William M Heyn

Nazi Gold William M Heyn

Nazi Gold is a World War II spy thriller set in Zagreb, Croatia and Jasenovac, Croatia's large concentration camp on the Sava River. To finance purchases of war materials, Hitler confiscates gold from conquered, national treasuries. British MI-6 and the American OSS infiltrate a team into Croatia to disrupt the flow of gold both to Germany and the Vatican. The resourceful spies operate out of a brothel in Zagreb and arrange to hijack and steal a gold shipment. The story requires the British Navy, the RAF, and clandestine operatives in Croatia to pull off the heist. Disguised as priests, the spies enter the labor camp, with its horrors and brutality to confirm the sources of gold, and beat the SS at its own game of stealing the national treasure. Inadvertently, they disrupt local corruption, and the Vatican's plan to finance escape "rat lines" for war criminals at the end of the War. The story is fast paced, brutal, and horrifying, exposing the duplicity and greed of Croatia's Ustashe fascists, corruption of Zagreb Roman Church, and the complicity of the Vatican. The perceptive spies utilize the German's plan to move the gold, but with a significant diversion in the end. Key to the mission is destruction of a German smelter, which is used to convert stolen ingot and confiscated gold and silver, from the labor camps, into German ingot for Swiss Franc credits. The theft of the gold and the atrocities of the Jasenovac camp trigger a class action lawsuit in San Francisco, thirty some years after the war is ended, against the Vatican Bank and the Franciscan Order of priests, which is unresolved fifty years later.