Hot History - Where’d the money go?

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

Hello guys! Today we're talking about what exactly happened to the 'stuff' of queens, emperors, dictators and criminals after it all comes crushing down!From Marie Antoinette's jewels to the Romanov family's Faberge Eggs and the Kaiser's palaces and art post exile, we look at what happened to the collections of these royal dynasty's when it all comes crashing down! PLUS we're looking at Hitlers personal will and the royalties from his book, before ending with the fate of Jeffrey Epstein's million dollar property portfolio! If you're wanting more Hot History content you can follow along on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and of course, right here!Til next week, Ainslie x

Hi guys and welcome back to Hot History of the podcast, covering all the things in history that you probably should know, but don't. I'm Ainsley Harvey, your hot historian, ready to cover a super exciting topic for today, guys, because we are looking at what happens when it all comes crashing down. And I don't mean regime change or like the drawing of lines on a map. I mean what happens. happens to stuff, assets, vehicles and cash after dynasties, empires and industry titans fall. So we're going to have a couple of time jumps today, starting back in 1789, looking at what

happened to Maria Antoinette's personal items and Versailles itself during the French Revolution. From there, we will jump up to the Russian Revolution looking at what happened to the Romanoff family's fortune, including the Faberje eggs and the mystery of the Swiss bank account. We'll then switch from Russia to Germany at the end of World War I looking at what happened to the German Kaiser and his family during exile. Then we will go from World War I to World War II looking at Adolf Hitler's estate, primarily his heirs and the royalties earned from Myanmar Kempth, and finally up to 2019, where we'll chat about the estate of Jeffrey Epstein,

from houses to trusts and everything in between. So, guys, it is a jam-packed episode, and I can't wait to dive in. So let's get straight into it, rewinding it all the way back to October 6, 1789, to the Palace of Versailles. So just to set the scene for you guys here, France is in chaos. The revolution had already begun with the Bastille falling in July. Bread prices were sky high after poor harvests, Paris was starving, and all the while, the king Louis XVIth and his court was sitting comfortably at Versailles, about 20 kilometres outside of Paris. Now, to Parisians, and let's be real, even still to us today, Versailles symbolised

everything wrong with the old regime. It was a place of luxury and indifference, and when the bread prices spiked to their highest point in early October, the women of the Paris markets, the people who like actually had to go and purchase and buy the bread were fed up. So they decide to do something about it. So around 8 to 10,000 people, mainly women like I said, but also some National Guardsmen, marched the 20 kilometres through the rain to their king at the Si to make their demands. Now when they arrive, they surround the palace, trapping the royal family. inside, and a select few delegates are picked to enter the palace and go to speak to the

king, and he actually does agree to a number of reforms which, on paper, sound fucking amazing, but ultimately no one trusted him. So they demanded that he returned to Paris with them to see these promises fulfilled. He, of course, refuses. And so the crowd remained cold, hungry and angry, and just before dawn, chaos erupted. So a group of protesters found an unguarded entrance and forced their way into the palace. They were killing royal guardsmen along the way, putting their heads on spikes, before making their way directly towards the queen's apartments. Now, guys, while the king was their object for reform and lawmaking,

the queen was the source of their fury. And so the mob passed through the glistening halls down to her bedroom with the noise, stirring Marie Antoinette, who only managed to escape by a connecting door to the King's chambers. Ungarded, in her nightdress, she was seconds away from facing this angry mob entirely alone. So running through the King's apartments into the safety of the Royal Guards, Marie, Louis and their children eventually appeared on a balcony before the Angerner. angry mob before anyone could reach them inside. First the king came out, then the queen, and there genuinely was a moment where it seemed like Marie Antoinette would be shot right

there in front of her husband and children. However, surprisingly, cries of Vive la Raine began or live long with the monarchy. The immediate violence called after this, but the message was incredibly clear. You were coming with us. And so Marie, Louis and their children were taken to Paris, where they were held under house arrest, tried to escape, held under guard again, this time in various prisons before being tried and publicly executed for treason by the new Republican government via the guillotine. Louis was first. Marie, the object of their fury and the symbol of aristocratic opulence was reduced to a common prisoner next. She was dragged. She was dragged before the people of Paris, with her now grey hair shaven in a simple cloth dress,

the guillotine awaiting, and her head eventually paraded around for the crowd who were there. But what happened to her body and her possessions after this? So fine and decadent they were thought to be, right? Madam Deficit, like we covered down last episode. Well, as for her body, it was thrown into a simple coffin covered with quick climb to speed decomposition and ultimately buried in an unmarked grave. But not before one woman immortalised her face forever. Madame Tussaud.

Now, she was born Marie Groschaltz, and she was a young Swiss woman trained in wax modelling, who was invited to Versailles years earlier to teach her skills to Madame Elizabeth the King's sister. So, not a woman of aristocratic birth, not a woman of, you know, fame or fortune, and very, very humble upbringings. But at this point in time, when the Revolution broke out, her proximity to the Royal Court was incredibly dangerous and she was actually imprisoned and only saved because of her

talents in making these death masks. Basically a wax mould used of the dead person's face taken in the first few hours post-mortem. So she's released to make death masks of enemies of the Revolution, including Maria. Now, she is said to have obtained the head of the queen at the cemetery where she made the mould quickly before the grave diggers close the coffin, and we actually still have that mask today, oplets and picks, up on the socials for you guys, but Marie Antoinette's death mask was the crown jewel of Madame du Sourd, who opened her waxworks museum in London after the revolution.

So Marie's body is thrown in an unmarked grave with her head and later exhumed by Louis XVI's younger brother who became King Louis the 17th after Napoleon's defeat. So you have the French Revolution, the government, you then have Napoleon as emperor. He's defeated. King Lily the 17th then follows. And he arranged for his brother and sister-in-law's remains to be buried with full royal honours at the Basilica of Saint-Dine, the traditional burial site for French kings and queens. They remain there today. You can go and see them. But the big question, what happened to Marie's stuff, right? She's like, the OG material girl we spoke all about it in last week's episode.

Well, when the royal family was forced to Paris by the Women's March in October 1789, no one had time to pack their backs. With most of the court and their attendants cleared out, Marie wasn't packing trunks of gowns and shoes. She had the clothes on her back and a small trunk filled with a variety of both her and her children's clothes, which meant that most of her wardrobe and pretty much, all of her furniture, remained at the sigh, which, thankfully, and unlike so many other palaces and buildings of fallen regimes, was not destroyed. In the days, after the King and Queen

left, so too did guards, chefs and attendants, and the once vast, bustling palace of the French court was silent and almost entirely abandoned. It's pretty insane to think. Like, if you've been to Versailles, you've stood in the Hall of Mirrors with the thousands of other people who go every single day to imagine it totally empty. And not just empty, guys. The Palace of the Cy was being used for storage. Yeah, the Great Palace, built by Louis XIV, the Sun King. Host to Benjamin Franklin, Mozart, Peter the Great and the epicenter of a rector.

aristocratic life was now a glorified storage container. And it stayed that way for about three years until 1792 when the monarchy was officially abolished. And when this happened, the Great Stripping began, where everything was either infantryed, confiscated, stored or in the vast majority of cases, sold off for cash. with nearly every single piece removed in a series of vast auctions and private sales. Whether it was to private collectors, foreign royalty or wealthy individuals, furniture, beds, clocks, chandeliers and even door fittings were pulled out and sold off. I actually have a set of doorknobs, not from Versailles, but from a chateau that was raided during the French Revolution that belonged to this aristocratic family.

I bought it in the Paris flea markets. I'm yet to put it on. I feel like I need my own, like, chateau to do it, but, right, everything's guttered during this period, including the personal effects of Mary Antoinette. So, that vast wardrobe that I said she left behind was either sold or far more likely actually repurposed. You see, her silk gowns were incredible. They came from all over the world and they were cut apart and sold the materials while her furniture was sold again, like I said, to foreign courts or wealthy individuals. This included her hideaway at the Si, the petty treanon, and her faux rural village, the Queen's Hamlet, which were also gutted and sold off. Now, we do still have some of her furniture, but we have very few pieces of her actual wardrobe, some of which, guys, if you're in the UK, UK listeners, is on display in the VNA Museum.

If you haven't been to that exhibition, go and see it. It is meant to be fucking incredible. Of those items that are surviving, we have a silk shoe belonging to Mary and Twinette, underd garments and a chemise, we have fragments of a court dress, not a full one, and several of her gloves. The rest, liquid aid for cash. As for Versailles post the Great Stripping, again, like I said, it was used for storage, and largely the only reason it is intact today, thank God, is because it was just too big and too expensive to pull apart and try to sell for pieces. So it really just became this extra set of buildings, right, used for all matter of administrative reasons, including government office space initially, then became military quarters,

it was transformed into the Museum of the History of France, and in the modern era today, well not today, but in the last kind of 200 years, it's been widely used for military purposes. Firstly, it was the place where the German Empire was proclaimed after France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian wars in 1871. Then, of course, we have the Treaty of the Sin in 1919 after the end of World War I breaking up that German Empire. And then it was held again, under Nazi occupation in World War II, where German soldiers would repeatedly urinate in the corner where the armistice was signed. Of course now, it is a UNESCO World Heritage site, with majority of the original furniture or very good replicas, returned to the palace, placing it back in the period of Mary Antoinette and her husband. But the big sexy question, right, the one thing that if you asked anyone on earth what item of Mary Antoinette's you would want to have, it's her jewels.

So what the fuck happened to them? Well, firstly, there are two different types of jewels where Marianne and most royal families, to be honest, are concerned. The first is the French crown jewels, which are state property, and the second is Marie Antoinette's personal jewelry, her private collection. So starting with the crown jewels, they were actually stolen in a crazy heist in 1792. So after the king and queen left Versailles, the crown jewels were taken to Garda Meld in Paris. They included everything from huge diamonds and sapphires and rubies to crowns and all matter of historic regalia pieces, which vanished overnight after the monarchy's abolition.

It remains to this day the biggest jewel heist in European history and eerily similar to that of the 2025 Loufeist, which was like the new French crown jewels because these ones were stolen. But what about Marie's personal jewelry collection? They also had a pretty daring escape. So in 1791, the year before the abolition of the monarchy, Marie Antoinette and Louis XVIth began to sense real danger. And as such, they hatch a plan for escape. To prepare for this, Marie Antoinette quietly packed her private jewels into a wooden chest, including everything from diamond earrings to multi-strand pearl necklaces and her very famous pearl and diamond pendant.

Understanding, rightfully so, but this would pay their way in a world outside of France post-revolution. So she elected not to travel with the chest during their escape, instead entrusting it to a loyal ally who transported it on her behalf to Brussels, a part of the ostort. empire at the time. Again, Rantuinette was Austrian. And the timing matters here because the chest went off months before their failed escape in which the royal family are captured, were backed Paris, imprisoned and the monarchy abolished the following year. So her jewels, long gone and in Austrian custody, before her execution in 1793. So what happened to them? Well, her only surviving child, the 17-year-old Marie Terese, aka Madame Royal,

was eventually released from prison in 1795, so two years after her mother is executed is her daughter released, in a prisoner exchange with Austria where she claimed the chest. However, she rarely ever wore its contents, herself witnessing firsthand her mother's excess and the danger it inspired. Now, she went on to marry her cousin on the Bourbon side, like the French side, dangerous, and his name was Louis Antoine, and they lived in exile during the Napoleonic years before eventually returning to Paris and even becoming king and queen for 20 minutes, before abdicating from the stress, cannot say, I blame them,

the daughter of Marie Antoinette and becoming Queen of France, like, no. Through all of this, she held on to her mother's jewels, though, leaving them to her own children who passed them down through the family for over 200 years. But in 2018, Sotheby's auctioned several jewels directly traceable to that 1791 chest of Mary Antoinette, including the large diamond and pearl pendant which sold for over 30 million US dollars. So all in all, Marie's clothing and furniture broken up and sold for bits, her lavish palace and its grounds used for storage, and her jewels survived by their daring escape, as did her only daughter.

So from the French Revolution, guys, let's skip forward to probably why most of you are here to the Russian Revolution on March 15th, 1917. So, Tsar Nicholas II ruled Russia from 1894 to 1917. But the Romanov dynasties rule predates that by almost 300 years. They were as authoritarian as it comes, pure autocrats, ruling Russia with an iron fist as the aristocracy got richer and the rest of Russia got poorer. And it all comes to ahead in a series of revolts leading up to February 1917 as Russia fails to modernize and the pressures of World War I bore down. The Tsar insists on, you know, going and leading the troops. himself, then there's the issue of Rasputin, the mad monk employed to mystically heal the heir

Alexi. Like, it's literally a movie, right? All in all, the people are angry, the Tsar sucks, and he is forced to abdicate his throne on March 15th, 1917, joining his family who were placed under house arrest at the Alexander Palace in Zarsko Seles. He's thing to note here, guys, The Romanovs were the richest royal family in European history. They had immense wealth with palaces, gold mines, jewels, faberget eggs, land and art, all making up their approximately 300 billion US dollar fortune in today's figures. So what happened to all that wealth? Well, officially, it went to the provisional government,

which was soon taken over by the Bolshevik Party under Vladimir Lenin. but some of it is a little more ambiguous. So let's start with the palaces, guys, the big ticket items, including the Grand Winter Palace in St Petersburg, the official home of this are. It had epic ballrooms and sweeping staircases. It is really the very symbol of Romanov Granger. Now, following February 1917, it briefly housed the provisional government, but the Bolsheviks took the palace by force in October of that same year, pillaging what remained.

Key to remember here, guys, this was the family's official home, and many of their personal items, including clothing, letters, documents and art were all left behind and looted by the Bolsheviks in this process. Now, I will post some photos to the socials of the aftermath of, like basically their raid, because it is pretty, pretty, brutal destruction of property. Now, after the Bolsheviks took the palace, they turned it into the State Hermitage Museum, which remains today as one of the world's largest art museums in the world. And as for the Romanov's other palaces, there was the Catherine and Alexander palaces, both located in Zarskoi, cello, the latter of which, like I said, the Romanov family were held under house arrest, and interestingly, or more so, like probably morbidly, they too were nationalised

after the Bolsheviks took power and opened as museums in 1918. So only after a year were members of the public able to like waltz through the final home of the Romanov family. Meanwhile, they're being killed out in Siberia. Like, it's pretty wild. Other palaces include the Vladimir Palace, which was converted into the House of Scientists. Others were occupied by government offices and many minor palaces, such as the Babolovo Palace were a band. So that's them. Again, similar to Versailles, right? Some of them are just too big to dismantle and try and sell off. But the Romanovs' personal items, the clothing, the books, the toys, the human everyday items,

they are small enough. And what happened to them? Well, the family were allowed to take some personal possessions while being held under house arrest, but as they moved from location to location, they did leave some things behind, and most of these survived today in various museums around Russia. But the one possession that you want to have, if you're an aristocrat

or ruler or royal, and you need to start a new life is jewels. Again, exactly what Marion Twinnett thought, and the Romanovs had, I think anyway, the most impressive collection of jewels in royal history.

With over 300 years of rule, their collection held everything from the Grand Crown of Catherine the Great to huge rubies, emeralds, diatoms, tiaras and all matter of other glistening goodness. And this was called the Diamond Fund, which since the time of Peter the Great in 1719, was state property. So even before the Revolution guys, these items worn by the Romanovs belonged to the Russian state, them personally. And you bet your bottom dollar. When the provisional government and later the Bolsheviks took power, this was the first thing they secured. Now there's some incredible pictures. Again, I'll post them on socials of the entire diamond fund assembled on a

huge table for cataloging and inspection. And it is genuinely unbelievable just how much there is. It is worth billions in today's figures. And as I said before, jewels are easy to transport and liquidate, so large parts of the diamond fund were sold off in the 1920s to fund the USSR. The largest of these Romanov jewelry sales was the 1927 auction at Christie's, which saw 596 of the total 773 pieces of the diamond fund sold to various buyers from European royals to archery.

art dealers, two American businessmen, all of whom wanted a piece of the former Imperial Families Collection. The funds then went on to establish and pay for the USSR, but not all the Romanov jewels were a part of the diamond funds. They, like many of the Royal Families of Europe, marrying Twinnett as well, had personal jewelry, which the Empress and her daughters had managed to keep secret while under house arrest by sewing them into their underwear. You see, being ready to at any moment was essential for the family, who knew these jewels would buy them a brand new life. So the girls wore the same underwear, under their night clothes, sewn with all these jewels, which is why on the night of July 17, 1918, when the family were taken down to the basement

of Impatiab House, they did not die when shot at, like their parents and brother. The jewels hidden in the underwear formed this, like, bulletproof vest, and the soldiers present were forced to use bayonets on the four young girls. Afterwards, they were stripped of their clothing, which is when the officers found the jewels, some of which were given to the Bolshevik government and make up part of the diamond fund today, but a lot of it was largely taken by those present. There is some surviving Romanov jewelry, though, namely the Vladimir Tiara, which belonged to the Tsar's aunt, and was smuggled out of Russia by a friend in a toolbox, later purchased

by Queen Mary of the UK, and was actually a favourite of Queen Elizabeth the 2nd, and most of the Zarina's personal collection, which, like Marie and to Annette, she managed to smuggle out by loyal friends. But how? Well, the story goes that during the Romanoff family's imprisonment in Tobolsk, one of the other kind of regions that they were held, Empress Alexandra managed to have many of the family's most valuable jewels smuggled out by the family valet, who gave them to the Mother Superior of the DuBelsk Ivanovski Monastery. The Mother Superior held on to them for her whole life, giving them to her assistant, the nun Marfa Usenetsvah, on her deathbed,

who then hid them in the convent somewhere. In the mid-1920s, though, Tenun was evicted from the convent, so Marfa gave the jewels to a trusted acquaintance, who then hid them. 13 years later, in October 1933, Marfa confessed under interrogation to the Tobolsk authorities and revealed the name of the acquaintance she gave the jewels to after a tip came in that she was the one who had this Arrhenius jewels, right? The Soviets aren't going to let potentially millions of dollars worth of Romanov jewels just be out there somewhere.

So the Soviets then interrogated her friend who handed the jewels over, all of which FYI kept top secret in the Russian counterintelligence files until they were declassified in 1996. after the fall of the USSR, with these jewels largely being sold off in secret in the years following their discovery. But the Romanovs didn't just like jewelry you could wear. They like jewelry you could play with. And for that, they had their famed Faberge eggs. A tradition started as Easter presents, but instead of chocolate eggs, they were solid gold, so while the Russian people literally could barely afford actual eggs,

the Romanov family got golden-bejeweled ones. And these were all seized by the Bolsheviks after the revolution, with some pieces remaining in the Kremlin, but most of them being sold off around the world. Now, some, I believe it was three actually, were purchased by the British Royal Family as part of their personal collection by Queen Mary. And no one sees these guys.

These are locked up, like in the British Royal Family's vaults. They are not for public display. Those remaining were sold to American. facilitated by wealthy American businessman Armand Hammer. And if that name sounds familiar to you guys, it is because he's the grandfather of Army Hammer, disgraced former actor, accused of cannibalism and all matter of other, like, terrible fucked up things.

So Armand Hammer sold a lot of these on behalf of the Soviets to Malcolm Forbes, founder of Forbes magazine, who had nine that were eventually sold to Russian billionaire Victor Veckelsberg. Now, the most famous of these eggs, the Imperial Winter Egg, was purchased by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. It was the most expensive Faberjeet piece ever sold and sold by Christie's on his behalf in December 2025, just a few months ago. And, guys, I was actually invited by Christie's to view the egg in London the day before the sale. It was insane.

I also got to try on, like, some incredible pieces of jewelry. Played with Faberje's stationery sets and bell presses. Like, it was amazing. But the egg was the standout guys. Holy shit. It was insane. So much so it sold for 30 million US dollars in the end. So, like, incredible.

Now, these Romanov Faberje eggs are held in private collections. I believe there's seven, like I said, mainly by British Royals and Russian billionaires, alongside those that exist in the Kremlin and in the Kremlin. and in the Fabersh Museum. But before we move on, from the Romanovs, guys, we have to talk about the secret Swiss bank account. So, after the failed but pretty scary first Russian Revolution in 1905, so like well before the actual revolution that toppled them,

the Romanovs are said to have secretly transferred several million in foreign currencies to a private account in Germany. However, with World War I on the horizon, the Tsar took these funds back to Russia, investing them back into the war effort. But the other side of the story is that the Tsar actually took the funds and placed them in a Swiss bank account where they still remain today, waiting for the Romanov heir to present themselves and be claimed. Now, the Romanoff family has several heirs today, albeit distant, and many of its closest linked relatives, including the Tsar's sister and aunt and mother. Right? All survived the revolution and tried to access. various funds after, but failed, leading many to question what happened to the Tsar's cash

after it was taken out of Germany. Was it spent on the war? Seized by the government, taken by the Brits, or is it still sitting in Credit Suisse waiting for the air to arrive? The truth is, we don't know. But the legend has prompted many an impersonator claiming to be one of the five surviving Romanov children in the years that happened. past. So speaking of World War I, let's put a pin in the Romanov's and Russia and jump over to Germany with the defeat and abdication of the Kaiser. So a bit of history here. Prior to the formation of the German Empire, Germany was made up of a number of smaller states, the biggest of which was called Prussia. Now the royal family of Prussia was the house of, wait for the

pronunciation, Hochenzollin, who ruled Prussia for over 900 years, nearly 1,000 years, pretty well. And given their size power and, like I said, that dynastic history there, they were selected as the new ruler or Kaiser of the new empire called Germany in 1871. And it was the house of Hochenzollin that Queen Victoria's eldest daughter married into, and her son, Wilhelm II, would go on to become the Kaiser who lost the war, abdicated the throne, and lived the rest of his life in the Netherlands in exile. But what happened to the house of Hojnzollin and what was life like for an exiled Kaiser, right? At this point we've only dealt with revolutions in which the rulers lose their heads.

So the Hochenzollins held a vast, mostly entailed fortune, estimated at around 152 million US dollars in the early 1920s. And this included extensive land, palaces, art collections. and the Kaiser himself was the richest German of them all, right? Holding 1.5 million acres of this land personally worth about $120 million. So in 1918, following defeat in World War I, the country became a republic, the Weimar Republic, and a democracy with the monarchy, booted to the curb.

But unlike the Bolsheviks, like I said, who stripped and murdered their royals, the Germans allowed the then-Kaiser and his family to not only live, but keep a substantial part of their fortune, including the family's ancestral seat, Hothenzollon Castle. So we already see here the big difference between an exile, which is largely pushed for by external governments, and a revolution within a nation, which, like I said, saw the Romanov's and the Bobons killed and stripped of everything.

So what was life like for a very much still alive but exiled Kaiser Wilhelm? the second. So as I said, he was banned from ever returning to Germany, fleeing across the border into the neutral Netherlands and being granted political asylum by the Dutch government. At first, he lived at Amarongan Castle, the home of a Dutch nobleman, but he found his life there was humiliating compared with the former imperial grandeur he was raised in. Here, he spent time reflecting on the wall, writing memoirs, reading newspapers, and even picking up a kind of rancel. random hobby in wood chopping. In 1920, though, with the fortune, he was allowed to keep. Wilhelm purchased House Dawn, a modest manner in the Dutch countryside, and this is where he spent

the remaining two decades of his life. Although far from the scale of his former palaces in Berlin, Wilhelm attempted to recreate a miniature version of imperial life by filling the house with furniture, art and personal possessions all shipped from Germany in Dutch. dozens of railway wagons by friends and family. To the extent, guys, that the walls of this, like, Dutch matter house were filled with portraits of Prussian kings and German emperors. And the reason he could do all of this is because the Honzoan family was still very, very wealthy. And they actually got even wealthier after a 1926 court case against the New German Republic, saw the family receive nearly 38 million gold marks in 18,000.

assets which will return to them from state possession. So these guys, living it up still and despite losing the throne, Wilhelm maintained a strict daily routine, expecting people to address him as your majesty. He also stayed abreast of all political development in his former empire and communicated extensively with royalists in the nation, including members of the Nazi party. Hating the Democratic government which deposed him, Wilhelm was cautiously optimistic that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis rise to power would eventually breed this really strong nationalist government that would restore Germany's prestige by placing him, the former monarch,

back on the throne as a figurehead, just like his cousins, the British, were. In fact, guys, Herman Guring made several visits to the former Kaiser in the Netherlands and his son, Crown Prince Wilhelm, became a member of the Nazi party himself, serving in a ceremonial capacity within the German army. He did not, however, gain any power or authority, let alone his crown back, and lived quietly on family estates with little political relevance for the rest of his life. But still, the stain of the Hochenzolle's Nazism plagued the family, who received further blows after much of their personal.

properties, lands and contents landed on the eastern side of Germany, which were occupied by the USSR after World War II. Under communist control, many of the family's items were taken, and the family today, headed up by Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia. Yes, that's literally his last name, is fighting to be compensated. But there's a catch. Under German law, no person or company, involved with the Nazis during World War II, will receive a single penny. And the involvement of Crown Prince Wilhelm, despite his lack of power or authority with the Nazis, makes them ineligible for this compensation. According to Prince Georg, the thousands of items on the line range from a simple coffee spoon

to centuries-old works of art. His family is also seeking cash compensation of €1.2 million euros, which represents the value of their land at the time it was seized, But, according to the prince's spokesperson, it is safe to assume that the current value of the family's private property taken by the communists is several hundred times higher. But, you know, they're happy to just settle for the price at the time. These guys are, like, so arrogant. Gail is such a whack-law. Anyway, there's an exile for you guys, right?

Which I think is a pretty good deal when you look at the Bobolins and especially the Romanovs. Key to note, 1918, Romanovs were losing their head. while Wilhelm's like building, you know, his pleasure palaces and chopping down wood. But let's ditch the royals, guys, and come forward to the menace of tyranny that was Adolf, Hitler. So after the exile of the Kaiser, like we said, the establishment of the Weimar Republic occurred. And after that came Nazism, bred by economic hardship, a lack of nationalism, embarrassment at the loss of World War I, and largely out of the charisma and promise of the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, who unceremoniously lost the war, married his mistress,

blew his brains out in a Berlin bunker, and really is just like history's biggest fucking loser. And while he came from very, very humble origins guys, these guys, he had no money. He gained large amounts of wealth, property, possessions and power. So what happened to all of this? after his death. Well, unlike the royals we've covered,

Hitler left behind relatively little personal property, as much of what he owned, including all of his cash, was closely tied to the Nazi state. And after its defeat, the Allies worked very quickly to seize, scatter, destroy, or absorb anything left behind. In terms of property, that included his eight-room Munich apartment, where Lee Miller took her famous photo in his bathtub,

after the liberation of DACA. Although not technically, his property, he did actually reside in the Reich. I can never say it. The Reich Chancellery, the German government headquarters with much of his personal belongings remaining there. And of course, guys,

famously, his Bavarian estate, the Berkhov on the Oberstlausburg near Berkest Garden in southern Germany. This Alpine mansion had huge panoramic windows overlooking the Alp that was fit out with terraces and gardens and guest rooms. He also had a small tea house built as a private retreat for walks. And of course, the Eagles Nest, a mountaintop building given to him by the Nazi party for his 50th birthday.

So what happened to it all? Well, when American forces captured Munich in April 1945, they discovered the apartment in Munich, almost exactly as Hitler had left it. Literally like he'd gotten up that morning, walked out the door, it was perfect. There was furniture. There was artwork. There was personal belongings and letters, right? That was still in place. And the building was taken over by the US Army before being then passed over into the control of the Bavarian state government and it actually still stands today as police headquarters with Hitler's a former bedroom, now a storage closet. The Reich Chancellery, however, I got it, was almost completely destroyed by shelling and explosions,

and after Berlin fell, Soviet troops occupied the site and just pretty much decided to tear down what was left. Then there is the Berkhov, which was hit repeatedly by the British Royal Air Force in a series of bombings, after which the SS guards who remained reportedly set fire to parts of the Berkhoff to destroy remaining evidence, but when American troops reached the site, it was still largely in place, or the remains anyway, and they looted a lot of it, furniture, artworks, books, dishes, right? Anything they could really handle. And it was eventually handed back over to the Bavarian government. And once they got a hold of it, concerns over the ruins becoming a symbolic gathering

place for neo-Nazis or Hitler sympathizers really increased, so they ordered the remaining ruins destroyed. I think it was Himmler's estate or like a school set up by Himmler, which still remained in place and went back to the Pervaryan government. They tried to sell it and a bunch of neo-Nazis approached them. So now there's like a whole bunch of rules around property, you know, associated with the Nazis.