Bank of England helped sell Nazi gold in 'cold blood'

The Bank of England knowingly helped to sell looted Nazi gold from occupied Czechoslovakia months before the outbreak of World War II, according to experts.

On Tuesday the Bank of England's archives -- published digitally for the first time -- reveal that £5.6 million of gold was transferred just days after the Nazi siege of Czechslovakia in 1939, which was one of the catalysts that sparked the war.

While the transfers themselves were known at the time, the archives unmask private letters and telephone conversations where the Bank of England avoided questions over its Czech gold holdings from the Treasury.

The bank sanctioned the transfer of gold -- worth an estimated £736.4 million ($1.1 billion) today, according to the Financial Times -- between two accounts held by the National Bank of Czechoslovakia and the German central bank, known then as the Reichsbank.

Albrecht Ritschl, professor of economic history at the London School of Economics, told CNN that the Bank of England "in cold blood, and pretending not to know what these accounts were and where the gold was coming from, agreed to the transfer."