The documentary focuses on one of the most enduring mysteries of World War II, the legend of Nazi gold allegedly hidden in the Austrian Lake Toplitz.

This lake, located in the remote Salzkammergut region, has been rumored for decades to be the final resting place of stolen European treasures collected during the terror of the Third Reich.

The narrative blends eyewitness testimony, historical investigation, wartime records, and later explorations to outline how the myth took shape and why it continues to fascinate the world.

The film opens by establishing Lake Toplitz as a forbidding landscape, geographically isolated and unusually deep.

It gained the nickname the devils dustbin because of claims that Nazis dumped massive amounts of gold there during the chaotic end of the war.

The first key element of the story is the role gold played in fueling Hitlers military ambitions.

Gold was essential to the wartime economy of Nazi Germany.

Because the German economy lacked sufficient foreign currency and natural resources, gold became a lifeline used to buy raw materials and weaponry abroad.

Starting with the annexation of Austria in 1938, the Nazis raided national treasuries across Europe.

They seized gold worth millions from Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Belgium, Hungary, and Italy.

They also confiscated gold from private citizens and from looted museums.

One of the most disturbing parts of this narrative involves the extraction of gold from concentration camp victims.

The SS removed dental gold and personal jewelry from prisoners, accumulating tens of millions of dollars worth.

Collectively, the regime collected hundreds of millions in foreign gold, equivalent to billions today.

The documentary explains how this gold was converted into bars, often stamped with forged Prussian mint marks, and sold through Swiss banks despite Allied warnings.

Switzerland acted as a silent financial pipeline, enabling Germany to exchange stolen gold for usable international currency until the final days of the war.

As the war turned against Germany, the Nazis began hiding their reserves.

Hitler ordered treasures moved to underground mines, mountains, or remote regions as Allied forces approached.

American troops discovered huge caches, such as the salt mine at Merkers, filled with gold bars, foreign currency, and priceless artworks.

Yet these discoveries represented only part of what had been stolen.

Rumors spread that large amounts remained hidden.

This brings the focus back to Austria.

The Salzkammergut became a key refuge for high ranking Nazis in the final weeks of the conflict.

Senior officials fled south with truckloads of valuables.

Testimony suggests that some of these treasures were buried in gardens or hidden in forests.

Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Hitlers second in command in the SS, fled with a stash of valuables and buried crates of gold before being captured.

Other accounts tell of Gestapo chief Heinrich Muller traveling into the lakes region with officers and sealed boxes that were never seen again.

These widespread stories laid the foundation for a larger regional mythology surrounding missing Nazi gold.

The documentary then introduces the most compelling eyewitness, Ida Weissenbacher.

As a young woman in 1945, she was forced by SS officers to transport mysterious boxes by horse and cart to Lake Toplitz.

She recalls heavy and light boxes, some extremely dense, and remembers seeing the SS throw them into the water.

She believed the contents did not belong in the village and understood only that they needed to disappear.

Her testimony is one of the reasons Lake Toplitz became a focal point of suspicion.

The lake itself contributes to the mystery.

It is unusually deep, cold, and dangerous.

Below 20 meters there is no oxygen.

A floating layer of dead trees forms a suspended false bottom that can trap divers.

During the war the lake was used by the German Navy for weapons testing.

Torpedoes were launched underwater into the mountainside, creating cavities and leaving behind debris.

The combination of real military secrecy and strange geography made it easy for legends to grow.

In the 1950s amateur divers attempted to reach the bottom but several died.

Each death reinforced superstitions that the lake was cursed.

It was against this backdrop that journalist and former naval officer Wolfgang Luehrser became obsessed with the mystery.

Working for a major German magazine, he began an investigation that pieced together local accounts, Nazi documents, and testimonies from former officers.

He persuaded his editor to fund a major expedition to the lake in 1959.

This became the first large scale scientific and journalistic attempt to uncover the truth.

Luehrser used professional diving equipment, underwater cameras, and a mechanical claw designed to grab objects from extreme depth.

After weeks of scanning the lake bed they finally located a wooden crate.

Crowds gathered on the shore to witness what was expected to be the recovery of Nazi gold.

Instead, the crate held bundles of pristine British banknotes.

This discovery astonished the world.

It also opened a new mystery.

Why would the Nazis sink millions in perfect British currency at the bottom of an Austrian lake.

The subsequent investigation revealed one of the most ambitious counterfeiting operations in history.

These notes were products of Operation Bernhard, a secret SS plan to destabilize the British economy.

The project was named after SS engineer Bernhard Kruger who oversaw a team of Jewish prisoners from Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Their task was to create flawless forged pound notes.

The operation succeeded beyond expectations.

They produced over one hundred million pounds in fake currency, representing more than the total amount in circulation at the time.

The Bank of England eventually acknowledged that these forgeries were the finest ever made.

The goal was to flood Britain with counterfeit money, collapse the pound, and disrupt the Allied economy.

The Luftwaffe originally intended to airdrop the forgeries over British cities, but the declining air power of Germany made this impossible.

Instead the notes were used by Nazi intelligence to finance covert operations, purchase goods, and acquire more gold.

As Allied forces approached the Sachsenhausen camp, Kruger realized that he and his team knew too much.

To protect himself and the prisoners, he ordered the evidence destroyed.

But burning millions in banknotes proved nearly impossible.

Instead crates of the forged pounds were transported to the Salzkammergut and dumped into Lake Toplitz.

Luehrsers expedition thus uncovered the remains of this operation.

The British government quickly ordered the destruction of most recovered notes to prevent collectors or criminals from exploiting them.

Ironically, surviving counterfeits today are worth more as historical artifacts than their original face value.

Yet despite this revelation about the forged pounds, questions persisted about the heavier boxes Ida Weissenbacher described.

She remained convinced that some containers were far too dense to hold paper.

Luehrser himself believed that a second SS group transported gold rather than banknotes.

He pointed to a wartime photograph showing large crates being thrown into the lake, some in the foreground believed to contain forgeries, while others in the background may have contained gold.

However no gold has ever been officially recovered from the lake.

The Austrian government conducted its own search after a diver died in the early 1960s.

They found more counterfeit notes and some naval equipment but no gold.

After this the lake was closed to unsanctioned exploration.

No diving is allowed without special permission, preserving the mystery.

Still, treasure hunters continue to be drawn to the region.

One local diver, Gerhard Zauner, became famous for recovering wartime relics from nearby lakes and even staged an April Fools prank with fake gold bars that temporarily fooled the authorities.

His museum displays weapons, equipment, and artifacts found underwater.

But even he admits that the true fate of any Nazi gold in Lake Toplitz remains unknown.

The documentary concludes by noting that the Salzkammergut region almost certainly still hides valuables taken by the Nazis.

Whether they lie in mountains, forests, or lakes is unclear.

Lake Toplitz itself remains a symbol of wartime secrets, a place that seems determined to guard whatever lies beneath its surface.

The blend of historical fact, documented theft, eyewitness testimony, and unanswered questions ensures that the legend continues to attract adventurers.

Gold fever, the film suggests, often overwhelms logic.

When people hear stories of hidden treasure, especially treasure stained by history, they cannot resist the possibility that they might uncover it.

The story of Lake Toplitz endures because it sits at the intersection of greed, war, secrecy, trauma, and the human desire for mystery.

The documentary positions the lake as both a literal dumping ground and a symbolic one, filled not only with physical objects but with the unresolved shadows of the Nazi past.

In this sense the lake holds more than sunken crates.

It holds the weight of memory, speculation, and the dark legacy of a regime that sought wealth through destruction.

Whether gold rests beneath the log covered depths or whether it was taken elsewhere, the myth has become part of the landscape.

The devils dustbin remains one of Europes most tantalising historical puzzles.