Today the Austrian Toplitzsee lake looks completely peaceful and calm, but during the Second World War it was called the Devil's Landfill. Shrouded in dense fog, the Austrian mountain ranges served as a wonderful hiding place for the secrets of the Hitler regime, which testified to their crimes.
Local peasant Steinegerr, English prisoner of war Loftus and Austrian Resistance member Albrecht Geiswinkler say they personally saw SS men throw large boxes and boxes of white metal into the waters of Lake Toplitz in April 1945, each bearing the inscription "Imperial Cargo".
Styria's "Black Pearl" - Lake Toplitz is located in the Austrian Dead Mountains near Bad Aussee, sixty kilometers southeast of Salzburg. Originated on the site of salt mines and surrounded by sheer cliffs, it belongs to the most insignificant bodies of water in this region. Its length is about two kilometers, its width is up to four hundred meters, and its maximum depth is one hundred and three meters.
Photo: Johann Hartl
Yuri Smirnov, Chairman of the Board of the Union of Search Units of Russia, spoke about Lake Toplitz as follows:
This lake has a "double bottom". At a depth of 4-5 meters, underwater islands float in it. They are clusters of unsinked logs. Directly below them - 5-6 meters of silt, and further - complete darkness.
After World War II, there were many rumors, assumptions and conjectures about the secrets hidden in the waters of the lake. It was even claimed that gold plundered by the SS, the so-called "treasures of the Nibelungs", as well as the gold reserves of the German Reichsbank were hidden here. It is known that on January 31, 1945, the German finance minister proposed to evacuate the gold reserve. Hitler agreed, and 24 carriages departed from Berlin loaded with gold and platinum, foreign exchange, foreign shares and paper imperial money. Nobody saw more of these values.
At the same time, it is believed that, in addition to counterfeit banknotes, lists of agents of the German secret service and dossiers indicating the operations in which they took part are buried in the lake. After the war, many of these persons were already respectable citizens of their countries, they sat in governments, parliaments, boards of well-known banks and firms. Therefore, they, of course, would not like the disclosure of Toplitz's secrets.
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Photo: Karsten Ivan
In addition, in the boxes at the bottom of the lake are probably hidden numbers of secret accounts in Swiss banks, which still contain wealth looted by the Nazis. However, despite all the assumptions and hypotheses, high steep banks, stone heaps of huge boulders, the great depth of the lake and submerged tree trunks still reliably protect its mysteries. Lake Toplitz has deservedly been nicknamed the "killer lake" due to the large number of mysterious deaths.
So what are the secrets hidden in the deep waters of this mountain lake? Once, in the first days of May 1945, a fisherman who was catching fish on Lake Toplitz saw a paper floating on the water with incomprehensible signs. Taking it out and examining it, he realized that instead of a fish he came across some kind of foreign banknote. Having dried and smoothed the bill, the next day the fisherman took it to the bank in Bad Aussee, where he was punctually counted out a large sum in Austrian schillings.
Suddenly, the rich fisherman decided to study the fishing site more carefully, and, oh joy, luck smiled at him. For the third and fourth time, he appeared at the bank with his catch, rejoicing in unspeakable luck, but once again two officers of the US Army met him at the cash register.
In February 1946, two engineers from Linz arrived at Toplitz - the Austrians Helmut Mayer and Ludwig Pichler. Together with them, a certain Hans Haslinger came to search for hidden treasures. In the materials of the investigation, which was later carried out by the Austrian gendarmerie, they appeared as "tourists".
The Austrians pitched a tent on the shore of the lake and, being experienced climbers, decided to climb the Rauchfang mountain overhanging Lake Toplitz. Haslinger, apparently feeling something or knowing about the danger, returned to the camp a day later, half way.
A month later, when no news came from the other two climbers, a search began for them. A group of rescuers, high in the Dead Mountains, found a hut made of snow, and two corpses nearby. At the same time, Pichler's stomach was ripped open, and his stomach was shoved into a backpack. The crime remained unsolved. The question also remained unclear: why did the criminals gut Pichler's body? Maybe they were looking for a swallowed plan or scheme?
In the course of further investigation, it turned out that during the Second World War, Mayer and Pichler took an active part in the work of a research institute, which was located on the shores of Lake Toplitz and was developing and testing new weapons for the German navy, probably torpedoes.
Another mysterious fatality occurred on Lake Toplitz in August 1950, when an engineer from Hamburg, Dr. Keller and Gert Gehrens, a professional climber, arrived. On August 10, attempting to climb the steep cliff of the southern slope of the Reichenstein, from which the lake was best seen, Gerens fell into the abyss. The cord that tied the climbers "suddenly" broke off. Dr. Keller testified about the accident and then suddenly disappeared.
Relatives of Gepens conducted their own investigation, during which it turned out that the disappeared Keller served in the SS during the war and was the head of a secret submarine base.
After some time, three French scientists arrived in the area of Lake Toplitz. In broken German, they asked for a hotel room, and then went to the police station, where they presented a letter stating that the applicants were studying the flora and fauna of the Alpine lakes. They will dive into the lake and, possibly, take away rock samples with them.
This letter also contained a request to the local police to provide support to the Parisian scientists in their scientific work. The letter was signed by the corps commander of Innsbruck. Having carried out their research, the French paid the full deal with the owner of the hotel and, having loaded four heavy boxes into their car, drove off.
Imagine the surprise of the owner of the hotel, when the bank where he came to exchange the money received from the French scientists, he was told that the bills were counterfeit. Of course, the command of the military units in Innsbruck had no idea about any letter of recommendation.
Soon the maid of the hotel appeared to the police with a statement, who heard the French explaining themselves to each other in the purest Hamburg dialect. Most likely, these were the former specialists of the research institute located on the shore of Lake Toplitz, and who knew about its secret.
In the summer of 1952, two corpses with bullet holes in their skulls were found on the shores of Lake Toplitz. The criminal case was not solved, the criminals were never found. Later that summer, the teacher of geography from France, Jean de Sauze, was found dead on the shore of the lake, who had come in search of treasures.
There was no backpack or search tools with him, but investigators found a rather deep hole near Jean's body. When it was covered with earth from the dump, there was not enough earth. The conclusion suggested itself: Jean de Souz had found something that took up a significant amount. For which he paid with his life. Where what he found went is a mystery.
In 1955, an engineer from Frankfurt am Main, Mayer, walking along a route not marked on any map, fell off the cliffs overhanging the lake. The result of the investigation into his death is the same - no result.
In 1959, in order to verify the facts stated in the book "Bernhardt Enterprise" by the former SS Sturmbannfuehrer Wilhelm Hethl (he called himself Walter Hagen), the German illustrated magazine "Stern" organized underwater exploration of Lake Toplitz.
It was then, during a dive, that fake English banknotes were discovered - in fifteen days of searching, thousands of such banknotes were raised from the bottom of the lake. This find caused a real sensation. However, most of this counterfeit money still remained at the bottom of Lake Toplitz.
In addition, on August 27, 1959, this expedition raised a box with the number "B-9" from the bottom of the lake, which contained documents of the former General Directorate of Imperial Security (RSHA), as well as lists of prisoners of concentration camps.
Nevertheless, instead of congratulating them on their success, the members of the expedition received a telegram with the strictest order: “Further stay is inexpedient. Stop searching immediately. The reason is the alleged lack of financial resources. The Austrian newspaper Volkstimme later wrote that Stern had been gagged with large sums. And it was done by those who did not at all want certain secrets of the Third Reich to become public.
There were entrepreneurs who were ready to continue the work interrupted in 1959, carried out by the expedition of the West German magazine "Stern". However, the Austrian government, apparently, not without pressure from Germany, refrained from issuing permits to work on Lake Toplitz and elsewhere.
The authorities motivated the refusal by the fact that everything located in the bowels of the country, as well as at the bottom of rivers and lakes in Austria, is the property of the state and will be brought out "into the light of day" when it is technically possible or becomes especially necessary.
The actual reason why the treasures in the lakes of the Salzkammergut and in the abandoned adits of salt mines remain untouched lies elsewhere: the recovered secret Gestapo documents can strongly discredit some prominent statesmen and politicians not only in West Germany.
In 1963, the Austrian Albrecht Geiswinkler, a former member of the Resistance, hoped to get a license to lift the Toplitz lake found in the waters, but some neo-fascist organization "Spider" immediately began to threaten him with murder. Threats probably followed against the government of the federal state of Styria in Graz. Geiswinkler received an official license denial.
In the fall of 1963, the interest of some people in Lake Toplitz began to noticeably increase and this was due to one very remarkable circumstance: the expiration in 1964 of the storage period for valuables deposited by the Nazi elite and German financial aces shortly before the surrender of Nazi Germany in foreign banks and estimated, according to some estimates, in the amount of more than 5 billion dollars, and finding a list of persons, whose signatures can be issued deposits, resting in a hermetically sealed safe, which is allegedly at the bottom of Toplitz.
In the early autumn of 1983, three tourists from the Federal Republic of Germany settled in Alt-Aussee. One of them, a submariner from Munich A. Agner, a few days later, violating the ban of the authorities, made an attempt to explore the bottom of Toplitz. As a result, only his lifeless body was raised to the surface of the lake. The investigation revealed that the flexible rubber hose that supplied the air to the diver had been cut by someone.
For more than twenty years, the German biologist Hans Fricke (the same one who, on the JAGO bathyscaphe off the coast of Grande Comoros, revealed a significant reduction in the number of coelacanth fish) has been exploring alpine lakes. Having sunk a few meters, the bathyscaphe was in complete darkness, so Frike and the captain of the bathyscaphe had to intensify their attention so as not to damage the body of the underwater vehicle by running into sharp stones and sunken logs.
Hans Fricke (left) and the captain of the bathyscaphe JAGO Schauer
Interestingly, at a depth of sixteen meters, the oxygen content in the water dropped sharply, and the signs of life around them disappeared. This is due to the fact that hydrogen sulfide, which is lethal for living organisms, is released from the bottom.
But not only dangers underwater lay in wait for Hans Fricke. His research, begun in 1983, affected the interests of a powerful organization that wanted the secret to remain at the bottom of Lake Toplitz.
We began our research in 1983 and were not interested, so to speak, in the lake's Nazi past. Therefore, we were surprised when we were attacked in the press by an extremist organization. This was extremely depressing for us, because we are biologists, and we were interested in science more than history. But time passed and I became interested in the history of the lake, as well as in the legends about Toplitz. I wanted to find out what is true and what is fiction. It took over twenty years to get closer to the answer.
During the first dive, we did not expect to find anything significant. We thought that we would pick up some pieces of iron and a couple of English banknotes. But, to our great surprise, there were much more fakes at the bottom of the lake - at the bottom lay a whole mountain of British pounds. Boxes filled with banknotes were scattered everywhere. The banknotes have survived in good condition due to the lack of oxygen at the bottom of the lake. There were such a huge amount of banknotes that the underwater vehicle literally bathed in money.
This sudden discovery completely changed the further life of Hans Fricke. He stopped researching biology and completely switched to solving the mystery of Lake Toplitz. Millions of counterfeit pounds have been deposited. As a result of the research, the facts of the operation of the Nazi special services called "Bernhard" were confirmed - the largest scam in the history of the world to issue counterfeit money in order to wreak havoc in the financial systems of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition.
Fricke soon realized why Lake Toplitz was called the Devil's Landfill. He found the remains of military equipment from the Second World War at the bottom of the lake, and also raised a large number of mines, missiles and other ammunition with the help of explosives technicians from Austria.
It turned out that the ammunition was intended for use in the navy. By the way, the institute, located near Lake Toplitz, was engaged in the development of just such ammunition. Hans Fricke tried to find out what connection existed between counterfeit banknotes and this institution.
At first glance, there is nothing in common between a research institute and counterfeit banknotes. Nevertheless, during the war, the laboratory and the forgeries were Hitler's weapons: the institute developed new types of weapons for submarines, and banknotes were printed to undermine the British economy. The institute and the counterfeit money had the same fate - at the end of the war they were drowned in a lake.
The silt layer that covered the bottom of the lake made the work very difficult, but Fricke's assumptions about the development of new weapons for the German submarine fleet were unexpectedly confirmed. They found an underwater mine with a fuse that worked at a certain depth, as well as fragments of missiles launched underwater and hitting surface targets.
Fake banknote
Was found and one missile launcher, which was going to equip German submarines. This installation was lowered with the help of a winch 90 meters into the waters of Lake Toplitz and a rocket was launched. The first combat test of this installation in the Baltic Sea was also the last: at the start, the rocket exploded and destroyed a German submarine with a crew. The developments of Nazi scientists were later used by American designers to create the Polaris rocket.
In November 1984, specialists of the Austrian army appeared on the lake, and all approaches to the lake were taken under the control of the gendarmerie. Together with the next batch of fake pounds, the Austrians raised to the surface a 3.5-meter Vau rocket weighing one ton. The survey of the rocket body surprised the army miners. After lying for forty years at the bottom of the lake, the rocket did not even have traces of rust.
In the southwestern part of the lake, with the help of mine detectors and special detectors, Austrian mine clearance specialists discovered the presence of a large amount of metal. The instruments showed that the metal is concentrated over an area of about 40 square meters. What is it - gold, platinum, an underground ammunition depot?
In the rocks that surround this area of the lake, and only seventy meters from the edge of the shore, a mysterious passage has been discovered that leads to a system of underground bunkers. However, to our deep regret, it was blown up and covered with huge boulders and earth.
Salzburg engineers and sappers attempted to break into an underground gallery under a wooded hill on the southern shore of the lake. Experts considered that the Nazis mined the approaches to the looted wealth, so the expedition soon stopped all work, and did not reach the final destination.
Hans Fricke's team tracked down the head of the Sachsenhausen counterfeiting workshop, SS Sturmbannführer Bernhard Kruger. Kruger talked about how in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in two secret barracks a special team of prisoners, staffed by artists, engravers, photographers, printers and counterfeiters, made counterfeit money and what secret marks were put on these banknotes. This team was directly subordinate to the Ministry of Reich Security, and even the head of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp did not know what was happening behind the fence.
SS Sturmbannführer Bernhard Kruger
The counterfeit money-making operation was named after Kruger - "Bernhard". By the end of the war, they had printed 8,965,080 banknotes totaling 134,610,810 counterfeit pounds sterling. Counterfeit pounds have successfully made their way around the world. They were supplied to agents and sold through Andorra, Belgium, Holland, even Turkey. Many of the Nazis distributing these pounds became respectable entrepreneurs after that.
At the end of the war, the Nazis began to hide the results of their criminal activities. A large number of trucks with boxes of counterfeit banknotes were taken under guard by SS troops and taken to secluded places. Lake Toplitz turned out to be one of such places. There were so many boxes that it took two days to flood them in the lake.
Many puzzled and unanswered questions are raised by the methods and pace of official work on the search and recovery from the bottom of Toplitz property flooded by the Nazis. Whatever it was, but in wide circles, one definite impression is created: the widely advertised events at the very beginning, aimed at finally revealing what is at the bottom of Lake Toplitz, gradually switch to keeping the dark secret of the fascists unsolved.
The Austrian authorities have imposed a "taboo" on the secrets still lurking in the mountain lakes of the Salzkammergut, and individuals who persistently continue to claim that secret Gestapo documents and major valuables are in Toplitz are even brought to court for disseminating such information. It is possible that the secrets of Lake Toplitz, covered with a thick layer of silt, will never be revealed.