First Special Service Force
6th CO, 3rd REG
Living History Group Member: HRS

On April 16 at 7 a.m. the convoy arrived. The move commenced once again, under the watchful eye of Morris, who arrived back at Merkers around 9:30 a.m. The move was accomplished by 357th Infantry Regiment personnel, assisted by the one hundred POWs who arrived with an escort of guards later in the day. The move went quickly, in part because some of the art had been moved to the surface the previous day. Besides the Merkers treasures, a few art objects in forty-five cases were removed from the Ransbach mine and added to the convoy. The move was completed at about 8:30 p.m. With this phase of the operation completed, the 357th Infantry Regiment's Third Battalion took leave of Merkers and rejoined their Ninetieth Infantry Division comrades. The First Battalion would remain at Merkers, under Corps Control, until the treasure's disposition had taken place.

On April 17, at 8:30 a.m. the art treasure convoy, named TASK FORCE HANSEN, moved out from Merkers, having approximately the same strength security guard as the gold convoy with the exception that fewer aircraft were used. The convoy consisted of twenty-six ten-ton trucks loaded with art, two loaded with POWs, and two empty for use in the event that a transfer of loads became necessary. The art convoy arrived at Frankfurt at 2:45 p.m., and an hour later the unloading and storing of the artwork began, supervised by Stout, assisted by the newly promoted Captain Dunn. The unloading was completed at 10:30 p.m., and at 11 p.m. Colonel Walker and the Ninety-ninth Battalion 457th Infantry Regiment departed, and the POWs were sent on another assignment.

 Disposition of the Treasure That afternoon, as the loading was taking place, McSherry visited the Reichsbank and directed that a tentative inventory be prepared of the gold, silver, and currency. This inventory was completed at 10 p.m. and handed to McSherry. The next day, April 18, Eisenhower cabled the War Department with a rough estimate of the Merkers find. Two days later, Eisenhower's chief of staff sent the Combined Chiefs of Staff a preliminary inventory of the Merkers treasure. It indicated that the value of the gold, silver, and currency was over $520 million. In his cover letter he pointed out that a large quantity of the loot appeared to have been taken by the SS from victims and suggested that proper agencies be contacted to send representatives to review the loot in terms of being evidence in war crimes proceedings.

Sometime after noon on April 17 or 18, Bernstein, now back at Frankfurt, learned that his colleagues had uncovered in the Merkers find a series of account books belonging to Thoms's Precious Metals Department, which Thoms had earlier informed Bernstein had been sent back to Berlin. In interrogating Thoms on April 18, Bernstein asked him to explain the books. Thoms indicated that the books were a running inventory of the gold bars and gold and silver coins held by the Reichsbank for its own account and the account of others. The books also provided specific information about each bar held at either Merkers or Berlin. Bernstein believed the books should be useful as a checklist against which the discovery of the Reichsbank gold could be controlled and might assist in the location of all of the Reichsbank gold.

On April 18 Bernstein sent McSherry a detailed report of the activities that had taken place during the preceding two weeks. He concluded by observing that "the Germans hid their assets in mines and other secret places in Germany, presumably with the intent of maintaining a source of financing of pro-Nazi activity." "Many of these caches," he continued, "have not yet been uncovered and should be ferreted out as soon as operations permit." He observed that it was "necessary that some procedure be established for analyzing and utilizing the property and records found in the Merkers area and those uncovered in the future." "Intelligence reports," he wrote, "indicate that just as the Germans secreted assets and valuable property within Germany, they also made elaborate arrangements for secreting assets in neutral and other nations of the world." "Every step should be taken," he urged, "in Germany to obtain information of the assets secreted both inside and outside Germany so that these assets cannot be used to perpetuate Nazism or contribute to the rebuilding of Nazi influence."

Beginning on April 14, Bernstein attempted to get someone to support his plan for a full-scale reconnaissance of Germany for other caches of loot. He contacted senior officers at XII Corps and Third Army for assistance, but no real help was forthcoming. Despite the lack of assistance, Bernstein, with a small reconnaissance party in Jeeps, left Frankfurt on April 19 in search of more loot. During the next two weeks his teams covered nineteen hundred miles, checking Reichsbanks all over American-occupied Germany and following up every lead regarding the whereabouts of gold. Of all the places visited by the reconnaissance parties, only three actually yielded recoveries of the so-called Reichsbank gold in the amount of $3 million. During May and June American soldiers found Reichsbank gold valued at about $11 million. Altogether the Americans had recovered 98.6 percent of the $255.96 million worth of gold shown on the closing balances of the Precious Metals Department of the Berlin Reichsbank.

In mid-August experts from the United States Treasury Department and the Bank of England completed the job of weighing and appraising the gold, gold coin, and silver bars that had been captured. The total value of the gold found in Germany was placed at $262,213,000. Also weighed and appraised was $270,469 worth of silver, as well as a ton of platinum. Eight bags of rare gold coins had not been appraised, nor had the SS loot.

During the summer of 1945, Allied currencies found at Merkers and elsewhere by the Americans were returned to various countries, and the process of restituting the artworks found at Merkers and elsewhere in the former German Reich began.(68) The gold found at Merkers was in early 1946 turned over to the Inter-Allied Reparation Agency and eventually turned over to the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold (TGC) for distribution to countries whose central-bank gold had been stolen by the Nazis. The TGC began the process of getting the gold returned to most countries as quickly as possible. However, cold war factors resulted in some of the gold not being restituted until 1996.

During the summer, efforts were made to ascertain the value of the SS loot found at Merkers, and discussions begun about its disposition. Within several years non-monetary gold, including that taken from victims of Nazi persecution, was given to the Preparatory Commission of the International Restitution Organization. Bernstein turned over the reports about the SS loot that he and his colleagues had produced as well as information contained in the records of the Precious Metals Department to war crimes prosecutors for use in connection with their preparations for the trials at Nuremberg. One of the counts on which Walter Funk was found guilty related to his dealings with the property taken from concentration camp victims by the SS and deposited in the Reichsbank.

Conclusion The accomplishments of recovering, moving, and managing the Merkers treasure by Colonels Bernstein, Barrett, Morris, Moore, Mason, and their colleagues may or may not have shortened the war. But they did block the Nazi leaders from further use of their looted gold and property of victims of their persecution. Their actions also ensured that the central banks of Europe would receive back at least some of the gold the Nazis had seized and that some funds would be available for restitution to individuals.

The story of the Merkers treasure still continues. During the summer of 1948, most of the records of the Reichsbank's Precious Metals Department were microfilmed by the U.S. Army and, interestingly enough, turned over to Albert Thoms, who was working for the successor bank to the Reichsbank. These records have subsequently disappeared in Germany, and there has been a search for them the past two years in the belief they would shed light on how much non-monetary gold (e.g., dental gold) was melted down and mixed with the monetary gold (i.e., central bank gold) and thus indicate how much restitution still should be made to victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs.

At an international Nazi Gold conference held in London in December 1997, several countries agreed to relinquish their claims to their share of the remaining 5.5 metric tons (worth about sixty million dollars) still held by the Tripartite Gold Commission (TGC) and donate it to a Nazi Persecution Relief Fund to help survivors of the Holocaust. Almost all of the claimant nations similarly agreed to such a policy during the course of 1998. Early in September 1998, in a ceremony held in Paris, the TGC announced its task was completed and went out of business. Thus, the Merkers story ends on a noble, selfless, just, and moral note, as upwards of fifteen countries were willing to forego receiving gold stolen from their nations by the Nazis and allow it to be used as compensation for victims of Nazi persecution.

Editor:  The 474th Infantry and the 99th Infantry part of the 474th provided all of the ground security and truck security on the move.  Col Edwin A Walker, Force HQ DET from Center Point, Texas assumed command of the First Special Service Force and then the 474th Infantry.  Lt Col Richard Whitney, HQ DET 1 Regiment from Akron, Ohio served in both the Force and the474th.