Lake Toplitz is called the "Black Pearl" of the Austrian Duchy of Styria. It is located sixty kilometers southeast of Salzburg, in the Dead Mountains, on the site of the ancient salt mines. The length of Lake Toplitz is about two kilometers, the width is no more than four hundred meters. The lake is deep enough, in some places - about a hundred meters. 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.
Alpine caches
In 1945, the territory of the Nazi empire was rapidly shrinking in size. Soviet troops moved non-stop to the west, from the opposite side Germany was pressed by the allies. While the Hitlerite army tried to hold on to the scraps of once conquered Europe, the Nazi leaders took swift measures to preserve the values. On Hitler's personal order, hundreds of trucks, loaded to the brim with "the national treasure of the German Reich," or, more simply, with riches stolen from all over Europe, went to caches prepared in advance in the Austrian Alps. On January 31, 1945, the German finance minister proposed the evacuation of the Reichsbank's gold reserves. Hitler agreed, and 24 wagons with gold and platinum, currency, foreign shares and paper imperial money departed from Berlin in the same direction. Routes,and even more so, the places of arrival were carefully classified.
But, unfortunately for the Nazis, the secret could not be completely kept. Numerous witnesses watched the convoys of trucks
heading in particular towards Lake Toplitz. Locals saw how some of the cars were hiding in the mountains, and from some of the SS men they dropped directly! in the waters of the lake dozens of huge boxes and metal boxes with the inscription - "Imperial cargo".
Victims of a mysterious lake
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The fact that so many boxes with unknown, but, most likely, valuable contents were flooded in the lake seriously interested the American command, and a group of military divers began a search 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 drowned boxes.
In February 1946, a small tent appeared on the shore of the lake. Two engineers from Austria settled there - Helmut Mayer and Ludwig Pichler. A certain Hans Haslinger arrived with them. The newcomers, not paying 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 from the other two climbers was received, in the end, their search 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, Pichler's stomach was ripped open, the stomach was cut out and shoved into a backpack. Who and why committed this cruel crime is still unknown. The investigation only found outthat until the end of the war, Mayer and Pichler worked at an "experimental station" located on the shores of Lake Toplitz, where the German fleet tested new weapons, and may have witnessed or even participated in the laying of caches.
In the summer of 1952, French geography teacher Jean de Sauz went here in search of treasures. A week later, one of the local residents stumbled upon the corpse of the unfortunate teacher near the lake. Not far from the corpse, investigators found a rather deep hole. When it was covered with earth from the dump, there was not enough earth. The conclusion suggested itself: de Soz found something, for which he paid with his life.
Ban from above
The year 1959 has come. A scuba diving team, funded by the West German weekly Stern, has been licensed to conduct diving operations on Lake Toplitz. The divers managed to lift from the bottom fifteen boxes and containers made of sheet iron, in which they found … counterfeit English banknotes of 1935-1937 worth 55 thousand pounds. The work ended abruptly after scuba divers lifted from the bottom a box marked "B-9" 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 reason is the alleged lack of financial resources. However, this was a clear lie. Just a few days before the telegram, the Stern magazine allocated an additional thirty 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. Local authorities soon imposed a strict ban on unauthorized diving.
Underwater bunker
In November 1984, the Austrian government took over the mysterious lake. All approaches to the lake were taken under the control of the gendarmerie. Along with another batch of fake pounds, the divers managed to lift to the surface a 3.5-meter V-rocket weighing one ton. The survey of the rocket body surprised the army miners. Having spent forty years at the bottom of the lake, the rocket had no trace of rust.
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 demining service discovered the presence of a large amount of metal not at the bottom, but under the bottom of the lake.
Soon, seventy meters 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.
Historians have found out that during the war years, prisoners of the Mauthausen camp were brought to Lake Toplitz for underground work. It was they who pierced the adits-passages in the underwater part. 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 at the end of the war dropped by one and a half meters. By the way, no one has managed to get into these suspicious bunkers so far.
The search does not stop
And in the XXI century, the secrets of the mountain lake Toplitz haunt researchers. In February 2001, another, thirteenth expedition was undertaken to its bottom. This time the most modern technology is 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. Divers must fully survey the bottom of the lake and bring everything to the surface. which may be of interest.
The very first dives were marked by a find. Cameras installed on the bathyscaphe recorded several oblong objects in one of the deepest places. With the help of robots, nine galvanized boxes weighing about 100 kg each were hooked and lifted to the surface. The ascent was watched by hundreds of tourists, for whom a huge raft was built nearby.
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 shot by the Nazis. Still, the participants and everyone who watches 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, for example, proves 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) that, among other things, 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. As studies show, all these treasures at one time, one way or another, visited the area of Lake Toplitz. Source: “Secrets of the XX century. Golden Series No. 6-from 2012