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It's one of the strangest dives I have ever done. I'm eight metres down, crawling on my belly across the muddy bottom of Lake Atter, 40 kilometres east of Salzburg, plunging my hands elbow-deep into the muck. It feels like reaching into a giant vat of chocolate mousse. I stir up clouds of silt and the visibility drops to nil. It's a probing technique my friend and dive buddy Werner Thiele has shown me. Through my bulky neoprene gloves, I feel the sleek shape of a cylinder, about the thickness of a gun barrel.

I've come to dive in the Salzkammergut region of inner Austria, a picturesque area of more than 70 lakes in the central Alps, to search for Second World War artifacts. The Salzkammergut was the site of some top-secret Nazi projects: a naval station on Lake Toplitz that tested prototype miniature submarines and underwater rockets; a plot to destroy the British economy by flooding the market with counterfeit bank notes; and a planned "Fourth Reich" after the Nazis presumed victory against the Allies.

By February, 1945, the German war machine was in a tailspin and retreating fast and the Salzkammergut was one of its final holdouts. In the last days of the war, under the cover of darkness, crate after crate of secret cargo was dumped into the lakes, many of which are deep, with tree-covered mud bottoms. It was the perfect hiding place. Much has been recovered over the years, including thousands of counterfeit bank notes and the equipment used to make them, but much still remains. Stolen art, sealed Swiss bank accounts and millions in gold bullion are rumoured to be hidden in the lakes. The area has come to be known as the "Devil's Dustbin."

Later this year, a major search of Lake Toplitz will be conducted by Florida-based Global Explorations, which has a three-year permit from the Austrian government to explore the 103-metre-deep mountain lake. Norman Scott, who is heading up the search, is confident that he will find what others have missed. "We know there's $134-million in gold bullion down there," he says. His team will use technology not available to other searchers including 3-D sonar, magnetometers and sub-bottom profilers.

For adventurous scuba divers, the lakes are a window into Europe's tenebrous past. By the time I wriggle the cylinder out of the muck, I realize that I have been duped. It's only a tree branch. A moment later, I feel something small and smooth. It's a hand-blown medicine bottle from the 19th century. At the end of the dive, Thiele and I compare our finds: He has three old hand-blown bottles and a gas-mask case. He explains that SS officers often used these tube-shaped cases to discard their personal effects into the lakes. We cautiously open it, but like Al Capone's lost vault there's nothing inside but a few spare gas-mask filters.

We base ourselves in the town of Hallstatt, a postcard-perfect waterfront village on the shores of Lake Hallstatt, 60 kilometres southeast of Salzburg. Because of the presence of natural salt mines, the area is believed to be one of the first places of human settlement, dating from the late Bronze Age, 1200 BC. The region has been named a UNESCO World Heritage site and is a place of exquisite beauty. Many of the top Nazi officers - Eichmann, von Ribbentrop, Goebbels and Hitler himself - had palatial waterfront homes on the lakes here.

Diving in the Salzkammergut has been pioneered by Gerhard Zauner, who has been running a dive shop here since 1974. When I meet him at his fill station on Lake Hallstatt, a few kilometres from town, he's wearing lederhosen, a white T-shirt and suspenders. He's a heavy-set man with a bushy, rusty-grey beard. When I ask him how many dives he has done, he says he doesn't know. He has made it a point not to log his dives so as to keep secret from the authorities the locations of all the guns he has found, he says with a hearty laugh.

Zauner had several run-ins with the authorities. When he was a young man in the 1970s, he and some buddies pulled up an anti-aircraft gun and ammunition from Lake Atter, took it out to the woods and fired off a few shells, narrowly missing the town church.

He doubts the stories of lost treasure, but Zauner has found enough artifacts to open a small museum in his family's guest house and has written a book (in German) about diving in the Salzkammergut. The Zauner Museum is a medley of his finds from the lakes over the years: soldier's helmets, gas masks, SS medals, a stamp from the naval academy dated Feb. 7, 1945, grenades he defused himself, a metal bust of Hitler. One of the more curious items is a German propaganda pamphlet for U.S. troops with a cartoon of dead American soldiers on the battlefield. When held up to a light, a painting of a naked woman can be seen through the paper. Posted on the glass display case are signs, written in German and English, stating that the exhibit is not meant to glorify nazism; its purpose is to offer a way of coming to terms with the past and a warning for the future.

Trade in Nazi artifacts is strictly prohibited in Austria and most people here would like to forget about the period forever. The thought of divers ambling out of the water carrying a bust of Hitler or a dripping SS dagger in front of a busload of camera-clicking tourists has caused conniptions for the local tourism board. "They are going mad because there's so many divers going after this stuff," Zauner says. Diving has been banned in front of Hallstatt town, Lake Toplitz and other high tourist areas.

All of the sites I dive are accessible from shore, but some require special permission to avoid trespassing. At some sites, I see schools of minnows and trout, but most are otherwise uninteresting. The real excitement comes from hunting for artifacts.

Thiele and I dive beside Joseph Goebbels's former house on Lake Grundle one afternoon. The sloping mud bottom looks promising. While we don't find any Second World War artifacts, we do find several very old hand-blown bottles.

Finding the best places requires planning, local knowledge and a bit of luck. "The trick is to look for old buildings," Thiele says. He adds that if you know where there was a high-ranking officer's house, it's also a good starting point. But the most interesting stuff will always be buried. "If you want to find something, you have to look in the mud," he says. The mud contains no oxygen and buried artifacts are often perfectly preserved. A Luger pistol found by a member of our group was rust-free and in perfect working order. The trick is to stick your arms in and work by feel. It's difficult diving and you often come up sweating and exhausted despite the frigid water.

Thiele, who lives near Innsbruck where he runs a travel agency, has also been diving in these lakes for years and has collected many of the same things as Zauner. In the early 1990s, he found a wooden box containing a dagger and books of lists. They were sodden, but still intact. He quickly realized what they were - lists from a concentration camp. "I didn't want to look too closely at that," he recalled. He sent the box to the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna.

An amateur archeologist, Thiele is far more interested in the Celtic artifacts that can be found in the lakes. He once found a bronze axe, and has several arrowheads and pieces of pottery in his collection. The Celtic stuff is much more difficult to find. Thiele has made hundreds of dives and knows some of the sites in which to look. A diver would need a lot of time and expert knowledge to have any hope of finding Celtic artifacts. On the final day, I dive a site called Ammunition Wall in Lake Hallstatt. It's a steep scramble down the bank from the highway north of town. Unlike the sloping mud bottoms at the other dive sites, this is a near vertical rock wall. Visibility is poor, and the wall is covered in fine silt, which stirs up with the slightest movement. As I descend, it becomes so dark I can see only with my dive light. It's disorienting, and Thiele and I constantly bump into each other. At 40 metres, I come to a ledge strewn in bazooka shells and launchers. Large-calibre machine-gun bullets litter the site. It looks like an underwater garbage dump. There's no need to dig here; everything rests on the bottom. The ammunition is still live so I don't touch the larger shells. Thiele poses for some pictures, then hands me something long and black, a leather knife sheath - standard issue for German soldiers. We are soon at our decompression limit and begin the long, slow ascent back to the surface, out of the Dustbin.

Pack your snorkel

Getting there

The Salzkammergut lakes are easily accessible by car or rail from Salzburg. Travel time is about one hour.

Diving

Divepark Dachstein Salzkammergut, run by Gerhard Zauner, offers guided dives into the lakes: 43 (0) 6134-8286; http://www.zauner-online.at. The lakes can be dived year-round, but temperatures at depth in some lakes are as cold as 5 degrees. A dry suit is recommended. Where to stay

Pension Hallberg: A- 4803 Hallstatt, Seestrasse 113; 43 (0) 6134-8709; http://www.pension-hallberg.at.tf. Rooms start at $36 per night.

More information

To learn more about activities in Hallstatt, such as hiking, visit http://www.hallstatt.net.