In 2017 Germany brought home nearly $31 billion of gold bars that had been stored in New York and Paris after World War II. The Financial Times gives a good account of how Germany amassed, lost and then got its gold back.
Perhaps no other country (except maybe Zimbabwe) understands the value of bullion as a store of value than Germany. Hyperinflation during the Weimar Republic of the 1920s had citizens piling near-worthless Deutsche marks into wheelbarrows just to buy bare necessities.
During the Second World War Nazi Germany looted about 4 tonnes of gold and stored it in the Reichsbank. But in 1948 the allies recovered it and gave it back to its rightful owners, leaving Germany’s bullion vaults bare.
It wasn’t long however until Germany was again in a position to buy gold. The Wirtschafswunder — economic miracle — of the 1950s and ‘60s allowed West Germany to stockpile large amounts of gold. Under the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, Germany could use dollars, earned by successful export businesses that traded them in for marks, to buy gold at $35 an ounce.
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