THE MYSTERY OF THE GOLDEN TRAIN (“Hidden Traces of the Grey Wolf”).

The Third Reich’s agony began with the surrender of Italy in early September 1943 and the subsequent opening of a second, southern front. By the end of the year, Field Marshal Rommel’s corps had been routed in North Africa, and another Field Marshal, Paulus, had been defeated at Stalingrad. Between June and December 1944, British and American bombers dropped 700,000 tons of bombs on Germany – more than all the bombs dropped during the war by all the participants. Post-war experts calculated that the total power of the explosives dropped from the skies on Germany EACH MONTH was equivalent to fifty atomic bombs, only one of which was dropped on Hiroshima! The heaviest bombing of Berlin was on 3 February 1945, when 937 enemy bombers dropped 2,300 tons of bombs on the city in one day.
The Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, and Kriegsmarine were running out of fuel, and the oil fields of Romania were burning. By early 1945, the Western Allies had a military superiority of 25 aircraft and 20 tanks to 1 in Germany. Nearly all of the Third Reich’s surface and submarine fleets were destroyed, and industrial centers were bombed. Germany fought on three fronts – north, south and east. The end was near.
In my book “Hidden Traces of the Grey Wolf”, I used sources not available to researchers in the former USSR and Germany. These are memoirs of the highest officials of the Third Reich and documents of the secret services of the United States. It is not possible to find them on the Internet. The book contains historical facts that are completely unknown to most people. But these facts influenced the events known to the absolute majority.
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THE BROWN CARDINAL’S PLAN.
When the soldier Adolf Hitler returned from the war in November 1918, he had 15 marks and 30 pfennigs in his bank account. By 1945, Chancellor Hitler was the richest man in Europe. Helping him get rich was Martin Bormann. Hitler, who was in politics, left the administrative and financial matters to his party secretary, who started the business by making a few pfennigs profit from the sale of a stamp with the Fuehrer’s picture on it. The stamp sold well in Europe, Asia, and America. And the profits from sales ran into millions of dollars and Reichsmarks.
By the end of 1943, after the surrender of Italy, the failure of the attempt to seize the Suez Canal and all the Arab oil that went with it, and then the defeat of the army at Stalingrad, torn apart by the Caspian oil, many of Hitler’s top men realized that the war was lost. The Special Branch of the General Staff began preparing operations to rescue gold, technology, and the Reich’s top officials. One of these operations was called ‘Tierra del Fuego’, a plan to escape Hitler to Argentina. Martin Bormann and his brother, the talented financier Albert Bormann, devised a network of clever combinations to pump the Third Reich’s financial assets into secret bank accounts in many countries. Argentina was chosen as a refuge for the Fuhrer and the entire Nazi top brass, so the main gold flows were directed there. In 1940 the country’s gold reserve was 346 tons, and in 1945 it became three times as large and amounted to 1,173 tons.
The Bormann brothers’ abilities were known to Allen Dulles, the secret American OSS service resident in Bern, Switzerland. After the war, this service became known as the CIA, and Allen Dulles became its first director.
After the First World War and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, lawyer Allen Dulles represented American corporations in Germany and was personally acquainted with the entire Nazi top brass long before Hitler came to power. Dulles had strong connections in the US government and it is no coincidence that when the Nazis were looking for a way to negotiate an armistice with the Americans and British after the surrender of Italy, Dulles was included in their plan as one of the main intermediaries.
SS chief Himmler, along with the Reich’s chief diplomat Ribbentrop and SD foreign intelligence chief Schellenberg, offered to unite the Americans against Stalinist Bolshevism, which threatened to occupy all of Europe. As a concession, Himmler released 17,000 Scandinavian prisoners of war and agreed to release all Jews held in concentration camps. In early 1945, Field Marshal Göring also tried to negotiate with the Americans and British. His proposals were not much different from Himmler’s; he too was in favor of continuing the war.
America was not interested in continuing the war. It was interested in military and industrial technology, in which the Nazis were far ahead, had successfully tested a ballistic space rocket, and were close to completing the nuclear payload for that rocket. It was this factor that was crucial to the Allied landings in Normandy in 1944, to capture or destroy all the secret German facilities in northern Europe that were working on nuclear weapons.

When the Third Reich began to collapse, the Nazis got busy salvaging the loot. All special trains and lorries with valuables were sent south to the mountains of Bavaria, Thuringia, and Austria. These transports were under the control of Reichsleiter Bormann. Naturally, the Americans were interested not only in military technology, but also gold, and the contents of all museums in Europe – all that the Nazis had managed to loot and now hastily hid in the salt mines, mountains of Bavaria, and lakes in Austria. That is why the commander of the Allied Forces, General Eisenhower, concentrated his operations in the southern regions of the Third Reich. Where the Germans hid gold, American bombers did not drop bombs. At a council of war, the general told his commanders: “The Russians want Berlin? Let them take it. We don’t want ruins and unnecessary casualties. We will take the rest…”.
The gold and technology of the Third Reich were offered to the Americans by Martin Bormann. In exchange for the lives of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, himself, Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller, and Kaltenbrunner, commander-in-chief of German forces in Southern Europe. The offer was accepted. In early 1945, Allen Dulles was in direct contact with Bormann’s confidants, representing the American side in negotiations for a separate peace in Austria and Italy. During the negotiations, the “Brown Cardinal” offered the Americans a “gold train” as an advance payment.

Ernst Kaltenbrunner was the head of all the secret services in the highest hierarchy of the Reich. He reported to the SD, the SS, and the Gestapo. After the attempted assassination of Hitler in July 1944, Kaltenbrunner unleashed his henchmen on the conspirators, who were hanged, shot and their wives beheaded. Kaltenbrunner was rewarded with a golden party badge on his uniform and made commander of all Nazi forces in southern Europe.
One of Kaltenbrunner’s most trusted confidants was his adjutant, Major Wilhelm Höttl of the SD Foreign Intelligence Service. This Major was one of those who represented their boss in negotiations with Allen Dulles in Italy. In the early spring of 1945, as Soviet troops approached Hungary’s borders, the Hungarian government decided to move all its historical treasures to Germany for safekeeping. In the utmost secrecy, a railway train was formed in Budapest and the national treasures and relics of the royal palace were loaded into its carriages. Gold and silver, paintings, frescoes, statues and other works of art, diamonds, pearls, emeralds, and sapphires were loaded in hundreds of crates. Among all this good stuff were valuables confiscated from Hungarian Jews who had been sent to concentration camps.
The Hungarian Colonel Arpad Toldi was in charge of forming the train and sending it to Berlin. His old comrade was the same SD Major Höttl, Kaltenbrunner’s adjutant mentioned above. The Major had been authorized by his superior to escort the train to its destination, and only he knew what that destination was. Höttl was also in charge of guarding the train. The train, whose contents were estimated at 6 billion US dollars (at the current exchange rate), left Budapest and traveled westwards on circuitous routes, hiding from enemy aircraft in the mountains and gorges of Austria.
The train passed safely through Austrian territory and the Major informed his boss. Then something inexplicable happened. Not far from the small Tyrolean town of Schnann, the train was stopped and robbed by unknown assailants. These mysterious robbers promptly loaded fifty crates of particularly valuable cargo into their army trucks. It was as if they knew beforehand in which wagons these crates were to be found. Having done their business, they disappeared as quickly as they had appeared, without a sound or a shot being fired.
What was in the crates and who the robbers were remained a mystery forever. One thing is certain – they were not cowboys from the Wild West or Odessa bandits. They were from the same department responsible for getting the train to its destination. The guards opened the carriages for the robbers and helped them carry out the crates.

On the eighth of April 1945, the “gold train” arrived near Werfen and was hidden in a tunnel. Major Höttl reported to his superior that the transit had been completed safely. A direct telephone line was set up between Dulles’ residence in Bern, Switzerland, and Kaltenbrunner’s villa in Austria. Bormann used the line to coordinate joint action between the contracting parties. The line was used to inform recipients of the arrival of valuable cargo.
A few days later, American President Roosevelt died, and his death threw the work of all the secret services into turmoil. It was reported that the Chief of Staff of the British-American Forces, General Donovan, nicknamed “Wild Bill” in honor of his hero, had suspended ‘Operation Crossword’, which was to transfer the train’s valuables to the Americans. He suspended it until he returned from Washington, where he had gone to receive instructions from the new president. Everything that happened after that was classified indefinitely, so it is unlikely that it will ever be available to researchers and historians.
The conspirators probably coordinated their actions to their mutual satisfaction. Almost all the people mentioned in the exchange sheet soon disappeared safely, and the press, which had tried to make a fuss about their mysterious disappearance, moved on to other events. Martin Bormann and Ernst Kaltenbrunner were unlucky; something in the plan did not work in their favor.
As for Martin Bormann, we can assume that Hitler no longer needed a party secretary and personal spy in the country he was traveling to. His brother Albert was far more useful to Hitler in his new life than a party secretary in the Burning Reich. Albert Bormann, the financier, was the only one who knew into which accounts and to which countries the Reich’s gold was being sent. He did it personally.
Well, Kaltenbrunner must have done himself harm. Most likely his men robbed the train in the vicinity of the Tyrolean town, for only he, Kaltenbrunner, knew the contents of the boxes in the wagons. Perhaps for this reason he was removed from the list of fugitives and ended his life on the gallows in Nuremberg.

70 YEARS LATER.
In November 2016, the Associated Press news agency reported that a search had begun for a Nazi train full of treasure that disappeared in 1945. According to legend, the train disappeared in 1945 in a mountain tunnel in southwestern Poland, on the outskirts of a Polish town in Silesia, in the final months of the war as the Third Reich secured items from advancing Red Army units.
Researchers who have spent decades searching military archives in vain have concluded that such a train could not have been there. But the treasure hunters ignored the experts’ verdict, hauled heavy machinery to the outskirts of the town, and began digging. You can’t deprive people of their dreams! As the excavator shoveled the earth, the two treasure hunters, Richter, a German, and Koper, a Pole, were joined by several other volunteers. They all hoped to find the train within a few days. Their optimism was bolstered by the story of two people who, using radar equipment, had allegedly spotted a mysterious train underground last year, not far from the castle near the town of Wałbrzych.
Szuchy immediately sparked gold fever in the area. Metal detectors and shovels were in demand, but the sinister rumor-mongers who had started the fuss suddenly disappeared. It was rumored that they were the shovel sellers.
A government official poured paraffin on the fire and said: “…I am 99 percent sure that the train exists…”. The new wave of media hype about the missing train attracted gawkers from all over Europe. It gave a financial boost to the part of the Silesian coal region where unprofitable mines had been closed with the collapse of communism. But the report by geological experts from Krakow University, who used magnetic equipment to find no train trace, came as a cold shower.
But the diggers did not give up! Or perhaps they continued to deceive investors because you can count on funding and pumping out money as long as there is interest. Andrzej Gajik, a spokesman for the search group, announced that six independent companies, using different radar equipment, had found anomalies pointing to an underground tunnel in the mountainous area along the railway. “The geological radar results are very promising, it’s great and we expect success,” Gaik reassured the diggers. Researchers say the existence of a train full of gold, which is said to have disappeared in these areas in May 1945, has never been conclusively proven. The Polish authorities, however, support the treasure hunt, which has captured the imagination of adventurers for decades. Well, the authorities’ interest is understandable. They do not charge any money for the search and, if diggers get lucky, the officials’ share is guaranteed.
And so the legend of the train was born. According to this legend, a train loaded with treasure disappeared into a tunnel complex under the Owl Mountains. This complex, known as “The Giant”, was a secret Nazi project that was not completed in time. The area belonged to Germany at the time but became part of Poland in the post-war settlement. The rumor was spread by an old miner, Tadeusz Slowikowski, who heard the story from a German. The German allegedly claimed that a train leaving the city of Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland) in the spring of 1945 had disappeared before reaching Waldenburg (now Wałbrzych), about 65 kilometers west of the Owl Mountains. Local historian Pavel Rodzijevic challenged the miners’ story, telling Associated Press reporters facts from archival documents that the gold had been evacuated to the German Central Bank in Berlin long before Soviet troops approached Breslau. The historian also argued that it made no sense to build a railway tunnel near an active railway. He argued that no documents on such a project have been found, whereas documents on the most secret projects of the Third Reich have survived, including a project for an underground tunnel under the Xenge Castle in Walbrzych. But as they say, the earth is filled with rumors and all those historians, miners, and diggers probably turned out to be their victims.

FROM THE ORIGINAL EXCAVATION REPORT
(full information is available on the Internet).
Search resumes for Nazi gold train that might not even exist. The Associated Press by VANESSA GERA: “…The search in southwestern Poland attests to the power of a local legend claiming a Nazi “gold train” disappeared in a mountain tunnel as the Germans escaped the advancing Soviet army at the end of World War II. Explorers in Poland began digging Tuesday for a legendary Nazi train said to be laden with treasure and armaments. Heavy machinery begins the search, the work of explorers hoping to find a legendary Nazi train laden with treasure …”
“…Legend holds the train was armed and loaded with treasure and disappeared after entering a complex of tunnels under the Owl Mountains, a secret project known as “Riese” (or «Giant») which the Nazis never finished. The area belonged to Germany at the time, but has been part of Poland since the borders were moved in the postwar settlement…”.

TWO COMMENTS.
1) Where Martin Bormann hid the gold and how he disappeared.
After the terrible bombing of Berlin on February 3, 1945, Bormann ordered all the gold and securities of the Reichsbank to be transported to Thuringia, 250 kilometers southwest of the capital. The train’s $238 million worth of contents were hidden in the Kaiserode mine. The Americans discovered 134 similar caches in salt mines and mountain caves in the Bavarian and Austrian Alps. The Nazis booby-trapped all entrances to the mines in case curious onlookers showed up.
In early April, two more treasure trains were sent by Bormann to Munich under heavy SS guard. These two trains disappeared, no record of them surviving. One of the last transports with Nazi gold was an airplane that landed in Salzburg, Austria. The gold was loaded onto army trucks and buried in the woods near the Tyrolean town of Rauris.
Documentation of all the caches was kept only at Bormann’s hideout, and he hoped that these papers would prove stronger than armor. On the night of May 2, 1945, in the armored car in which Martin Bormann and the Fuhrer’s doctor Ludwig Stumpfegger tried to get out of the besieged Reich Chancellery, hit a shell fired from an anti-tank gun. The shell penetrated the armor and passengers were killed. The corpses were so disfigured that they could not be identified. The remains were buried near a railroad bridge. Bormann’s hidden papers were never found.
As Hitler’s disappearance remained a mystery, Martin Bormann became a myth too. In the years that followed, he was seen in Rome, Moscow, Egypt, South America, Denmark, Sweden, and Japan. He disguised himself as a monk or a farmer flew helicopters, and crossed mountain ranges on a donkey.
Simon Wiesenthal, an Austrian Jew who went to Israel, realized that there was good money to be made from the myth. To promote the deal, Wiesenthal announced in the press that he was already on the trail of Bormann, but needed financial support. Money poured into his foundation and the world was fascinated by the publications of the “Nazi hunter”. Wiesenthal and the aforementioned shovel salesmen copied each other jealously.
This continued until late 1972 when German exhumation teams unearthed the remains of two bodies near a railway bridge in Berlin. Pathologists confirmed that these were the remains of Stumpfegger and Bormann. All the journalists who had made money from stories about the missing Nazis became despondent. But Wiesenthal, who had lost his business, was the saddest of all. With the death of Martin Bormann, the fate of the caches remains unknown. Judging by the fact that the Americans only managed to find 10% of the caches, the Bormann archives and the Reich’s treasures are still unaccounted for, waiting for their lucky digger.
Perhaps Martin Bormann’s brother, the talented financier Albert Bormann, who was involved in the transfer of the Reich’s gold across the ocean and himself safely hid in Argentina, was the only one who knew about the caches.

2) How Hitler helped all his enemies.
Gradually, all Nazi military technology, including space and nuclear technology, and scientific personnel moved overseas, making America the most powerful country on the planet. The Russians got the small stuff. Not counting the heaps of junk looted by Marshal Zhukov and his entourage, Siberian factories are still smoking with trophy German machine tools many decades after the war. The trophy liner renamed the ‘Admiral Nakhimov’, which smoked for half a century after the war, was sunk by hapless Soviet sailors in the early 1990s on the roadstead of Novorossiysk Bay (I had a cadet training on this liner as a helmsman in 1967 and can testify that it was a unique ship of the twentieth century).
Cargo ships of the “Liberty” series, built in American shipyards with a safety margin of only one voyage, were an important part of the Odessa Shipping Sea Company after the war for another 30 years until Soviet shipbuilders eventually learned to copy German shipbuilding from blueprints stolen from the Germans.
And what about the treasure of the gold train? Polish enthusiasts are still searching for it. Diggers are hoping for a miracle, believing that tons of gold are hidden in the rocks somewhere nearby. They may have to dig up the entire territory reclaimed from the Germans. One thing is for sure – potatoes grow better on dug-up land.

© Copyright: Walter Maria Certificate of Publication #216122700097