Nazi gold

Much of the focus of the discussion about Nazi gold (Raubgold, "stolen gold") concerns how much of it Nazi Germany transferred to overseas banks during World War II. The Nazis looted the assets of its victims (including those in concentration camps) to accumulate wealth. In 1998, a Swiss commission estimated that the Swiss National Bank held $440 million ($8 billion in 2020 currency) of Nazi gold, over half of which is believed to have been looted. Some of the accumulated wealth was used to finance the war, but the total spending remains unclear. The present whereabouts of the gold has been the subject of several books, conspiracy theories, and a failed civil lawsuit brought in January 2000 against the Vatican Bank, the Franciscan Order, and other defendants. The draining of Germany's gold and foreign exchange reserves inhibited the acquisition of materiel, and the Nazi economy, focused on militarization, 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. It is believed that these three sources boosted German official gold reserves by US$71 million ($1.3 billion in 2020 currency) 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.