WW2 RAF aerial photos may lead to lost Nazi gold worth £500m

RAF surveillance photos shot by Mosquito fighter-bombers over Germany during the Second World War are guiding historians to find the location of a bunker believed to contain a hoard of Nazi gold worth over 500 million pounds on today”s markets.

After using photos and eyewitness reports from the time to pinpoint the spot, a dig is due to start next month in the Leinawald forest near Leipzig in the hope it will uncover the lost underground complex.

Rumours of the colossal subterranean installation have fuelled a treasure hunt mania in the forest over recent years.

Nazi archives show that battalions of Organisation Todt – the Third Reich”s main labour organisation – were shipped into the Leinawald in 1944 on the orders of Hitler”s armaments minister Albert Speer.

At the weekend human remains were found in the forest; believed to be those of slave labourers forced to assist the Nazis in building the secret bunker.

And Luftwaffe records from 1945 show that a bombing raid by warplanes was ordered on the site in April 1945 – one month from the end of the war – despite the fact that hardly any German planes were able to fly because of total Allied air supremacy.

One photo that excites local historian Hilmar Prosche shows sand workings in August 1944 that resemble the outline of a human skull.

He believes the skull points the way to the bunkerentrancde and the Reichsbank gold worth over 500 million pounds.

“They obviously thought it was worth the risk to put aircraft into the sky to drop bombs to try to obliterate surface traces of what had been constructed here,” the Daily Mail quoted Prosche as saying.

Another historian involved in the planned dig said: “We have Nazi labour battalions digging in the forest assisted by slaves, British warplanes taking photos of the workings, our own side bombing it – and a report from Berlin of trucks leaving the Reichsbank and headed towards Leipzig under S.S. guard.”

“The fact that the government back in 1961 thought it worth digging here makes us certain that the gold is here,” he said.