Podcasts about Nazi gold

Faithful listeners of the podcast know it has been several months since our last regular episode, but this hiatus was for a very good reason. Behind the scenes, I have  been collaborating with John Clarence, the premier researcher on the Noss/Victorio Peak Gold Story, to develop an expansive new podcast series on that topic. You might be wondering why a JFK podcast is pivoting to a story about buried treasure. The truth is, the Victorio Peak gold story directly intersects with the lives of JFK and RFK, exposing hidden sides of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon that will give you serious pause and fundamentally change how you evaluate those presidencies…and perhaps for at least one of those men, how you evaluate his potential involvement in the JFK assassination.However, before we can understand Victorio Peak, we need a prelude. That prelude starts this weekend with a multi-episode deep dive into a well-documented, yet often overlooked, World War II event: the discovery of the Merkers salt mine. In April 1945, advancing American forces uncovered the staggering wealth of the Third Reich, mostly stolen from neighboring countries during the war.  At this late stage of the war, it was now hidden deep underground, including 8,198 gold bars and a horrifying quantity of SS loot stripped from concentration camp victims. This well documented historical event is crucial because it goes directly to understanding how the U.S. government and  our military at the time looked upon massive treasures of stolen gold, and how they may have ultimately handled portions of it. It sets the foundational stage for the Victorio Peak story that follows.If the idea of the government secretly moving and hoarding massive caches of gold sounds like a fictional tie-together, a chilling coincidence from this past week proves otherwise. In this 7-minute teaser, I weave our upcoming historical narrative covering the Merkers mine  with the shocking, breaking news of David Rush. Rush, a former senior CIA officer with top-secret clearance, was arrested after an FBI raid on his home uncovered 303 one-kilogram gold bars—valued at roughly $40 million—sitting in a basement safe. Prosecutors allege that Rush created a fake, highly classified "black box" Special Access Program to request this incredible wealth directly from the CIA for supposed "work-related expenses".This modern-day scandal takes the historical rumors of hidden government gold and makes them very real in the modern realm. It forces us to pause and rethink what is possible as we begin to stitch this massive web together. The hiatus is over. Listen in to this teaser as we prepare to journey into the Merkers Mine, with four episodes due out this weekend, telling this chilling World War II  story. And from there... we go to Victorio Peak, and beyond.

In this highly anticipated first episode of our new series, we hit pause on the Noss/Victorio Peak legal battles (episodes you have NOT heard yet)  to ask a chilling question: What if some portion of the gold hidden inside that New Mexico mountain has a completely different, far darker origin? What if the mysterious bars found at Victorio Peak weren't Spanish colonial gold or Apache plunder, but stolen wealth from the ruins of the Third Reich?To understand this mind-bending possibility, we travel back to the dying days of World War II in Germany. Following the devastating Allied bombing of the Reichsbank in Berlin in February 1945, the Nazis frantically moved their remaining wealth—including the horrifying "Melmer" deliveries made up of property and dental gold systematically stripped from Holocaust victims—to a salt mine in the village of Merkers. There, 2,100 feet underground behind a three-foot-thick brick wall and a steel bank door, advancing American forces would soon discover over 8,198 bars of gold bullion, billions in currency, and priceless works of art stacked knee-high in the dark tunnels.But how does the greatest treasure discovery of World War II connect to the American Southwest? We explore the deeply secretive post-war era, drawing parallels to Operation Paperclip, which quietly moved German rocket scientists and V-2 equipment to the highly classified White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico—the exact location of Victorio Peak. As we examine the documented anomalies and missing records in the official accounting of the Merkers treasure, we lay out the chilling circumstantial case that a portion of this unimaginable wealth may have secretly arrived in the dead of night at White Sands sometime between 1945 and the early 1960's. Join us as we journey into the pitch-black tunnels of the Merkers mine to trace the official—and unofficial—path of the Nazi gold. Listen to our teaser posted just prior to Episode 1 in order to gain a better understanding of how this story begins to fit into the bigger picture of what we are about to bring to you at JFK The Enduring Secret

 In Part 2 of our Merkers Mine mini-series, the secret is out. On April 8, 1945, General George S. Patton learns that his advancing Third Army has stumbled upon the captured gold reserves of the Third Reich. But Patton being Patton, his first instinct isn't to hand it over to the bureaucrats. He orders a strict press blackout, surrounds the mine with tanks, and pitches audacious, off-the-books ideas to his superiors: minting the 250 tons of gold into medallions for his soldiers, or hiding it away to create a secret, self-sustaining financial endowment for his army to bypass congressional appropriations. It is a fascinating, chilling glimpse into how massive, untraceable wealth was viewed by military leaders at the time. But the geopolitical stakes are simply too high, as the Merkers area is slated to fall under Soviet control after the war. Supreme Allied Headquarters dispatches financial expert Colonel Bernard Bernstein to take control of the discovery and move it immediately. On April 12, history is made as Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton descend 2,000 feet down a pitch-black mine shaft in a rickety elevator. Behind a blasted steel and brick door in Room No. 8, they come face-to-face with the unimaginably vast treasure. Most devastatingly, they open the suitcases of the SS "Melmer" deliveries, discovering wedding bands, watches, and gold dental fillings systematically ripped from the victims of the Holocaust. The staggering scale of the plunder is matched only by the horrors witnessed later that same afternoon. Just hours after standing amidst the greatest concentration of stolen wealth in human history, the generals travel to Ohrdruf, the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by American forces. The horrific juxtaposition of the Third Reich's hoarded treasure and the emaciated corpses of its victims leaves Eisenhower deeply shaken and Patton physically sick. Listen in as we detail this extraordinary day in history, culminating in the frantic, massive logistical operation—Task Force Whitney—launched by the U.S. military to move the treasure out of the darkness and into the American zone. 

In Part 3 of our Merkers Mine series, the clock is ticking. Under the Yalta agreements, the region containing the mine is slated to be handed over to Soviet control. Every gold bar, suitcase of SS loot, and priceless work of art must be moved to the American zone immediately. Enter Lieutenant George Stout, America's premier art conservation expert, and the legendary "Monuments Men." Descending into the pitch-black tunnels, they face an impossible logistical nightmare: safely extracting hundreds of delicate, priceless masterpieces—including works by Rembrandt and Manet. In a detail that reads like pure fiction, the American soldiers frantically wrap these uncrates paintings in thousands of abandoned German army sheepskin coats, garments originally tailored for the Nazis' disastrous 1941 winter invasion of Russia.Meanwhile, the operation to extract 250 tons of gold bullion goes into overdrive. It is a backbreaking, round-the-clock effort to haul thousands of unwieldy bags up a single, shuddering elevator shaft. What follows is a massive, heavily guarded overland transport featuring 10-ton trucks, military police battalions, and continuous P-51 Mustang air cover. But the most valuable discovery of the day might not be the gold itself. Financial expert Colonel Bernard Bernstein uncovers the meticulous internal ledgers of the Reichsbank's precious metals department—the smoking gun that documents exactly whose wealth was stolen, providing crucial evidence that will later be used to prosecute Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg trials.But this story is not just about staggering wealth; it is inextricably linked to unimaginable horror. This episode returns to the devastating aftermath of the Ohrdruf concentration camp liberation, detailing General Eisenhower's uncompromising order to force local German civilians to march through the camp and witness the atrocities committed in their name—an event that ended in the shocking suicide of the town's mayor. Today, the Merkers Mine is an adventure tourist attraction with laser light shows, but as we conclude this chapter, we are reminded that much of the Nazi wealth disappeared into the shadows, and the final accounting has never truly been settled. Listen in as we trace the treasure out of the darkness and prepare for the finale of this World War II prelude.

In the thrilling finale of our Merkers Mine series, we confront the uncomfortable arithmetic of the Third Reich's stolen wealth. While the Allies recovered an astonishing 250 tons of gold at Merkers, hundreds of millions of dollars in looted Nazi gold remain completely unaccounted for to this day. Could a portion of this missing fortune have ended up deep inside a desert mountain in southern New Mexico?. To answer this, we explore the highly secretive post-war world of Operation Paperclip, which brought former Nazi rocket scientists and hundreds of train cars filled with V2 rocket components from the exact same German region as the Merkers mine directly to the White Sands Missile Range.This massive, chaotic logistical operation may have provided the perfect Trojan horse to smuggle stolen wealth into the United States. We delve into the tantalizing, controversial theory that diverted Nazi bullion was shipped alongside the rocket parts, meticulously concealed in crates falsely labeled as Volkswagen engines that were calibrated to match the exact weight of a real engine. The destination for these mysterious crates was White Sands—the home of Victorio Peak, a mountain already famous for a legendary Spanish gold discovery made by Doc Noss years earlier.The historical anomalies surrounding this peak are impossible to ignore. When two airmen secretly entered Victorio Peak in 1958, they didn't describe finding crude, centuries-old Spanish colonial ingots; they reported seeing modern, smelted, brick-shaped gold bullion stacked in orderly, military-style pyramids. Tying this massive web together is a chilling final revelation: Leland Howard, the powerful U.S. Treasury official sent to Frankfurt to oversee the captured Merkers gold in 1945, is the exact same man who later orchestrated the military's top-secret excavations and the suppression of the Noss family claims at Victorio Peak. The prelude is now complete. Join us as we close the book on the Merkers Mine and prepare to step fully into the enduring mystery of the Noss Gold.

Young women hired to paint watch dials with radium were told the glowing substance was harmless — even as their jaws crumbled and their bones slowly turned to dust from the inside out.*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*IN THIS EPISODE: During World War I, hundreds of young women went to work in clock factories, painting watch dials with luminous radium paint. But after the girls — who literally glowed in the dark after their shifts — began to experience gruesome side effects, they began a race-against-time fight for justice that would forever change US labor laws. (The Radium Ghost Girls) *** A man is forewarned about a traffic accident that probably would have killed him. Was it a guardian angel, or is there another explanation? (The Phantom's Fatal Forewarning) *** While the search for extraterrestrial life here in this universe is complicated enough, the problem becomes even murkier when you account for the multiverse theory. Could an alternate universe or dimension still be habitable by humans? (Is It Possible To Live In A Parallel Universe?) *** It has been proven that the Nazis were horrible war criminals and not only did some cruel and inhuman things to their prisoners, but even dove into the supernatural and paranormal in the hopes of turning the tide of the war in their favor. But I'm guessing you've not hear about how the Nazis used Bigfoot to further their plans, have you? (Nazi Gold and Bigfoot Costumes) *** Sometimes a horror film will haunt you in your dreams… but for one woman, those hauntings became more real than the movie itself. (It Was Just a Movie) CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:34.351 = Show Open00:03:42.692 = The Radium Ghost Girls00:20:52.772 = Is It Possible To Live In a Parallel Universe? ***00:25:02.899 = The Phantom's Fatal Forewarning00:26:43.885 = It Was Just a Movie00:36:52.566 = Nazi Gold and Bigfoot Costumes ***00:41:35.977 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakHELPFUL LINKS & RESOURCES…https://WeirdDarkness.com/STORE = Tees, Mugs, Socks, Hoodies, Totes, Hats, Kidswear & Morehttps://WeirdDarkness.com/HOPE = Hope For Depression or Thoughts of Self-Harmhttps://WeirdDarkness.com/NEWSLETTER = In-Depth Articles, Memes, Weird DarkNEWS, Videos & Morehttps://WeirdDarkness.com/AUDIOBOOKS = FREE Audiobooks Narrated By Darren Marlar SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Nazi Gold and Bigfoot Costumes” by Nick Redfern: http://bit.ly/33rXyXZ“Is It Possible To Live In a Parallel Universe?” by Sequoya Kennedy: http://bit.ly/2OOUOP6“It Was Just a Movie” submitted to WeirdDarkness.com by Kaitlynne G: http://bit.ly/2OrN4Dx“The Radium Ghost Girls” by Kate Moore: https://bzfd.it/37NLxQ2“The Phantom's Fatal Forewarning” submitted by Mark Ferris: http://bit.ly/2DoLaNI=====(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)= = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.=====Originally aired: July 31, 2018EPISODE PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/RadiumGirlsABOUT WEIRD DARKNESS: #WeirdDarkness is a true crime and paranormal podcast narrated by professional award-winning voice actor, Darren Marlar. Seven days per week, Weird Darkness focuses on all things strange and macabre such as haunted locations, unsolved mysteries, true ghost stories, supernatural manifestations, urban legends, unsolved or cold cases, conspiracy theories, and more. Weird Darkness has been named one of the “20 Best Storytellers in Podcasting” by Podcast Business Journal. Listeners have described the show as a blend of “Coast to Coast AM”, “The Twilight Zone”, “Unsolved Mysteries”, and “In Search Of”.DISCLAIMER: Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised.

Es ist mal wieder Pädagogischer Tag an der Schule der Studienräte und echte Kennende des Podcasts wissen, was das bedeutet, nämlich, dass diese Folge mal wieder mit Mach 4 durch eure Hörkanäle gepustet wird. Nicht viel Zeit und trotzdem viele Themen. Wie das geht, erfahrt ihr in dieser Folge. Zunächst lassen die Herren mal die vergangene Woche revue passieren, denn es stapelten sich Projekttag, Tag der offenen Tür und wie erwähnt Pädagogischer Tag. Doch was bei dem Einen Stress und Frustration auslöst, bereitet dem Anderen große Freude - woran das liegt, hört rein! Dann geht's noch um Hochzeiten und den Fachterminus von Sprösslingen wilder Ehen. Während ein obskurer Mensch die AfD unterwandert und eine ganz passable Hitlerparodie zum besten gibt, demonstrieren auf der anderen Seite Zigtausende gegen die Gründung der neuen Hitlerjugend...äh...Generation Deutschland. Weird alles...dann lieber Dampfzug fahren...Aber gut, Deutschland ist halt ein demokratischer und sozialer Brennpunkt. Perfekter Ort für ein Rap Battle! Die mündliche Prüfung heißt dieses Mal: "Martins großes Latrinum" Der Batzke testet die Lateinkenntnisse des Kollegen Pieler. Hier könnt ihr auch mitraten und euch das ein oder andere Zitat auch gerne mal notieren, denn: Non scolae sed vitae discimus.

This week the boys break out the tin foil hats and venture deep into the world of Conspiracy Theory with a tale that connects the dots between WWII, The Philadelphia Experiment, Deep Underground Military Bases, Alien Experimentation, Militarized Psychics, Time Travel, Nazi Gold... and that's just the beginning of The Montauk Project. For Live Shows, Merch, and More Visit: www.LastPodcastOnTheLeft.comKevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Last Podcast on the Left ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.

**Discussion begins at 3:15**World War II was a global conflict that lasted from 1939 to 1945, involving the Allies (primarily the U.S, UK, and Soviet Union) fighting against the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. The war resulted in massive destruction, the Holocaust, and the reshaping of international power dynamics, ultimately leading to the formation of the United Nations and the beginning of the Cold War.  During the war, the Nazis looted vast amounts of wealth, including gold, art, jewelry, and other precious materials. Much of the gold came from the central banks of occupied countries, particularly Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Poland. They also seized gold from Jewish families, including rings, teeth fillings, and other personal items.  As Germany faced inevitable defeat, high-ranking Nazi officials began to move large amounts of this looted wealth, including gold, out of sight. There were reports that huge amounts of gold were secretly stored in vaults, and some Nazi leaders began transferring the gold to places like Switzerland, where neutral banks could hold it safely.  There are also theories that gold was hidden in underground bunkers, caves, or remote locations across Europe, either to be recovered later or to be kept out of the hands of the Allies.  What do we know about the Nazi Gold, and is there more still out there?Send us a textSupport the showTheme song by INDA

Imagine working with a substance so dangerous it glows in the dark—and fighting for justice when it starts to destroy your life. That's the story of the Radium Girls.Darkness Syndicate members get the ad-free version. https://weirddarkness.com/syndicateInfo on the next LIVE SCREAM event. https://weirddarkness.com/LiveScreamInfo on the next WEIRDO WATCH PARTY event. https://weirddarkness.com/TVIN THIS EPISODE: During World War I, hundreds of young women went to work in clock factories, painting watch dials with luminous radium paint. But after the girls — who literally glowed in the dark after their shifts — began to experience gruesome side effects, they began a race-against-time fight for justice that would forever change US labor laws. (The Radium Ghost Girls) *** A man is forewarned about a traffic accident that probably would have killed him. Was it a guardian angel, or is there another explanation? (The Phantom's Fatal Forewarning) *** While the search for extraterrestrial life here in this universe is complicated enough, the problem becomes even murkier when you account for the multiverse theory. Could an alternate universe or dimension still be habitable by humans? (Is It Possible To Live In A Parallel Universe?) *** It has been proven that the Nazis were horrible war criminals and not only did some cruel and inhuman things to their prisoners, but even dove into the supernatural and paranormal in the hopes of turning the tide of the war in their favor. But I'm guessing you've not hear about how the Nazis used Bigfoot to further their plans, have you? (Nazi Gold and Bigfoot Costumes) *** Sometimes a horror film will haunt you in your dreams… but for one woman, those hauntings became more real than the movie itself. (It Was Just a Movie) CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Disclaimer and Cold Open00:01:51.271 = Show Intro00:04:35.160 = The Radium Ghost Girls00:22:26.355 = Is It Possible To Live In a Parallel Universe?00:26:38.413 = The Phantom's Fatal Forewarning00:28:17.033 = It Was Just a Movie00:39:33.151 = Nazi Gold and Bigfoot Costumes00:44:13.952 = Show CloseSOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM THE EPISODE…“Nazi Gold and Bigfoot Costumes” by Nick Redfern: http://bit.ly/33rXyXZ“Is It Possible To Live In a Parallel Universe?” by Sequoya Kennedy: http://bit.ly/2OOUOP6“It Was Just a Movie” submitted to WeirdDarkness.com by Kaitlynne G: http://bit.ly/2OrN4Dx“The Radium Ghost Girls” by Kate Moore: https://bzfd.it/37NLxQ2“The Phantom's Fatal Forewarning” submitted by Mark Ferris: http://bit.ly/2DoLaNIWeird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library. = = = = =(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)= = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.= = = = =Originally aired: July 31, 2018SOURCES PAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/RadiumGirls

Klaus-Michael Kuehne is Germany's richest man, and in recent years he's become a philanthropist. But how much of this generosity is atonement for the way his father built the family fortune during World War II? 

Discover the dark truth behind Nazi gold—how the Third Reich looted Europe to fuel its war machine, leaving behind a legacy of stolen treasure that still captivates treasure hunters today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ariella; lethal and lovely.Based on a post by ronde, in 2 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Steamy Stories.Packed and Stacked.She was maybe twenty-five, and even in the battle dress she was wearing, she looked slender. I couldn’t tell much else about her except she looked a little the Arabic women I’d seen in Afghanistan. I was sure about two things though; the rifle was an Israeli M 89 SR sniper rifle, and she sounded very serious when she spoke.“What are you doing here?” she demanded.Since I was armed to the teeth and had just shot a guy, my story about being a tourist and out taking some pictures wasn’t going to work very well. The truth would work better unless she was one of the traffickers. I didn’t think she was though. If she had been, she’d have just shot me while she had the chance.“I’m an American. This guy hired me to track down some gold he thought was hidden in an old led mine. This is where the led mine is supposed to be located. I hadn’t counted on there being anybody else here.”She smiled then.“You’ll be Dale Stevenson, right?”“Yeah. How do you know that?”She was still smiling.“We can talk about that later. Right now, we need to take care of the guys who are going to come down that road in a couple of minutes.”Showdown looming.When the truck finally came into view, the men looked a little hesitant and the woman told me why.“They’re taking it slow because they don’t know who’s out here. If it was the Argentine Army, the traffickers would have known they were coming and they wouldn’t be here. That’s because they pay certain people in the Army to protect them. They would just relocate and the Army could appear to be doing their job because they discovered the camp. Once they figure out where we are, they won’t stop until we’re dead or they are so I hope you’re a good shot. During my briefing they said you are.”It was about then the truck came creeping down the road. The woman sighted through the rifle scope and with two quick shots; she shot the driver and smashed in the receiver of the M60.The men bailed out of the pickup and clustered up behind it, then talked for a while before another man pulled the dead driver out of the truck, got back in, started the engine, and started it back down the road. The other men followed behind it with their rifles ready. When they got close enough to see their faces, most of them looked scared.The woman was looking through the scope on her rifle when she whispered.“They’re still looking for where the shots came from, Oh, one of them just pointed in the direction of the man you shot. They think the shots came from those rocks over there. They’ll keep the truck between them and the rocks until they’re pretty close, and then jump out from behind it and start firing at those rocks and any other cover they see. We’ll have to take them before they spread out too much. I’ll take out the driver and the ones in the lead. You start at the rear and work your way toward the truck.”The truck continued to creep down the road, and when they were about ten meters from the main road, the men began to move up the side of the truck. She took out the driver and that was my signal. I sighted in on the man furthest from the truck and fired.The whole thing took less than a minute. I saw one man running back toward the camp, but he didn’t make it. The woman’s shot dropped him face first in the dirt of the road.Well, like I said, my original intention was to retreat if possible. Now, we’d shot a bunch of people based on what the woman had said, and I didn’t have the slightest idea who the hell she was or who they were. The only thing I was sure of was I was in deep shit and it was probably going to get deeper.I turned to look at the woman. She was in the process of changing magazines on her rifle. She slammed the full magazine into the magazine well, checked the chamber for a live round, and then looked up and smiled.“I guess you’re as good as they said. You only missed twice.”She was beginning to piss me off by telling me what to do and then criticizing me for how I did it.“Yeah, well, it’s been a while since I’ve been in a firefight. Since you seem to know everything about me and what just happened, what do we do now?”She stood up, shouldered the rifle, and frowned.“I’ve been watching that camp for a week waiting for you to get here, and I counted twelve men. That means there are five left. They’ll wait a while for these men to come back, but when they don’t they’ll send at least two to find out what happened. We need to get to that camp before they do that.”“And what do we do when we get there? I don’t really like shooting people when I don’t know which side they’re on.”She smiled again.“They’re on the side that would kill both of us without even thinking about it. Does that help?”Moving to a safer place.We kept to the rocks until we got to the trees, and then made our way to the camp by walking a few meters from the road. Two men were just walking to the second truck when we got there. The woman tapped me on the shoulder and when I looked she pointed at the shack and held up three fingers, the pointed to me.Without waiting for an answer, she sighted down the scope of her rifle. A second later, the guy starting to climb in the driver’s seat grabbed his chest and then fell down. It was maybe two seconds later and after the other guy started running back to the shack that he went down with a bullet in his back.That was about when the other three came running out of the shack with their rifles. I took them out with three shots. Then, we waited to see if any of them were going to get up or if there were any more in the shack. After five minutes, all was quiet, so the woman stood up.“That should be all of them. Let’s go see what they have in the shacks.”I noticed she didn’t shoulder the rifle this time, and she didn’t just walk out into the clearing. She ran to take cover behind the truck first. I followed her and kept watching our flanks and rear.Once we were at the truck, she peeked around it at the shack, then ran the three meters to the corner. Once she was there, she motioned for me. I knew what she wanted me to do because it was a standard method of entering a building used by US Army Rangers. I ran to the other corner. Once I was there, we started working our way to the door.Her count had been right. There was nobody in the smaller shack. It was evidently sort of a barracks and mess hall, because there were four cots on one side. On the other side was a table and a small wood-burning stove.We left the shack and repeated the same thing on the larger shack. When we pushed open the door there, I saw the reason the traffickers were there.Inside that shack and in a clump were six young girls holding on to each other because they were terrified. Two looked like the women I’d seen in Buenos Aires, but the other four were definitely Asian.The woman rattled off something in Spanish, and then something in what I guessed was French. It looked to me like the girls relaxed a little then. The two Hispanic girls smiled, and two of the Asian girls said something back to her and then started jabbering away at the other two.The woman turned to me and smiled.“I just told them we were here to rescue them. The girls who talked to me are Vietnamese girls and they understood French. They said they’ve been here for two weeks. The other two Asian girls are from Taiwan and they speak Chinese. The two Vietnamese girls are telling them what I said. Now we have to get them somewhere safe. I can take care of that.”The woman pulled what looked like a cell phone from her vest and tapped the screen, then held it to her ear. A few seconds later, she said, “Secure. Six kittens”. She got an answer, said, “Ready in fifteen”, then tapped the screen again. As she put the cell phone back in her vest, she smiled.“You’re wondering how I got a cell phone to work out here aren’t you? It is a cell phone so if I were to be captured, it won’t raise any suspicions. It works just like any other cell phone except it will only communicate with our own cell towers. My group has a mobile tower about six kilometers from here. They’ll meet us at the road in about fifteen minutes.”Like she said, about fifteen minutes later, a bus drove up and stopped where the road to the camp met the main road. Once the six girls were on board, the bus drove off and left the woman and me standing there in the road. I asked her why she didn’t get on the bus too. She smiled.“I’ll tell you on the way back to their camp. We have a few things left to do.”Her story explained a lot about her and how she knew so much about me.“My name, my real name, is Ariella. You don’t need to know my last name."Ariella is Hebrew for "Lioness of God”. My father named me that because he said I was so much like my grandfather. My grandfather was killed during the rebellion in the Warsaw ghetto. My other grandparents were sent to Treblinka where they were killed.“My father was ten years old then, and during the fighting, some people in the Polish resistance smuggled him out of the ghetto and into the forest. From there, he was taken to a Catholic monastery where he was baptized as a Catholic so the Germans wouldn’t arrest and take him to a concentration camp. He had to learn how to act like a Catholic boy in a very short time, but he was a smart boy and survived the war that way."When the war ended, my father was taken to France and placed with Catholic foster parents. He grew up on a vineyard near Langon and learned to speak French, but he never forgot he was Jewish. As soon as he reached the age of nineteen, he left France for Israel and began searching for any relatives who survived the camps. He found no one with the same last name who remembered his father or mother. Instead, he found Miriam, the woman he would marry and the woman who would become my mother."Her past was much like my father’s, though she was French. Her parents placed her with Catholic friends when the Nazi’s began arresting French Jews. She was later taken to Spain and raised by a family there. She was only eighteen when she went to Israel in hopes of finding her family. She found a job to support herself working in the government, and that is how she met my father."From my mother, I learned to speak and write Spanish. From both my father and mother, I learned to speak and write French and Hebrew."When I was eighteen, I was conscripted into the Israeli Defense Force. Because my testing showed I had an aptitude for languages, when I finished basic and combat training, I was sent to a school to learn to speak and write Arabic. After that school, I was transferred to the Combat Intelligence Collection Corps. I was made part of Sayeret Matkal, the Israeli Special Forces branch that does recon and intelligence gathering behind enemy lines. I can’t tell you what I did there."When I finished my service, a man came to see me and asked if I’d like to help Israel in a different way. What he told me sounded exciting, so I accepted and became part of the Duvdevan Unit. I spent two years dressed in civilian clothes in several Arab countries gathering intelligence on terrorist organizations. A year ago, I was identified by one of the radical Islamic organizations as an Israeli agent and had to leave the Middle East or I’d have been killed. I was assigned to Argentina to gather intelligence on the Neo-Nazi groups that are located here and to some extent, in Brazil and other South American countries."The men we just killed are part of a Neo-Nazi group who call their organization Ahner. They took their name from the Nazi Germany think-tank known as Ahnenerbe. Their ideology is the same as the German Nazi party. They advocate the elimination or enslavement or all races they consider inferior, and they finance their operations by trafficking in sex slaves of those same races. That’s what they’re doing out here; financing their operations. I was assigned to stop them."The camp you saw is a lay-over point between the ports in Chile where they land the girls and wherever they’re going next. It might be the brothels in Buenos Aires, Mexico, almost any country including the US. They will kill anyone who tries to stop them. Do you feel better about what we did now?”I’d heard of the Duvdeven Unit of the Israeli Special Forces, but the name was about all I’d heard. Nobody, not even the CIA guys I worked with, knew much about what the Duvdeven Unit did, or if they knew, they weren’t telling anybody. All that was known was they were Israelis who were fluent in Arabic and dressed in the clothing of the local population. Supposedly they infiltrated the ranks of the terrorists and sent that information back to Israel. There were rumors about assassinations of high-ranking terrorist officials, but that’s all they were, just rumors.That knowledge explained a lot of things about Ariella. I knew the Israeli Special Forces are among the most highly trained fighting forces in the world and were as good as our own US Army Rangers and Navy SEALs. To work undercover in the situations in Afghanistan and Iran would require more than training though. It would require an immense amount of self-confidence and as one of my Ranger instructors had once said, “balls big enough to need a wheelbarrow”.It also explained how much she knew about me. The CIA in the Middle East and the Israeli Special Forces have a very close working relationship. All it would take is for someone in the ISF to request information about me and they’d have it. What I didn’t understand is why they were interested in what I was doing in Argentina.“OK, I understand why you’re here, but you said you were waiting on me for a week. It’s not that I don’t appreciate you bailing my ass out of trouble, but why are you so interested in why I’m here?”Ariella stopped walking then and turned to face me.“Because Marcus Richter hired you.”I was confused again.“Richter isn’t a Neo-Nazi. He’s a dealer in international currencies.”Ariella smiled.“That’s what he told you, and he is, but his story is more detailed than that.At the end of World War Two, the Allies were looking for a German banker named Heinrich Richter because he was responsible for sending much of the gold pillaged by the German Army to Swiss banks. They wanted his records and his testimony so they could return the gold to the appropriate countries.Israel was very interested as well, because a significant amount of that gold came from Jews in the countries Germany overran. The Allies were closing in on him when he disappeared. The rumor was he was able to escape to Argentina. Through our intelligence efforts in Argentina, we learned he did indeed relocate to Argentina where he married a local woman with high status in the government. Unfortunately, we learned that information after he died."For several years, we monitored the activities of his wife and son, the same Marcus Richter who spoke with you. His mother appears to have retired to an estate in the country with a private nurse, and no one other than Richter visits or telephones her. In our observations of Richter though, it was soon evident he has close connections with several Neo-Nazi groups in Argentina. We suspected he was using his business to launder money for them, but we were never able to positively tie his financial dealings to them. Richter is smart and he uses Swiss banks for all the transfers. Getting information from a Swiss bank is something even Israel can not easily do. The reason is the amount of Nazi gold still held in those banks."We needed a way to stop him, so we laid a trap for him. We forged the hallmark on a single gold bar and arranged for another currency trader who supports our cause to contact him. We also planted the story about the submarines through another of our contacts in Argentina, a former member of the ISF who emigrated from Germany to Argentina a few years ago. The man who told Richter about the smelter was another of our contacts who casually related the story to Richter’s assistants. The story about the mine and its location has been rumored in Argentina for years so once we had located the smelter for him, Richter assumed the gold must be in the mine, just as we intended.The rest of the story you already know, except that the money you are being paid came from the treasury of Ahner. We know that information through the efforts of a man who is the son of a Jewish man and his Argentine wife. He grew up in Buenos Aires and is fluent in Spanish. He has infiltrated Ahner and relays information on their activities to my unit.”I was beginning to understand now and I didn’t feel good about the whole deal.“So, there is no gold?”Ariella smiled.“We believe there is a cache of Nazi gold somewhere in Argentina, but it is not likely to be found. All the people who knew of it are dead by now and as far as we’ve been able to determine, they didn’t pass the information on to anyone. As for any gold here in a led mine, well, there is a led mine a few kilometers from here, but it doesn’t have any gold.”“So I came down here for nothing?”“Oh no, you are going to be very useful. When you go back and tell Richter there is no gold here, he’ll have to relay that to Ahner. In the past, his contracts with Ahner have been that he is paid an advance which would be returned should his work not be successful. Since he will have failed in this attempt, Anher will demand that Richter return the advance.He won’t be able to do that because as we speak, the US is quietly in the process of freezing all his US bank accounts and arranging for a transfer from his Swiss bank would take too long"It would be my guess that when Ahner can’t get their money back, Marcus Richter will suddenly disappear and never be found. That is what happened to the last person who promised something to Ahner and then didn’t deliver. As I said, they will kill anyone without even a second thought.”“It sounds like I need to start sleeping with a pistol from now on. Thanks a lot.”Ariella shook her head.“No. You’re in no danger. We know Richter never disclosed your identity to Ahner, and the ammunition for both our rifles and your pistol are common to weapons issued to the Argentine Army and of the same manufacturer. When we leave, I’ll leave some evidence that it was the Argentine Army that attacked the camp. That does happen from time to time, usually when some company commander decides he isn’t being paid well enough to keep protecting them.”When we got back to the camp, Ariella took off her backpack.

Ariella; lethal and lovely.Based on a post by ronde, in 2 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Steamy Stories.Packed and Stacked.She was maybe twenty-five, and even in the battle dress she was wearing, she looked slender. I couldn’t tell much else about her except she looked a little the Arabic women I’d seen in Afghanistan. I was sure about two things though; the rifle was an Israeli M 89 SR sniper rifle, and she sounded very serious when she spoke.“What are you doing here?” she demanded.Since I was armed to the teeth and had just shot a guy, my story about being a tourist and out taking some pictures wasn’t going to work very well. The truth would work better unless she was one of the traffickers. I didn’t think she was though. If she had been, she’d have just shot me while she had the chance.“I’m an American. This guy hired me to track down some gold he thought was hidden in an old led mine. This is where the led mine is supposed to be located. I hadn’t counted on there being anybody else here.”She smiled then.“You’ll be Dale Stevenson, right?”“Yeah. How do you know that?”She was still smiling.“We can talk about that later. Right now, we need to take care of the guys who are going to come down that road in a couple of minutes.”Showdown looming.When the truck finally came into view, the men looked a little hesitant and the woman told me why.“They’re taking it slow because they don’t know who’s out here. If it was the Argentine Army, the traffickers would have known they were coming and they wouldn’t be here. That’s because they pay certain people in the Army to protect them. They would just relocate and the Army could appear to be doing their job because they discovered the camp. Once they figure out where we are, they won’t stop until we’re dead or they are so I hope you’re a good shot. During my briefing they said you are.”It was about then the truck came creeping down the road. The woman sighted through the rifle scope and with two quick shots; she shot the driver and smashed in the receiver of the M60.The men bailed out of the pickup and clustered up behind it, then talked for a while before another man pulled the dead driver out of the truck, got back in, started the engine, and started it back down the road. The other men followed behind it with their rifles ready. When they got close enough to see their faces, most of them looked scared.The woman was looking through the scope on her rifle when she whispered.“They’re still looking for where the shots came from, Oh, one of them just pointed in the direction of the man you shot. They think the shots came from those rocks over there. They’ll keep the truck between them and the rocks until they’re pretty close, and then jump out from behind it and start firing at those rocks and any other cover they see. We’ll have to take them before they spread out too much. I’ll take out the driver and the ones in the lead. You start at the rear and work your way toward the truck.”The truck continued to creep down the road, and when they were about ten meters from the main road, the men began to move up the side of the truck. She took out the driver and that was my signal. I sighted in on the man furthest from the truck and fired.The whole thing took less than a minute. I saw one man running back toward the camp, but he didn’t make it. The woman’s shot dropped him face first in the dirt of the road.Well, like I said, my original intention was to retreat if possible. Now, we’d shot a bunch of people based on what the woman had said, and I didn’t have the slightest idea who the hell she was or who they were. The only thing I was sure of was I was in deep shit and it was probably going to get deeper.I turned to look at the woman. She was in the process of changing magazines on her rifle. She slammed the full magazine into the magazine well, checked the chamber for a live round, and then looked up and smiled.“I guess you’re as good as they said. You only missed twice.”She was beginning to piss me off by telling me what to do and then criticizing me for how I did it.“Yeah, well, it’s been a while since I’ve been in a firefight. Since you seem to know everything about me and what just happened, what do we do now?”She stood up, shouldered the rifle, and frowned.“I’ve been watching that camp for a week waiting for you to get here, and I counted twelve men. That means there are five left. They’ll wait a while for these men to come back, but when they don’t they’ll send at least two to find out what happened. We need to get to that camp before they do that.”“And what do we do when we get there? I don’t really like shooting people when I don’t know which side they’re on.”She smiled again.“They’re on the side that would kill both of us without even thinking about it. Does that help?”Moving to a safer place.We kept to the rocks until we got to the trees, and then made our way to the camp by walking a few meters from the road. Two men were just walking to the second truck when we got there. The woman tapped me on the shoulder and when I looked she pointed at the shack and held up three fingers, the pointed to me.Without waiting for an answer, she sighted down the scope of her rifle. A second later, the guy starting to climb in the driver’s seat grabbed his chest and then fell down. It was maybe two seconds later and after the other guy started running back to the shack that he went down with a bullet in his back.That was about when the other three came running out of the shack with their rifles. I took them out with three shots. Then, we waited to see if any of them were going to get up or if there were any more in the shack. After five minutes, all was quiet, so the woman stood up.“That should be all of them. Let’s go see what they have in the shacks.”I noticed she didn’t shoulder the rifle this time, and she didn’t just walk out into the clearing. She ran to take cover behind the truck first. I followed her and kept watching our flanks and rear.Once we were at the truck, she peeked around it at the shack, then ran the three meters to the corner. Once she was there, she motioned for me. I knew what she wanted me to do because it was a standard method of entering a building used by US Army Rangers. I ran to the other corner. Once I was there, we started working our way to the door.Her count had been right. There was nobody in the smaller shack. It was evidently sort of a barracks and mess hall, because there were four cots on one side. On the other side was a table and a small wood-burning stove.We left the shack and repeated the same thing on the larger shack. When we pushed open the door there, I saw the reason the traffickers were there.Inside that shack and in a clump were six young girls holding on to each other because they were terrified. Two looked like the women I’d seen in Buenos Aires, but the other four were definitely Asian.The woman rattled off something in Spanish, and then something in what I guessed was French. It looked to me like the girls relaxed a little then. The two Hispanic girls smiled, and two of the Asian girls said something back to her and then started jabbering away at the other two.The woman turned to me and smiled.“I just told them we were here to rescue them. The girls who talked to me are Vietnamese girls and they understood French. They said they’ve been here for two weeks. The other two Asian girls are from Taiwan and they speak Chinese. The two Vietnamese girls are telling them what I said. Now we have to get them somewhere safe. I can take care of that.”The woman pulled what looked like a cell phone from her vest and tapped the screen, then held it to her ear. A few seconds later, she said, “Secure. Six kittens”. She got an answer, said, “Ready in fifteen”, then tapped the screen again. As she put the cell phone back in her vest, she smiled.“You’re wondering how I got a cell phone to work out here aren’t you? It is a cell phone so if I were to be captured, it won’t raise any suspicions. It works just like any other cell phone except it will only communicate with our own cell towers. My group has a mobile tower about six kilometers from here. They’ll meet us at the road in about fifteen minutes.”Like she said, about fifteen minutes later, a bus drove up and stopped where the road to the camp met the main road. Once the six girls were on board, the bus drove off and left the woman and me standing there in the road. I asked her why she didn’t get on the bus too. She smiled.“I’ll tell you on the way back to their camp. We have a few things left to do.”Her story explained a lot about her and how she knew so much about me.“My name, my real name, is Ariella. You don’t need to know my last name."Ariella is Hebrew for "Lioness of God”. My father named me that because he said I was so much like my grandfather. My grandfather was killed during the rebellion in the Warsaw ghetto. My other grandparents were sent to Treblinka where they were killed.“My father was ten years old then, and during the fighting, some people in the Polish resistance smuggled him out of the ghetto and into the forest. From there, he was taken to a Catholic monastery where he was baptized as a Catholic so the Germans wouldn’t arrest and take him to a concentration camp. He had to learn how to act like a Catholic boy in a very short time, but he was a smart boy and survived the war that way."When the war ended, my father was taken to France and placed with Catholic foster parents. He grew up on a vineyard near Langon and learned to speak French, but he never forgot he was Jewish. As soon as he reached the age of nineteen, he left France for Israel and began searching for any relatives who survived the camps. He found no one with the same last name who remembered his father or mother. Instead, he found Miriam, the woman he would marry and the woman who would become my mother."Her past was much like my father’s, though she was French. Her parents placed her with Catholic friends when the Nazi’s began arresting French Jews. She was later taken to Spain and raised by a family there. She was only eighteen when she went to Israel in hopes of finding her family. She found a job to support herself working in the government, and that is how she met my father."From my mother, I learned to speak and write Spanish. From both my father and mother, I learned to speak and write French and Hebrew."When I was eighteen, I was conscripted into the Israeli Defense Force. Because my testing showed I had an aptitude for languages, when I finished basic and combat training, I was sent to a school to learn to speak and write Arabic. After that school, I was transferred to the Combat Intelligence Collection Corps. I was made part of Sayeret Matkal, the Israeli Special Forces branch that does recon and intelligence gathering behind enemy lines. I can’t tell you what I did there."When I finished my service, a man came to see me and asked if I’d like to help Israel in a different way. What he told me sounded exciting, so I accepted and became part of the Duvdevan Unit. I spent two years dressed in civilian clothes in several Arab countries gathering intelligence on terrorist organizations. A year ago, I was identified by one of the radical Islamic organizations as an Israeli agent and had to leave the Middle East or I’d have been killed. I was assigned to Argentina to gather intelligence on the Neo-Nazi groups that are located here and to some extent, in Brazil and other South American countries."The men we just killed are part of a Neo-Nazi group who call their organization Ahner. They took their name from the Nazi Germany think-tank known as Ahnenerbe. Their ideology is the same as the German Nazi party. They advocate the elimination or enslavement or all races they consider inferior, and they finance their operations by trafficking in sex slaves of those same races. That’s what they’re doing out here; financing their operations. I was assigned to stop them."The camp you saw is a lay-over point between the ports in Chile where they land the girls and wherever they’re going next. It might be the brothels in Buenos Aires, Mexico, almost any country including the US. They will kill anyone who tries to stop them. Do you feel better about what we did now?”I’d heard of the Duvdeven Unit of the Israeli Special Forces, but the name was about all I’d heard. Nobody, not even the CIA guys I worked with, knew much about what the Duvdeven Unit did, or if they knew, they weren’t telling anybody. All that was known was they were Israelis who were fluent in Arabic and dressed in the clothing of the local population. Supposedly they infiltrated the ranks of the terrorists and sent that information back to Israel. There were rumors about assassinations of high-ranking terrorist officials, but that’s all they were, just rumors.That knowledge explained a lot of things about Ariella. I knew the Israeli Special Forces are among the most highly trained fighting forces in the world and were as good as our own US Army Rangers and Navy SEALs. To work undercover in the situations in Afghanistan and Iran would require more than training though. It would require an immense amount of self-confidence and as one of my Ranger instructors had once said, “balls big enough to need a wheelbarrow”.It also explained how much she knew about me. The CIA in the Middle East and the Israeli Special Forces have a very close working relationship. All it would take is for someone in the ISF to request information about me and they’d have it. What I didn’t understand is why they were interested in what I was doing in Argentina.“OK, I understand why you’re here, but you said you were waiting on me for a week. It’s not that I don’t appreciate you bailing my ass out of trouble, but why are you so interested in why I’m here?”Ariella stopped walking then and turned to face me.“Because Marcus Richter hired you.”I was confused again.“Richter isn’t a Neo-Nazi. He’s a dealer in international currencies.”Ariella smiled.“That’s what he told you, and he is, but his story is more detailed than that.At the end of World War Two, the Allies were looking for a German banker named Heinrich Richter because he was responsible for sending much of the gold pillaged by the German Army to Swiss banks. They wanted his records and his testimony so they could return the gold to the appropriate countries.Israel was very interested as well, because a significant amount of that gold came from Jews in the countries Germany overran. The Allies were closing in on him when he disappeared. The rumor was he was able to escape to Argentina. Through our intelligence efforts in Argentina, we learned he did indeed relocate to Argentina where he married a local woman with high status in the government. Unfortunately, we learned that information after he died."For several years, we monitored the activities of his wife and son, the same Marcus Richter who spoke with you. His mother appears to have retired to an estate in the country with a private nurse, and no one other than Richter visits or telephones her. In our observations of Richter though, it was soon evident he has close connections with several Neo-Nazi groups in Argentina. We suspected he was using his business to launder money for them, but we were never able to positively tie his financial dealings to them. Richter is smart and he uses Swiss banks for all the transfers. Getting information from a Swiss bank is something even Israel can not easily do. The reason is the amount of Nazi gold still held in those banks."We needed a way to stop him, so we laid a trap for him. We forged the hallmark on a single gold bar and arranged for another currency trader who supports our cause to contact him. We also planted the story about the submarines through another of our contacts in Argentina, a former member of the ISF who emigrated from Germany to Argentina a few years ago. The man who told Richter about the smelter was another of our contacts who casually related the story to Richter’s assistants. The story about the mine and its location has been rumored in Argentina for years so once we had located the smelter for him, Richter assumed the gold must be in the mine, just as we intended.The rest of the story you already know, except that the money you are being paid came from the treasury of Ahner. We know that information through the efforts of a man who is the son of a Jewish man and his Argentine wife. He grew up in Buenos Aires and is fluent in Spanish. He has infiltrated Ahner and relays information on their activities to my unit.”I was beginning to understand now and I didn’t feel good about the whole deal.“So, there is no gold?”Ariella smiled.“We believe there is a cache of Nazi gold somewhere in Argentina, but it is not likely to be found. All the people who knew of it are dead by now and as far as we’ve been able to determine, they didn’t pass the information on to anyone. As for any gold here in a led mine, well, there is a led mine a few kilometers from here, but it doesn’t have any gold.”“So I came down here for nothing?”“Oh no, you are going to be very useful. When you go back and tell Richter there is no gold here, he’ll have to relay that to Ahner. In the past, his contracts with Ahner have been that he is paid an advance which would be returned should his work not be successful. Since he will have failed in this attempt, Anher will demand that Richter return the advance.He won’t be able to do that because as we speak, the US is quietly in the process of freezing all his US bank accounts and arranging for a transfer from his Swiss bank would take too long"It would be my guess that when Ahner can’t get their money back, Marcus Richter will suddenly disappear and never be found. That is what happened to the last person who promised something to Ahner and then didn’t deliver. As I said, they will kill anyone without even a second thought.”“It sounds like I need to start sleeping with a pistol from now on. Thanks a lot.”Ariella shook her head.“No. You’re in no danger. We know Richter never disclosed your identity to Ahner, and the ammunition for both our rifles and your pistol are common to weapons issued to the Argentine Army and of the same manufacturer. When we leave, I’ll leave some evidence that it was the Argentine Army that attacked the camp. That does happen from time to time, usually when some company commander decides he isn’t being paid well enough to keep protecting them.”When we got back to the camp, Ariella took off her backpack.

Ariella; lethal and lovely.Based on a post by ronde, in 2 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Steamy Stories.Packed and Stacked.She was maybe twenty-five, and even in the battle dress she was wearing, she looked slender. I couldn’t tell much else about her except she looked a little the Arabic women I’d seen in Afghanistan. I was sure about two things though; the rifle was an Israeli M 89 SR sniper rifle, and she sounded very serious when she spoke.“What are you doing here?” she demanded.Since I was armed to the teeth and had just shot a guy, my story about being a tourist and out taking some pictures wasn’t going to work very well. The truth would work better unless she was one of the traffickers. I didn’t think she was though. If she had been, she’d have just shot me while she had the chance.“I’m an American. This guy hired me to track down some gold he thought was hidden in an old led mine. This is where the led mine is supposed to be located. I hadn’t counted on there being anybody else here.”She smiled then.“You’ll be Dale Stevenson, right?”“Yeah. How do you know that?”She was still smiling.“We can talk about that later. Right now, we need to take care of the guys who are going to come down that road in a couple of minutes.”Showdown looming.When the truck finally came into view, the men looked a little hesitant and the woman told me why.“They’re taking it slow because they don’t know who’s out here. If it was the Argentine Army, the traffickers would have known they were coming and they wouldn’t be here. That’s because they pay certain people in the Army to protect them. They would just relocate and the Army could appear to be doing their job because they discovered the camp. Once they figure out where we are, they won’t stop until we’re dead or they are so I hope you’re a good shot. During my briefing they said you are.”It was about then the truck came creeping down the road. The woman sighted through the rifle scope and with two quick shots; she shot the driver and smashed in the receiver of the M60.The men bailed out of the pickup and clustered up behind it, then talked for a while before another man pulled the dead driver out of the truck, got back in, started the engine, and started it back down the road. The other men followed behind it with their rifles ready. When they got close enough to see their faces, most of them looked scared.The woman was looking through the scope on her rifle when she whispered.“They’re still looking for where the shots came from, Oh, one of them just pointed in the direction of the man you shot. They think the shots came from those rocks over there. They’ll keep the truck between them and the rocks until they’re pretty close, and then jump out from behind it and start firing at those rocks and any other cover they see. We’ll have to take them before they spread out too much. I’ll take out the driver and the ones in the lead. You start at the rear and work your way toward the truck.”The truck continued to creep down the road, and when they were about ten meters from the main road, the men began to move up the side of the truck. She took out the driver and that was my signal. I sighted in on the man furthest from the truck and fired.The whole thing took less than a minute. I saw one man running back toward the camp, but he didn’t make it. The woman’s shot dropped him face first in the dirt of the road.Well, like I said, my original intention was to retreat if possible. Now, we’d shot a bunch of people based on what the woman had said, and I didn’t have the slightest idea who the hell she was or who they were. The only thing I was sure of was I was in deep shit and it was probably going to get deeper.I turned to look at the woman. She was in the process of changing magazines on her rifle. She slammed the full magazine into the magazine well, checked the chamber for a live round, and then looked up and smiled.“I guess you’re as good as they said. You only missed twice.”She was beginning to piss me off by telling me what to do and then criticizing me for how I did it.“Yeah, well, it’s been a while since I’ve been in a firefight. Since you seem to know everything about me and what just happened, what do we do now?”She stood up, shouldered the rifle, and frowned.“I’ve been watching that camp for a week waiting for you to get here, and I counted twelve men. That means there are five left. They’ll wait a while for these men to come back, but when they don’t they’ll send at least two to find out what happened. We need to get to that camp before they do that.”“And what do we do when we get there? I don’t really like shooting people when I don’t know which side they’re on.”She smiled again.“They’re on the side that would kill both of us without even thinking about it. Does that help?”Moving to a safer place.We kept to the rocks until we got to the trees, and then made our way to the camp by walking a few meters from the road. Two men were just walking to the second truck when we got there. The woman tapped me on the shoulder and when I looked she pointed at the shack and held up three fingers, the pointed to me.Without waiting for an answer, she sighted down the scope of her rifle. A second later, the guy starting to climb in the driver’s seat grabbed his chest and then fell down. It was maybe two seconds later and after the other guy started running back to the shack that he went down with a bullet in his back.That was about when the other three came running out of the shack with their rifles. I took them out with three shots. Then, we waited to see if any of them were going to get up or if there were any more in the shack. After five minutes, all was quiet, so the woman stood up.“That should be all of them. Let’s go see what they have in the shacks.”I noticed she didn’t shoulder the rifle this time, and she didn’t just walk out into the clearing. She ran to take cover behind the truck first. I followed her and kept watching our flanks and rear.Once we were at the truck, she peeked around it at the shack, then ran the three meters to the corner. Once she was there, she motioned for me. I knew what she wanted me to do because it was a standard method of entering a building used by US Army Rangers. I ran to the other corner. Once I was there, we started working our way to the door.Her count had been right. There was nobody in the smaller shack. It was evidently sort of a barracks and mess hall, because there were four cots on one side. On the other side was a table and a small wood-burning stove.We left the shack and repeated the same thing on the larger shack. When we pushed open the door there, I saw the reason the traffickers were there.Inside that shack and in a clump were six young girls holding on to each other because they were terrified. Two looked like the women I’d seen in Buenos Aires, but the other four were definitely Asian.The woman rattled off something in Spanish, and then something in what I guessed was French. It looked to me like the girls relaxed a little then. The two Hispanic girls smiled, and two of the Asian girls said something back to her and then started jabbering away at the other two.The woman turned to me and smiled.“I just told them we were here to rescue them. The girls who talked to me are Vietnamese girls and they understood French. They said they’ve been here for two weeks. The other two Asian girls are from Taiwan and they speak Chinese. The two Vietnamese girls are telling them what I said. Now we have to get them somewhere safe. I can take care of that.”The woman pulled what looked like a cell phone from her vest and tapped the screen, then held it to her ear. A few seconds later, she said, “Secure. Six kittens”. She got an answer, said, “Ready in fifteen”, then tapped the screen again. As she put the cell phone back in her vest, she smiled.“You’re wondering how I got a cell phone to work out here aren’t you? It is a cell phone so if I were to be captured, it won’t raise any suspicions. It works just like any other cell phone except it will only communicate with our own cell towers. My group has a mobile tower about six kilometers from here. They’ll meet us at the road in about fifteen minutes.”Like she said, about fifteen minutes later, a bus drove up and stopped where the road to the camp met the main road. Once the six girls were on board, the bus drove off and left the woman and me standing there in the road. I asked her why she didn’t get on the bus too. She smiled.“I’ll tell you on the way back to their camp. We have a few things left to do.”Her story explained a lot about her and how she knew so much about me.“My name, my real name, is Ariella. You don’t need to know my last name."Ariella is Hebrew for "Lioness of God”. My father named me that because he said I was so much like my grandfather. My grandfather was killed during the rebellion in the Warsaw ghetto. My other grandparents were sent to Treblinka where they were killed.“My father was ten years old then, and during the fighting, some people in the Polish resistance smuggled him out of the ghetto and into the forest. From there, he was taken to a Catholic monastery where he was baptized as a Catholic so the Germans wouldn’t arrest and take him to a concentration camp. He had to learn how to act like a Catholic boy in a very short time, but he was a smart boy and survived the war that way."When the war ended, my father was taken to France and placed with Catholic foster parents. He grew up on a vineyard near Langon and learned to speak French, but he never forgot he was Jewish. As soon as he reached the age of nineteen, he left France for Israel and began searching for any relatives who survived the camps. He found no one with the same last name who remembered his father or mother. Instead, he found Miriam, the woman he would marry and the woman who would become my mother."Her past was much like my father’s, though she was French. Her parents placed her with Catholic friends when the Nazi’s began arresting French Jews. She was later taken to Spain and raised by a family there. She was only eighteen when she went to Israel in hopes of finding her family. She found a job to support herself working in the government, and that is how she met my father."From my mother, I learned to speak and write Spanish. From both my father and mother, I learned to speak and write French and Hebrew."When I was eighteen, I was conscripted into the Israeli Defense Force. Because my testing showed I had an aptitude for languages, when I finished basic and combat training, I was sent to a school to learn to speak and write Arabic. After that school, I was transferred to the Combat Intelligence Collection Corps. I was made part of Sayeret Matkal, the Israeli Special Forces branch that does recon and intelligence gathering behind enemy lines. I can’t tell you what I did there."When I finished my service, a man came to see me and asked if I’d like to help Israel in a different way. What he told me sounded exciting, so I accepted and became part of the Duvdevan Unit. I spent two years dressed in civilian clothes in several Arab countries gathering intelligence on terrorist organizations. A year ago, I was identified by one of the radical Islamic organizations as an Israeli agent and had to leave the Middle East or I’d have been killed. I was assigned to Argentina to gather intelligence on the Neo-Nazi groups that are located here and to some extent, in Brazil and other South American countries."The men we just killed are part of a Neo-Nazi group who call their organization Ahner. They took their name from the Nazi Germany think-tank known as Ahnenerbe. Their ideology is the same as the German Nazi party. They advocate the elimination or enslavement or all races they consider inferior, and they finance their operations by trafficking in sex slaves of those same races. That’s what they’re doing out here; financing their operations. I was assigned to stop them."The camp you saw is a lay-over point between the ports in Chile where they land the girls and wherever they’re going next. It might be the brothels in Buenos Aires, Mexico, almost any country including the US. They will kill anyone who tries to stop them. Do you feel better about what we did now?”I’d heard of the Duvdeven Unit of the Israeli Special Forces, but the name was about all I’d heard. Nobody, not even the CIA guys I worked with, knew much about what the Duvdeven Unit did, or if they knew, they weren’t telling anybody. All that was known was they were Israelis who were fluent in Arabic and dressed in the clothing of the local population. Supposedly they infiltrated the ranks of the terrorists and sent that information back to Israel. There were rumors about assassinations of high-ranking terrorist officials, but that’s all they were, just rumors.That knowledge explained a lot of things about Ariella. I knew the Israeli Special Forces are among the most highly trained fighting forces in the world and were as good as our own US Army Rangers and Navy SEALs. To work undercover in the situations in Afghanistan and Iran would require more than training though. It would require an immense amount of self-confidence and as one of my Ranger instructors had once said, “balls big enough to need a wheelbarrow”.It also explained how much she knew about me. The CIA in the Middle East and the Israeli Special Forces have a very close working relationship. All it would take is for someone in the ISF to request information about me and they’d have it. What I didn’t understand is why they were interested in what I was doing in Argentina.“OK, I understand why you’re here, but you said you were waiting on me for a week. It’s not that I don’t appreciate you bailing my ass out of trouble, but why are you so interested in why I’m here?”Ariella stopped walking then and turned to face me.“Because Marcus Richter hired you.”I was confused again.“Richter isn’t a Neo-Nazi. He’s a dealer in international currencies.”Ariella smiled.“That’s what he told you, and he is, but his story is more detailed than that.At the end of World War Two, the Allies were looking for a German banker named Heinrich Richter because he was responsible for sending much of the gold pillaged by the German Army to Swiss banks. They wanted his records and his testimony so they could return the gold to the appropriate countries.Israel was very interested as well, because a significant amount of that gold came from Jews in the countries Germany overran. The Allies were closing in on him when he disappeared. The rumor was he was able to escape to Argentina. Through our intelligence efforts in Argentina, we learned he did indeed relocate to Argentina where he married a local woman with high status in the government. Unfortunately, we learned that information after he died."For several years, we monitored the activities of his wife and son, the same Marcus Richter who spoke with you. His mother appears to have retired to an estate in the country with a private nurse, and no one other than Richter visits or telephones her. In our observations of Richter though, it was soon evident he has close connections with several Neo-Nazi groups in Argentina. We suspected he was using his business to launder money for them, but we were never able to positively tie his financial dealings to them. Richter is smart and he uses Swiss banks for all the transfers. Getting information from a Swiss bank is something even Israel can not easily do. The reason is the amount of Nazi gold still held in those banks."We needed a way to stop him, so we laid a trap for him. We forged the hallmark on a single gold bar and arranged for another currency trader who supports our cause to contact him. We also planted the story about the submarines through another of our contacts in Argentina, a former member of the ISF who emigrated from Germany to Argentina a few years ago. The man who told Richter about the smelter was another of our contacts who casually related the story to Richter’s assistants. The story about the mine and its location has been rumored in Argentina for years so once we had located the smelter for him, Richter assumed the gold must be in the mine, just as we intended.The rest of the story you already know, except that the money you are being paid came from the treasury of Ahner. We know that information through the efforts of a man who is the son of a Jewish man and his Argentine wife. He grew up in Buenos Aires and is fluent in Spanish. He has infiltrated Ahner and relays information on their activities to my unit.”I was beginning to understand now and I didn’t feel good about the whole deal.“So, there is no gold?”Ariella smiled.“We believe there is a cache of Nazi gold somewhere in Argentina, but it is not likely to be found. All the people who knew of it are dead by now and as far as we’ve been able to determine, they didn’t pass the information on to anyone. As for any gold here in a led mine, well, there is a led mine a few kilometers from here, but it doesn’t have any gold.”“So I came down here for nothing?”“Oh no, you are going to be very useful. When you go back and tell Richter there is no gold here, he’ll have to relay that to Ahner. In the past, his contracts with Ahner have been that he is paid an advance which would be returned should his work not be successful. Since he will have failed in this attempt, Anher will demand that Richter return the advance.He won’t be able to do that because as we speak, the US is quietly in the process of freezing all his US bank accounts and arranging for a transfer from his Swiss bank would take too long"It would be my guess that when Ahner can’t get their money back, Marcus Richter will suddenly disappear and never be found. That is what happened to the last person who promised something to Ahner and then didn’t deliver. As I said, they will kill anyone without even a second thought.”“It sounds like I need to start sleeping with a pistol from now on. Thanks a lot.”Ariella shook her head.“No. You’re in no danger. We know Richter never disclosed your identity to Ahner, and the ammunition for both our rifles and your pistol are common to weapons issued to the Argentine Army and of the same manufacturer. When we leave, I’ll leave some evidence that it was the Argentine Army that attacked the camp. That does happen from time to time, usually when some company commander decides he isn’t being paid well enough to keep protecting them.”When we got back to the camp, Ariella took off her backpack.

I was hired to find lost Nazi gold. I found Ariella instead.Based on a post by ronde, in 2 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Steamy Stories.The shiny, black, Mercedes X-Class pickup slowly worked its way down the road about a hundred meters from where I was crouched behind a rock. The fact the pickup was alone and had an M 60 machine gun on a pintle mount in the bed told me this wasn’t some unit of the Argentine Army. The Argentine Army might have been driving a Mercedes pickup, but it would have been OD green and the machine gun would have been an FN Mag.The woman nudged me then.“They’ll be on top of us in a few minutes. I’ll take out the truck driver and the M 60. That’ll slow them down while they’re trying to figure out where the shots came from. They might run then, but if they don’t it’ll take both of us to take out the rest. Are you ready for that?”I was ready, because I knew if we didn’t take out all of them, we’d be running for our lives. I’d experienced that before. I was a former US Army Ranger with two tours of Afghanistan under my belt before I decided civilian life would be a whole lot healthier.I had no reservations about what we had to do, though it was going to be tough. With it’s short barrel, iron sights, and a tendency to overheat if fired quickly, the HK G 36 C carbine I carried lost accuracy fast after about two hundred meters, so they’d have to be closer than that. I could use the old “spray and pray” technique used by some US Army soldiers before the M4 came out with a selector switch for a three round burst instead of just full-auto fire. The problem with that was I only had a hundred and twenty rounds and they wouldn’t last long if I did that. After that, all I had was a 9 millimeter Browning pistol. They’d have to be a lot closer before I had any chance of putting even one down with that.The woman was in better shape for long range shooting. The Israeli M 89 SR rifle she was crouched behind was accurate out to about a thousand meters if she knew what she was doing, and if she did, the thirty rounds in her magazine would be more than sufficient.She let the truck get to about seventy-five meters from our position and then put one 7.62  millimeter round through the windshield. The driver slumped down in the seat at the same time her second shot hit the M60 just behind the operating handle and effectively froze the action. The truck turned sharply into a rock and then the engine died. The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than about five seconds. The woman definitely knew her way around a rifle.The three guys in the truck bed and the one left in the cab bailed out, got behind the truck, and started looking for the shooter. They were going to have a difficult time finding us. The suppressor on the M89SR effectively hid any muzzle flash and any dust caused by the gasses exiting the barrel. It also reduced the sound enough that it would be difficult for the guys to pinpoint it since the echo from the mountains made the sound seem to come from all directions.The woman and I watched them for the next five minutes, and it became obvious they weren’t battle-trained troops. They were probably considered a serious threat by the local population, but to me they were just amateurs; well-equipped amateurs, but still amateurs.They were well equipped because they had money, and money was the reason I was in Argentina in the first place. Meeting the woman was just a lucky accident. Well, that’s what I thought at the time. I later found out it was no accident.How it all started.The whole thing started six weeks before I found myself with the woman crouched behind a rock and waiting to see what the guys behind the truck were going to do next.After separating myself from the US Army, I needed some way to keep myself indoors and fed. When I looked at what I knew how to do, planning for close combat and then executing that plan was all I could come up with.Given the domestic and political climate at the time, a lot of former military men were running self defense schools. After reading about a few of the schools, I decided I could make some money that way too.I’d been deployed for much of my Army career so most of my Army pay was sitting in my bank. I used half of what I had as a down payment on fifty acres in Eastern Tennessee with a house and barn on it, and built a pistol and rifle range.I was doing OK, teaching a class a couple times a week in basic gun safety and giving the Tennessee concealed-carry class and test. The other days, I taught advanced courses in long-range rifle shooting and rapid-fire pistol shooting. I also sold targets and ammunition. I wasn’t getting rich, but I was able to make the mortgage payments, put food on the table, and keep my fridge stocked with beer.One afternoon after I’d finished up my class on accurate rapid pistol fire, I was policing brass from the range when a guy in a suit and tie walked up and stuck out his hand. He introduced himself as Marcus Richter.“Mr. Dale Stevenson; did I get your name right? Ah, good. Mr. Stevenson, I understand you have somewhat of a unique background, a background I would find useful if you agree to my proposal.”I figured he’d gotten that information from my web site. I thought “US Army Ranger” sounded better than “former military” like some of the school web sites used.I shrugged.“I can teach you how to fire a weapon and how to defend yourself in an emergency if that’s what you mean.”He shook his head.“No, though the thought has crossed my mind. Fortunately, I have people who take care of those duties for me."No, I’m a successful business man in a rather unique business. I trade in world currencies. It is that business that resulted in my visit to your establishment today. I fear the explanation of that business will be quite lengthy, so would it be possible to find a place where we might sit down and out of the sun?”I’d converted part of the barn into a classroom for my classes, so I led the man there. Once we were seated, he cleared his throat.“As I said, I am a trader in world currencies and that includes gold and silver in its many forms, from coinage to bullion. My business is of necessity rather secretive, for were some in the precious metal market to have advanced knowledge of my activities, it would have an impact upon the world pricing of said precious metals. It is such advanced knowledge I hope to exploit to my advantage if you agree to perform a service for me, a service for which you will be very well compensated.”I wasn’t entirely convinced this guy was on the level, but I had no reason to stop listening to him.I smiled.“It sounds like you have some sort of secret mission you want me to do for you.”He smiled.“Yes, secrecy is of the utmost importance. When you hear the details, you will understand why."As you probably know, in the last stages of World War Two, many high-ranking members of the Nazi party and German military realized any favorable outcome to the war was an impossibility. Germany would be defeated and given the atrocities committed, those same people would be prosecuted for war crimes, found guilty, and imprisoned or executed."They began making plans to escape before they were captured by the Allies. Argentina was neutral during the war and indeed declared war on the Axis powers a month before the war in Europe ended, but many in Argentina were still sympathetic toward Germany. As a result, Argentina was viewed as a possible haven by those attempting to escape what would surely be their ultimate fate."Argentina, in fact, encouraged those high-ranking people to come there. It is well known that many were able to successfully leave Germany and take up residence in Argentina. The efforts of some Israeli organizations that were able to locate some of them and transport them back to Israel for trial is a testimony to that fact."What is not well known is how those same people funded their escape and managed to live in Argentina until they were able to find employment. There are suspicions of the transfer of gold either before or after their escape, but no proof. What is known is there were large caches of gold the Nazi’s looted from the countries and people they overran in the early stages of the war."While much of that gold was gold bars plundered from the repositories in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, a significant amount was in the gold taken from individuals. To date, some of that gold has been recovered, but a sizeable portion has not and there are only rumors as to its location, until about a month ago."Ah, shall we say, a friend of a friend mentioned he had been offered a small bar of gold bullion bearing the imprint of the Heraeus Corporation of Germany. I do not know if you know of this German company, but Heraeus has been in the business of refining and producing precious metals since the late 1800’s when they discovered a method of melting platinum."During World War Two, one small gold smelting facility of the Heraeus corporation located on the outskirts of Hanau, Germany was taken over by the Nazi party, managed by Nazi party members, and slave labor was used for the smelting process. They began melting the gold looted from the countries occupied by the German Army into bullion. The bullion was stamped with the hallmark of the Heraeus corporation in order to make it appear to be legitimate, though the Heraeus company per se had nothing to do with the operation."This knowledge has been common since the war ended, but what happened to the gold bullion produced by the Nazi controlled factory has been unknown until this single bar of bullion was offered to this friend of my friend. The offer was made in somewhat secretive circumstances and the design of the hallmark dated to the period of the Second World War. These two things intrigued this friend of my friend and also intrigued me."My interest was passing until I spoke to a man who wished to buy gold as an investment. He related a tale told by his grandfather of watching U-boats berthed at Helgoland, Germany when he was twelve years old. His grandfather had watched the U-boats before as they were fueled, armed, and then sent back out to sea. On a few occasions, this was not the case."According to his story, over the course of a week, several men in prison uniforms loaded six submarines with wooden cases that appeared much too heavy to be supplies and not large enough to hold munitions. He thought it unusual that they did not load any torpedoes as they always had before, but assumed the submarines were supply submarines used to re-supply U-boats at sea."Once the submarines were loaded, the men in prison uniforms were taken away and a few men in the uniform of the German navy went on board, but not in the same numbers this man had seen before. Instead of a full crew, a number of men in business dress also boarded the submarines. The submarines then left port. Three months later, those same six submarines were again docked in Helgoland and were being once again loaded as before. This cycle was repeated two more times before he witnessed the same submarines being loaded with torpedoes and manned by full crews of the German Navy."Another very interesting event happened in Argentina at the end of the war. Juan Peron was elected president and set about nationalizing industries and services while at the same time raising the wages of workers. Most importantly, he paid off the entire amount of externally held Argentine debt."Because Argentina does mine native gold and silver ore, I have people there to keep me informed about the latest developments. When I heard the stories about the bar of gold bullion and the German submarines and put that story into the context of what I know about the country, I asked my people there to do some research into the matter. The report I received a few weeks ago offered some tantalizing conclusions."At the end of the war, Argentina had external debt amounting to about two hundred million US Dollars. When Peron was elected President, he settled the national debt with payments in gold bullion, which is understandable because gold is the currency of the world. What is not understandable is where Peron was able to find enough gold to do that without bankrupting the country. The entire gold reserves of Argentina at the time were about two hundred and fifty million US dollars. He would have had to drain most of those reserves, but apparently did not. He continued to implement his policies by using that same gold reserve."My people were not able to identify how that situation changed so rapidly once Peron was in office nor the source of the gold with which he paid the Argentine debt. They were able to report that prior to settling that debt, the Argentine government ceased operations of a small, older smelter in the foothills of the Andes near Mendoza to bring that facility up to the level of current technology. They learned this from an old man who had been employed at the smelter in his youth. He said he was sent home and told to not report for work for two months."The man was interested in what changes were going to be made so over the course of seven weeks, he watched the activities at the smelter. He related to my people that the first week, he saw many trucks drive into the smelter and each truck had armed guards who were all tall men who looked European. He could not see what they did in the smelter, but he did notice the smokestack continued to emit smoke just as it had when the smelter was operating."A week before his two month furlough was to end, he witnessed those same trucks with the same armed guards drive out of the smelter and take the road that led to Buenos Aires. He also said when he returned to work, there was little difference from how the smelter had operated before.”I wasn’t sure what all this had to do with me. When I asked, his face became grim.“What I and my people believe is that a very large amount of gold was shipped to Argentina by the Nazis on submarines and used to pay the Argentine government for allowing them to stay there. That is the only explanation for how Peron was able to find the gold to pay off the national debt. It is also an explanation for the unusual loading of the submarine and for the bar of gold bullion offered to, as I said, a friend of a friend. The smelter was shut down in order to melt the Nazi gold and then recast it into bullion that bore the Argentine hallmark.”I was still confused.“OK, that’s all well and good, but again, what does that have to do with me?”He placed his hands on the table between us and smiled.“I want to pay you to find the rest of the Nazi gold.”Now, I was confused again.“The rest? I thought you said they melted it all down and recast it.”He shook his head and chuckled.“I said they melted and recast enough to pay off the Argentine debt, not that they melted and recast all the gold. The total amount of gold plundered by the Nazis is not accurately known, but it has been estimated at nearly two billion US dollars in the currency of the day. About a fourth of that can be reasonably accounted for as it was transferred to various banks in neutral countries, though some of those transfers are disputed. The rest has never been found."It is my estimate that the Nazis shipped at least four hundred tons of gold to Argentina on those submarines. In the currency of the day, that would be about half a billion US dollars. In 1945, the Argentine debt was about two hundred million US dollars. That leaves us with a difference of about three hundred million which would be a little over one and a half billion US dollars at today’s market price.”I said I didn’t think that was feasible because of the weight of gold. It wouldn’t fit on a submarine. He smiled.“Yes, gold is heavy but also very dense and does not require much space. The normal armament for a U-boat of the type loaded at Helgoland was fourteen torpedoes that weighed a little over a ton and a half each. Each submarine could have carried over twenty tons of gold if the torpedoes were not on board. The six submarines making four trips could have carried that much gold and many passengers. With a range of about nine thousand nautical miles, they could easily have made the trip from Germany to Argentina and back in about three months at sea.It sounded like another Nazi conspiracy theory to me, but it was interesting so I decided to play along for a while."So, you want me to find this gold and then what? Hire a bunch of trucks to bring it back to the US?”He smiled and shook his head.“No. I only want you to confirm its location from the information my people have developed after almost a year of research. Near Mendoza in Mendoza province, my people located the ruins of what they described as a replica of The Berghof, Hitler’s residence in Bavaria. The surrounding area is mostly unpopulated now, but was once the site of a now closed led mine. We believe the building was built to house German Army and SS officers who fled Germany and surmise the gold must have been secreted in the led mine. Once you have confirmed the gold is indeed at that location, others will orchestrate its removal and transport.That little bell in your head that tells you something’s not right started to ring."Mr. Richter, if your people know where it is, why don’t those others you talked about confirm the gold is there and then remove it?”He pursed his lips.“My people in Argentina are carefully watched by the Argentine government to detect any financial dealings they might attempt. It is highly likely some in the Argentine government are also aware of their findings. Were my people to investigate that mine, well, the current government of Argentina would consider the gold to be the property of Argentina. It is not, but Argentina would be very upset were they to find it has been discovered and removed from the country.”The little bell in my head was now clanging.“So what you’re asking me to do is illegal? I don’t much like the idea of spending time in an Argentine prison.”He shook his head.“Your involvement will only be to locate and enter an abandoned and unguarded mine, confirm with photographs that the gold is there, and then bring those photographs and an accurate location back to me. It will be as if you were a tourist seeing the countryside and just happened upon the mine during your travels. There is nothing illegal about that."You will be well compensated for your efforts. I am prepared to offer you transportation to and from Argentina, a vehicle and other equipment for your use while there, and the sum of one hundred thousand dollars. I have arranged for twenty thousand dollars to be transferred to your bank account immediately upon your arrival in Argentina and commencement of your search. You will, of course, be provided with a small sum for travel expenses. The balance will be transferred upon your return, assuming you are successful. If not, the transfer will be for an additional twenty thous

I was hired to find lost Nazi gold. I found Ariella instead.Based on a post by ronde, in 2 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Steamy Stories.The shiny, black, Mercedes X-Class pickup slowly worked its way down the road about a hundred meters from where I was crouched behind a rock. The fact the pickup was alone and had an M 60 machine gun on a pintle mount in the bed told me this wasn’t some unit of the Argentine Army. The Argentine Army might have been driving a Mercedes pickup, but it would have been OD green and the machine gun would have been an FN Mag.The woman nudged me then.“They’ll be on top of us in a few minutes. I’ll take out the truck driver and the M 60. That’ll slow them down while they’re trying to figure out where the shots came from. They might run then, but if they don’t it’ll take both of us to take out the rest. Are you ready for that?”I was ready, because I knew if we didn’t take out all of them, we’d be running for our lives. I’d experienced that before. I was a former US Army Ranger with two tours of Afghanistan under my belt before I decided civilian life would be a whole lot healthier.I had no reservations about what we had to do, though it was going to be tough. With it’s short barrel, iron sights, and a tendency to overheat if fired quickly, the HK G 36 C carbine I carried lost accuracy fast after about two hundred meters, so they’d have to be closer than that. I could use the old “spray and pray” technique used by some US Army soldiers before the M4 came out with a selector switch for a three round burst instead of just full-auto fire. The problem with that was I only had a hundred and twenty rounds and they wouldn’t last long if I did that. After that, all I had was a 9 millimeter Browning pistol. They’d have to be a lot closer before I had any chance of putting even one down with that.The woman was in better shape for long range shooting. The Israeli M 89 SR rifle she was crouched behind was accurate out to about a thousand meters if she knew what she was doing, and if she did, the thirty rounds in her magazine would be more than sufficient.She let the truck get to about seventy-five meters from our position and then put one 7.62  millimeter round through the windshield. The driver slumped down in the seat at the same time her second shot hit the M60 just behind the operating handle and effectively froze the action. The truck turned sharply into a rock and then the engine died. The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than about five seconds. The woman definitely knew her way around a rifle.The three guys in the truck bed and the one left in the cab bailed out, got behind the truck, and started looking for the shooter. They were going to have a difficult time finding us. The suppressor on the M89SR effectively hid any muzzle flash and any dust caused by the gasses exiting the barrel. It also reduced the sound enough that it would be difficult for the guys to pinpoint it since the echo from the mountains made the sound seem to come from all directions.The woman and I watched them for the next five minutes, and it became obvious they weren’t battle-trained troops. They were probably considered a serious threat by the local population, but to me they were just amateurs; well-equipped amateurs, but still amateurs.They were well equipped because they had money, and money was the reason I was in Argentina in the first place. Meeting the woman was just a lucky accident. Well, that’s what I thought at the time. I later found out it was no accident.How it all started.The whole thing started six weeks before I found myself with the woman crouched behind a rock and waiting to see what the guys behind the truck were going to do next.After separating myself from the US Army, I needed some way to keep myself indoors and fed. When I looked at what I knew how to do, planning for close combat and then executing that plan was all I could come up with.Given the domestic and political climate at the time, a lot of former military men were running self defense schools. After reading about a few of the schools, I decided I could make some money that way too.I’d been deployed for much of my Army career so most of my Army pay was sitting in my bank. I used half of what I had as a down payment on fifty acres in Eastern Tennessee with a house and barn on it, and built a pistol and rifle range.I was doing OK, teaching a class a couple times a week in basic gun safety and giving the Tennessee concealed-carry class and test. The other days, I taught advanced courses in long-range rifle shooting and rapid-fire pistol shooting. I also sold targets and ammunition. I wasn’t getting rich, but I was able to make the mortgage payments, put food on the table, and keep my fridge stocked with beer.One afternoon after I’d finished up my class on accurate rapid pistol fire, I was policing brass from the range when a guy in a suit and tie walked up and stuck out his hand. He introduced himself as Marcus Richter.“Mr. Dale Stevenson; did I get your name right? Ah, good. Mr. Stevenson, I understand you have somewhat of a unique background, a background I would find useful if you agree to my proposal.”I figured he’d gotten that information from my web site. I thought “US Army Ranger” sounded better than “former military” like some of the school web sites used.I shrugged.“I can teach you how to fire a weapon and how to defend yourself in an emergency if that’s what you mean.”He shook his head.“No, though the thought has crossed my mind. Fortunately, I have people who take care of those duties for me."No, I’m a successful business man in a rather unique business. I trade in world currencies. It is that business that resulted in my visit to your establishment today. I fear the explanation of that business will be quite lengthy, so would it be possible to find a place where we might sit down and out of the sun?”I’d converted part of the barn into a classroom for my classes, so I led the man there. Once we were seated, he cleared his throat.“As I said, I am a trader in world currencies and that includes gold and silver in its many forms, from coinage to bullion. My business is of necessity rather secretive, for were some in the precious metal market to have advanced knowledge of my activities, it would have an impact upon the world pricing of said precious metals. It is such advanced knowledge I hope to exploit to my advantage if you agree to perform a service for me, a service for which you will be very well compensated.”I wasn’t entirely convinced this guy was on the level, but I had no reason to stop listening to him.I smiled.“It sounds like you have some sort of secret mission you want me to do for you.”He smiled.“Yes, secrecy is of the utmost importance. When you hear the details, you will understand why."As you probably know, in the last stages of World War Two, many high-ranking members of the Nazi party and German military realized any favorable outcome to the war was an impossibility. Germany would be defeated and given the atrocities committed, those same people would be prosecuted for war crimes, found guilty, and imprisoned or executed."They began making plans to escape before they were captured by the Allies. Argentina was neutral during the war and indeed declared war on the Axis powers a month before the war in Europe ended, but many in Argentina were still sympathetic toward Germany. As a result, Argentina was viewed as a possible haven by those attempting to escape what would surely be their ultimate fate."Argentina, in fact, encouraged those high-ranking people to come there. It is well known that many were able to successfully leave Germany and take up residence in Argentina. The efforts of some Israeli organizations that were able to locate some of them and transport them back to Israel for trial is a testimony to that fact."What is not well known is how those same people funded their escape and managed to live in Argentina until they were able to find employment. There are suspicions of the transfer of gold either before or after their escape, but no proof. What is known is there were large caches of gold the Nazi’s looted from the countries and people they overran in the early stages of the war."While much of that gold was gold bars plundered from the repositories in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, a significant amount was in the gold taken from individuals. To date, some of that gold has been recovered, but a sizeable portion has not and there are only rumors as to its location, until about a month ago."Ah, shall we say, a friend of a friend mentioned he had been offered a small bar of gold bullion bearing the imprint of the Heraeus Corporation of Germany. I do not know if you know of this German company, but Heraeus has been in the business of refining and producing precious metals since the late 1800’s when they discovered a method of melting platinum."During World War Two, one small gold smelting facility of the Heraeus corporation located on the outskirts of Hanau, Germany was taken over by the Nazi party, managed by Nazi party members, and slave labor was used for the smelting process. They began melting the gold looted from the countries occupied by the German Army into bullion. The bullion was stamped with the hallmark of the Heraeus corporation in order to make it appear to be legitimate, though the Heraeus company per se had nothing to do with the operation."This knowledge has been common since the war ended, but what happened to the gold bullion produced by the Nazi controlled factory has been unknown until this single bar of bullion was offered to this friend of my friend. The offer was made in somewhat secretive circumstances and the design of the hallmark dated to the period of the Second World War. These two things intrigued this friend of my friend and also intrigued me."My interest was passing until I spoke to a man who wished to buy gold as an investment. He related a tale told by his grandfather of watching U-boats berthed at Helgoland, Germany when he was twelve years old. His grandfather had watched the U-boats before as they were fueled, armed, and then sent back out to sea. On a few occasions, this was not the case."According to his story, over the course of a week, several men in prison uniforms loaded six submarines with wooden cases that appeared much too heavy to be supplies and not large enough to hold munitions. He thought it unusual that they did not load any torpedoes as they always had before, but assumed the submarines were supply submarines used to re-supply U-boats at sea."Once the submarines were loaded, the men in prison uniforms were taken away and a few men in the uniform of the German navy went on board, but not in the same numbers this man had seen before. Instead of a full crew, a number of men in business dress also boarded the submarines. The submarines then left port. Three months later, those same six submarines were again docked in Helgoland and were being once again loaded as before. This cycle was repeated two more times before he witnessed the same submarines being loaded with torpedoes and manned by full crews of the German Navy."Another very interesting event happened in Argentina at the end of the war. Juan Peron was elected president and set about nationalizing industries and services while at the same time raising the wages of workers. Most importantly, he paid off the entire amount of externally held Argentine debt."Because Argentina does mine native gold and silver ore, I have people there to keep me informed about the latest developments. When I heard the stories about the bar of gold bullion and the German submarines and put that story into the context of what I know about the country, I asked my people there to do some research into the matter. The report I received a few weeks ago offered some tantalizing conclusions."At the end of the war, Argentina had external debt amounting to about two hundred million US Dollars. When Peron was elected President, he settled the national debt with payments in gold bullion, which is understandable because gold is the currency of the world. What is not understandable is where Peron was able to find enough gold to do that without bankrupting the country. The entire gold reserves of Argentina at the time were about two hundred and fifty million US dollars. He would have had to drain most of those reserves, but apparently did not. He continued to implement his policies by using that same gold reserve."My people were not able to identify how that situation changed so rapidly once Peron was in office nor the source of the gold with which he paid the Argentine debt. They were able to report that prior to settling that debt, the Argentine government ceased operations of a small, older smelter in the foothills of the Andes near Mendoza to bring that facility up to the level of current technology. They learned this from an old man who had been employed at the smelter in his youth. He said he was sent home and told to not report for work for two months."The man was interested in what changes were going to be made so over the course of seven weeks, he watched the activities at the smelter. He related to my people that the first week, he saw many trucks drive into the smelter and each truck had armed guards who were all tall men who looked European. He could not see what they did in the smelter, but he did notice the smokestack continued to emit smoke just as it had when the smelter was operating."A week before his two month furlough was to end, he witnessed those same trucks with the same armed guards drive out of the smelter and take the road that led to Buenos Aires. He also said when he returned to work, there was little difference from how the smelter had operated before.”I wasn’t sure what all this had to do with me. When I asked, his face became grim.“What I and my people believe is that a very large amount of gold was shipped to Argentina by the Nazis on submarines and used to pay the Argentine government for allowing them to stay there. That is the only explanation for how Peron was able to find the gold to pay off the national debt. It is also an explanation for the unusual loading of the submarine and for the bar of gold bullion offered to, as I said, a friend of a friend. The smelter was shut down in order to melt the Nazi gold and then recast it into bullion that bore the Argentine hallmark.”I was still confused.“OK, that’s all well and good, but again, what does that have to do with me?”He placed his hands on the table between us and smiled.“I want to pay you to find the rest of the Nazi gold.”Now, I was confused again.“The rest? I thought you said they melted it all down and recast it.”He shook his head and chuckled.“I said they melted and recast enough to pay off the Argentine debt, not that they melted and recast all the gold. The total amount of gold plundered by the Nazis is not accurately known, but it has been estimated at nearly two billion US dollars in the currency of the day. About a fourth of that can be reasonably accounted for as it was transferred to various banks in neutral countries, though some of those transfers are disputed. The rest has never been found."It is my estimate that the Nazis shipped at least four hundred tons of gold to Argentina on those submarines. In the currency of the day, that would be about half a billion US dollars. In 1945, the Argentine debt was about two hundred million US dollars. That leaves us with a difference of about three hundred million which would be a little over one and a half billion US dollars at today’s market price.”I said I didn’t think that was feasible because of the weight of gold. It wouldn’t fit on a submarine. He smiled.“Yes, gold is heavy but also very dense and does not require much space. The normal armament for a U-boat of the type loaded at Helgoland was fourteen torpedoes that weighed a little over a ton and a half each. Each submarine could have carried over twenty tons of gold if the torpedoes were not on board. The six submarines making four trips could have carried that much gold and many passengers. With a range of about nine thousand nautical miles, they could easily have made the trip from Germany to Argentina and back in about three months at sea.It sounded like another Nazi conspiracy theory to me, but it was interesting so I decided to play along for a while."So, you want me to find this gold and then what? Hire a bunch of trucks to bring it back to the US?”He smiled and shook his head.“No. I only want you to confirm its location from the information my people have developed after almost a year of research. Near Mendoza in Mendoza province, my people located the ruins of what they described as a replica of The Berghof, Hitler’s residence in Bavaria. The surrounding area is mostly unpopulated now, but was once the site of a now closed led mine. We believe the building was built to house German Army and SS officers who fled Germany and surmise the gold must have been secreted in the led mine. Once you have confirmed the gold is indeed at that location, others will orchestrate its removal and transport.That little bell in your head that tells you something’s not right started to ring."Mr. Richter, if your people know where it is, why don’t those others you talked about confirm the gold is there and then remove it?”He pursed his lips.“My people in Argentina are carefully watched by the Argentine government to detect any financial dealings they might attempt. It is highly likely some in the Argentine government are also aware of their findings. Were my people to investigate that mine, well, the current government of Argentina would consider the gold to be the property of Argentina. It is not, but Argentina would be very upset were they to find it has been discovered and removed from the country.”The little bell in my head was now clanging.“So what you’re asking me to do is illegal? I don’t much like the idea of spending time in an Argentine prison.”He shook his head.“Your involvement will only be to locate and enter an abandoned and unguarded mine, confirm with photographs that the gold is there, and then bring those photographs and an accurate location back to me. It will be as if you were a tourist seeing the countryside and just happened upon the mine during your travels. There is nothing illegal about that."You will be well compensated for your efforts. I am prepared to offer you transportation to and from Argentina, a vehicle and other equipment for your use while there, and the sum of one hundred thousand dollars. I have arranged for twenty thousand dollars to be transferred to your bank account immediately upon your arrival in Argentina and commencement of your search. You will, of course, be provided with a small sum for travel expenses. The balance will be transferred upon your return, assuming you are successful. If not, the transfer will be for an additional twenty thous

I was hired to find lost Nazi gold. I found Ariella instead.Based on a post by ronde, in 2 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Steamy Stories.The shiny, black, Mercedes X-Class pickup slowly worked its way down the road about a hundred meters from where I was crouched behind a rock. The fact the pickup was alone and had an M 60 machine gun on a pintle mount in the bed told me this wasn’t some unit of the Argentine Army. The Argentine Army might have been driving a Mercedes pickup, but it would have been OD green and the machine gun would have been an FN Mag.The woman nudged me then.“They’ll be on top of us in a few minutes. I’ll take out the truck driver and the M 60. That’ll slow them down while they’re trying to figure out where the shots came from. They might run then, but if they don’t it’ll take both of us to take out the rest. Are you ready for that?”I was ready, because I knew if we didn’t take out all of them, we’d be running for our lives. I’d experienced that before. I was a former US Army Ranger with two tours of Afghanistan under my belt before I decided civilian life would be a whole lot healthier.I had no reservations about what we had to do, though it was going to be tough. With it’s short barrel, iron sights, and a tendency to overheat if fired quickly, the HK G 36 C carbine I carried lost accuracy fast after about two hundred meters, so they’d have to be closer than that. I could use the old “spray and pray” technique used by some US Army soldiers before the M4 came out with a selector switch for a three round burst instead of just full-auto fire. The problem with that was I only had a hundred and twenty rounds and they wouldn’t last long if I did that. After that, all I had was a 9 millimeter Browning pistol. They’d have to be a lot closer before I had any chance of putting even one down with that.The woman was in better shape for long range shooting. The Israeli M 89 SR rifle she was crouched behind was accurate out to about a thousand meters if she knew what she was doing, and if she did, the thirty rounds in her magazine would be more than sufficient.She let the truck get to about seventy-five meters from our position and then put one 7.62  millimeter round through the windshield. The driver slumped down in the seat at the same time her second shot hit the M60 just behind the operating handle and effectively froze the action. The truck turned sharply into a rock and then the engine died. The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than about five seconds. The woman definitely knew her way around a rifle.The three guys in the truck bed and the one left in the cab bailed out, got behind the truck, and started looking for the shooter. They were going to have a difficult time finding us. The suppressor on the M89SR effectively hid any muzzle flash and any dust caused by the gasses exiting the barrel. It also reduced the sound enough that it would be difficult for the guys to pinpoint it since the echo from the mountains made the sound seem to come from all directions.The woman and I watched them for the next five minutes, and it became obvious they weren’t battle-trained troops. They were probably considered a serious threat by the local population, but to me they were just amateurs; well-equipped amateurs, but still amateurs.They were well equipped because they had money, and money was the reason I was in Argentina in the first place. Meeting the woman was just a lucky accident. Well, that’s what I thought at the time. I later found out it was no accident.How it all started.The whole thing started six weeks before I found myself with the woman crouched behind a rock and waiting to see what the guys behind the truck were going to do next.After separating myself from the US Army, I needed some way to keep myself indoors and fed. When I looked at what I knew how to do, planning for close combat and then executing that plan was all I could come up with.Given the domestic and political climate at the time, a lot of former military men were running self defense schools. After reading about a few of the schools, I decided I could make some money that way too.I’d been deployed for much of my Army career so most of my Army pay was sitting in my bank. I used half of what I had as a down payment on fifty acres in Eastern Tennessee with a house and barn on it, and built a pistol and rifle range.I was doing OK, teaching a class a couple times a week in basic gun safety and giving the Tennessee concealed-carry class and test. The other days, I taught advanced courses in long-range rifle shooting and rapid-fire pistol shooting. I also sold targets and ammunition. I wasn’t getting rich, but I was able to make the mortgage payments, put food on the table, and keep my fridge stocked with beer.One afternoon after I’d finished up my class on accurate rapid pistol fire, I was policing brass from the range when a guy in a suit and tie walked up and stuck out his hand. He introduced himself as Marcus Richter.“Mr. Dale Stevenson; did I get your name right? Ah, good. Mr. Stevenson, I understand you have somewhat of a unique background, a background I would find useful if you agree to my proposal.”I figured he’d gotten that information from my web site. I thought “US Army Ranger” sounded better than “former military” like some of the school web sites used.I shrugged.“I can teach you how to fire a weapon and how to defend yourself in an emergency if that’s what you mean.”He shook his head.“No, though the thought has crossed my mind. Fortunately, I have people who take care of those duties for me."No, I’m a successful business man in a rather unique business. I trade in world currencies. It is that business that resulted in my visit to your establishment today. I fear the explanation of that business will be quite lengthy, so would it be possible to find a place where we might sit down and out of the sun?”I’d converted part of the barn into a classroom for my classes, so I led the man there. Once we were seated, he cleared his throat.“As I said, I am a trader in world currencies and that includes gold and silver in its many forms, from coinage to bullion. My business is of necessity rather secretive, for were some in the precious metal market to have advanced knowledge of my activities, it would have an impact upon the world pricing of said precious metals. It is such advanced knowledge I hope to exploit to my advantage if you agree to perform a service for me, a service for which you will be very well compensated.”I wasn’t entirely convinced this guy was on the level, but I had no reason to stop listening to him.I smiled.“It sounds like you have some sort of secret mission you want me to do for you.”He smiled.“Yes, secrecy is of the utmost importance. When you hear the details, you will understand why."As you probably know, in the last stages of World War Two, many high-ranking members of the Nazi party and German military realized any favorable outcome to the war was an impossibility. Germany would be defeated and given the atrocities committed, those same people would be prosecuted for war crimes, found guilty, and imprisoned or executed."They began making plans to escape before they were captured by the Allies. Argentina was neutral during the war and indeed declared war on the Axis powers a month before the war in Europe ended, but many in Argentina were still sympathetic toward Germany. As a result, Argentina was viewed as a possible haven by those attempting to escape what would surely be their ultimate fate."Argentina, in fact, encouraged those high-ranking people to come there. It is well known that many were able to successfully leave Germany and take up residence in Argentina. The efforts of some Israeli organizations that were able to locate some of them and transport them back to Israel for trial is a testimony to that fact."What is not well known is how those same people funded their escape and managed to live in Argentina until they were able to find employment. There are suspicions of the transfer of gold either before or after their escape, but no proof. What is known is there were large caches of gold the Nazi’s looted from the countries and people they overran in the early stages of the war."While much of that gold was gold bars plundered from the repositories in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, a significant amount was in the gold taken from individuals. To date, some of that gold has been recovered, but a sizeable portion has not and there are only rumors as to its location, until about a month ago."Ah, shall we say, a friend of a friend mentioned he had been offered a small bar of gold bullion bearing the imprint of the Heraeus Corporation of Germany. I do not know if you know of this German company, but Heraeus has been in the business of refining and producing precious metals since the late 1800’s when they discovered a method of melting platinum."During World War Two, one small gold smelting facility of the Heraeus corporation located on the outskirts of Hanau, Germany was taken over by the Nazi party, managed by Nazi party members, and slave labor was used for the smelting process. They began melting the gold looted from the countries occupied by the German Army into bullion. The bullion was stamped with the hallmark of the Heraeus corporation in order to make it appear to be legitimate, though the Heraeus company per se had nothing to do with the operation."This knowledge has been common since the war ended, but what happened to the gold bullion produced by the Nazi controlled factory has been unknown until this single bar of bullion was offered to this friend of my friend. The offer was made in somewhat secretive circumstances and the design of the hallmark dated to the period of the Second World War. These two things intrigued this friend of my friend and also intrigued me."My interest was passing until I spoke to a man who wished to buy gold as an investment. He related a tale told by his grandfather of watching U-boats berthed at Helgoland, Germany when he was twelve years old. His grandfather had watched the U-boats before as they were fueled, armed, and then sent back out to sea. On a few occasions, this was not the case."According to his story, over the course of a week, several men in prison uniforms loaded six submarines with wooden cases that appeared much too heavy to be supplies and not large enough to hold munitions. He thought it unusual that they did not load any torpedoes as they always had before, but assumed the submarines were supply submarines used to re-supply U-boats at sea."Once the submarines were loaded, the men in prison uniforms were taken away and a few men in the uniform of the German navy went on board, but not in the same numbers this man had seen before. Instead of a full crew, a number of men in business dress also boarded the submarines. The submarines then left port. Three months later, those same six submarines were again docked in Helgoland and were being once again loaded as before. This cycle was repeated two more times before he witnessed the same submarines being loaded with torpedoes and manned by full crews of the German Navy."Another very interesting event happened in Argentina at the end of the war. Juan Peron was elected president and set about nationalizing industries and services while at the same time raising the wages of workers. Most importantly, he paid off the entire amount of externally held Argentine debt."Because Argentina does mine native gold and silver ore, I have people there to keep me informed about the latest developments. When I heard the stories about the bar of gold bullion and the German submarines and put that story into the context of what I know about the country, I asked my people there to do some research into the matter. The report I received a few weeks ago offered some tantalizing conclusions."At the end of the war, Argentina had external debt amounting to about two hundred million US Dollars. When Peron was elected President, he settled the national debt with payments in gold bullion, which is understandable because gold is the currency of the world. What is not understandable is where Peron was able to find enough gold to do that without bankrupting the country. The entire gold reserves of Argentina at the time were about two hundred and fifty million US dollars. He would have had to drain most of those reserves, but apparently did not. He continued to implement his policies by using that same gold reserve."My people were not able to identify how that situation changed so rapidly once Peron was in office nor the source of the gold with which he paid the Argentine debt. They were able to report that prior to settling that debt, the Argentine government ceased operations of a small, older smelter in the foothills of the Andes near Mendoza to bring that facility up to the level of current technology. They learned this from an old man who had been employed at the smelter in his youth. He said he was sent home and told to not report for work for two months."The man was interested in what changes were going to be made so over the course of seven weeks, he watched the activities at the smelter. He related to my people that the first week, he saw many trucks drive into the smelter and each truck had armed guards who were all tall men who looked European. He could not see what they did in the smelter, but he did notice the smokestack continued to emit smoke just as it had when the smelter was operating."A week before his two month furlough was to end, he witnessed those same trucks with the same armed guards drive out of the smelter and take the road that led to Buenos Aires. He also said when he returned to work, there was little difference from how the smelter had operated before.”I wasn’t sure what all this had to do with me. When I asked, his face became grim.“What I and my people believe is that a very large amount of gold was shipped to Argentina by the Nazis on submarines and used to pay the Argentine government for allowing them to stay there. That is the only explanation for how Peron was able to find the gold to pay off the national debt. It is also an explanation for the unusual loading of the submarine and for the bar of gold bullion offered to, as I said, a friend of a friend. The smelter was shut down in order to melt the Nazi gold and then recast it into bullion that bore the Argentine hallmark.”I was still confused.“OK, that’s all well and good, but again, what does that have to do with me?”He placed his hands on the table between us and smiled.“I want to pay you to find the rest of the Nazi gold.”Now, I was confused again.“The rest? I thought you said they melted it all down and recast it.”He shook his head and chuckled.“I said they melted and recast enough to pay off the Argentine debt, not that they melted and recast all the gold. The total amount of gold plundered by the Nazis is not accurately known, but it has been estimated at nearly two billion US dollars in the currency of the day. About a fourth of that can be reasonably accounted for as it was transferred to various banks in neutral countries, though some of those transfers are disputed. The rest has never been found."It is my estimate that the Nazis shipped at least four hundred tons of gold to Argentina on those submarines. In the currency of the day, that would be about half a billion US dollars. In 1945, the Argentine debt was about two hundred million US dollars. That leaves us with a difference of about three hundred million which would be a little over one and a half billion US dollars at today’s market price.”I said I didn’t think that was feasible because of the weight of gold. It wouldn’t fit on a submarine. He smiled.“Yes, gold is heavy but also very dense and does not require much space. The normal armament for a U-boat of the type loaded at Helgoland was fourteen torpedoes that weighed a little over a ton and a half each. Each submarine could have carried over twenty tons of gold if the torpedoes were not on board. The six submarines making four trips could have carried that much gold and many passengers. With a range of about nine thousand nautical miles, they could easily have made the trip from Germany to Argentina and back in about three months at sea.It sounded like another Nazi conspiracy theory to me, but it was interesting so I decided to play along for a while."So, you want me to find this gold and then what? Hire a bunch of trucks to bring it back to the US?”He smiled and shook his head.“No. I only want you to confirm its location from the information my people have developed after almost a year of research. Near Mendoza in Mendoza province, my people located the ruins of what they described as a replica of The Berghof, Hitler’s residence in Bavaria. The surrounding area is mostly unpopulated now, but was once the site of a now closed led mine. We believe the building was built to house German Army and SS officers who fled Germany and surmise the gold must have been secreted in the led mine. Once you have confirmed the gold is indeed at that location, others will orchestrate its removal and transport.That little bell in your head that tells you something’s not right started to ring."Mr. Richter, if your people know where it is, why don’t those others you talked about confirm the gold is there and then remove it?”He pursed his lips.“My people in Argentina are carefully watched by the Argentine government to detect any financial dealings they might attempt. It is highly likely some in the Argentine government are also aware of their findings. Were my people to investigate that mine, well, the current government of Argentina would consider the gold to be the property of Argentina. It is not, but Argentina would be very upset were they to find it has been discovered and removed from the country.”The little bell in my head was now clanging.“So what you’re asking me to do is illegal? I don’t much like the idea of spending time in an Argentine prison.”He shook his head.“Your involvement will only be to locate and enter an abandoned and unguarded mine, confirm with photographs that the gold is there, and then bring those photographs and an accurate location back to me. It will be as if you were a tourist seeing the countryside and just happened upon the mine during your travels. There is nothing illegal about that."You will be well compensated for your efforts. I am prepared to offer you transportation to and from Argentina, a vehicle and other equipment for your use while there, and the sum of one hundred thousand dollars. I have arranged for twenty thousand dollars to be transferred to your bank account immediately upon your arrival in Argentina and commencement of your search. You will, of course, be provided with a small sum for travel expenses. The balance will be transferred upon your return, assuming you are successful. If not, the transfer will be for an additional twenty thous

Are the bugs the baddies or is it the human race? Well, only one of them looks fascist as hell and it's not the insects. The boys discuss.        Links You can rate and review us in these places (and more, probably) Does This Still Work? - TV Podcast https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/does-this-still-work-1088105 ‎Does This Still Work? on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/does-this-still-work/id1492570867 Nazi Gold https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-modesto-bee/148470550/ UFO https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-toronto-star/148477782/  

As Nazi forces tore through much of Europe and North Africa during World War II, gold, valuable artifacts and priceless paintings disappeared from the conquered territories, and many of these treasures are still missing to this day. Many people believe the Nazis hid these treasures away in secret locations. It's perfect fodder for urban legends: the loot stashed away by Nazi soldiers, its location only revealed on a difficult-to-obtain map. But are the tales true? Does gold stolen and concealed by the Nazis really exist? Subscribe to our Patreon Follow us on Instagram Listen to our sister podcast: History of Everything Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As if being murdering SOBs weren't enough, the Nazis were also thieving rats. During WWII, they stole billons in gold from countries they overran and moved it to Germany. But at the end of the war, only part of it was recovered. Where's the rest? Find out the extent of our knowledge in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

During World War I, hundreds of young women went to work in clock factories, painting watch dials with luminous radium paint. But after the girls — who literally glowed in the dark after their shifts — began to experience gruesome side effects, they began a race-against-time fight for justice that would forever change US labor laws. (The Radium Ghost Girls) *** A man is forewarned about a traffic accident that probably would have killed him. Was it a guardian angel, or is there another explanation? (The Phantom's Fatal Forewarning) *** While the search for extraterrestrial life here in this universe is complicated enough, the problem becomes even murkier when you account for the multiverse theory. Could an alternate universe or dimension still be habitable by humans? (Is It Possible To Live In A Parallel Universe?) *** It has been proven that the Nazis were horrible war criminals and not only did some cruel and inhuman things to their prisoners, but even dove into the supernatural and paranormal in the hopes of turning the tide of the war in their favor. But I'm guessing you've not hear about how the Nazis used Bigfoot to further their plans, have you? (Nazi Gold and Bigfoot Costumes) *** Sometimes a horror film will haunt you in your dreams… but for one woman, those hauntings became more real than the movie itself. (It Was Just a Movie) SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM THE EPISODE…“Nazi Gold and Bigfoot Costumes” by Nick Redfern: http://bit.ly/33rXyXZ“Is It Possible To Live In a Parallel Universe?” by Sequoya Kennedy: http://bit.ly/2OOUOP6“It Was Just a Movie” submitted to WeirdDarkness.com by Kaitlynne G: http://bit.ly/2OrN4Dx“The Radium Ghost Girls” by Kate Moore: https://bzfd.it/37NLxQ2“The Phantom's Fatal Forewarning” submitted by Mark Ferris: http://bit.ly/2DoLaNIWeird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =Check out all of my podcasts - “Auditory Anthology”, “Retro Radio: Old Time Radio In The Dark”, “Church of the Undead”, “Micro Terrors”, “Weird Darkness”, and more by clicking on “EPISODES” at https://WeirdDarkness.com!= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2024, Weird Darkness.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =Originally aired: July 31, 2018CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/specters-of-the-radium-girls/

Lies, damn lies and statistics? DICK BOVE, once again, challenges the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), this time attacking its announcement that the US economy generated 216,000 jobs in December as the unemployment rate held steady at 3.7 percent. Using government data on hirings, layoffs, people quitting jobs and hourly wages, BOVE concludes December's BLS report is widely off the mark. “We lost 150,000 jobs last month,” says BOVE, chief financial strategist at ODEON CAPITAL GROUP. “It's an outrageous misstatement of these numbers by the press that creates major losses in the hands of investors,” he adds.    In fact, BOVE sees weaker signs in the labor markets than is acknowledged by other analysts. Are we therefore, inching ever closer to that long anticipated recession?  The CONVERSATION examines the US money supply which BOVE has been tracking for months. The latest data shows the M2 money supply continues to shrink with the first significant drop in M2 since the Great Depression. Some analyst see that as a harbinger of recession. MAT VAN ALSTYNE, ODEON co-founder and managing partner, says BOVE'S analysis of the US Money Supply is on target. Meanwhile, bank earnings season is upon us. BOVE, a veteran bank analyst, expects dismal results and explains why.  Will we see a sharp decline in 2024 in management fund fees for ETF mutual funds and other funds? One report hints at fee reductions. The CONVERSATION also looks at the lessons of history – how many nations supposedly neutral, reportedly profiteered by quietly working with the Third Reich. What might this suggest about the stance of “non-aligned” nations today as the brutal war in Ukraine grinds on, asks our host JOHN AIDAN BYRNE. Questions & Comments: Podcast@odeoncap.com      

In der 11. Folge des Podcasts und Videoblogs "Wir und die Musikwelt" berichten Markus und Axel von den Unwegbarkeiten absurdester Gig-Locations auf Tournee. Ob Schneegestöber auf 2000m Höhe, Klaustrophobie im Bergwerkschacht 500m unter Tage, Seegang auf dem Kreuzfahrtschiff oder Sandsturm an der Costa Smeralda - das Tourleben bleibt spannend.

In the final installment of my series exploring the legends behind Indiana Jones films, I look at both the reality and the myth of Nazi gold trains, specifically looking at the tragedy behind the Hungarian gold train and the urban legend of a buried Nazi gold train in Poland.  Direct all advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Visit www.airwavemedia.com to find other high-quality podcasts! Find a transcript of this episode with source citations and related imagery at www.historicalblindness.com sometime before the release of the next episode. Pledge support on Patreon to get an ad-free feed with exclusive episodes! Check out my novel, Manuscript Found!  And check out the show merch, which make perfect gifts!  Further support the show by giving a one-time gift at paypal.me/NathanLeviLloyd or finding me on Venmo at @HistoricalBlindness. Some music on this episode is by Kai Engel, licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0), including "daemones," "Remedy for Melancholy," "Comatose," "July," "Oneiri," "daedalus," "Daylight PON II," and "Sentinel." "Adventure Theme" by Adam Monroe was licensed commercially through Pond5. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Myth? Legend? or Adventure? Its weird when you watch movies now... Like Indiana Jones, National Treasure and the Goonies but are then told this kind of treasure hunting could really be true... Join me on this journey where I will be discussing hidden treasures.. has it been found? or where is it now... #FFB

Asian Hawk is back to steal some buried Nazi Gold in Jackie Chan's Operation Condor.

Whoopi comic book… Walmart will pay those affected by fraud… Gold Rush 2.0?... Nazi Gold orrr... Writers Strike continues… Twitter purge… Zuck Jiu-Jitsu… Places to be for Hoity Toitys… Lauren showing off with Bezos in Miami… Tyson posts quarterly loss… Italy crisis talk on Noodle prices… Bud Light to advertise… Freddie Mercury stuff to be auctioned… Joke of the day… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During World War II, the Nazis had a base in an isolated, wooded area of the Austrian Alps called Lake Toplitz. It is believed that they used the lake as a secret dumping ground because objects that fell to the bottom would not rot. Some people think the lake is filled with Nazi gold. Others believe it contains secret weapons. But it might actually be full of counterfeit British points and information on Swiss bank accounts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week! We're talking Star Wars: The Bad Batch S2E1 + S2E2Aspen explains what The Bad Batch is to Kenny (who hasn't finished a single episode). Kenny wonders why there are so many "good clones" with malfunctioning chips in their heads.We also board the Dave Bautista train (choo-choo!), Kenny talks Marie Kondo, and we try too hard to pronounce "Kaminoans."———— Support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/trekwarspodSocial Media: https://www.twitter.com/trekwarspod https://www.instagram.com/trekwarspodWant to ask us questions? Email us at trekwarspod@gmail.com .And leave us a review! https://bit.ly/leave-a-review-trek-wars

Find Weird Darkness in your favorite podcast app at https://weirddarkness.com/listen. PLEASE SHARE Weird Darkness with someone who loves paranormal stories, true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries like you do! Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show!IN THIS EPISODE: A man is forewarned about a traffic accident that probably would have killed him. Was it a guardian angel, or is there another explanation? (The Phantom's Fatal Forewarning) *** While the search for extraterrestrial life here in this universe is complicated enough, the problem becomes even murkier when you account for the multiverse theory. Could an alternate universe or dimension still be habitable by humans? (Is It Possible To Live In A Parallel Universe?) *** It has been proven that the Nazis were horrible war criminals and not only did some cruel and inhuman things to their prisoners, but even dove into the supernatural and paranormal in the hopes of turning the tide of the war in their favor. But I'm guessing you've not hear about how the Nazis used Bigfoot to further their plans, have you? (Nazi Gold and Bigfoot Costumes) *** Sometimes a horror film will haunt you in your dreams… but for one woman, those hauntings became more real than the movie itself. (It Was Just a Movie) *** During World War I, hundreds of young women went to work in clock factories, painting watch dials with luminous radium paint. But after the girls — who literally glowed in the dark after their shifts — began to experience gruesome side effects, they began a race-against-time fight for justice that would forever change US labor laws. (The Radium Ghost Girls)SOURCES AND ESSENTIAL WEB LINKS…“Nazi Gold and Bigfoot Costumes” by Nick Redfern: http://bit.ly/33rXyXZ “Is It Possible To Live In a Parallel Universe?” by Sequoya Kennedy: http://bit.ly/2OOUOP6 “It Was Just a Movie” submitted to WeirdDarkness.com by Kaitlynne G: http://bit.ly/2OrN4Dx “The Radium Ghost Girls” by Kate Moore: https://bzfd.it/37NLxQ2 “The Phantom's Fatal Forewarning” submitted by Mark Ferris: http://bit.ly/2DoLaNI = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library. Background music provided by Alibi Music Library, EpidemicSound and/or StoryBlocks with paid license. Music from Shadows Symphony (https://tinyurl.com/yyrv987t), Midnight Syndicate (http://amzn.to/2BYCoXZ), Kevin MacLeod (https://tinyurl.com/y2v7fgbu), Tony Longworth (https://tinyurl.com/y2nhnbt7), and Nicolas Gasparini (https://tinyurl.com/lnqpfs8) is used with permission of the artists.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46Weird Darkness®, Weird Darkness© 2022

"Nazigold": Dabei geht es um die widerrechtliche Aneignung von Gold durch die deutschen Behörden während der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Darunter fallen so wohl geraubte Güter von Privatpersonen, vor allem enteigneten, deportierten und ermordeten Menschen mit jüdischen Wurzeln, als auch die Beschlagnahmung von staatlichen Goldschätzen in besetzten Ländern, zum Beispiel Belgien; auch geht es um Fälle, wo entsprechende Zwangsanleihen nicht zurückgezahlt wurden. Autor: Heiner Wember Von Heiner Wember.

Jahrestag Sperrung Rahmede-Talbrücke: Wirtschaftliche Folgen - Wirtschaftliche Folgen WM-Aus für DFB - Chaos ab Januar?: Neue Wohngeldregeln überfordern Kommunen - Stichtag: Londoner Konferenz über Nazigold (25) Von Oliver Thoma.

Hunger Games und Disney-Land - in dieser Folge geht es um viel viel Geld. Es geht um Reichtum, den sich die meisten Menschen nicht einmal vorstellen können, und um Reiche, die das für eine Privatsache halten. David de Jong ist Journalist, Historiker und Autor des internationalen Bestsellers „Nazi Billionaires,“ in dem er das braune Erbe der reichsten deutschen Familien und Unternehmen -Quandt, Flick, von Finck, den Porsche-Piech Clan und Dr. Oetker - unter die Lupe nimmt. Als Niederländer spricht David de Jong bei FREIHEIT DELUXE über seine Perspektive auf die deutsche Gesellschaft und stellt die Frage, warum es sich die Reichsten im Land der Erinnerungskultur leisten können, ihre Nazi-Vergangenheit nicht angemessen aufzuarbeiten. Über absurden Reichtum und ein feudales Gesellschaftssystem schreibt David de Jong zurzeit auch als Nahostkorrespondent des niederländischen „Financial Daily.“ Für unseren Podcast war er aus Quatar zugeschaltet. Er beobachtet die WM und beschreibt, wie egal den Quataris jegliche Politik und jegliches Aufbegehren nach Menschenrechten sein kann - einfach weil sie ökonomisch unerreichbar sind. Was passiert, wenn gesellschaftliche Macht in den Händen von wenigen, unvorstellbar reichen Menschen liegt? Über diese Freiheit der Reichsten spricht David de Jong mit Jagoda Marinic und was das für die Freiheit der anderen bedeutet. Hier hört ihr… …welches Zitat über Freiheit David mitgebracht hat (02:56), wie er zu der Recherche seines Buches gekommen ist (08:09), über welche Familienunternehmen er geschrieben hat (11:12), nach welchem Kriegsverbrecher immer noch ein deutscher Medienpreis benannt ist (15:12), warum die Entnazifizierung in Deutschland nicht funktioniert hat (36:48), wie man etwas ändern kann (42:56), wie viele Quataris es gibt und wie viele Gastarbeiter für sie schuften (52:24), warum der nihilistische Reichtum eine Gefahr für die globale Gesellschaft ist (01:18), ob David und Jagoda es schaffen auf einer positiven Note zu enden (01:21). Ein Transkript der Folge findet ihr hier: https://download.hr2.de/podcasts/freiheit_deluxe/david-de-jong-100.pdf FREIHEIT DELUXE mit Jagoda Marinic ist eine Produktion des Hessischen Rundfunks in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels.

Hunger Games und Disney-Land - in dieser Folge geht es um viel viel Geld. Es geht um Reichtum, den sich die meisten Menschen nicht einmal vorstellen können, und um Reiche, die das für eine Privatsache halten. David de Jong ist Journalist, Historiker und Autor des internationalen Bestsellers „Nazi Billionaires,“ in dem er das braune Erbe der reichsten deutschen Familien und Unternehmen -Quandt, Flick, von Finck, den Porsche-Piech Clan und Dr. Oetker - unter die Lupe nimmt. Als Niederländer spricht David de Jong bei FREIHEIT DELUXE über seine Perspektive auf die deutsche Gesellschaft und stellt die Frage, warum es sich die Reichsten im Land der Erinnerungskultur leisten können, ihre Nazi-Vergangenheit nicht angemessen aufzuarbeiten. Über absurden Reichtum und ein feudales Gesellschaftssystem schreibt David de Jong zurzeit auch als Nahostkorrespondent des niederländischen „Financial Daily.“ Für unseren Podcast war er aus Quatar zugeschaltet. Er beobachtet die WM und beschreibt, wie egal den Quataris jegliche Politik und jegliches Aufbegehren nach Menschenrechten sein kann - einfach weil sie ökonomisch unerreichbar sind. Was passiert, wenn gesellschaftliche Macht in den Händen von wenigen, unvorstellbar reichen Menschen liegt? Über diese Freiheit der Reichsten spricht David de Jong mit Jagoda Marinic und was das für die Freiheit der anderen bedeutet. Hier hört ihr… …welches Zitat über Freiheit David mitgebracht hat (02:56), wie er zu der Recherche seines Buches gekommen ist (08:09), über welche Familienunternehmen er geschrieben hat (11:12), nach welchem Kriegsverbrecher immer noch ein deutscher Medienpreis benannt ist (15:12), warum die Entnazifizierung in Deutschland nicht funktioniert hat (36:48), wie man etwas ändern kann (42:56), wie viele Quataris es gibt und wie viele Gastarbeiter für sie schuften (52:24), warum der nihilistische Reichtum eine Gefahr für die globale Gesellschaft ist (01:18), ob David und Jagoda es schaffen auf einer positiven Note zu enden (01:21). Ein Transkript der Folge findet ihr hier: https://download.hr2.de/podcasts/freiheit_deluxe/david-de-jong-100.pdf FREIHEIT DELUXE mit Jagoda Marinic ist eine Produktion des Hessischen Rundfunks in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels.

A secret railroad. A lost train. And a forgotten treasure. Today we are talking about the mysterious Nazi Gold Train. Birthday Shout Out Form Instagram Resources, Books, Photos, Coloring pages and more! Mysterykidspodcast.com Become a Patreon! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/themysterykidspodcast/message

The Nazi gold train or Wałbrzych gold train is an urban legend about a train laden with gold and treasure that was hidden by the Nazis in southwest Poland during the last days of World War II. Did it even exist?

At the end of World War Two, when the Nazis had thrown much of Europe into disarray and devastation, a myth speculating the existence of a Nazi gold train was born. It claimed that a train carrying hoards of gold, money, and stolen treasures was fleeing from the Red Army in Poland when it vanished forever. In 2015, two men approached the Polish government with new information about the train and reopened the captivating mysteries and conspiracies surrounding the final months of Nazi rule. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cover photo of Menachem Kaiser by Beowulf Sheehan.To learn more, please visit the website for Menacham Kaiser and Plunder.Show Notes:2:00 genesis of Plunder: A Memoir of family property and Nazi treasure4:00 the memoir by Abraham Kajser6:45 Kajser's experience as a forced laborer during WWII in underground camp structures in Poland that were given the code name Project Riese 7:30 Polish version and Hebrew version of Kajser's memoir8:45 political decisions in what stories are given attention10:30 the writer's mandate to create work that's honest11:20 he went on a Fulbright to Lithuania11:50 his unexpected research on the Vilna Ghetto12:30 lessons missed in Holocaust education13:00 his revelation of how morally and historically complicated and interesting the Holocaust is14:00 Jews' self-governance in ghettos included trials and hangings15:00 How the ‘politics memory' differs in countries like Lithuania and Poland17:00 The arc of his thoughts on the moral and ethical questions raised by his inheritance claim for his grandfather's building21:00 status of his inheritance claim for his grandfather's building22:00 move by mayor of Sosnowiec to claim his grandfather's building25:30 Nationalist shift in Poland, resulting in failed/dismissed property claims27:00 response to Plunder in Poland28:30 KARTA publisher of Plunder in Poland 30:00 the challenges he dealt with in researching the book 31:50 research into forced displacement of Germans after WWII34:30 myth-soaked Silesia became a character in the book36:30 archive from Vilnius, Lithuania38:00 David Fishman's The Book Smugglers40:00 value of archives in digitized form versus physical form41:00 Vilnius archive re-surfaced in the late 1980s/early 1990s 43:00 arts programs in the Vilna ghetto during WWII43:30 Artist Samuel Bak44:00 Poet Abraham Sutzkever44:15 Protest songs by poet, musician, writer and activist Szmerke Kaczerginski44:40 civil war rumblings in Vilna ghetto46:50 Jacob Gens, head of the Vilna ghetto government47:45 death of Itzik Wittenberg, Hero of the Vilna Ghetto / leader of the Resistance49:30 anti-Semitism in Poland50:30 his thoughts on how the justice system is designed to frustrate efforts 52:15 his thoughts on how his legacy is being shaped as a writer57:00 his current project related to an ongoing story in Montreal that involves allegations of hiding 4B in Nazi gold.To view rewards for supporting the podcast, please visit Warfare's Patreon page.To leave questions or comments about this or other episodes of the podcast, please call 1.929.260.4942 or email Stephanie@warfareofartandlaw.com. © Stephanie Drawdy [2022]

To unlock the full episode, join the Frightday Society at http://patreon.com/frightday for access to this, and much, much more. Black projects consistently struggle for funding. Heck, have you seen Spooky Mulder's office? But sometimes life gives you Nazi lemons, and as a result of making lemonade, psychological warfare techniques and exotic research into time travel gets funded. 

Alex and Robin recount and explore the mystery of the billions of dollars of gold stolen by the Nazis during World War 2. How much of it is still out there?

For listeners from Eastern Europe, Poland specifically, we apologise sincerely and profusely for our terrible, terrible pronunciations. What dinguses we felt! Right stupidos...Why so heavy on Polish place names this episode? WELL! This week finds us in the latter days of World War II as a supposed train full of gold and treasures plundered by the Nazis goes missing in the Polish mountains. Is it still out there somewhere? Many have searched for it, including the Polish military for a time, and our minds are blown as we discover the most recent attempt to locate it continued after we started this podcast!And for an episode about a train full of loot stolen by the Nazis we certainly discuss the practicalities of The Three Little Pigs and the painting of dogs playing poker a bit too much... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

During WWII, Nazis plundered cities across Europe for anything of value. Legend has it that a train filled with stolen riches vanished in 1945, and treasure hunters have been searching for it ever since. A strange development in 2021 might mean they're closer than ever. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hooker & DB Mornings.

In this episode of The Railway Hub Podcast, we explore the possibility that there's a missing train full of gold hidden below a former Nazi command post at Ksiaz Castle. Sit back and delve into this bizarre and macabre world of secret underground bases, gothic castles and modern day treasure hunters. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week, we'll tackle the horrifying case about a man who killed his family for gold and the equally terrifying story of a con artist who killed and dismembered his victims. Get ready for scary mysteries Twisted News.

“SPECTERS OF THE RADIUM GIRLS” and 4 More Weird But True Stories! #WeirdDarknessLike the podcast on Facebook – https://facebook.com/weirddarkness, join the Weirdos Facebook Group – https://facebook.com/groups/marlarhouse, and sign up for the fee email newsletter - https://weirddarkness.com/newsletter! Please SHARE Weird Darkness with someone who loves paranormal stories, true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries like you do! Recommending the show to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show!IN THIS EPISODE: (Dark Archives episode previously released July 31, 2018) *** A man is forewarned about a traffic accident that probably would have killed him. Was it a guardian angel, or is there another explanation? (The Phantom's Fatal Forewarning) *** While the search for extraterrestrial life here in this universe is complicated enough, the problem becomes even murkier when you account for the multiverse theory. Could an alternate universe or dimension still be habitable by humans? (Is It Possible To Live In A Parallel Universe?) *** It has been proven that the Nazis were horrible war criminals and not only did some cruel and inhuman things to their prisoners, but even dove into the supernatural and paranormal in the hopes of turning the tide of the war in their favor. But I'm guessing you've not hear about how the Nazis used Bigfoot to further their plans, have you? (Nazi Gold and Bigfoot Costumes) *** Sometimes a horror film will haunt you in your dreams… but for one woman, those hauntings became more real than the movie itself. (It Was Just a Movie) *** During World War I, hundreds of young women went to work in clock factories, painting watch dials with luminous radium paint. But after the girls — who literally glowed in the dark after their shifts — began to experience gruesome side effects, they began a race-against-time fight for justice that would forever change US labor laws. (The Radium Ghost Girls)SOURCES AND ESSENTIAL WEB LINKS…“Nazi Gold and Bigfoot Costumes” by Nick Redfern: http://bit.ly/33rXyXZ “Is It Possible To Live In a Parallel Universe?” by Sequoya Kennedy: http://bit.ly/2OOUOP6 “It Was Just a Movie” submitted to WeirdDarkness.com by Kaitlynne G: http://bit.ly/2OrN4Dx “The Radium Ghost Girls” by Kate Moore: https://bzfd.it/37NLxQ2 “The Phantom's Fatal Forewarning” submitted by Mark Ferris: http://bit.ly/2DoLaNI Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library. Background music provided by Alibi Music, EpidemicSound and/or AudioBlocks with paid license. Music from Shadows Symphony (https://tinyurl.com/yyrv987t), Midnight Syndicate (http://amzn.to/2BYCoXZ), Kevin MacLeod (https://tinyurl.com/y2v7fgbu), Tony Longworth (https://tinyurl.com/y2nhnbt7), and/or Nicolas Gasparini/Myuu (https://tinyurl.com/lnqpfs8) is used with permission. 

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =WANT TO ADVERTISE ON WEIRD DARKNESS?Weird Darkness has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. They're great to work with and will help you advertise on the show. Email sales@advertisecast.com or start the process now at https://weirddarkness.com/advertise = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46Find out how to escape eternal darkness at https://weirddarkness.com/eternaldarkness WeirdDarkness™ - is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. Copyright, 2021.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =00:21:01.364,

Historian and author Dr Nicola Tallis explores the topic of Nazi gold - what it is, where it came from and where it might be now - with Callum McKelvie, the Features Editor at All About History Magazine. Callum has researched and written extensively about Nazi gold and he tells Nicola how the gold, as well as precious stones and art work, was collected by the Nazis as part of Aryanization, the forced expulsion of Jews from business life in Nazi Germany, Axis-aligned states, and their occupied territories. It entailed the transfer of Jewish property into "Aryan" hands. Join the conversation on social media and find images of the jewels and items discussed by visiting @historygemspod on both Twitter and Instagram.

You're invited to our first ever Eavesdroppin' Pot Luck Party - Australian style, where everyone ‘brings a plate'… which means this episode is a random pile of mini sausage rolls

This week we're doing something a little different: we're making predictions on the new year. Who will die? If you guessed everyone in a Hunger Games-style reality show, you would be me. Also, we have a MODERATOR IN TRAINING in studio this week. This is our Madcast Media Network internship program. It's not exactly unpaid since our interns pay us to be here. Did he do a good enough job to be promoted to a Junior Assistant Deputy Moderator? You decide. Rucka (https://www.youtube.com/user/itsRucka) and I appeared on the ETC Show (https://www.youtube.com/user/MachinimaETC) podcast with Ricky and Eliot for the 2016 "worst year ever" review. This was a great episode, definitely worth checking out if you've never listened to their show before: https://youtu.be/TRusaAxH2M8 Also, the final selection for the first round of SUPER PODCAST CHAMPION EDITION will be made the first week of January (the week this episode is available). Here's the link: http://www.madcastmedia.com/submit Special thanks to Candid for supporting this episode. Download Candid from your favorite app store and join the "MADCAST MEDIA" group to be a part of the discussion. And if you think you're talking to me, tweet to verify (https://twitter.com/maddoxrules): https://becandid.com/ https://www.amazon.com/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=212353&creative=380557&linkCode=sb1&tag=bestdebate-20 And finally we round out the episode with a stupid theory on a Nazi gold train that doesn't exist (but our moderator in training disagrees). Plus, here's the iguana drop I played during this episode: https://youtu.be/nOwvmZSVrNU The voicemail number is: 1-562-58-I-RULE (1-562-584-7853). Fortune - Amazon is considering drone-friendly floating warehouses - http://fortune.com/2016/12/29/amazon-floating-warehouses/ Newsday - Digging for Nazi gold train begins in spite of no evidence of its existence - http://www.newsday.com/news/world/nazi-gold-train-search-begins-even-though-some-warn-it-may-not-exist-1.12182981 "Mining by Moonlight" and "Music to Delight" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/