Chasing Gold: The Incredible Story of How the Nazis Stole Europe's Bullion (38 page)

At dawn on May 25, the
Béarn
,
Jeanne d’Arc
, and
Émile Bertin
converged on the Madeira Islands, their agreed meeting point. By 7:30 A.M. they were in sight of each other. With the
Béarn
in the middle, the three ships then left on a course to Halifax at twelve knots. The captains of each wanted to arrive as soon as possible, but had to stay together, which caused complications. The
Émile Bertin
could travel as fast as forty knots, but that would eat up a lot of fuel. The other two ships had slower maximum speeds and had less fuel. The three captains balanced off speed and fuel consumption.

The three commanders maintained radio silence for most of the trip in order to avoid tipping off the Germans about their location. They listened, however, to radio reports of war developments in northern France. The news was terrible. At one point the navy broadcast, “The country has all its eyes fixed on Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk.”

On May 31, the three ships broke radio silence to inform officials in Halifax that they would arrive the next day at about 4:00 P.M. The French had already alerted the New York Federal Reserve that a shipment was coming, and the French National Bank official aboard the
Béarn
, sent a message to the other ships that all the gold on his vessel should leave by train for New York City as soon as they arrived.

At 8:00 A.M. on June 1, two Canadian military planes began circling the three ships. An hour later, both the British naval station in Bermuda and the Canadians warned the French vessels that an enemy submarine was at the entrance to the port. In response, Admiral Rouyer on the
Jeanne d’Arc
increased his speed to seventeen knots and put his ship on a zigzag course. The French vessels as well as Canadian escort ships soon pulled into the harbor. The
Jeanne d’Arc
was the first ship to land, arriving at Pier B at 11:30 A.M., followed by the
Béarn
a short time later.

The gold on the
Béarn
was unloaded and put directly onto an armored train; as soon as the job was finished it left for the New York Federal Reserve. Between 6:00 A.M. and 2:00 P.M. the next day, the crew of the
Émile Bertin
transferred its gold to another train. The bullion from the
Jeanne d’Arc
was put in railroad wagons between noon and 6:00 P.M.

After some delay, the Admiralty in France finally sent new instructions to the three ships in Halifax: FIRST RETURN AS SOON AS POSSIBLE THE CRUISER ÉMILE BERTIN TO BREST STOP PROCEED AT A GOOD PACE STOP SECOND JEANNE-D’ARC WILL STAY IN HALIFAX UNTIL NEW ORDERS FROM HERE STOP THIRD LET ME KNOW AS SOON AS POSSIBLE DATE APPROXIMATELY WHEN THE AIRCRAFT LOADING OF BÉARN WILL BE FINISHED STOP.

The vessels responded: ÉMILE BERTIN WILL LEAVE 3 JUNE ARRIVE BREST 9 JUNE STOP LOADING BEARN COMMENCED YESTERDAY BUT LACKING MANY PARTS AND AWAITING HALIFAX STOP TOTAL TIME OF ASSEMBLY AND LOADING MAY LAST EIGHT TO FIFTEEN DAYS DEPENDING ON THE ARRIVAL OF PARTS STOP WILL BE PRECISE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE STOP.
¹⁵

Despite the French navy’s bravado, the French Admiralty did not have enough ships to evacuate quickly all the country’s gold holdings plus the bullion that France was guarding for foreign countries. More and more of the country’s commercial ships had to be pressed into service. Gold was now even traveling on passenger liners. One of those was the
SS Pasteur
, a luxury cruiser that was the pride of the French South-Atlantic Company. It had been designed to carry 751 people across oceans in style. The luxury steamer’s owners were so proud of it that they had arranged for the French post office to put it on four million postage stamps that were slated to come out simultaneously with its launch. The war, though, upset that plan. The
Pasteur
had not been commissioned when the French navy took it over and gave orders for it to go to Brest and pick up four hundred tons of “precious metal” that was to be taken to Halifax. The shipment was later cut in half for security reasons.

On June 2 at 9:00 P.M., the
Pasteur
, accompanied by two escort ships that would stay with it for the first twenty-four hours of the voyage, left Brest for Halifax with 213 tons of gold. It was a highly risky trip since the ship had no on-board means of defense, but it did have one great advantage. It could travel at twenty-four knots, twice as fast as the convoy that had included the
Jeanne-d’Arc
. Only six days later, the
Pasteur
entered the Halifax harbor. The gold was immediately transferred to an armored train guarded by Canadian mounted police. Representatives of the Royal Bank of Canada carefully checked the weight of all the containers before they were deposited in vaults in Ottawa. Although this shipment was to buy still more planes, the
Pasteur
couldn’t carry them back. Its luxury cabins and ballrooms were not appropriate for large aircraft. The ship’s captain eventually received orders to leave Halifax for New York City, where it would have stabilizers installed for the return trip to Europe.
¹⁶

While the commanders and the crews of the
Jeanne d’Arc
and
Béarn
were waiting for their ships to be loaded with war materiel, French sailors in Halifax learned that Italy had declared war on France and Britain. Speaking at the University of Virginia that same day, an angry President Franklin Roosevelt said, “The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.” Mussolini’s war objective was modest. As he told his army chief of staff, “I only need a few thousand dead so that I can sit at the peace conference as a man who has fought.”
¹⁷

French commanders in Halifax were realistic enough to know that their country’s military situation was now hopeless, but they remained determined to continue fighting. On June 15, Curtiss planes from the U.S. arrived by air in Halifax, and by 10:00 P.M. twenty-three fighter aircraft, forty-eight bombers, and twenty-five transport planes were on the deck of the
Béarn
. The captain left for Casablanca the following morning. Six fighter aircraft and eight liaison planes were loaded that night on the
Jeanne d’Arc
, and that ship was also ready to leave. The next morning the two vessels, escorted by a Canadian torpedo boat, pulled out of Halifax.
¹⁸

That same day in Paris shortly after 7:00 P.M., four German military officers arrived at the French National Bank in Paris. The building was on the rue de La Vrillière near the Louvre Museum. The Nazi Economic Squad wanted to pick up any gold that was still there.

The soldiers were immediately taken to the office of Henry de Bletterie, the bank’s controller general, where several other officials were also present. A decidedly cool meeting ensued.

“What’s the name of your president?” demanded a German soldier.

“Monsieur Fournier, governor of the Banque de France,” replied de Bletterie.

“Where is he?”

“In unoccupied France.”

“Who’s replacing him?”

“The controller general.”

“What’s his name?”

“De Bletterie.”

“Do you have any gold, currencies, foreign valuables? How much?

“We no longer have anything here such as gold, currency or valuables. There remain about 200,000 to 300,000 francs in bills.”

“Where did the valuables go?”

“Far from here in unoccupied France.”

“Do you have any safety deposit boxes?”

“Yes, we have safety deposit boxes. About eight hundred.”

“And in your branches?”

“We also have them there. We could telephone and find out how many there are in the Seine Department.”

“Useless for now. Do you have the keys to the boxes?”

“We have the keys to the underground chambers, but we don’t have the keys for each deposit box. Those are in the hands of customers, and we have neither the right nor the possibility to open them.”

“As of now, by higher authority, going down to the safety deposit boxes is formally forbidden.”

“I protest against that order, and I demand a written order from an authorized, qualified, and superior official. I cannot take under consideration an oral order coming from someone of whose qualifications I know nothing.”

“My uniform is not sufficient for you? I act by order of superiors, and that should be enough for you.”

“That’s not enough for me.”
¹⁹

The German entourage then left, but returned a few minutes later accompanied by a Nazi officer who described himself as the head of a
Devisenschutzkommando
unit. At 8:15 P.M., the entire group went down to the basement, where the vault was located. The huge 11,000-square-meter storage area had been built in 1927 and was held up by 658 gray marble columns. The main door, which rotated on a rail, weighed seven tons. Two different keys were needed to enter.

Without a word being said, the Germans looked around. After an hour of searching, they finally had to admit that there was not a bar of gold left in the Paris vault. De Bletterie did not volunteer that at precisely that moment French bank officials and their staff in several locations around the country were doing everything they could to get the last French national treasure out of the country.
²⁰

Late in the evening of June 16, Prime Minister Paul Reynaud resigned, and Marshal Philippe Pétain formed a new cabinet that included a majority of ministers who wanted to end the war. Just after midnight, Paul Baudouin, the new French foreign minister, called in the Spanish ambassador and asked if his country would act as an intermediary to the Germans “with a view to the cessation of hostilities and the settlement of conditions for peace.” At 9:00 A.M. the next morning, General Charles de Gaulle left Bordeaux on a British plane to exile. He already had vague plans to organize a Free French army to continue the war against Hitler. Later that same day, Pétain announced over the radio, “I approached the adversary last night to ask him if he is ready to explore with me, as between soldier and soldier, when the fight is over and in an honorable circumstance, the means of ending hostilities.”
²¹
In a radio appeal made on June 22 to the people of France, de Gaulle called for his countrymen to continue the fight and pointed to the many resources the country still possessed: “There remains a vast empire, an intact naval fleet, and lots of gold.”
²²

Admiral François Darlan, the commander of the French navy, sent a message to his entire fleet, signing with his new secret moniker Xavier 337: FIGHT FIERCELY TO THE END AS LONG AS A REGULAR AND INDEPENDENT FRENCH GOVERNMENT HAS NOT GIVEN A CONTRARY ORDER. DISOBEY ORDERS FROM ALL OTHER GOVERNMENTS. NO MATTER WHAT ORDERS ARE RECEIVED, NEVER ABANDON TO THE ENEMY A COMBAT SHIP INTACT.

The captain of the French liner
Pasteur
was still in New York City on June 17, when he learned from American newspapers that his country was pleading for an armistice. He immediately contacted the French naval attaché to ask for instructions. French officials were concerned that the U.S. might seize the ship in New York City in order to keep it out of Nazi hands and ordered him to return immediately to Halifax. While en route, the French Admiralty sent a message telling him that if he had not yet left to remain in New York City or head for Dakar, the capital of Senegal, a French colony in Africa. That port city was located on the Cap-Vert Peninsula, which stuck far out into the Atlantic Ocean 1,500 miles south of Casablanca and nearly 4,000 miles southeast of New York City. The communication, though, did not get through, and the
Pasteur
headed for Halifax. It arrived on June 19 and was ordered to leave immediately for Dakar.

At 1:00 P.M. on June 18, the
Émile Bertin
again pulled into the Halifax harbor, this time tying up at Pier 4. It had left Brest on the evening of June 11 with 254 tons of gold, 3,986 sacks of coins and 796 cases of bars. The previous day while at sea, the crew had heard news of Pétain’s peace petition. When the ship landed, Edouard de Katow, the French National Bank representative on board, decided to leave the bullion where it was until he had received new instructions. The Canadian train that was ready to take it to Ottawa would just have to wait.
²³

As soon as the ship was safely tied up, an officer from the French naval mission in the harbor came aboard and gave Commander Battet a message that had arrived a few hours earlier. It read: AS SOON AS ARRIVE IN HALIFAX ÉMILE BERTIN SHOULD MAKE ROUTE AS FAST AS POSSIBLE TO FORT DE FRANCE WITH CARGO ON BOARD STOP. Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique, had one of the largest harbors in the Caribbean. The ship was almost out of fuel oil, so the first thing Battet did was have the tanks filled, which was done late that night.
²⁴

The next day just before noon, the French commander met with Vice Admiral Stuart Bonham Carter, the commanding British officer at Halifax; their meeting quickly turned hostile. Carter gruffly told Battet that the French officer’s assignment was finished and that he was taking over the French ship. The British admiral explained that he had received orders from London not to let any French vessels leave the harbor.

The French officer responded furiously: “Such an attitude is contrary to all traditions of maritime honor and to all international rules.”

Carter replied just as tartly: “I am obliged, also myself, to obey the instructions of my government . . . if necessary by force.”

The British admiral warned, “We have our batteries.” But the Frenchman barked back, “I also have cannons.”
²⁵

Diplomatic cables soon flew between France, Canada, Britain, and the U.S. While the British did not want the ship to end up in Nazi hands, the Canadians opposed using force to stop the French. Canadian Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King got into the fight, saying sternly, “We control our own country and will not be governed by an Admiralty point of view, but by the position of Canada as a whole.” Battet received another message from France, repeating the earlier cable to leave port with the gold. It also requested a confirmation that the instructions had been received. Following intense talks but no progress, Battet at 9:00 A.M. on June 21 sent a message to the French Admiralty saying, FOLLOW YOUR ORDERS TO LEAVE BY FORCE STOP CHANCE OF SUCCESS ONE IN THREE STOP.
²⁶