WW2 Treasure in Austria? PhD Candidate Klovekorn the Relic Hunter

If it were not true, the story of WW2 treasures hiding deep within an alphine lake in Austria, sounds more like a Hollywood fictional movie. Yet its true.

The great German historian Heinrich Schliemann discovered Troy in 1870 by his steadfast research of myths. Therefore we should be amazed and encouraged that even historical myths can be based on real events.

So is the myth of a treasure in this Austrian lake real or fiction? There is certainly no gold in the lake, no diamonds and no artwork to be found therein, however, unbelievably, it does indeed keep tens of thousands of pounds worth of counterfeit notes! Most of these were recovered by the government after WW2 and the diving conditions of the lake are so hazardous that many have lost their lives in attempting to dive the lake.

In the dying days of WW2 the Nazi's were realizing their terrible empire of darkness was about to come to an end. Some tried to escape, others committed suicide. A rare few began hiding looted art and stolen goods. This included the use of the Alphine Lake Toplitz as a secret depository to hide tens of thousands of pounds of forged five pound notes. Called Operation Bernhard, the Nazi's used the counterfeit notes for German spies, to bribe and to raise inflation. When the war was almost lost, it was dumped into lake Toplitz!

In 2019 I used a drone to recover some of these five pound notes (see photos) some 80m under the water. A real five pound note from this era is worth about 200 pounds whereas the Nazi fake is worth about 400 pounds.

I then filmed another YouTube video on how to tell the difference between a Nazi fake and a real five pound note. You would be amazed to learn that the Bank of England purposely designed faults into the notes such that they could be recognised by experts and I run you through which faults had been replicated by the Nazi's and which had been missed.

Knowing which faults by design were part of the Bank of England secret verification system, helps experts today to identify the fakes, which by virtue of their rarity and history are so much more expensive.

Diving the lake is forbidden, do not attempt to dive the lake it is very dangerous.

According to further myths, competing Nazi organisations still active after World War II, began fighting one another to get control of the Nazi loot. Members of former SA and SS organisations were shot dead in the struggle for the lost treasure.

What can we learn from this history? That the relics of history remain and are a touch away from a dark past. That evil lurks in dark schemes but never pays off.

Exploring the landscape in search for the lost city of Troy, or seeking to discover the Holy Grail, or in this case, finding lost Nazi treasure in an Austrian lake, history is very much alive today and we can learn from it to apply it to our lives in the present!

Henning Kloevekorn Phd Can.

Klovekorn the Relic Hunter