Lake Toplitz is called the "Black Pearl" of the Austrian Duchy of Styria. It is located 60 km south-east of Salzburg, in the Dead Mountains, on the site of the ancient salt mines.
The length of Lake Toplitz is about 2 km, the width is no more than 400 m. The lake is quite deep, in some places it is about 100 m.
The surroundings of the lake are quite picturesque, but it is not at all the natural beauty that has attracted treasure seekers from all over the world for fifty years.
In 1945, before the end of World War II, the territory of the Nazi empire was rapidly shrinking in size. Soviet troops were advancing non-stop to the west, from the opposite side the fascist troops were crowding the allies.
While the Hitlerite army tried to hold on to the shreds of once easily conquered Europe, the Nazi leaders took swift measures to preserve the huge amount of captured property.
On Hitler's personal order, hundreds of trucks, loaded to the brim with "the national treasure of the German Reich," or, more simply, with the wealth stolen from all over Europe, went to the caches prepared in advance in the Austrian Alps.
“In the end we will be defeated. England refuses to armistice. Churchill will bear the main responsibility before future generations for the defeat of the West. In a future war, Europe will be destroyed in one day; if our people survive, they will need to restore the light of civilization and unite the Western elite.
I want to leave a rich legacy for the future great Reich, who will come to power."
Promotional video:
These words, Hitler's true testament, were transmitted to historians in Spain in 1947.
At the very end of January 1945, German Finance Minister Ludwig von Krosig proposed to evacuate the gold reserves of the Reichsbank.
Hitler agreed, and 24 wagons with gold and platinum - in bullion and in the form of jewelry, currencies of different countries, foreign shares and paper imperial money - departed from Berlin in the same direction.
The routes of the train's movement, and even more so the place of arrival, were carefully classified.
But, to the great regret of the Nazis, the secret could not be fully preserved. Numerous witnesses observed convoys of trucks heading, in particular, towards Lake Toplitz.
Local residents saw how some of the cars were hiding in the mountains, and from some of the SS men they threw dozens of huge boxes and metal boxes with the inscription “Imperial cargo” directly into the lake (!).
The fact that such a number of boxes with unknown, but, most likely, valuable contents were flooded in the lake seriously interested the American allied command, and a group of military divers started searching in May 1945.
The work stopped only after one of the divers was raised to the surface with a knife under the shoulder blade. This was the first of the mysterious cases in which people died while trying to lift flooded boxes.
Who and how guarded the treasures at the bottom of the lake is a mystery. Divers of the Third Reich? Some kind of attendants hiding on the shore? Or maybe some kind of underwater settlement was organized at the bottom of Toplitsa?
In principle, there is nothing surprising in this assumption, given the rumors about the secret underwater bases of the Nazis in the Antarctic region and elsewhere in the world.
In February 1946, a small tent appeared on the shore of the lake. Two engineers from Austria settled in it. Their names were Helmut Mayer and Ludwig Pichler. A certain Hans Haslinger arrived with them.
The newcomers, who at first glance did not pay any special attention to the lake, decided for some reason to climb the coastal mountain Rauhfang. Haslinger most likely knew about the possible danger, because he returned to the camp half way.
A month passed, no news came from the other two climbers, and, in the end, the search for them began.
A few days later, a group of rescuers, high in the Dead Mountains, were shocked by a terrible sight: two corpses lay near a hut made of snow.
At the same time, Ludwig Pichler's stomach was ripped open, the stomach was cut out and stuffed into a backpack. Who and why committed this cruel and completely incomprehensible crime from the point of view of logic is still unknown. You could have just shot the unfortunate man!
The investigation managed to find out only the fact that until the end of the war Helmut Meyer and Ludwig Pichler worked at an "experimental station" located on the shores of Lake Toplitz.
According to Nazi archives, the German Navy was testing new weapons at this base. It is possible that these two were witnesses or even participants in the laying of caches.
In the summer of 1952, a French geography teacher named Jean de Soz went to Lake Toplitz in order to search for treasures. A week later, one of the local residents stumbled upon the corpse of the unfortunate teacher near the lake. Not far from Jean's body, investigators found a rather deep hole.
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 another mystery.
It was 1959. A scuba diving team, funded by the West German weekly Stern, was licensed to conduct diving operations on Lake Toplitz.
The divers managed to lift from the bottom 15 boxes and containers made of sheet iron, in which they found themselves … No, no, not the sought-after Nazi treasure, but fake English banknotes of 1935-1937. in the amount of 55 thousand pounds. This was a great disappointment for the expedition.
The work of the search group was abruptly curtailed after scuba divers lifted from the bottom a box marked "B-9" from the bottom on August 27, 1959, which contained documents of the former General Directorate of Imperial Security, as well as lists of prisoners of concentration camps.
However, instead of congratulations, the members of the expedition received a telegram with the strictest order: “Further stay is inexpedient. Stop searching immediately."
The official reason for the withdrawal of the expedition was the alleged lack of funds. However, this was a clear lie.
Only a few days before the telegram, the Stern magazine allocated an additional 30 thousand marks for work on the lake. As the Austrian newspaper Volkshtimme wrote, Stern was simply gagged with large sums. And it was done by those who really did not want some of the secrets of the Third Reich to become public.
Soon, local authorities imposed a strict ban on unauthorized diving into the waters of the lake.
On October 6, 1963, 19-year-old German Alfred Egner, a specialist in diving, found his death in Lake Toplitz.
The circumstances of this drama are extremely suspicious, since Egner was not the first victim of the cursed treasure: before him, a dozen adventurers died in the treacherous waters of the lake or in its vicinity, and this, undoubtedly, did not close the chain of deaths.
In November 1984, the Austrian government took over the mysterious lake. All approaches to Toplitsa were taken under the control of the gendarmerie.
Along with the next batch of fake pounds, the divers managed to lift to the surface a V-rocket weighing 1 ton and 3.5 meters long.
The inspection of the rocket body extremely surprised the army miners: after lying for almost forty years at the bottom of the lake, not the slightest trace of rust was noticeable on the rocket body.
Two conclusions suggested themselves: either the rocket body was made of some kind of rust-proof metal (or was coated with some kind of rust-preventing compound), or the rocket had hit the lake quite recently.
But the main find awaited the search engines ahead. In the southwestern part of the lake, with the help of mine detectors and special detectors, Austrian specialists of the mine clearance service discovered the presence of a large amount of metal not on the bottom, but under the bottom of the lake. It turns out that the secret bunker on two lakes actually exists?
Soon, 70 m from the edge of the coast, a passage was discovered leading to a system of underground bunkers. To the deep regret of the treasure hunters, the passage turned out to be blown up and blocked by heaps of boulders and earth.
However, the Austrian police managed to find a witness who claimed that at the end of the war, before the entrance was blocked, he visited the bunkers and saw there a huge cave filled with numerous boxes.
Later, historians found out that during the Second World War, prisoners of the Mauthausen camp were brought to Lake Toplitz for the production of some secret underground work.
They were the ones who pierced adits-passages in the underwater part of the lake. For this, the waters of the lake were temporarily diverted to the side.
The archives of the federal department, which is in charge of natural resources, confirmed that the water level in the lake for some unknown reason dropped by one and a half meters at the end of the war.
And then, for no apparent reason, he again took his natural mark. By the way, no one has yet managed to get into these suspicious bunkers.
Nowadays, the search for Nazi treasures does not stop, the secrets of the mountain lake Toplitz positively do not give rest to researchers.
In February 2001, one more, already thirteenth expedition was undertaken to its bottom. This time the most modern technology was used - the American deep-sea bathyscaphe "Phantom".
The Phantom team signed a contract with the CBS television company and the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, which, in particular, is engaged in the search for pre-war contributions of Jews who became victims of the Holocaust.
The divers were required to fully survey the bottom of the lake and bring anything of interest to the surface.
The very first dives were marked by significant results. Cameras installed on the bathyscaphe recorded several oblong objects in one of the deepest places.
With the help of robots, it was possible to hook and lift to the surface 9 galvanized boxes weighing about 10 kg each. The ascent was watched by hundreds of tourists, for whom a huge raft was built nearby - the expedition was by no means secret.
The coast, where the mysterious cargo was delivered, was securely cordoned off by the police.
The observers could only see how the boxes were loaded onto armored trucks and escorted to Salzburg. The authorities promised to tell about their contents only after careful examination.
In the meantime, there are rumors. Some people talk about safes, which allegedly contain personal accounts in Swiss banks and lists of Jewish millionaires who were shot by the Nazis.
But all the same, the participants and everyone who watched the Phantom's dives are more concerned about the legends about buried treasures.
Many books have been written on this topic in recent years. One of the most famous authors - the Austrian writer Markus Keberl - proves, for example, that under the water of Lake Toplitz the Nazis hid nothing more than containers with the famous Amber Room.
In total, according to experts who have studied the archives for many years, about a dozen of the most valuable treasures are kept in Lake Toplitz. According to experts, it is in this lake (or under it), among other things, that are hidden 22 cans with Otto Skorzeny's gold, 5 kg of Kaltenbrunner diamonds, the most valuable collection of postage stamps that belonged to Goering, and, finally, boxes with the gold reserves of the Reichsbank.
Studies show that all these treasures at one time, one way or another, visited the area of Lake Toplitz.