Listen to the episode here.

Have you ever heard about the enduring mystery surrounding the fate of the Amber Room? You know that massive room crafted with walls of solid amber, gold leaf, and mirrors?

Angie starts by sharing the room’s inception and how King Frederick I commissioned it. She talks about how it was gifted to Russia, where it sat in boxes for years before getting reassembled and improved upon. Then Angie goes into how Hitler wanted the Amber Room and was salty it ever left Germany, whereupon it disappears.

Don’t worry, she shares the leading theories of what happened.

This episode pairs well with:
The Potato King – Frederick II

Transcript

Theresa: Hi 

Theresa: and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast. The podcast where two friends are going to compulsively mainline history memes download 24-hour long audiobooks on very niche topics just to really focus in on 30 minutes of the book and then spend the rest of our time trying to find gobs of sources and hoping to hell the other person has never heard this story. I’m host one. I’m Teresa. That is host two. 

Angie: I’m Angie. You spoke of that 24-hour audiobook for 30 minutes of it like that’s what you did last Tuesday. 

Theresa: Look I’m still a good chunk of time away from finishing one of said audiobooks and it will be a short story. I love that for you. 

Angie: I did go today. It’s my turn. 

Theresa: You do you decided to take the full episode because I panic texted you and just went did you are you sure you’re a whole episode because I am woefully unprepared and then told my husband we have done three years of homework without taking a single week off. We’re not stopped. We’re not starting this week and Mike said you have your bachelors in the Unhinged History Podcast almost. That’s what I’m hearing. Yeah we do. Yeah so we have that going for us but I’m going to let you take over. 

Angie: Okay so I don’t you know when you a bean bean spicy is funny because we have a wide variety of special interests that don’t correlate with any of our other special interests that somehow for us they do yeah 

Theresa: okay yeah you mean a history meme as I do some needlework yeah 

Angie: yeah okay are you familiar with the Amber Room yes okay do you know the whole story of the Amber Room I’m gonna tell you about it whether you know 

Theresa: or not yeah you’re gonna I know I’m this is what I’m walking in for what I know came from a series of like two and a half minute TikTok videos okay cool 

Angie: so my sources are an outlets obscure article by Stephen Stephan Bachman in April Genevieve Tolcec from February of 2024 a warfare history network article because we have to include that I mean yeah that point of 216 right it’s either 

Theresa: that the park service or syphilis 

Angie: yeah honestly and I don’t think I need to see syphilis one time in this episode because 

Theresa: of this podcast I’ve learned how to spell it 

Angie: honestly a Smithsonian article by Jess Bloomberg from July of 2007 called a brief history of the Amber Room and then I love the show histories mysteries with Lawrence Fishborn have you watched any of these no it’s so fun it’s like unsolved mysteries but historical stories right and Lawrence Fishborn is the narrator so I’m gonna listen every one of them so those are my sources I have a couple others like more recent articles that I just looked forward to see what was happening currently okay so that’s it I am bringing you an unresolved story and I know you’re just gonna love me so much for it bring it on okay back story so Amber I don’t know a ton about Amber so sorry to those of you that do but it’s hard and tree sap it’s like 44 million years old most of what we find like 90% of what we find today comes from an area around the Baltic Sea now thousands of years ago sticky resin starts oozing out of the pine trees in Eastern Europe and then it builds upon the forest floor and then over time the earth surface shifts and the ice age comes and goes and the land floods and becomes the Baltic Sea okay blah blah blah there’s your geography 

Theresa: blah blah blah 30 million years later yeah okay so 

Angie: pieces of amber break free from the sea floor and they wash up on the beaches where people start liking them and people then start calling it the quote gold of the north because it’s so valuable at the time most of it turns up along the eastern Baltic coastline from Danzig in Germany up to Estonia so it’s like like a region of the world where it’s really really concentrated as amber becomes more popular people start actively hunting for it and at first because it’s coming up from the bottom of the ocean floor they’re using like these big nets nets to scoop it up from the water which is wild to me to think of like something like a gemstone being scooped up in nets but anyway many of these workers they end up as they’re enslaved by two talk nights who make an absolute fortune selling the amber by the 13th century the nights who control this trade and operate like an operation they center their amber commerce around the newly built Konigsberg castle on the pregale river that’s going to come back later it’s going to be really important but at the moment just know that when amber was being like mass circulated around the world it was its center of commerce was Konigsberg castle in the 13th century from teutonic nights okay in the 15th century things change the Protestant Reformation sweeps across Europe the teutonic nights they give up Catholicism and they become Lutherans which is also wild to me did not see that coming at this point they transfer their lands into a territory that at the time is going to be the Duchy of Prussia who will like it’s controlled by Poland at this time later Prussia breaks free and becomes like independent but in 1701 their leader Frederick the third becomes King Frederick the first of Prussia this is Frederick the great’s grandfather 

Theresa: okay so the tie-in-to-your-potato king has been firmly established yes 

Angie: and I need you to know how many times I checked that family tree because they are all called Frederick now this Frederick he married Sophie Charlotte in 1684 and because once again life doesn’t happen in a vacuum she is the great-granddaughter of King James the first of England and she loves art and culture and she spends a great deal of her time trying to make Berlin which at the time is precious capital beautiful and impressive like that’s her goal so in 1696 she hires a German Baroque sculptor named Andres Schluter to redesign the royal palace so Schluter kind of goes looking about to see what he can work with like what do we got right and he finds several chests packed with amber down in the cellar like more than he’d ever seen in one place so 

Theresa: this is the equivalent of finding the treasure chest full of gold and just like we had this full of rubies and diamonds 

Angie: pretty much and he’s like we could do something with this so in 1701 construction of the amber room begins now originally it’s intended for Charltonburg palace which would have been home to Frederick the first um but one of the things that’s super special about the amber room is that it really is an international like feat of collaboration so the room itself is designed by this German sculptor Andres Schluter who I mentioned earlier but it’s constructed by a Danish amber craftsman called Goldfried Wilfrum so in a nutshell what has happened is when Schluter finds all the amber in the cellars he comes up with this idea to make an entire room out of it so he designs the plans for such a room that would be quote a complete chamber decorated from floor to ceiling with amber panels backed with gold leaf covered with mirrors polished on his eggs carvings of nymphs cupids angels a coat of arms monograms and inlays some small some so small the observer needed a magnifying glass to see them so that’s when the Danish carver gets to work right so over the next few years a method is sort of evolved by Wilfrum of bonding these amber flivers into much larger pieces and in doing so he creates 46 massive amber panels 12 of them will be 12 feet tall geez which is insane to me but then in 1705 Sophie Charlotte dies and Schluter falls out of favor and that’s basically a nice way of saying that he’s banished from court and then shortly after Wilfrum is fired okay so I was curious like why he would have been banished for court so this really isn’t part of the story but I just think it’s funny like I had to tell you I thought because the way the timeline goes is the queen dies and then he’s banished so my brain immediately is like oh he has something to do with her death 

Theresa: oh right now he’s a dick and she was the only one protecting him because he’s like oh I know how to create this beautiful thing they’re like okay she’s dead we literally don’t care 

Angie: well actually you’re probably closer to right because what had happened is um other other people in court they start complaining about some structural integrity on another building and as it comes out he’s not the best at his job oh so um he gets banished because uh hey your other buildings are failing he lied on his resume basically yeah and so because he’s banished and like not working on the amber room anymore Wilfrum the the um amber craftsman he’s also fired by 1707 it’s being looked after by amber masters got freed teruah and urnish schnicked from dancing so it’s done but not at this point but then in 1713 Frederick I dies and is succeeded by his son Frederick Wilhelm who is much more interested in building a strong prussian army than he is with these amber panels so it sort of just sits almost complete at the berlin city palace until 1716 when russia’s peter the great sees it and he’s like oh hey that’s a cool room I like that hey that’s real pretty pretty much and Frederick’s like well I he is he is hurting for an alliance with russia um like something real so and he he has no purpose for this room so he’s like oh you want to you can take it like it’s cool like I don’t need it live your dream so the panels are carefully packed into crates and they are transported to peter’s summer palace in st petersburg that’s how it ends up in russia so upon arrival some pieces are broken or missing and no one can figure out how to assemble them which cracks me up so they have no instructions left from the original creators so the amber basically sits unused for nearly 20 years after peter the great dies in 1725 now in 1743 empress elizabeth takes the throne and she orders the amber move to her winter palace where the italian sculptor alexander marcelli successfully solves the puzzle and he’s able to assemble the panels she’s still unsatisfied so she has the room relocated three more times she can do that 

Theresa: I mean that’s when you have that kind of power and wealth it’s one of those that’s equally missing no honey I want can you move that bookshelf over here and yeah I’m gonna need to tell the books back so I can see how it looks that doesn’t fit right 

Angie: can you move it back it’s like yeah I want the pool two inches to the left please um yeah so like I said it’s relocated three more times mirrors are added and then some amber frames eventually it covers over 55 square meters and contains six tons of amber good night is crazy to me now in 1755 the room is moved to elizabeth’s niece catherine’s palace like she’s great yeah Catherine the great and she adds around 900 more pounds of amber she installs large windows and commissions these four stone mosaics that represent like the senses when complete visitors marvel that the chamber literally comes alive in the candlelight like it glows like it is just stunning and it would sit there in this splendor and glory for almost 200 years until just after june 22nd 1941 oh 

Theresa: is that after operation barbarossa when that relationship between german and russia goes kaput you guessed it 

Angie: 99 german divisions including 14 panther divisions and 10 motorized divisions storm into the soviet union they are going from the Baltic to the black sea and according to war history online quote for a month the nazi blitz greeg was unstoppable and in the north of the army group field marshal willhen ritter von leib moved closer to its objective the soviet union’s second city of leningrad okay here’s where the story is interesting hitler puts out an order to preserve the priceless works of art at the catheter palace in fact he says do not destroy the catheter palace until the amber sound so that’s kind of interesting now there are those that say basically of all the art that hitler wants it’s the amber room that he wants the most this check because right i mean hitler is a staunch nationalist and it drives him nuts that the russians have this masterpiece that he considers to be of german origin and he wants it back in the hands of germany so here’s the thing after the siege of leningrad which is was formerly st petersburg where tappan palace sits we don’t see the amber room again like period so it just evacuates growth eaten walks away yeah the last confirmed thing we know is that hitler specifically sends troops in with instructions as i said to not destroy the palace and find the amber room now here’s where it gets super dicey supposedly they can’t find it now to their credit which i never thought i would be defending a nazi here but to their credit the catheter palace features over a thousand rooms including 40 grand halls and over a hundred private apartments so i mean i get them not finding it the first time i feel like maybe that’s a heck of a walk 

Theresa: like well i mean but we we put chalk x’s on every door we checked every door has a check we’ve checked every door yeah okay so um 

Angie: what do you think happened just based on this little bit that i told you 

Theresa: i mean i’m going to assume at some point somebody goes disassemble the room hide everything kind of like how europe purged all of the artifacts they could to hide in like salt mines or actually i think that was the nazi so it hit them there but i mean you look at like museums that were just like put everything we’ve got in the basement 

Angie: yeah okay so let me hit you with some theories about what they think happened one of my favorite things about this mystery is that some of these theories actually work together like it could be option a it could be option b or it could be a call a little bit of either column right so off the bat we have a man called anatoly kuchimov who’s the curator and is told to move whatever he can of the palace deeper into russia long before the nazis get there but he runs into a problem over the 200 years that the amber room has been chilling in the catherine palace it’s gotten brittle and really fragile and because he lacks time and resources he like shatters it he hides it 

Theresa: oh like just he does puts up a couple of false walls in front calls it good covers the 

Angie: so supposedly this this is what they say he covers the room in florida ceiling thick wallpaper so when the nazis go looking room to room they just see this sort of nondescript whatever like receiving room or whatever you’re gonna call it but one of them makes like another sweet past and he sees in this room like said sort of just just a room nothing to write home to mom about he notices a little bit of plaster on the floor and a little bit of bubbling in the wallpaper right at the scene and because he is nosy as hell he sticks his finger into the wallpaper and like pulls it up a bit then behind the wallpaper is like the sheepskin backing that they would have used but behind that he sees the globe through the room now as the story goes the nazis have literally all the time in the world and all the hands they need at this point of the war yeah fairly early on right they take the next two days and they carefully pack it up and they take it back to conan’s bird castle which is now part of germany now initially right it wasn’t never in conan’s bird castle but that’s the castle that teutonic knights ran their operation of us so just think it’s really funny that it would find its way there one way or the other on november 13th of 1941 a newspaper article goes out saying there will be an exhibit at the castle conan’s bird and the room will be featured this is the only evidence to support this there are no photographs and nothing else to prove that it was ever there or that this exhibit ever even happened because obviously the west is not trying to get into conan’s bird right now we’re a little busy right um now fast forward a few years to august of 1944 the raf bombs the crap out of conan’s bird and then the soviets take the city after some really intense shelling by april 45 the city is 90 destroyed and most of the castle with it which sort of super sucks for the soviets because it would be awfully embarrassing if they destroy their own art in the process ps this art is worth over half a billion dollars so the soviets are like oh maybe maybe we go look maybe we just go check right so they they send a team led by professor alexander burshov and all he’s able to find is three of the four italian mosaics and they are barbecued so he states in his report that between the days of april 9th and april 11th and 45 the room had to have been destroyed however there are those that believe he’s full of malarkey because 

Theresa: he never hosted dinner party after that and he always walked around like he carried a big ass secret a big smile 

Angie: well evidently on the 21st and the 24th of january of that year hillard who is like very aware of the changing tide of war and incoming allied forces issues orders to move all the looted material from conan’s bird and take it deeper into german territory enter this man called eric kacz he is high-ranking nazi official he is literally the worst but he is also saying something i mean i’m gonna say um barbie was probably the worst right um but this guy is terrible like he was one of those nazi officials that was i’m gonna say this later in the story so now i don’t have to say then but he was one of those officials that was unrepentant the entire time and all he did was sing the praise of hillard and forever so poorly of of anybody other than right okay so he’s like the administrative official in charge of all of this stuff including the police and the gestapo of the area that encompasses the ukraine belarus and each prash and east prussia where conan’s bird is situated And in an interesting turn of events, he flees in January of 45. So just for dates here, Hitler puts out orders on the 21st and the 24th of January telling them to clear Conigsburg Castle, get the looted material out, and then this guy, who is totally in charge of this region, jumpship. He goes on the run and he stays on the run for about four years. He’s captured by the British and they take him to Poland to stand trial for his war crimes, but for whatever reason, his death sentence is inexplicably commuted to life in prison. And here’s the thing, most historians look back on this and there’s like, there’s no real reason to have spared him. His crimes were just as bad as any of the other Nazi officials. And like I mentioned, he’s super unrepentant, so why are we letting him continue writing? 

When plenty of other Nazis died for less. So people are like, what’s the deal with this guy? Now, they think that his sentence was commuted to life in prison after a rather long interrogation by Soviet authorities who believe that at some point he says he knows where the whereabouts of the Amber Room are. 

And so life in prison is what it is. Now, he says the story according to him goes that in January of 1945, 24 wooden crates are trucked to a place called Mamanky, which is about 60 miles from Cohninsburg. Excuse me, I pronounced that wrong. Mammerky. 

I left the R out the first time. Now, Mammerky is a fortified Nazi stronghold that is serving as the command center for the Eastern Front. I had no idea that that never crossed my mind, but of course they would have strongholds for each front. But I don’t know why that like just smacked me in the face. Now, this complex is huge. Above ground, it covers 600 acres. There are 200 buildings, but the underground is even more impressive. It has miles and miles of bunkers and tunnels that the Nazis have like over the course of the war built and backfilled as necessary. Based on what coach says, the Soviets spend the next 20 years searching. 

No luck. So in 1970, they collect 1970, they collect him from prison and take him to Mammerky and he points to where he thought it went. And guess what? It’s not there. So maybe he’s lying. Maybe he just says he knows where it’s at to like stay his death a little while longer, but maybe he forgot. 

Theresa: Maybe it moved after. 

Angie: There are so many variables here, right? Now today, this area is super overgrown and in big disrepair, but a Polish man called Bartek, Slivnicek, has a little museum there and it features all sorts of Nazi and Soviet items that he’s found over the years. And it includes a replica of the room itself. So you can like go in, pay a little price feed into his museum and like check everything out. Every year he excavates one new bunker because that’s all he can afford to do. 

Theresa: Because he’s taking the proceeds from his little museum and doing it? 

Angie: That’s the way that I understand it. And he is just like hell bent. He knows it’s here. So he is going to keep looking until he finds it. However, there is only been one percent searched. So it’ll be a minute like that’s how massive this complex is and he’s been at it for years. 

Theresa: And you know his grandkids are like there goes pop pop. This shovel. Tuesday at eight o’clock. He’s putting in a second shift. 

Angie: Pretty much. Yeah. Now at this time, I’d like to point out and I think this is wild, but I guess this is how the world works. After the war ended, both the Stasi and the KGB have units dedicated to locating the room. Like that’s their only job. And they take tip phone calls and all sorts of things for years. So this is like a fun little side fact to chew on. Now, I love this option. 

If Koch is lying, there’s another option. Perhaps it’s hidden in Czechoslovakia, which seems weird, but there are two German historians that believe this with everything they got. They’re called Eric Stenz and George Mederer. And in 07, they see this news report from a woman who was a cook during the war. And she says that towards the end of the war, she’s working at a place called Friedland Castle, which is like roughly 270 miles from Konigsberg and much further away from the front line. So anyway, she remembers that towards the end of the war, she sees hundreds of SS soldiers bringing all these crates into the castle and down into the cellar every night for two weeks. 

So she’s like, I don’t know what’s in there, but it seems kind of important. Now, these two historians, Mederer and Stenz, they go to Friedland Castle and they start searching and they find these two areas that have been walled off with like modern materials. So they take photos and then they go to the Czech authorities and they ask, hey, can we like look behind the walls in this cellar? And the authorities are like, nope. 

Theresa: Okay, but now imagine, imagine, a credential is assigned. You are a government official. Angie and Theresa walk up to you, hat in hand with a couple of Polaroids asking if we can just knock out a couple of walls. 

Angie: Yeah. Yeah. Well, what’s funny is so you would think that their simple response would just be, no. Like the Czech authorities don’t owe anybody an explanation for why. Just no, leave our castle alone. 

Thank you so much. But instead, the Czech authorities say, no, there’s no sellers down there. And the historians are like, yeah, we got picked. So it happens and they show the authorities the sellers and the authorities are then like, oh, oh, you mean that one? Oh, no, you know what? It’s just got some old books from the Berlin library back there. It’s nothing. 

You don’t need to go back there. But they allow them in to keep working and to keep digging or whatever they’re doing down there. Digging where? Looking more. I said digging. 

I just mean like they’re looking. There’s tunnels and bunkers underneath this castle as well. And so they tell them you can keep looking like you can pay your visits to Freedland Castle. You can do what you’re going to do. 

But by no means are you allowed to bring in any sort of tech that can look through those walls. Why? Well, they’re thinking that the Czechs are holding on to something of significance like an old crutch. You know, the whole Munich agreement that they got left out of back in 38 that sort of gave their country to Germany. 

They’re thinking that the theory is that they think that the Czechoslovakians have the amber room and they’re just not going to give it up because y’all didn’t include us in the conversation back in 38. So you don’t get this back. Now what I find to be interesting one way or the other, whether they have the amber room or not, why did you wall up a cellar full of books from the Berlin Library? Like if that’s your excuse, if that’s what you’re saying is down there, why leave it there? Why not bring the books back up? 

Theresa: Because the books have been down there so long that the humidity has already destroyed and they’ll do the books. The books are toast. They’ve been toast. They were toast decades ago. It’s worthless now. It’s worthless. That’s what they’re saying. 

Angie: Now, allow me to regale you with my favorite theory. Stalin, well, this theory involves Stalin and a Russian historian in 1995 called Vladimir Lipsky. 

Theresa: Stalin was alive in 95? No. 

Angie: Okay. The historian. Okay. Like involved Stalin in his story. 

Theresa: I was trying to say like where was I when that was? I thought this time was very different. Very different timeline. 

Angie: So Lipsky is looking back on history. And so basically what happens is German, Germany and Russia signed something called the Molotov-Rubentop Non-Aggression Pack. And basically it partitions Poland by the two countries. And the goal is to try and slow Germany’s march toward war. Stalin is looking at what Germany’s up to in the 30s and he’s like, we can’t do another war. Like we just did this. We’re all still recovering. 

Theresa: Yeah. I’ve wiped out all of my top generals. Like I’m bottom of the barrel. Yeah. 

Angie: Like we got nothing. So Stalin at this point is dealing what he can to slow the German tide basically. Like he’s just, for the love of God, man, please, can we just be allies? 

Can you just be nice? So to commemorate the signing of the pact, Stalin orders a copy of the Amber Room made for Hitler to give to him when he comes to Russia as an ally. 

Theresa: So Stalin basically rubs it in Hitler’s face that we got the original neater, neater, neater. No. 

Angie: In Stalin’s mind, Stalin is going to give Hitler this replica as a like peace gift. Sure. 

Theresa: But I mean, right? I can only imagine Hitler’s like, no, you keep the copy. I want the master. 

Angie: Well, I’m sure that’s what Hitler did, but it doesn’t matter because Hitler doesn’t keep to the non-aggression pact and just rolls on into the Soviet Union. That’s true. But before that, when Stalin’s like, hey, I’m going to have an Amber Room built for you, he commissions this master craftsman called Anatoly Brunowski to build this Amber Room. So Anatoly builds one and his apprentices build a second one. So there are two additional Amber Rooms floating around. Now, in Stalin’s genius here, he’s like, hey, I’m going to build you an Amber Room. It’s not going to cost half a billion dollars, more like 10 to 15 million. 

But it’s the idea of the thing, right? So then, as I mentioned, Hitler breaks the non-aggression pact and he invades Russia. Now, Stalin’s not stupid and he knows Hitler loves to take other people’s pretty things. So this historian, Vladimir Lipsky, believes that before the Nazis invade Russia, the Russians swap out the original room for the production. For the fake. 

Yes. And this could work because the copies are made in May of 41 and the Nazis don’t arrive until September. So the Nazis are duped, but that begs the question, where’s the real room? 

Now, I find this to be very interesting. I don’t know if I believe this part, but supposedly there’s this man called Armand Hammer. And every time I say that, all I can think of is Armand Hammer, right? 

Theresa: And the man begs quite well. 

Angie: And Cleans. It’s brilliant. He is a pro-Soviet billionaire in the U.S. Now, he thinks that, well, Hammer doesn’t think this, but there’s this belief that when Stalin has the reproduction put into the palace, he packs up the original amber room and he sends it to Hammer in the U.S. As a sort of collateral for their business dealings, but also to keep it safe. Whether or not that’s true is irrelevant because it’s just awesome that Stalin may have thought this through. In 79, another copy of the amber room is ordered and installed in the Catherine Palace. Germany helps to pay for it. Now, there are those that believe that in 79, when the amber room is installed in the Catherine Palace, all Russia did was take the original amber room out of storage and reinstall it back in the palace. 

Theresa: That is a brilliant conspiracy. 

Angie: And to be honest, I think that’s the truth because Stalin knows that Hitler wants the amber room. What better way than to just hide the stupid thing in plain sight? But you say that, but if you the wallpaper fake room, but behind it is another reproduction. 

Theresa: Brilliant. I don’t know. I mean, because I know we have reports of Winston Churchill calling Stalin and being like, yo, I know you have this nonaggression pact at play with Hitler, but hey, we got reports that it’s going to go sideways for you. He’s right. And Stalin’s like, nah, not my bro. We’re cool. 

Angie: I think it doesn’t stop Stalin from still trying to protect his art. Right. Like you said, how many museums hit everything in the basement while we waited? So that’s what I think happens. Now, there are a couple of other theories. 

And I don’t buy these two for nothing, but these seem to be the ones that a lot of people are like cashing out on. During Operation Hannibal when Hitler’s like, oh crap, we got to get everybody like out. We got to evacuate. Like the allies are coming. 

We got problems. There are two ships, the William Gustav and the SS Karlsruhe. And there are people that believe that the Amber Room is on either of these two ships. 

Both of them. Okay, the William Gustav takes off from an area a lot further away from Konigsberg than Karlsruhe. The Karlsruhe harbors in a area that’s like within walking distance to the Konigsberg castle. So these two ships, they take off like relatively close to each other, like probably within hours. Both of them are torpedoed and sunk. 

Theresa: Back to the ocean floor when they came. It’s the… The rivers on board. Right. 

Angie: Now, for years people were like, oh, it’s definitely on the William Gustav. That’s where it is. Well, so Soviet divers go down. I can’t remember the year. I didn’t put the year on my note, so I apologize. Soviet divers go down and they get to like the storage area of where the ship would have been. And one section of it is missing. 

All the other stuff is there except for one section. Like it’s as if somebody’s already been there. But the problem is the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustav is considered one of the greatest maritime tragedies in history. When that ship was torpedoed, it took 9,000 souls with it. 

Jeez. That’s a big boat. So basically it’s a protected gravesite, right? So now divers can’t go down. 

Like they are not allowed to touch it at all because emotional reasons. Right. Now, yeah. 

But the Carlsrua isn’t. Now, it did take souls with it, but there are divers currently or at least as far as 2020 diving on this ship. I like how you say 

Theresa: currently like, hey, right now as of we’re recording the dive started 30 minutes ago. They are about halfway down. 

Angie: It could have been. Here’s the thing. There’s no update since 2020. The problem with where this particular ship went down is the area that it went down in the Baltic Sea is incredibly like the current and the way the wind operates. So they require special equipment in the way that they have to actually anchor their ship. It’s a whole undertaking that is incredibly costly. And the divers that go down have to be specifically trained for this type of condition. 

And they have to have a member from like the Antiquities Commission with them on the dive. So they’ve been down. They found the Carlsrua. Now, for years nobody knew where it was. They found it. They’ve located it. When they went in 2020 on that initial dive, they found crates. They found perfectly preserved military vehicles like with the rubber still on the tires. But because of the monumental undertaking, it will probably be years before we hear anything, if ever, that comes from this. I personally found on the fact that Hitler, if he had it, even if he had a reproduction, what does he know, wouldn’t have put it on a boat. 

My only thing is this. He knows this area of the Baltic is heavily torpedoed all the time. Why would you put something worth half a billion dollars that you have literally sent men in to find and crate up on a ship in a like motorcade of ships that you know have a potential of being bombarded? Because. When you can just truck it to a castle 60 miles south. 

Theresa: Because it’s Hitler and by the end he was rather panicked to a lot of his decisions. 

Angie: Maybe, but I don’t know. I don’t buy it. So anyway, that’s the unsolved mystery of the amber room. I like to believe that it the original is still sitting proudly in the Catherine Palace and never left Russia in the first place. I mean that part is grand and I like that concept. 

Theresa: That’s my favorite idea. But the thing is we will actually probably never know unless some very corroborated journal comes out or something that people can prove. There are so many replicas now it would be so hard to be able to be like, well, we think this is the original. Actually, this might be the original. Well, no, actually, this is the original. So who knows. 

Theresa: So where are the replicas? Where can we, are we start going to the one in Poland to help the guy dig? 

Angie: So, I suppose you could. You can go to the Catherine Palace and see the one that’s there. I don’t know where the second replica is that was made by Stalin. I don’t know where the one that he could write because he had the master craftsman and then his apprentices made one. 

I’m unclear where the apprentice one is today. That could have been the one that the Nazis took off with that we can’t find. So there could be three in the ground somewhere and that guy in Poland could pull one up and then the guys in Friedlich Castle could pull one up and then like, who knows. 

Theresa: Now wouldn’t it be hilarious if they all came up the same day, fought for news coverage? 

Angie: So, the two days ago, I thought, you know what, since I know of this, this excavation that they’re trying to pull off in the Baltic Sea, I wonder if there’s any current news. Like, wonder if they’ve released anything further. And two days ago, I looked it up and there are a couple of news blurbs from like August of this year. 

Theresa: And there’s August of 2025. 

Angie: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. This is 2025. I just realized. Welcome to the future. August of 2025. There is a region in Poland that is just received permits for like, like dig permits. So we’ll see. There hasn’t been anything since then. That’s the most recent news to come up. I’m excited. 

Theresa: That is actually pretty big, exciting. I’m not even going to kid. Right. Pretty cool. That’s the evidence. 

Angie: And my potato king, I got to mention him. 

Theresa: You did. You did. I’m really, I’m really appreciative that he got mentioned again. I realized when we were talking, I’d mentioned the operation Barbarossa and we talked about that during the night witches episode. 

So let me see if we can link up. We find Frederick the Great so we can figure out where that one was. I think he’s episode seven. He was episode seven hot diggity. And then the night witches, which had Operation Barbarossa kind of, you know, the start of the German Russian aspect of the conflict of World War Two. 

That was episode 87 with the night witches. I love them. That’s what I think they’re badass. They were incredibly badass. And if you’re thinking, holy crap, I need to share this with somebody who is also badass. Do it. 

Do it now, please. And then rate, review, subscribe, jump in on that Patreon, get access to those at free. We also, if you’re a paid member, we have a version of a bus spreadsheet. 

And the spreadsheet is where you can go and go. Did they talk about the start of the Red Cross yet? No, I think they have. They did. Oh, they did. 

And they’ve also talked about the disappearance of Agatha Christie and the whole line. But there’s a variety of things. These are all the things that are there. Rate, review, subscribe. We’ll see you next week. Goodbye. Bye. 

Theresa: You