Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²ÊÖÐÌØÍø

This course provides an overview of two of the major issues from World War Two that remain unfinished business with present day ramifications and consequences at both state and individual levels. The gold used by the Germans during the war to pay the neutral powers (Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Turkey) for the supply of vital goods for the Third Reich was largely stolen from the vaults of countries it had occupied (National Banks of Belgium and Holland and France) and the victims of the Holocaust (jewellery and gold teeth melted down and transformed into gold bars). Several of the countries were forced to return the gold after the war, but others such as Portugal were able diplomatically navigate the newly Cold War era and allowed to keep the gold by the United States. The course examines the gold trail and looks at the efforts of individual Germans escape from Europe to South America with large quantities of gold.

Looted arts remains one of the most emotive issues related to the war with the key issue of restitution a central feature of investigations into the whereabouts of specific pieces of art and disputes over ownership. This has involved both individuals and museums and the scale of the problem during WWII was enormous with German attempts to ban (and then privately sell) what they termed degenerate art and the looting of key masterpieces by the German army during the war. While the crime of the looting of the art was specific to WWII many of the pieces that were stolen have changed ownership many times since the end of the war making this a contemporary as well a historical topic.