Rommel's sunken gold 'found' by British expert

Rommel's sunken gold 'found' by British expert
By Henry Samuel in Paris
18/07/2007
Telegraph UK

A British researcher claims to have located Rommel's elusive sunken treasure just weeks after a team of German divers scouring the Mediterranean failed to find the hoard.

Terry Hodgkinson is on the trail of the loot stolen by the Nazis

The famed treasure has long been reputed to have been dumped somewhere off the coast of Corsica by fleeing SS men, who planned to recover it after the war.

However, Terry Hodgkinson, who has been researching the missing gold for 15 years, told The Daily Telegraph that he was now "confident" he knew its exact location in waters less than a nautical mile from the town of Bastia.

Mr Hodgkinson, who is also a television scriptwriter, has teamed up with Corsican experts and won permission from the French authorities to enter the race to find six steel cases said to contain 440lb of gold bullion plus other precious objects pillaged from the Jewish community in Tunisia during the war.

"We are confident of the location, but it will require the latest techniques to retrieve it, as the cases, which were once soldered, have no doubt separated and sunk deep into the sand," he said.

The only way to reach the loot would be to "hoover" up the seabed - a costly and time-consuming method. Now the main obstacle is funding.

After months of research in Tunisia, he believes he has uncovered the truth not just about the treasure spot, but also previously unknown aspects of the story behind its arrival in Corsican waters.

Accounts suggest that it was not Field Marshal Erwin Rommel but the ruthless SS colonel Walter Rauff who stripped Tunisian Jews of their wealth.

Rauff, who created the Nazis' notorious "gas vans" - mobile gas chambers - commanded a special Middle East extermination unit called in a month after Rommel's victory against the British at Tobruk in June 1942.

However, his mission came to an abrupt halt after the British overcame Rommel, also known as "the Desert Fox", at El Alamein in October 1942.


The Nazis left North Africa and are believed to have deliberately sunk the treasure as they later fled Corsica under heavy British and American bombardment.

There have since been several attempts to find it, inspiring films and even a Goon Show episode.

In February, French maritime police came across a German television crew hunting the treasure without authorisation.

They were fined but later resumed their search after receiving the go-ahead to shoot a "cultural film".

Under French law, the proceeds from the treasure would be split between the state and those who found it. However, in this case, the state would seemingly also try to find any surviving relatives of those stripped of their gold.