What is known today about 6 legendary treasures lost during World War II

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

War always brings with it not only grief and death, but also general chaos. In this position, it is very convenient to engage in robbery. This can be done with absolutely impunity and simply endlessly. This is exactly what the Nazis did during World War II. The destroyed and stolen priceless works of art, artifacts and other treasures were simply not in number. This list includes the most famous treasures lost by mankind in the crucible of World War II.

After the end of the war, many stories were told about real and invented lost treasures. These stories are so closely intertwined that it is sometimes impossible to distinguish between truth and lie. But all this fragmentary information has always excited the minds of various treasure hunters and countless treasure hunters.

1. Gold of Yamashita

Yamashita Tomoyuki was a general in the Japanese army that occupied the Philippines in 1944. Emperor Hirohito ordered him to hide gold bars and a huge amount of gold jewelry in the Philippine underground tunnels. According to legend, the tunnels were mined and equipped with a huge number of traps. All entrances and exits were walled up together with the prisoners of war and soldiers who worked there.

In general, the history of the lost countless treasures hidden by the "Malay Tiger", the so-called Yamashita, is covered with a dark veil of secrets and mysteries. No one knows for certain their true history. Historians only know that this gold was collected throughout Southeast Asia. It was intended in order to be able to continue the war after the surrender of Japan in 1945.

All researchers are inclined to believe that the Japanese emperor and his yakuza robbed banks in the occupied territories and stole valuables from private collections and museums. All this was first brought to Singapore. A little later, the treasures were shipped to the Philippines. There, the trail of these values was lost for many decades.

In 1971, a chest of gold was found in the Philippine caves by an archaeological expedition led by Rogelio Roxas. According to rumors, this was part of the lost treasures of Yamashita. Roxas claimed that the then President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, appropriated this and everything else.

There are versions that the CIA took out the treasures right after the end of World War II. In 2017, archaeologists stumbled upon one of the Philippine islands for untold treasures of gold bars, totaling tens of billions of dollars. But so far historians do not undertake to assert precisely that these are the very treasures.

2. Amber room

Peter I received an unusual and luxurious diplomatic gift from King Frederick Wilhelm I of Prussia in 1716. It was a set of natural amber panels. The panels were used to decorate the royal palace. The Amber Room was completed already during the reign of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna.

The Amber Room has become the main palace attraction. During the Second World War, it was barbarously dismantled and taken by the Nazis to Konigsberg. In 1944, the city was bombed by the allied forces. But historians still debate whether the Amber Room was destroyed, and treasure hunters still hope to find it. Officially, it is believed that it is lost irretrievably.

The restorers of the Tsarskoye Selo amber workshop have restored exactly the Amber Room in all its former splendor. The result of their long-term painstaking work can be seen now in the Catherine Palace.

3. Rommel's gold

The most densely shrouded in various myths is such a treasure of the Second World War as the legendary gold of Rommel. Erwin Rommel, Field Marshal of Germany and one of the most prominent military leaders of the Second World War. Rommel was a real "star" of the Third Reich, so to speak. This commander brilliantly carried out a number of operations in North Africa, so skillfully and cunningly that he received the nickname "desert foxes".

According to historians, Rommel personally had nothing to do with the stolen gold, although this legendary treasure still bears his name. During the military operations of the Nazis in Tunisia, they stole a huge amount of gold. Valuables were transported to the island of Corsica, and then by ship to Germany. It was on the way there that the ship supposedly sank and the treasure trail was lost.

4. Fossils of Beijing

Not all values that were stolen by the Nazis had a specific material value and were created by human hands. Beijing fossils are bones discovered by archaeologists in the vicinity of Beijing in the 1920s. Presumably they belong to people who lived in this area more than 700 thousand years ago. "Peking man", or simply Sinanthropus, according to scientists, is a dead-end branch of development.

In 1941, the Chinese government decided to send all these scientific treasures to the United States to save them from destruction during military operations. It so happened that at this very time the United States also entered the war and the camp, where the artifacts were awaiting shipment, was captured by the Japanese. The treasure trail was lost in the chaos of war.

It is still not known who eventually got the skulls: the Americans, the Japanese or the Chinese? The site of the discovery of these skulls in Zhoukoudan is the Peking Man Museum. There are casts of Peking fossils on display, but the most valuable exhibits, of course, are not. Excavations continue in the area to this day, but so far archaeologists have not found anything else.

5. "Portrait of a Young Man", Raphael

Many works of art were stolen by the Nazis, countless paintings by the most famous masters. The most famous of them is "Portrait of a Young Man" by the great Italian artist of the Renaissance, Raphael.

The canvas was stolen in 1939 from the Polish Prince Czartoryski Museum in Krakow. At first, Hans Frank owned the painting. He was then the head of the Nazi government in Poland. The work was kept in the Wawel Castle. When the territory was liberated and Frank was arrested, this picture, like many other values, was absent. The fate of the famous painting still remains unknown.

6. SS Minden

The German ship was loaded to the top with gold. It departed from the shores of Brazil on September 6, 1939 and headed for Germany. On the way, off the coast of Iceland, SS Minden collided with the British cruisers HMS Calypso and HMS Dunedin. According to legend, Adolf Hitler ordered the ship's captain to sink the ship if there was no way to escape, so that the cargo would not fall into the wrong hands.

Most likely, this was done. Gold was considered lost. Only in 2017 was the exact place where the ship sank was determined. In the same year, a group of British treasure hunters discovered a huge box filled with gold ingots. The weight of the find is as much as four tons, and the value of the treasure exceeds one hundred million dollars!

Humanity has lost a huge amount of priceless treasures. Among them there are those whose value cannot be measured in money. Read about one such legendary treasure in our article mysterious Liberia, which has been looking for 400 years.