Altaussee is a small town on the shore of the Aussee in the Austrian region of Stiermarken (See also Lake Toplitz). It was the center of the region that was meant to be the Alpenfestung. The Auseerland wasn't a very good Festung however; it was conquered by Major Ralph Pierson with one tank, one jeep and five soldiers. No shots were fired.
Normally, this region had about 18000 inhabitants; at the end of the war it accommodated almost 80000 people. Many prominent nazis, their families and collaborators from all over Europe had moved here, among them Eichmann's wife and children and the head of the RSHA Ernst Kaltenbrunner. The RSHA, SD and Abwehr had brought their secret documents and their loot here. Several truckloads of gold and documents arrived here under the protection of the Red Cross. The SS made a list of everything that was brought to Altaussee from Berlin by Ernst Kaltenbrunner:
Some of the treasure was carried into the mountains surrounding the region (Totengebirge, Dachstein, etc.) by young soldiers.
Adolf Eichman and the staff of his department IV B 4 had brought several truckloads of documents and valuables to this region via Prague, Budweis and Ebensee and also moved 22 iron crates full of documents and gold from the Altausseer lake to Bla Alm, a remote retreat in the mountains.
Tooth gold from the concentration camps was sent here in May 1945 by the Reichsbank. This gold had been sent from several concentration camps to a central depot in Oranienburg and was melted into bars by the firm Degussa. Some of this gold was later recovered in Tirol and impounded by the French.
In 1945, shortly after Hitler's suicide, five trucks coming from the regions of Munich and Berchtesgaden drove to the Totesgebirge. According to a list, signed by SS-general Fröhling, they carried 15000 million gold mark, 200 million American dollars, counterfeit English Pounds and their printing plates and other valuables. Some of this was probably thrown into Lake Toplitz.
The most valuable part of the loot were the art treasures from the musea of France, Italy, Belgium, Danmark and The Netherlands, stored in a derelict salt mine near Altaussee, where they were recovered later. Today, this salt mine is open to visitors. Don't take the brochure too seriously, it states that a large part of the European cultural heritance was here to protect it from the turbulance of war. I don't think protection was the main reason why the paintings were in Austria.
After the war, gold coins showed up all over this region. In the winter of 1945 some crates were removed from the garden of Miss Christl Kerry, who had rented her house before to Ernst Kaltenbrunner. A farmer called Joseph Pucherl later found two iron crates under a dirt heap. They contained over 10000 gold coins. Persons unknown dug up something from the garden of Eichman's wife's house in Fischerdorf. She and her children had disappeared shortly before. In June 1950 several men who had French papers but later turned out to be Germans came to the Ausseer lake and retreived twelve iron crates from it. The contents of these crates is still unknown.
The people of this region still speak of hidden treasure. The value of the loot the nazis hid in different parts of the world is estimated at over 4000 million gold mark.
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