The trove of declassified documents in the National Archives totally debunks the myth that the Nazis were disciplined, incorruptible warriors motivated by a warped, delusional ideology. Most telling was the capriciousness with which Hitler invoked his Aryan litmus test. Unwilling to lose some of the military's best and brightest, Hitler sanctioned the presence of more than 1,200 Jews in the German army. The documents make breathtakingly clear that plunder and conquest were the only two inviolable principles of the Third Reich, and suggest that Hitler's demented master-race theory was merely cynical propaganda to legitimize his insatiable larceny.
One of the first orders of business for the invading Nazi army in each conquered European capital was a raid on the national treasury. The contents of museums were also often pilfered, and the homes and wealth of Jews were confiscated. By 1944 the Germans had emptied out, not counting Vichy France, eight national treasuries -- in Albania, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslavakia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, and Yugoslavia -- the greatest robbery in the history of the world.
Even as the Allies firebombed Germany, the Nazis were removing their plunder from the Reischbank and burying it in dozens of mines throughout the country, in the vain belief that they would see it again once they had negotiated a truce with the Allies. In the Merkers potassium mine alone, $241 million worth of gold bullion, jewelry, and gold fillings from the mouths of concentration camp victims was found.
--Ann Louise Bardach
Vanity Fair
March 1997
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