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Nazi gold ((ドイツ語:Raubgold), "stolen gold") is the gold transferred by Nazi Germany to overseas banks during World War II. The regime executed a policy of looting the assets of its victims to finance the war, collecting the looted assets in central depositories. The occasional transfer of gold in return for currency took place in collusion with many individual collaborative institutions. The precise identities of those institutions, as well as the exact extent of the transactions, remain unclear. The present whereabouts of Nazi gold that disappeared into European banking institutions in 1945 has been the subject of several books, conspiracy theories, and a failed civil suit brought in January 2000 against the Vatican Bank, the Franciscan Order, and other defendants. ==Acquisition== The draining of Germany's gold and foreign exchange reserves inhibited the acquisition of materiel, and the Nazi economy, focused on militarisation, could not afford to deplete the means to procure foreign machinery and parts. Nonetheless, towards the end of the 1930s, Germany's foreign reserves were unsustainably low. By 1939, Germany had defaulted upon its foreign loans and most of its trade relied upon command economy barter. However, this tendency towards autarkic conservation of foreign reserves concealed a trend of expanding official reserves, which occurred through looting assets from annexed Austria, occupied Czechoslovakia, and Nazi-governed Danzig.〔UK Treasury correspondence, T 236/931.〕 It is believed that these three sources boosted German official gold reserves by US $71m between 1937 and 1939.〔 To mask the acquisition, the Reichsbank understated its official reserves in 1939 by $40m relative to the Bank of England's estimates.〔 During the war, Nazi Germany continued the practice on a much larger scale. Germany expropriated some $550m in gold from foreign governments, including $223m from Belgium and $193m from the Netherlands.〔 These figures do not include gold and other instruments stolen from private citizens or companies. The total value of all assets stolen by Nazi Germany remains uncertain. A growing source of precious metal came from Nazi concentration camps and death camps, where all property was taken from the victims, and included personal effects such as wedding rings, eye glasses, pocket watches, cigarette cases, jewellery and gold teeth. (All other substantial property, such as houses, paintings, shares, and bonds, were stolen from the victims before they entered the camps.) The gold was collected at the camps and sent to the Reichsbank under the false-name Max Heiliger accounts for melting down for bullion. Much of the gold bullion was stored in abandoned mines in Germany, such as the Merkers mine, where it was found by US soldiers towards the end of the war in 1945. Other resources such as the personal possessions of the victims of Nazi persecution, were found in the concentration camps on liberation. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Nazi gold」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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