. It was a cage meant for miners, not fourstar generals. As they stepped inside, a German mine operator stood by the controls. Patton looked at the German.

He looked at the single cable holding them up. He grinned at Eisenhower. Ike. If that cable snaps, the Germans will win the war after all. They’ll get three for the price of one. Eisenhower didn’t laugh. He hated small spaces. He hated being underground. But he had to see it. The elevator dropped down, down 21, 100 ft.

The air got hotter. The pressure built in their ears. Finally, it stopped. They stepped out into a surreal underworld. The walls were sparkling white salt. The lights were dim, and everywhere there was treasure. They walked into room number eight, the main vault. It was staggering. 8,37 gold bars each stamped with the Nazi eagle, bags of gold coins from France, Belgium, Norway, millions of US dollars, billions of German marks.

Bradley looked at it and shook his head. He was a practical man. To him, this wasn’t wealth. It was a logistics headache. But Patton Patton’s eyes lit up. He walked over to a stack of gold bars. He picked one up. It was heavy. He felt the weight of history in his hand. He turned to Eisenhower and Bradley. He had an idea. A classic patent idea.

Ike, I have a suggestion. Let’s not tell Washington about this. Let’s keep it. Eisenhower looked at him. Keep it. Patton nodded. This gold pays for the war, but why give it to the politicians? They’ll just waste it. He pointed to the bags of gold coins. I say we cut this gold up. We make medallions.

One solid gold medallion for every son of a in the Third Army. Bradley laughed. He turned to Patton. George, if these were the old free booting days when a soldier kept his loot, you’d be the richest man in the world. Patton smiled. He wasn’t joking. In his mind, to the victor belong the spoils. His men had fought for this ground.

Why should they give the gold to bureaucrats in suits? But Eisenhower cut the conversation short. He wasn’t interested in loot. He was looking at something else in the corner of the room. Something that wiped the smile off everyone’s face. In the back of the vault, there were suitcases. Ordinary leather suitcases. They didn’t look like bank property.

Eisenhower ordered one to be opened. Inside, there were no gold bars. There was no money. There were wedding rings, thousands of them, gold wedding bands, silver lockets, eyeglasses with gold rims, and gold teeth, piles of gold fillings torn from human mouths. The mood in the cavern changed instantly.

The excitement of the treasure hunt vanished. This wasn’t just stolen wealth. This was murder. These were the possessions of the Jews killed in the gas chambers. The SS had stripped them of everything, even the gold in their teeth. >> They had melted it down to pay for the war. Eisenhower picked up a handful of rings. His face went pale.

He realized the magnitude of the crime. This wasn’t just a bank robbery. It was an industrialcale looting of the dead. He dropped the rings back into the suitcase. He turned to Patton. His voice was cold, hard. George, we are not keeping this. We are not making medallions. We are going to catalog every ounce, and we are going to show the world what these bastards did.

Patton nodded. Even he was silenced by the sight of the teeth. He hated the Germans in that moment more than he ever had on the battlefield. He reportedly said, “I hope we hang every one of them.” Now, a new problem emerged. The Russians. Eisenhower and his staff looked at the map.

Murkers was deep inside the zone assigned to the Soviet Union. According to the treaty, the Americans had to pull back. If they left the gold, the Soviets would claim it. Stalin needed money. Russia was bankrupt. If Stalin got his hands on $600 million in gold, he would use it to build tanks, to build bombs, to threaten the West.

Eisenhower made a decision. It was technically a violation of the spirit of the treaty, but he didn’t care. He ordered Operation Air Mail. “Get it out,” he said. “Get it all out now.” The Third Army became a moving company. They mobilized every truck they could find. Day and night, the soldiers hauled the heavy gold bars up the elevator. They loaded them onto convoys.

It was a race against time. Soviet scouts were already in the area. If the Russians found out what was in the mine, they might demand it. They might attack to get it. Patton supervised the loading. He urged the men to move faster. Don’t leave a single coin for the commies. Within 48 hours, the mine was empty.

The gold was gone. It was driven west deep into the American zone to the city of Frankfurt. It was locked in the vaults of the Federal Reserve. When the Red Army finally arrived in Murkers a few weeks later, they found an empty hole in the ground. The Americans had pulled off the heist of the century. But the gold wasn’t the only thing.

In the other tunnels they found the soul of Europe. Hundreds of paintings. The winter garden by Manet. Works by Durer by Tishon. The greatest art of the German museums. Patton looked at the art. He was a man of culture, but he was also a soldier. He looked at a painting worth millions of dollars. He shrucked.

It’s pretty, he said, but it won’t stop a tank. He was more interested in the museum curators who were hiding in the mine. He interrogated them. Why did you hide them here? They replied, “To save them from your bombs, General.” Patton ordered the art to be saved, too. He knew that if the art was lost, German culture would be destroyed, or worse, stolen by Stalin.

The discovery at Murker’s mine was the end of the Nazi dream. Hitler had claimed he would build a thousand-year Reich, but all that was left was a pile of stolen gold in a dark hole. The gold was eventually returned. The rings were melted down. The money was used to rebuild Europe. But the story of that day remains legendary.

The day three generals stood in a salt mine. And George Patton suggested they should just keep it all. It was a moment that showed the difference between the commanders. Eisenhower saw the responsibility. Bradley saw the logistics. But Patton, Patton saw the glory. He wanted to reward his men. He wanted to stick it to the politicians.

And he wanted to make sure that the soldiers who had walked through hell got a little piece of heaven to take home. He didn’t get his wish, but he did get the satisfaction of knowing that he stole Hitler’s wallet and he didn’t leave a dime for Stalin. Patton wanted to give the gold to the soldiers.

Eisenhower wanted to return it. Who do you think was right? >> Should the soldiers have kept the spoils of war?