Chasing Gold: The Incredible Story of How the Nazis Stole Europe's Bullion (28 page)

The plans for
Weserübung Nord
, the invasion of Norway, called for a German diplomat to make a presentation of German demands simultaneously with the beginning of military actions at 4:15 A.M. The invasion was to be spearheaded by German warships attacking cities at the end of fjords on the country’s long coastline: Narvik, Trondheim, Kristiansand, Bergen, Oslo, Egersund, and Arendal. Since there was no contiguous land between Germany and Norway, all the Wehrmacht forces had to arrive by ship or plane.

Carl J. Hambro, the president of the Storting, Norway’s parliament, was asleep at home just after midnight, when his wife woke him to tell him that air-raid alarms were going off all over the capital. Hambro took a cab to the foreign ministry, where a cabinet meeting was taking place. The invasion left Prime Minister Johan Nygaardsvold, a long-time supporter of neutrality and minimum national defense, stunned into inaction. Hambro, however, seized the moment and directed his nation’s response.

Curt Bräuer, the German minister in Oslo, arrived at the Norwegian foreign ministry at 4:15 A.M. to deliver the German ultimatum. Foreign Minister Halvdan Koht was in the cabinet meeting, but left to meet the German in the ministry’s library. There was no electricity in the building because of a blackout, so the men talked by the light of two small candles. Bräuer handed him a fourteen-page typed document, and then gave a verbal synopsis. He warned there would be brutal consequences if there were any “foolish resistance.”
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After the German diplomat finished his speech, Koht replied that he would have to submit the demands to his government. The minister pressed for a quick reply, saying that the occupation had to be completed before nine o’clock that morning. Koht returned to the cabinet session, but soon returned with the answer: Norway was going to defend its neutrality and resist the German invasion. It was now 5:30, and a grey dawn was breaking across the capital.

“Then there will be fighting,” Bräuer replied. “And nothing can save you.”

“The fighting is already in progress,” said Koht.
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When the German left, the cabinet decided that the entire royal family, King Håkon, Crown-Prince Olav, Princess Ingeborg, and their three children, plus the cabinet and Storting members would leave as soon as possible to the town of Hamar eighty miles north. The special train would depart from Oslo’s Eastern Central Station at 7:00 A.M.
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The Nazis expected little or no military resistance because Norway lacked a substantial army, having traditionally considered neutrality to be their only form of defense. There could be some token mobilization, which would take weeks to carry out. Norwegian military equipment was also antiquated. Nazi plans called for more than 12,500 German forces to be involved on the first day of the invasion, with another 54,500 arriving in the following ten days. Norway had a permanent army of about 7,000 men.

Every ship in the German Nazi navy took part in the attack. The most prized ship was the
Blücher
, the newest heavy cruiser. It had only recently completed sea trials and sailed out of Bremen on April 8 heading north to Norway. Its mission was to capture Oslo. On board were 1,000 Wehrmacht soldiers including General Erwin Engelbrecht and a group of commandos with orders to capture the gold stored at the Bank of Norway.

Shortly before midnight, the first German ship entered the Oslo fjord. At 3:30 A.M., Rear Admiral Oscar Kummetz, the
Blücher
’s commander, ordered his vessel to slow to eight knots and move into the narrowest point of the fjord. The capital was now only twenty miles away. On the shore across from the village of Drøbak stood the Oscarsborg Fortress, a vintage installation built in the 1850s. It housed two 280 mm guns made by Krupp, the famed German arms manufacturer. They were nicknamed Moses and Aaron. A single shell weighed 560 lb. The fort also had an anti-torpedo battery that was also an antique.
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Colonel Birger Eriksen, sixty-five, the commander of the Oscarsborg, had only recently been called back to active duty as war tensions mounted. Just before dawn, he looked out into the darkness and saw a small flotilla sailing towards him. Towering above smaller vessels was the heavy cruiser, rising out of the water like some Colossus of Rhodes. Searchlights from the fort briefly lit it up. Eriksen initially was not sure what to do because he hadn’t been given any specific orders on how to handle such a situation. Moreover, he could not even tell if the incoming ships were German or British since both navies had been active recently in Norwegian waters. There was little communication between Eriksen and his superiors. He was on his own. As he looked out from a grassy hill between Moses and Aaron, Eriksen knew that he could fire only one round. He would have no chance to reload. At 4:21 A.M., the
Blücher
was only about 1,800 yards away when the colonel barked out the order for the Krupp guns to fire. He knew he would either be decorated or face a court martial.
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The first shell hit the German ship in front of the aft mast and set off explosions that started fires in the command tower. Only a few seconds later, the second one slammed into the port side gun turret and caused still more blazes. On-shore batteries then began firing at the flotilla. Eriksen was sure of the nationality of the burning ship when he heard the strains of
Deutschland Über Alles
, the German national anthem, from the stricken cruiser.
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German Captain Kurt Zoepffel after the war recounted the scene aboard the
Blücher
: “Suddenly an ear-splitting roar of thunder rends the air. The glare of the guns pierces the darkness. I can see three flashes simultaneously. We are under fire from two sides. The guns seem to be only about five hundred yards away. Soon bright flames can be seen leaping from the ship. The dreaded shout: ‘Ship on fire,’ was heard. ‘Steering gear out of order.’ ‘Fire apparatus out of order.’ One grave report after another reached the bridge.”
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Two-and-a-half hours later, and after the fire had spread to stored ammunition, Admiral Kummetz ordered the vessel abandoned. At about 6:30 A.M., the
Blücher
rolled over on its port side and began sinking. Norwegians estimated that about 1,000 men went down with the ship, but later studies put the figure at more like 400. Both Kummetz and Engelbrecht jumped into the ocean in full uniform and swam safely to shore. They eventually arrived in Oslo about midnight.
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As soon as the Germans arrived in the Oslo Fjord, Norway’s military leaders contacted the Bank of Norway’s Nicolai Rygg, who told them that he wanted to start moving the country’s gold to Lillehammer right away. The central bank headquarters, a three-story granite structure, was located near the harbor where the
Blücher
should have docked. Opposite the bank stood the nation’s department of defense. The bullion had already been packed in anticipation that it might have to be moved north at any time. Rygg now directed the loading operation with the help of more than fifty bank employees. Twenty-six trucks were borrowed from Oslo companies to move the cargo north. A maximum of two tons of bullion were put on each truck to avoid overloading.

A driver and two bank employees acting as guards were aboard each vehicle. One of the two guards sat next to the driver, while the other was in back in the cargo area. The guards were armed with pistols. Each truck left for Lillehammer as soon as it was loaded.
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The last one departed at 1:30 P.M., which was almost exactly the same time as the first airlifted German soldiers arrived in Oslo. Rygg headed for Lillehammer after the last truckload had departed.

On April 11, a member of the German embassy in Oslo and a Wehrmacht major from von Falkenhorst’s staff arrived at the Norwegian Central Bank and demanded the gold. Sverre Thorkildsen, a vice director, told them that it had been moved out two days before, and no one there knew where it had gone. The Germans left unhappy, but could do little about it. Later Hitler sent a top official from Berlin to Oslo, who forced reluctant bank officials to tell him that the gold was in Lillehammer, a city the Nazis did not yet control. Furious, the German said that everyone involved would have “
Der Kopf Kaput
” (Their head cut off).
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Soon after the fighting started, General Otto Ruge took over as commander-in-chief of all Norwegian forces from Major General Kristian Laake, an elderly leader who was already scheduled to go into retirement. Ruge had his headquarters in Oyer, twelve miles north of Lillehammer. He sent one of his top officers to Lillehammer to work out a way to move the gold as soon as possible further north.

The new plan called for taking it first to Åndalsnes, a small town about 150 miles to the northwest that was a rail center and had a small harbor. There they would put the gold on a ship that would take it to Molde, a nearby town with a harbor large enough for a British warship to dock and take on cargo.

Since trucks were easy targets for Nazi air attacks, the military planners decided to put the gold on a train camouflaged to make it look like simple freight cars and haul it to Åndalsnes. Ruge didn’t like the proposal, which seemed highly risky, but he felt he had no choice. With German forces closing in on Lillehammer, Finance Minister Oscar Torp assigned Fredrik Haslund, an official with his Labor Party, to oversee the gold transport. A car as well as a colonel and a major were put at his disposal, and Haslund recruited a team of men for the job, telling them only that they were going to do road work and should bring picks and shovels. The army ordered the city lights blacked out for safety and to conceal what was going on, while Ruge sent two officers and thirty soldiers to guard the train.
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One of them was Nordahl Grieg, a famous poet and nephew of composer Edvard Grieg. He was a footloose world traveler, who had fought briefly in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. He was then living outside of Lillehammer with his girlfriend. As soon as fighting began, he enlisted.

In Lillehammer at 10:00 P.M. on April 18, a small contingent armed with only pick axes and shovels gathered. The local sheriff spread the word that they were going to work on the city’s defense fortification. A half hour later, the police blocked all roads surrounding the Bank of Norway building and the local train station. By 3:00 A.M. the next day, everything was in place to move 1,542 cases of gold from the bank vault to trucks that would take them to the train. There were now 818 large cases, 685 small ones, and 19 barrels. In addition, there were two steel cases. One contained Norwegian currency bills, and the other had official documents. There was a temporary snafu, when the director of the Lillehammer branch couldn’t remember the combination to the vault, which he hadn’t written down out of fear that the Germans might capture him. After some tense moments, he finally recalled it.
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Late that evening, the engine chugged its way out of the station. On board, in addition to bank officials, were security forces under the command of Major Bjørn Sunde. The Norwegians heard the news that the first British troops coming to help them had arrived in Åndalsnes. Along the way three German soldiers looking for the king stopped the train and asked for its official documents. They inspected the train, but didn’t open any boxes.

The gold train pulled into the port city of Åndalsnes at 5:00 A.M. on April 20. The formerly quiet village was now bustling with British Royal Marines heading south to fight near Lillehammer. German aircraft were attacking the town and the British, and the city had clearly become too dangerous for the gold. Major Sunde had often skied in the area and remembered an area up in the valley that was steep and would provide a good natural bomb shelter. Haslund phoned Finance Minister Torp to tell him the plan: they would move the train about ten miles and park it in a tunnel.

The Norwegian cabinet meanwhile had decided to send all the bullion to Britain in three shipments in order to reduce the risk of it all being captured by the Germans or lost at sea. Four officials, including ministers Oscar Torp and Trygve Lie, went to Åndalsnes to meet with British Captain Philip Vian and work out the details.

At 11:00 that night, the four Norwegians walked into Vian’s headquarters. The British officers were very agitated. One of their comrades had barely missed being killed in Åndalsnes, but finally the visitors got a chance to interject and tell them that they wanted to turn over their entire merchant marine fleet of more than eleven hundred ships to the Allies. Now the Norwegians had Captain Vian’s attention, and he quickly replied, “That is an impressive number, and I will immediately send a letter to the Admiralty.” They then discussed the gold, explaining that it was hidden nearby in a railway tunnel. Vian clapped his hands and shouted with an enthusiasm, “Well done! Gentleman, I think it is the first time in our history that a captain has been woken up in the middle of the night and offered more than one thousand ships and £16 million in gold.”
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The German offensive north from Oslo through the Gudbrands Valley advanced relentlessly despite deep snow. When Allied forces withdrew from Lillehammer on April 21, the Wehrmacht quickly took over the city. Two Berlin treasury officials accompanied by Gestapo agents soon arrived at the Bank of Norway office to check on the gold. No one in town knew the combination to the vault, but a locksmith eventually opened it. When the Germans turned on the lights and walked into the vault, they found only a few banknotes worth about $30.
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During the night of April 23-24, three British cruisers,
Galatea
,
Glasgow
, and
Sheffield
, arrived in Åndalsnes with fresh British troops to throw into the battle. The town by now was little more than a mountain of war rubble. Haslund soon received orders to load the first 200 cases of the country’s gold onto the
Galatea
, which would leave immediately for its return trip to Britain as soon as it was unloaded. Grieg and the gold, though, were still two hours away at the Romsdalen station up valley. When he received word to start moving the bullion, workmen separated wagon #8138, which contained two hundred large cases, from the rest of the cars. Then Haslund and sixteen soldiers scrambled into a passenger wagon, and the three-car train headed to the port.
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