When George Taber popped the cork on an Imperial bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon – that’s six liters – he had good reason: he and his wife, Jean, along with 50 friends, were toasting their new house in Old Orchid, just across the pond from his old one, and George’s latest book, on a subject he started researching nearly 50 years ago: “Chasing Gold: The Incredible Story of How the Nazis Stole Europe’s Bullion.”
How better to celebrate a magnum opus, as a Huffington Post columnist called Taber’s book, than with an Imperial bottle of wine?
The book, 500 pages of narrative, footnotes, appendices and index, is a veritable course in World War II history.
From the arrogant economist who conceived of the notion, Taber lays out the Nazi strategy to fund its war machine with Europe’s gold.
He then tracks the gold from the vaults of central banks to the nations who sold the Nazis the tungsten, chromium and ball bearings Germany couldn’t produce itself.
Or, in the cases where the gold eluded the invading troops, he follows it to hiding places as remote as the African desert.
While the background details are dense, the tales are arresting. Take the case of Poland’s gold that was spirited out of Warsaw on trucks taking the same route as tens of thousands of fleeing refugees.
Loaded onto trains, the gold had to then make it through Romania.
When it was realized that the heavy gold had to traverse a rickety wooden railroad bridge in Romania, the cargo was split between two trains: if one plunged into the gorge below, the Poles reasoned, at least half the gold might be saved.
The stories unspool chronologically, starting at the end of World War I, as Germany resolved as a nation to become self-sufficient, so horribly had they suffered under the British embargo that resulted in the starvation of 2 million Germans.
Now, as Hitler secretly ramped up the nation for war, gold became an imperative to pay for the few things Germany couldn’t produce. Ball bearings from Sweden, tungsten from Spain and Portugal, chromium from Turkey, all could be bought with gold.
In all, not including the personal gold he seized from Jews, Hitler stole worth nearly $600 million in bullion.
Taber’s interest in the subject was piqued by a 1966 assignment. A former Time magazine reporter and editor based for many years in Europe, he was in Brussels when French president Charles de Gaulle launched a campaign to return to the gold standard, a significant international story.
Taber’s editor asked him to look into France’s Central Bank gold, and what had happened to Belgium’s gold after France had agreed to shelter it during the war.
But when France fell to the Germans, the Vichy government caved to Hitler’s pressure and gave Belgium’s gold to the Nazis.
“It was only a sidebar story, but that got me interested,” recalls Taber. “It became a hobby, reading about World War ll and gold. I realized nobody had ever told the story about it.”
After the war, the French were honorable, Taber says.
“When de Gaulle came back to power, they gave their own gold to the Belgians in payment.”
In his research, though, he found that the French had capitulated at a crucial point in the war.
“It was when the Germans were really running low on the amount of gold they had,” Taber says.
That insight came from a document he had had translated from German. “I realized nobody had ever told the story of how it became a national strategy and how all the countries were involved.”
There had been writings on Nazi gold theft in particular countries, but not taken together as a strategy.
Last year’s film, “The Monuments Men,” loosely based on a non-fiction book, concerns artworks stolen from European countries by the Nazis who then hid them from the Soviets as they approached Berlin.
In the end, Allied troops found 16,000 works of art, and in the same hiding place, the entire gold reserves of Nazi Germany.
But in the movie, Taber says, the gold is only mentioned in passing.
“You can’t fight a war with art,” notes Taber. As for films that focused on the theft of gold: “There haven’t been any.”
Hard to believe Hollywood wouldn’t seize on the cinematic potential of the Taber’s various tales.
Archival photos in “Chasing Gold” show a shirtless African man carrying a box of gold on his head – France had sent it to its colonies, along with the gold of Belgium and Poland.
Another photo, from April 1940, shows a Nazi cruiser listing in the fjord leading into Oslo. It had been shot by a 19th century canon in an old fort on precisely the day that Norway planned to ship its gold out of Oslo.
“There was a 65-year-old guy who had been called back to duty out of retirement,” says Taber. ”He’s on duty at the fort, and he looks out in heavy haze and sees this giant ship coming towards him. He has no idea what the nationality is, British or German. Finally, he says to the men around him, ‘Tomorrow, I’ll either be a hero or be court-martialed. Fire!’
“He only knew it was a German ship when he heard the band play ‘Deutschland Ueber Alles’ after it had been hit,” says Taber. “That allowed the Norwegians to get the gold out of Oslo. It was a cat-and-mouse game as the Germans chased the Norwegians all the way to the top of Norway above the Arctic Circle. The King and the gold left together and went to Britain and eventually to the United States.”
Taber particularly enjoyed the irony of discovering the canon was manufactured by the German giant Krupp.
“You can’t write a story that’s better than that,” he says.
When Taber finally retired from journalism, he took up writing about wine.
His first book, “Judgment in Paris,” about a California cabernet sauvignon that bested French wines in a prestigious blind judging, became the basis for the movie “Bottle Shock.”
The book has sold 100,000 copies in seven languages.
Last week, nine years after its release, it was still No. 10 on Amazon’s list of best-selling wine books.
Taber went on to write a book on the controversy over wine corks, “To Cork or Not to Cork.”
It was a finalist for the James Beard award. In 2009, he wrote “In Search of Bacchus,” on wine tourism.
His last book on wine was published in 2011, “A Toast to Bargain Wines.”
Taber works from his home office in Old Orchid, or from his summer cottage on tiny Block Island off the coast of Rhode Island. While his wife, Jean, joined him in his initial trips to Europe to research “Chasing Gold,” he ended up going on his own several times, staying in hotels near national archives, working all day, and cramming travel to several countries on the same trip.
He also hired stringers, who in addition to research also translated.
The story of Moscow’s gold, which Taber says had never been told, required extensive research into records documenting the gold’s journey by train 900 miles over the Ural mountains.
It traveled along with the embalmed body of Lenin – with its round-the-clock honor guard, and the art work from Leningrad’s Hermitage Museum.
Taber is in the mood to start another book. But he’s having trouble coming up with a subject to write about.
“I’d have to find a yarn as good as this one.”
“Chasing Gold,” published by Pegasus books, a division of Norton, is on sale at the Vero Beach Book Center.
Taber will be speaking at the Moorings Club Jan. 26.
