AUSTRIA: Loot from the Lake

In the crowded last days of war, May 1945, a convoy of Nazi trucks, speeding away from the advancing U.S. troops, was hastily abandoned in upper Austria, 37 miles east of Germany's Berchtesgaden. One stalled truck yielded 23 chests crammed with expertly forged British £5 and £10 notes with total face value of several million dollars. At a lake near by, bank notes tossed overboard from a second truck began to float ashore. In the months that followed, U.S. Navy divers and British frogmen plunged to the 200-ft. to 250-ft. depths of Austria's Toplitz Lake, and later at least...

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