by Jim Marrs
It is not known but strongly suspected by researchers that this hidden treasure guarded by the Cathars included a copper scroll similar to an etched scroll of copper found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 at Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. When translated in the mid-1950s at Manchester University, this scroll proved to be an inventory of a great treasure. It apparently was one of several copies. With its detailed directions to hidden Hebrew valuables, the Copper Scroll was literally a treasure map. Such an inventory in the hidden Visigoth cache would explain why certain French aristocrats, descendants of the Goths and the Cathars, who had access to the treasure, fomented the First Crusade, resulting in the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 A.D.
Less than twenty years after the crusaders took Jerusalem and placed King Baldwin II of Le Bourg in charge of the occupied territories, nine knights were granted a military order called the Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. This title was soon shortened to the Knights of the Temple, or Knights Templar. They were allowed to be billeted in Herod’s palace, the exact location of the hidden treasure as described in the Copper Scroll.
These knights were led by Hugh de Payens, a nobleman in the service of his cousin, Hughes, count of Champagne, and Andre de Montbard, the uncle of Bernard of Clairvaux, later known as the Cistercian Saint Bernard. Montbard also was a vassal of the count of Champagne. At least two of the original knights, Rosal and Gondemare, were Cistercian monks prior to their departure for Jerusalem. In fact, the entire group was closely related both by family ties and by connections to the Cistercian monks and Flemish royalty descended from the Cathars. They journeyed to the Holy Land with an agenda: to recover the remainder of the treasure.
Ostensibly, this order of knights was to protect the roads to Jerusalem, but their actions were of a very different nature. Rather than guard roads, the Templar knights spent years excavating under Herod’s palace, the old Temple of Solomon. The digging was extensive. British Royal Engineers led by a Lieutenant Charles Wilson discovered evidence of the Templars while mapping vaults under Mount Moriah in 1894. They found vaulted passageways with keystone arches, typical of Templar handiwork. They also found artifacts consisting of a spur, parts of a sword and lance, and a small Templar cross, which are still on display in Scotland.
It was during their excavations, according to several accounts, that the Templars acquired material wealth as well as texts of hidden knowledge, most probably including some dealing with the life of Jesus and his associations with the Essenes and Gnostics. They also reportedly acquired the legendary Tables of Testimony given to Moses as well as other holy relics—perhaps even the legendary Ark of the Covenant and the Spear of Longinus—which could have been used to validate their later position as an alternative religious authority to the Roman Church.
When the Knights Templar transported the remainder of Solomon’s treasure back to the Languedoc region of southern France, it was reunited with the portion the Goths had brought from Rome more than seven hundred years earlier. The material wealth—King Solomon’s diamonds, precious gems, gold, and silver—formed the base of the Templars’ legendary fortune. Much of this was transported to their temple in Paris. The esoteric treasure—scrolls and tablets of ancient knowledge—were kept hidden from the Roman Church in the elaborate cave systems of the Pyrenees.
On Friday, October 13, 1307, the greedy French king Philip, in debt to the Templars, moved against the Templars with the blessing of Pope Clement V. Like their Cathar forebears, the Templars were charged with all forms of heresy. Templars throughout Europe were hunted down, killed, and tortured. The last Templar grand master, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake in 1314. But many Templars simply cast off their distinctive surcoats, identifiable by the red Maltese cross, and blended into the local populations only to emerge in later years as Freemasons.
When authorities broke into the Paris temple, they found nothing. The treasure had been removed by the Templars, who apparently dispersed it to several different locations. Some went to Scotland, where Robert the Bruce provided the Templars sanctuary, some went to pre-Columbus America, and some returned to the caverns of Languedoc.
Centuries passed while the devout in southern France kept the secret of the hidden treasure from both church and state authorities. This secret briefly broke into public view in the late 1890s, when the young priest of the small village of Rennes-le-Château discovered some documents hidden in the alter of his church, which had been consecrated to Mary Magdalene in 1059 and stood on Visigoth ruins dating to the sixth century.
In 1891, Father Francois Berenger Sauniere discovered two genealogies dating from 1244 and 1644, along with two texts written in the 1780s by a former parish priest, Abbot Antoine Bigou. The Bigou texts were unusual and appeared to be written in different and indecipherable codes. Sauniere took his discovery to his superior, the bishop of nearby Carcassonne, who sent him on to Paris to meet with the director general of the Saint-Sulpice Seminary, reportedly a center for an unorthodox society called the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, reputed to be a front for the Priory of Sion. This priory is thought to include members committed to keeping secret the Templar treasure and knowledge.
Whatever was in the documents changed Sauniere’s life. He journeyed to Paris, where he mingled with the Parisian cultural elite and soon came into great wealth. Before his sudden death in 1917, researchers estimated he had spent several million dollars on construction and renovations in the town. He also had the town’s road and water supply upgraded, assembled a massive library, and built a zoological garden, a lavish country house named Villa Bethania, and a round tower named Tour Magdala, or Tower of Magdalene. Within the renovated church, Sauniere erected a strange statue of the demon Asmodeus—“custodian of secrets, guardian of hidden treasures, and, according to ancient Judaic legend, builder of Solomon’s temple.”
Sauniere began to exhibit a defiant independence toward his Church superiors, refusing to disclose the source of his newfound wealth or accept a transfer from Rennes-le-Château, where he and his housekeeper were seen digging incessantly in the graveyard around the church. Yet, when push came to shove, the Vatican supported Sauniere, a good indication of the significance of his discoveries.
On January 17, 1917, Sauniere suffered a sudden stroke. A nearby priest was called to administer last rites but, “visibly shaken,” refused to do so after hearing Sauniere’s confession, which has never been made public. His housekeeper and companion, Marie Denarnaud, kept her silence about Sauniere’s activities, living quietly in the Villa Bethania. Toward the end of her life, she sold the villa to a man whom she promised she would tell a secret that would make him both wealthy and powerful. Unfortunately, she too died of a stroke before passing along this secret.
Thus began the mystery of Rennes-le-Château. “Speculation has varied over the years as to the true nature of Sauniere’s discovery,” wrote Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince; “most prosaically it has been suggested that he found a hoard of treasure, while others believe it was something considerably more stupendous, such as the Ark of the Covenant, the treasure of the Jerusalem Temple, the Holy Grail—or even the tomb of Christ…. The Priory claim that what Sauniere had discovered were parchments containing genealogical information that proves the survival of the [Franks] Merovingian dynasty.” Whatever Sauniere found, it seems to have been linked to Solomon’s treasure long hidden in the nearby cave systems by first the Goths and later the Templars.
In review of what is known about the Father Sauniere affair, it appears doubtful that the priest actually found the lost treasure. It is more likely that his find was some ancient genealogies inimical to the Catholic Church and perhaps some clues to the location of the treasure. Such clues were expanded upon by the work of Otto Rahn with further expeditions to Languedoc financed by SS chief Himmler. Rahn’s work was getting him closer to the location of the treasure. “In a letter written to [Rahn’s close friend Karl Maria Wiligut-Weisthor] in September 1935, Otto Rahn inf
ormed his friend that he was at a place where he had reason to believe the Grail might be found, and that Weisthor should keep the matter secret with the exception of mentioning it to Himmler,” reported British authors David Wood and Ian Campbell.
By the start of the war, Rahn was dead but his knowledge was kept alive by Himmler. According to author Angebert, as early as June 1943, a group of German geologists, historians, and ethnologists camped near Montségur and began excavations that lasted into November. This expedition failed to produce the treasure.
BUT OTTO SKORZENY, dispatched by Himmler in early 1944, apparently had better luck. “The commando force reached Languedoc in early March 1944, and set up headquarters at the base of Montségur. They spent a few days exploring the Cathar fortress and in reconnaissance of the surrounding mountains. They discovered remnants of what had once been a 3,000-step stairway which led from the castle to an exit in the valley below,” wrote Colonel Howard Buechner.
Skorzeny, disdaining intellectual study of the problem over the treasure’s location, set about his work from the standpoint of a tactician. He quickly surmised that Rahn and the members of the 1943 expedition had looked in the obvious—and wrong—locations.
The Germans promptly found a secret path used as an escape route for the Cathars during the siege of Montségur, which ended in March 1244, exactly seven hundred years earlier. “Skorzeny and his men scouted along this path and soon discovered what appeared to be an ancient trail leading into the higher mountains,” related Colonel Buechner. “At an undisclosed distance from Montségur they found a fortified entrance to a large grotto. Perhaps it was the grotto of Bouan, which was the last refuge of the Cathars after the fall of Montségur. Not far from this grotto was the mountain called La Peyre. Near the crest of this mountain was another grotto and in this cavern, it is said, they found the treasure.”
On March 15, 1944, Skorzeny sent a one-word telegram to Berlin. It read: “Ureka [Eureka, or I have found it!].”
It was signed with Skorzeny’s nickname, “Scar.”
His message was soon answered with a cryptic note: “Well done. Congratulations. Watch the sky tomorrow at noon. Await our arrival.”
This was signed “Reichsfuehrer SS.”
According to Colonel Buechner, there followed an amazing coincidence of events. Each March 16, local descendants of the Cathars gathered at Montségur to pay homage to their ancestors who had died there seven hundred years earlier. In 1944, the local German military governor refused to grant permission, claiming Hitler’s Third Reich had “historic rights” to Montségur. In defiance of this prohibition, a group of pilgrims traveled to Montségur anyway and there encountered Skorzeny and his men. The giant commander chief, who had a reputation for defying bureaucracy, granted their request, since he had control of the treasure.
The pilgrims placed special significance on the date March 16, 1944, because of an ancient prophecy that stated, “At the end of seven hundred years, the laurel will be green once more.” Many assumed this meant the beginning of a revival of Catharism. That year’s seven hundredth anniversary delegation of pilgrims was much larger than usual. “Thus it was that the worshippers were on top of the mountain [Montségur] at precisely the time when Skorzeny had been instructed to ‘watch the sky,’” noted Colonel Buechner. Near noon, a Fieseler Storch, or Stork, light airplane bearing German markings approached and created a giant spectacle for the gathered crowd. The airplane, which may have carried either Himmler, Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, or both, used skywriting equipment to produce a huge Celtic cross across the sky over Montségur.
“The pilgrims on the mountaintop were awestruck and reacted as if a miracle had occurred,” said Colonel Buechner. “They had no idea that the fabulous treasure of the Cathars had been discovered only a short time before and that the plane was saluting the victorious expedition.”
The next afternoon, an official delegation arrived and congratulations and medals were handed out. This delegation was headed by Rosenberg and Oberst, or colonel, Wolfram Sievers, a ranking member of the Ahnenerbe SS, the organization dealing with esoteric and occult matters for Himmler’s Black Shirts. According to Colonel Buechner’s sources, the treasure was carried out of the Pyrenees by pack-mule train to the village of Lavelanet, where it was loaded onto trucks for the journey to a rail head. Guarded rail cars carried the treasure to the small town of Merkers, located about forty miles from Berlin, where it was catalogued by hand-picked members of the Ahnenerbe SS and then moved to other locations, including Hitler’s redoubt at Berchtesgaden, where some of the treasure was carried into the extensive tunnel system, large parts of which remain inaccessible today.
“During its initial days at Merkers, the ‘Treasure of the Ages’ was intact for the last time,” stated Colonel Buechner. The Nazis apparently had secured the world’s greatest treasure trove—both of wealth and of lost secrets.
According to Colonel Buechner, the treasure consisted of:
Thousands of gold coins, some of which dated back to the early days of the Roman Empire and earlier.
Items believed to have come from the Temple of Solomon, which included gold plates and fragments of wood that provided strong evidence that the partially decomposed relic was the fabled Ark of the Covenant.
Twelve stone tablets bearing pre-runic inscriptions, which none of the experts were able to read. These items comprised the stone grail of the Germans and of Otto Rahn.
A beautiful silvery cup with an emerald-like base made of what appeared to be jasper. Three gold plaques on the cup were inscribed with cuneiform script in an ancient language.
A large number of religious objects of various types, which were unidentifiable as to time and significance. However, there were many crosses from different periods, made of gold or silver and adorned with pearls and precious stones.
An abundance of precious stones in all sizes and shapes.
By the time the Allies occupied Germany, much of the treasure had been melted down into bars and shipped out of the country. A vast amount of gold and silver, as well as pieces of art and religious artifacts, were taken into Allied hands in the town of Merkers, but the most rare and valuable items dropped from public view.
“When Martin Bormann’s wife—Frau Gerda Buch Bormann—was captured at a small hotel in northern Italy, she had 2,200 antique gold coins in her possession,” wrote Buechner. “These priceless coins were almost certainly a part of Hitler’s personal share of the Treasure of Solomon…. Bormann himself sent gold coins to Argentina by submarine, where on arrival, his treasure was placed under the personal protection of Evita Peron.” Bormann’s wife suffered from cancer and was released by the Allied authorities. She died of mercury poisoning on March 23, 1946.
Lest anyone consider Colonel Buechner’s account of Otto Rahn and the taking of Solomon’s treasure some personal fantasy, they would do well to consider his credentials. A native of New Orleans, Howard A. Buechner earned a bachelor’s degree from Tulane University and a medical degree from Louisiana State University. During World War II, Dr. Buechner was a medical officer with the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment of the 45th Infantry Division, the unit that arrived first at Dachau concentration camp. Dr. Buechner was the first American physician to enter the camp upon its liberation. He was later promoted to colonel while serving in the postwar reserves. It was during his wartime experiences, on the scene, that Colonel Buechner first learned of the loss of Solomon’s treasure. Buechner’s awards included the Medical Combat Badge, the Bronze Star, three battle stars, the Army Commendation Medal, the War Cross, and the Distinguished Service Cross of Louisiana. He also became a professor of medicine at Tulane and served as emeritus professor of medicine at LSU, where an honorary professorship was established in his name. His papers on tuberculosis and other lung diseases made him an internationally recognized expert.
Colonel Buechner and other researchers have estimated the treasure trove recovered by Skorzeny in southern France in excess of $60 b
illion, based on the current price of gold. This, added to the other loot from Europe, gave the Nazis more than enough economic clout to continue their plans for world conquest long after the end of World War II. Such wealth made it possible for Bormann and other Nazis to misdirect West German investigations and silence foreign governments and news organizations. And it provided the means to infiltrate and buy out numerous companies and corporations, both outside the United States and within.
To understand how a shadowy Nazi empire was created, one must return to German business history and take note of Bormann’s activities beginning in mid-1944.
CHAPTER 5
THE WRITING ON THE WALL
IN THE FALL OF 1942, THE GERMAN SIXTH ARMY WAS RAMPAGING virtually unhindered through the Ukraine in Russia. Its objectives were Baku and the rich Caucasian oil fields. With these oil reserves in hand, Hitler planned to turn south and capture the oil of the Middle East in a combined operation with Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s famed Afrika Korps’ assault from North Africa. This scheme was thwarted by Rommel’s defeat at El Alamein—made possible by the now-known decoding of German Enigma messages—and the eventual destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, a city on the Volga River.
Stalingrad, which the Germans had entered in strength by late September of that year, soon turned into a cauldron of death and destruction. Even breathing became a chore due to the constant shelling and bombing. Though of dubious strategic value, both Hitler and Stalin insisted there be no withdrawal from the fiercely defended city, the namesake of the Soviet leader. Russian pincer attacks isolated the Sixth Army in late November, but organized resistance did not end until February 2, 1943, with the surrender of more than ninety thousand German soldiers—most of them reduced to skin and bones through lack of supplies. With the loss of the Sixth Army, ranking Nazis recognized that the war’s momentum had turned against them on the Eastern Front. It was never to be regained.