Hitler and Alaric 1’s Lost Treasure
Under the Nazis, the German economy was heavily focused on the military, and near the end of the 1930s, the enormous war machine began running out of money. The country’s foreign reserves had bottomed out and the country was now defaulting on its foreign loans. Prior to the war, Germany successfully looted assets from annexed Austria, occupied Czechoslovakia and the Nazi-governed city of Danzig. It’s believed that this plundering enriched Nazi gold sources by some $71 million by 1939. The Reichsbank, founded in 1876, hid the largesse in 1939 by understating its official reserves by $40 million as related to the Bank of England’s estimates.
But when WWII began in earnest, the Nazis launched into high-gear, expropriating at least $550 million in gold from foreign governments. This included $223 million from Belgium and $193 million from the Netherlands. These figures don’t include gold or other items stolen from private citizens and companies. With such rapacious greed, it’s no wonder that Hitler had his eye on King Alaric’s legendary gold.
So he sent Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS and several Nazi archaeologists to the fabled site to try to find the gold. In 1940, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco presented Himmler with priceless artifacts including bronze and gold ornaments and human bones. All of which belonged to the Visigoths. The items were spirited away to Germany, where it was hoped they would prove the now-infamous theory regarding the Aryan-race (which has fortunately been thoroughly debunked by science). A devotee of pseudo-science, Hitler had proposed the racist and anti-semitic theory that a Master Race could be created. This theory held that the so-called Master Race belonged at the top, with Jewish people placed on the bottom. Himmler, second only in command to Hitler, also promoted this theory, which fueled the Holocaust. He was the mastermind of the “Final Solution,” a cruel attempt to kill all European Jews. Ultimately six million Jews died in this horrific atrocity.
And Hitler also wished to establish an ethnic connection between Germany and Spain. Unfortunately, many of these priceless artifacts were lost to eternity after being distributed to a number of museums in Germany.
Hitler felt a connection with the Visigoths because they were a Germanic people and this is why he sent Himmler to southern Italy in the late 1930s. But the trip turned out to be ill-fated and Himmler was unsuccessful. Perhaps Hitler felt an affinity with Alaric 1 because the long-dead ruler successfully sacked the revered city twice. And remarkably, Alaric and his fellow Visigoths left much of Rome, and its culture, intact.