When Gontier returned to the fort the next day, more trucks had somehow miraculously appeared, and loading was faster. The French navy had discovered eleven six-ton trucks that the British had abandoned in their rush to get to Dunkirk. Enemy air attacks continuously halted the work, and some twenty bombs fell on the road between the fort and the docks.8
Three hours later, Admiral Traub, the head of the maritime region, received a phone call telling him that German armored vehicles had captured the city of Rennes, one hundred thirty miles away. There were no military units to stop the invaders before they reached Brest. A new order went out that every ship had to leave the port by 6:00 P.M. Gold was now being moved even during aerial attacks. Officers distributed spiked tea and wine to keep the men working. They explained that they certainly were not going to leave any wine for the conquering Germans. All the ships were now being loading simultaneously and frantically. At one point Gontier urgently yelled to one of the captains, “All gold must be shipped.” The captain shouted back, “We’re already doing the impossible.”9 At 1:00 in the afternoon, one of the port’s tugboats hit a magnetic mine only a few hundred yards from the El Djezaïr.
Realizing that they desperately needed more men to work at the fort, navy officers in the middle of the afternoon decided to enlist inmates from the nearby Pontaniou prison. The men were promised that they would be pardoned as soon as the job was finished. The navy men then quickly put in a new security check. Each prisoner was given a small piece of paper with a number on it that had to be returned after he delivered the gold.
At 5:00 P.M. on June 18, the last truck left the fort. An hour later, the El Kantara sent out an optical signal saying: “Loading finished. We’re setting off.” Several smaller and slower boats not carrying gold were trying to leave the port at the same time. Every ship’s captain and all those on board were living in fear that they would hit a mine and set off an explosion. Slowly, the five gold ships pulled away from the docks one by one. Once outside the harbor, they formed two columns, and their escort ships, the Milan and the Epervier, led them to open ocean. While the flotilla was leaving, the dispatch boat Vauquois hit a mine only a few hundred yards from the convoy. Back on shore, men torched the stocks of fuel, and fire lit up the sky. The two-day and two-night evacuation of the gold from Fort Portzic had been a success. The first five ships carried twenty-tree thousand cases that contained 1,120 tons of bullion.10
While the French gold was being rescued in Brest, the Polish and Belgian gold that had been turned over to the French was in equal danger. On June 7, the French navy had sent out an order: BELGIAN AND POLISH GOLD MUST ARRIVE IN LORIENT MONDAY JUNE TEN STOP.11 The Polish gold that had been in Nevers now had to go north by train.12 The Belgian gold that had been turned over to the French National Bank was stored near Bordeaux and would also be moved by rail. Admiral Hervé de Penfentanyo, the Navy’s harbormaster at Brest, ordered that the Polish and Belgian gold should be stored in a place where it could be “rapidly removed in a very short period of time.” The shipment went smoothly despite the war, and on 5:00 in the afternoon of June 13, Admiral Penfentanyo sent out a message: 1208 CASES OF POLAND AND 4944 CASES OF BELGIUM STOCKED AIR-RAID SHELTER STOP SUPPLY FLEET STOP COULD BE PICKED UP IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS STOP.13
Two-and-a-half hours later, the French admiralty sent the cargo ship Victor Schoelcher a message that read HEAD TO LORIENT STOP. Captain Moevus was instructed to leave that night and proceed at a speed that would get it there early the next morning. The admiralty’s message: YOU HAVE TO PICK UP GOLD STOP MARITIME HARBORMASTER THERE WILL GIVE YOU THE NECESSARY ORDERS STOP ABSOLUTE SECRECY STOP.14
The ship arrived the next morning, at 6:35, and Moevus went on shore to get instructions from Admiral de Penfentanyo. He learned that his cargo was Belgian and Polish gold, which was packed and ready for shipment. The cargo consisted of 6,152 cases, with each weighing about 120 pounds. The admiral ordered him to pick up the cargo and leave port as soon as possible. The gold was currently stored in an air-raid shelter, but trucks and the police would get it to the dock. The captain said he had on board two men, a reserve lieutenant and a banana trader, who could handle security. Loading began immediately and continued without interruption, even through air-raid alarms. The torpedo boat Epée was assigned to be the escort out of the harbor.
Most of the Polish National Bank’s board members had by then left France for Britain, but they had assigned Stefan Michalski, also a board member, to remain with their gold. Michalski, his son, and the director of the French National Bank’s Lorient vault, monitored the operation with the care of a mother eagle fluttering around her nest.
Shortly before midnight, the navy harbormaster sent out a message saying that the Germans had dropped mines and until further notice no ships could depart. At 2:00 A.M. an explosions expert arrived to look at the situation. He said that dredgers would have to be brought in before it was safe to depart. Sailors came up with a jerry-rigged solution, but even that would not be ready until afternoon. In the meantime, the gold was to stay on board, but everyone had to get off the ships.
Before leaving the Victor Schoelcher, Michalski asked the captain, “Do you know our destination?”
Moevus replied, “No.”
“Neither do I, but I think that it should be either Canada or the Caribbean,” said the Pole.
Everyone in the harbor soon learned that the Germans expected to be there the next morning. There was no way that the de-mining could be completed by then. At an emergency meeting of top officials, Captain Moevus spelled out his pessimistic options, which were all bad. Even though the Germans would not be there until the following day, the Luftwaffe at any time could sink the Victor Schoelcher in shallow waters an easily retrieve the gold. He could also scuttle the ship, but the enemy would probably still pull it out of the water. Then he presented his plan. He proposed sailing out to open ocean following the mouth of the river. He would be passing parallel to the rocks on the coast. “That way, I would have the best chance of being far away from the mines,” he said. “Once I’m outside the harbor, I’ll sail with the Epée on a westerly route and wait to receive instructions for our destination.”15
Admiral de Penfentanyo was skeptical, but finally approved the captain’s risky plan. He didn’t have any better solution. The ship would leave at midnight. The staff offered to provide navigation equipment that the captain would need. The meeting was just breaking up, when a Lorient banker pulled up in a truck that was carrying some public and private papers. He asked the captain where he was going and if he could go on the ship as well. Moevus replied that he didn’t know his destination, but given how fast the enemy was coming it could only be Africa or America. The banker said that he did not have authority to take the papers outside France. The captain replied that the only assurance he could give was that he was going abroad. The man reluctantly left.
The Victor Schoelcher departed as planned on June 18. Orders to evacuate Lorient had been received two hours prior. All the people on board and in the harbor held their breath as Moevus sailed the route he had described. They expected that at any moment the ship would explode, but Victor Schoelcher kept bravely slipping through the water. The captain stayed in touch with officials on shore using marine flags. When it finally passed the ancient Port-Louis citadel, the last dangerous location, he signaled that he was going to proceed on a course west-by-southwest for the next twenty-four hours. The Epée replied, “I am on a 248 course.”16
The happiest man on board was Stefan Michalski, who told the captain, “I sincerely thank you for the perfect execution of this evacuation, and I ask you to please transmit my thanks to the staff whose disciplined ardor and courageous efforts permitted this success.”
Moevus received a message shortly before 6:00 P.M. instructing the Victor Schoelcher and the Epée to stay in the nearby Iroise Sea, where the water more than 100 meters deep. He should wait there for the flotilla from Brest to arrive. Those ships had left at almost the same ti
me and were sailing at eighteen knots, without lights. A little before midnight, all the ships simultaneously saw each other in the dark. An escort ship sent out the message: FOLLOW US STOP COURSE 230 STOP SPEED EIGHTEEN KNOTS STOP. Moevus responded: THAT’S VERY PRETTY STOP. The El Djezaïr, though, answered: MY MAXIMUM SPEED 15.5 KNOTS.17
After aligning themselves and coordinating their speed, Moevus cabled: IN EVENT OF SEPARATION DON’T KNOW OUR DESTINATION.
The admiral replied: DESTINATION CASABLANCA.
A few hours later, the Jean-Bart left the port of Saint-Nazaire and took over escort duties. With everything finally a little calmer, Gontier of the French National Bank, who was aboard the El Djezaïr, asked the Admiralty to inquire how many cases he had on board. Moevus replied: LEFT WITH 4944 CASES BELGIAN GOLD AND 1208 CASES POLISH GOLD STOP HEAD OF THE CONVOY IS POLISH BANK DIRECTOR STOP. The five ships from Brest also sent the lists of their cargo. The six ships together were carrying 22,669 cases and bags containing 1,120 tons of bullion. The value of the cargo at the 1940 price of $35 an ounce was $1.3 billion.
At 10:00 in the morning on June 19, the Victor Schoelcher received a message from the French Admiralty instructing it to leave the convoy and head for Royan, a port at the mouth of the Gironde River estuary in southwestern France. Captain Moevus and Michalski were stunned, and the captain asked the El Djezaïr, the lead ship, to explain. The captain could only say that he had gotten a message two-and-a-half hours earlier telling him that the Victor Schoelcher should make the detour. The captain of the El Djezaïr, sent a message asking for a clarification, and the order was repeated that the Victor Schoelcher should go to Royan. By then, Michalski was furious and shouted: “I demand that you send the Admiralty an official protest from me in the name of the Polish government that I represent to the risks that this order causes the gold of the Polish State Bank.”18
A message came back saying that navy officials in Royan would be responsible for the gold until further notice. The Victor Schoelcher did not hear anything for two hours, and shortly after noon, Captain Moevus again asked for confirmation. This time he got no reply. He later heard reports over his radio from a French ship saying that planes had attacked it and that another vessel that had been torpedoed. At 10:30 P.M., the captain sent out another message: NO RESPONSE TO MY REQUESTS STOP CARRYING 250 TONS GOLD STOP UNLESS ORDERS TO THE CONTRARY ON A ROUTE TO CASABLANCA STOP POSITION 270 SPEED 15 KNOTS STOP.
Finally just before 1:00 in the morning, the French Admiralty sent back a message saying that the earlier one had not come from them. It added: VICTOR-SCHOELCHER PROCEED ON ROUTE TO CASABLANCA AND PLEASE CONFIRM RECEPTION STOP. Moevus by then was certain the first message had not come from the French admiralty but was probably a ploy of German warfare.19
With little to do but listen to the radio, the captain and Michalski continued toward North Africa. On June 21 they heard that the unescorted Belgian passenger steamer Ville-de-Namur had been hit by two torpedoes and sunk. In the afternoon they heard an SOS from the vessel Yanarville, which had been torpedoed. At 11:00 P.M., the Aragaz radioed that it had been hit by submarine, and at midnight the Asheres reported it had been attacked five miles off Spain’s Cap de la Nau.
Finally on Sunday, June 23, Michalski and Moevus saw the Moroccan coastline, and the gold flotilla with its rich cargo soon pulled into Casablanca.20
The French National Bank still had many more tons of gold left inside the country. Bank officials decided not to use a Mediterranean location since Italy might soon enter the war on Hitler’s side. Le Verdon, a port near Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast, was the alternative departure point.
Charles Moreton, a veteran French National Bank official who only recently had taken over as head of the office at Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France, had just arrived in Paris on May 24 for a temporary assignment. At 6:30 that evening, he got a phone call instructing him to be in the office of the bank’s secretary general in ten minutes. When he arrived, Moreton was told to get on the 10:00 P.M. train to Bordeaux. There he was to organize a shipment, out of France and away from the Nazis, of approximately 200 tons of gold from ten regional bank centers. The gold would then leave Le Verdon for a still undetermined location, and he was to go with it. When he got to Bordeaux, he should have pictures taken for a passport because he might be going abroad. That’s all he was told.21
Moreton’s formal assignment letter said he was to accompany the shipment to Canada, where it was to be deposited at the Bank of Canada’s Ottawa office. It did not say exactly how the bullion was supposed to get to Canada, but indicated there might be a temporary stop in Casablanca.22
The following morning at 11:00, Moreton’s train from Paris pulled into Bordeaux four hours late. The city was overrun with wounded soldiers, refugees, and men on their way to the front. He described it a “total nightmare.” Nonetheless, he and a small crew put together a large shipment of gold that had arrived from a variety of locations. Bordeaux had two railroad stations, Saint Jean and Saint Louis, and often he did not know where it would arrive until a couple of hours before the gold actually showed up. He used taxis to move his cargo between stations. At one point a train carrying seventeen tons derailed, and it took five hours to get everything back on the track. Finally at 9:00 P.M. on May 28, a twenty-three-car train was ready to leave the Saint-Louis station for the nearby port of Trompeloup-Pauillac. The cargo would then be taken to a paquebot, a small ship that traditionally carried mail and a few passengers. One was docked sixty miles away in Le Verdon. Moreton had to wait another twelve hours for his train to depart because there was only one very busy track.23
Following a two-hour trip to the port, the banker’s crew was about to move the boxes of gold from the train to the ship, when two customs agents ambled up and asked him what they were shipping out of the country. He explained it was part of France’s national gold, adding with irritation that this was a matter of national defense. He also mentioned that he was an official of the Banque de France. That didn’t impress the civil servants. They demanded to see a signed document authorizing the shipment. Impatiently, Moreton explained that he was a bank director on special assignment. A soldier accompanying him richly enjoyed the bureaucratic confrontation, but the banker called the whole affair “grotesque.”24
At last officials at the bank office in Bordeaux sent someone with the proper papers for the obstinate customs officials, and then a small team of men loaded 3,080 heavy sacks and 758 cases that weighed more than 300 tons onto a requisitioned passenger ship. During the transfer, a few sacks broke, and gold coins went rolling in all directions although most were quickly rounded up. A bank official arrived with Moreton’s passport and a fistful of French francs, Moroccan francs, U.S. dollars, and British pounds to get him through the unknowable voyage he faced. The immediate destination was Casablanca, but Moreton still thought he would ultimately be going to Canada.25
Finally on June 3, the ship received orders to fill the ship’s tanks with fuel and then pick up their torpedo escort Hardi before heading south toward Casablanca. While waiting for its instructions, Moreton got to know the ship’s crew. All but one had been working for maritime companies before being called up for war duty. While still at sea on June 5, they learned that the British were evacuating Dunkirk. The banker wrote in his report of the journey that night, “At the end of this sad day, despite a glassy sea and beautiful weather we sadly and quietly smoked pipes or cigarettes near the captain’s bridge until 10 P.M.” There was a submarine alert the next day near Cadiz, Spain, and a French ship sank a German sub.
Later that day, Moreton’s ship pulled into Casablanca. A group of small but stocky Arab dockworkers quickly moved the heavy boxes and bags of gold from the ship to the vaults of the Moroccan State Bank. Customs agents spent nearly a day verifying the contents. The French navy didn’t have a ship that could take the gold to Canada, so it was not clear how it was going to cross the Atlantic.
When Moreton returned to his hotel in Casablanca at noo
n on June 7, he learned that Julien Koszul, a French National Bank inspector, had arrived by plane that morning with new instructions. The gold was due to depart on the USS Vincennes, which would be arriving in two days. The two men were to go on board and monitor the transfer.26
After the German invasion of France began, American Ambassador Bullitt met almost daily with Premier Reynaud and knew well the dangers facing the country and its gold. In cables Bullitt pressed President Roosevelt to help the French war effort by supplying them with weapons, despite American neutrality. In a telegram on May 28, the ambassador wrote, “I ask you solemnly and urgently to send immediately a cruiser to Bordeaux for two purposes: First to bring to Bordeaux immediately from 5 to 10,000 Thompson submachine guns caliber .45 model 1928 A-1, and one million rounds of ammunition; and second to carry away from Bordeaux the entire French and Belgian gold reserve. The French reserve is 550 tons. The Belgians 100 tons.” He added ominously, “The French have no ships available.”27
Bullitt temporarily interrupted his telegram, but returned to report, “Reynaud has just told me that if we can send a cruiser to Bordeaux or any other port, he will put the entire gold reserve on it and send it to the U.S.” Roosevelt replied that he would send three warships to pick up the bullion at Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the Atlantic coast near where France and Spain meet.28
Reynaud was grateful for the American offer, but several of his cabinet members believed that both the British and the Americans had become shameful vultures at France’s most dangerous time. They charged that London wanted to grab France’s navy, while Washington was after its gold. The Reynaud cabinet eventually decided to send only 200 tons more to the U.S. for safekeeping. The rest, or about eighty percent of the country’s remaining gold including what they were holding for Poland and Belgium, would go to France’s colonies, and the French navy would handle the shipment.29 Since transporting the gold on U.S. ships would have violated American neutrality, the transfer had to be done at sea, and the ownership of the bullion had to be transferred for the duration of the trip from the French to the Americans. Saint-Jean-de-Luz was also now too dangerous a location, so it was decided to load the gold in the open ocean off Casablanca.
Chasing Gold: The Incredible Story of How the Nazis Stole Europe's Bullion Page 30