Travis BeecroftHIST 461ElkindApril 30, 2014Cultural Heroes: The Story of the Monuments Men and Their

Task to Find, Preserve, and Return History’s GreatestTreasures

“We do not want to destroy unnecessarily what men spent somuch time and care and skill in making…[for] these examples

of craftsmanship tell us so much about our ancestors…Ifthese things are lost or broken or destroyed, we lose avaluable part of our knowledge about our forefathers. Noage lives entirely alone; every civilization is formed not

merely by its own achievements but by what it is weinherited from the past. If these things are destroyed, wehave lost a part of our past, and we shall be the poorer for

it.”1

The destruction of World War II was unprecedented, and

in the wake of the insurmountable loss of life and total

annihilation of numerous European cities, the need to

protect and preserve items of cultural importance was

paramount. Historical pieces such as van Eyck’s Adoration of

the Mystic Lamb, Michelangelo’s Bruges Madonna, and countless 1 Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter, The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History (New York: Center Street, 2009), 371. This quote is from British Monuments Man Ronald Balfour at a draft lecture for soldiersin 1944. Edsel’s book focuses on the Monuments Men and their movements throughout France and Germany during World War II, which will also be the subject of this paper. Giventhe limited space available and the breadth of information on the topic, Monuments Men excursions into Italy will be referenced in an appropriate footnote for anyone that wishesto pursue relevant scholarship.

Beecroft, 1

paintings by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Renoir, carry immense

monetary and intrinsic value, but they also represent

intellectual advancements from profound periods of cultural

grandeur. With Allied bombing raids and Adolf Hitler’s

incessant need to acquire all of the historical and cultural

artifacts of Europe, those treasures were at risk of being

lost at the hands of military mayhem and crazed fanaticism.

Consequently, nearly 345 men and women from thirteen nations

were assembled to perform the task of tracking, locating,

and returning thousands of artistic masterpieces to their

rightful owners after scrupulous Nazi looting before and

during World War II. These men and women became members of

the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives sub-commission (MFAA),

but for the eight that served on the front lines with the

American and British armies, they were true “Monuments Men.”

In their efforts to preserve historical buildings and

recover centuries worth of historical artifacts, these

Monuments Men, risked their lives traveling through France,

Germany, and Austria without the proper equipment, without

the proper organizational structure, and without the respect

Beecroft, 2

that combat soldiers received. However, in the face of

overwhelming odds the Monuments Men succeeded. As a result,

historical achievements in architecture were preserved, and

items of cultural importance were returned to their place of

inception, providing context and significance to the vast

and diverse histories of Europe.

The historical scholarship behind the extensive Nazi

looting campaign and the efforts to recover what was taken

is immense. The literature conferred for this assignment

ranges in date from 1946 to 2009, and includes primary

material from the United States Government as well as

memoirs from a few of the Monuments Men themselves. For

instance, in 1946, a year after the war ended, the United

States Government published a Report of the American Commission for

the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas

that was intended to summarize the actions taken by the

governments of the United States and Great Britain to

protect the invaluable artistic achievements of our cultural

forebears. This report states that as the Allied armies

were preparing to invade Europe in 1942, U.S. civilian

Beecroft, 3

intellectual groups formulated plans that would provide a

“measure of protection consistent with military strategy

[that] could, in the war areas, be extended to the cultural

monuments—buildings, works of art, libraries, and records,”

or, in other words, “the heritage of the entire civilized

world.”2 As a result of this push by the intellectual

community, on August 20, 1943 President Roosevelt and the

Department of State signed into effect the Roberts

Commission,3 named after U.S. Supreme Court Associate

Justice Owen J. Roberts, which established the MFAA “as an

official joint operation between the United States and

Britain, run by the Civil Affairs branch of the Allied

Military Government for Occupied Territories (AMGOT),”

primarily answering to the M-5 division of the British War

Office.4 In addition to a summation of preservation efforts

in the Mediterranean and European theaters of war, the Report

of the American Commission also includes letters from General 2 Report of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historical Monuments in War Areas (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), 1.3 For the date of the commission, see Report of the American Commission, 3.4 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 52.

Beecroft, 4

Eisenhower, indexes featuring the names of MFAA members, and

sixty pages of images germane to topic. This is an

extremely valuable resource and a must-have for anyone

researching the Monuments Men.

Equally important to note are the memoirs by two of the

Monuments Men in the field during the later years of the

Allied military campaign. Perhaps one of the most important

Monuments Men, and certainly their most prestigious member,

was Second Lieutenant James Rorimer. His 1950 memoir

entitled Survival: The Salvage and Protection of Art in War, documents

his time as a MFAA officer in the Communications Zone in

Normandy to his services with the Seine Section in Paris and

the U.S. Seventh Army in Germany. While on his cultural

odyssey, Rorimer was responsible for helping to “preserve

monuments and other cultural objects from the tip of the

Normandy peninsula across large and artistically important

areas of France into Germany and Austria.”5 His findings

are documented throughout the memoir, as are numerous

pictures, which show the destruction he faced and the beauty5 James J. Rorimer, Survival: The Salvage and Protection of Art in War (New York: Abelard, 1950), xi.

Beecroft, 5

he saved through his efforts. Also included in his memoir

are accounts of historical and cultural ignorance on behalf

of American soldiers who encountered the prized pieces of

art, unaware of their significance. This is exemplified in

a letter Rorimer received in 1945 from Herr Hampe, a

civilian architect in Austria who helped trace information,

which read “unfortunately by the use for soldier’s billeting

further damage is done to the furniture which nearly all are

precious historical possessions” of the Austrian family they

belonged to.6 Disgusted by this, Rorimer closes his memoir

by stating:

“Our own basic lack of training in simple good manners and Christian principles has resulted in this outrageous behavior in foreign lands. Until fundamentals of civilized living are inculcated into all of our people, our men will go abroad as poor ambassadors of a nation working so that others may not starve, caring for the sick and the underprivileged, and protecting treasures and cultural objects as a heritage for future generations.”7

6 Rorimer, Survival, 241.7 Ibid, 248. The book’s appendices include descriptions of international law, Nazi laws and their interpretations, a list of the cultural artifacts found in the German salt mines of Heilbronn and Hochendorf, and a list of the MFAA personnel in the U.S. Seventh Army.

Beecroft, 6

Efforts were made on behalf of the MFAA to educate members

of the army, which will be discussed at a later time, and

for that, we should be thankful.

Monuments Man Captain Walker Hancock of the U.S. First

Army details his experiences in the German town of Aachen

and the Belgian town of La Gleize in his memoir entitled

“Experiences of a Monuments Officer in Germany.” Here,

Hancock illustrates the damaged inflicted upon the city of

Aachen as a result of numerous Allied bombing raids, noting

that “I realized at once what I later so often found to be

true—that a skeleton city is more terrible than one that the

bombs have completely flattened. Aachen was a skeleton.”8

Hancock saw destruction in the town of La Gleize as well,

but found temporary peace after finding a thirteenth century

wooden statue of the Virgin Mary still intact in a severely

damaged church.9 “With her solemn glance,” Hancock recalls,

“her hands quietly upraised in a gesture of appeal, her 8 Walker Hancock, “Experiences of a Monuments Officer in Germany,” College Art Journal 5.4 (May 1946): 272-273, accessed April 27, 2014, JSTOR.9 See Image 1. Source: Robert M. Edsel, Rescuing da Vinci: Hitler and the Nazis Stole Europe’s Great Art, America and Her Allies Recovered It (Dallas: Laurel LLC, 2006), 138.

Beecroft, 7

figure bending a little in its draperies, she had such

beauty that one wondered how she had found her way into this

commonplace village.”10 It is in moments like this that the

Monuments Men found purpose in their work—seeing the history

they were protecting firsthand, and knowing they had a hand

in its preservation. Keenly aware of their overwhelming

need, yet limited availability, Hancock reflects at the end

of his memoir, stating:

“Despite the disheartening realization of our impotencein the vastness of need, there was constant satisfaction in the very effort, however meager the result. The greatest joy always lay in the associationwith those interested in the same work…[who were] surprised at our concern for their national patrimony; other officers, British and American, who realized the need to save something of man’s past achievements from the tide of ruin that was engulfing the world…There were Germans, too, who…saw in our endeavors a motive other than the selfish greed that some of their leadershad shown…Was there, perhaps, in this mutual confidenceand common interest, the germ of something that might be made to work for world peace at least as effectivelyas the disciplinary measures upon which we now rest so much faith?”11

While today much needs to be done to achieve world peace,

the combined multinational effort to protect Europe’s lost

treasures during World War II can certainly give us hope.10 Hancock, “Experiences of a Monuments Officer,” 283.11 Ibid, 311.

Beecroft, 8

Literature focusing more explicitly on the Nazi looting

of Europe’s cultural treasures is written by authors such as

David Roxan and Ken Wanstall and Hector Feliciano. Roxan

and Wanstall’s book entitled The Rape of Art: The Story of Hitler’s

Plunder of the Greatest Masterpieces of Europe, discusses Hitler’s goal

of accumulating the world’s greatest art for his personal

Führermuseum in Linz, Austria, which would represent the

cultural center of the world should Germany had won the war.

They explain that the looting “was [done] on a scale

unprecedented in history,” and “was carried out with typical

German efficiency, planned beforehand and ruthlessly

executed,” by extensive stealing and purchasing through

intimidation.12 This book also explains how ruthless their

vandalism was in Russia, with Roxan and Wanstall noting that

“Hitler was uninterested in Russian art treasures and made

no attempt to check their willful destruction,” thereby

allowing scores of Russian history to be lost forever.13

Moreover, the book details the Nazi renovations of salt 12 David Roxan and Ken Wanstall, The Rape of Art: The Story of Hitler’s Plunder of the Great Masterpieces of Europe (New York: Coward-McCann, 1965), 10-11.13 Roxan and Wanstall, The Rape of Art, 116.

Beecroft, 9

mines like the one at Alt Aussee to house the overflow of

their treasure trove. Hector Feliciano’s book, The Lost

Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art, is “a

history and investigation of Nazi art-looting during the

Second World War,” specifically focusing on “systematic

confiscations” of private art collections belonging to

French Jewish families or art dealers, such as the

Rothschilds, the Paul Rosenbergs, the Bernheim-Jeunes, the

David-Weills, and the Schlosses.14 Feliciano explains how

the “Nazis stole much more than mere assets…[they] were also

stealing the soul, meaning, and cultural standards of these

collectors.”15 Furthermore, an entire chapter is dedicated

to the Paris art market during the war years, which

Feliciano describes as being “a godsend” because “it brought

an end to the crisis of the 1930s, when art prices declined

by as much as 70 percent […] forcing a third of Paris’s

galleries to close their doors.”16 Feliciano also details

14 Hector Feliciano, The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art (New York: Basic, 1997), 3.15 Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 5.16 Ibid, 123.

Beecroft, 10

the recovery efforts made to return those collections to

their proper owners.

Lynn Nicholas and Matila Simon further explore the

effect of Nazi looting on France. Lynn Nicholas’s book, The

Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second

World War, explains how the Nazi party was funded by auctions

which sold what Nazis considered to be “degenerate art,”

including works by Braque, van Gogh, Picasso, Klee, and

Kokoschka, among others.17 Nicholas also notes that during

the German occupation of France from 1940-1944 Paris was

flooded with Nazi confiscations and the National Gallery Jeu

de Paume needed to hire more art historians in order to

cope.18 Additionally, Nicholas explains that there was

French resistance to the German art policy that allowed

Nazis to freely move pieces of French national interest

without their consent. “The idea,” she notes “was that the

[French] museums would liquidate the collections to

themselves, thereby making them state property,” something

17 Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures inthe Third Reich and the Second World War (New York: Knopf, 1994), 5.18 Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 129.

Beecroft, 11

the Germans allowed for lesser works, but not major ones.19

Nicholas explains that “German efforts to win over the minds

of the French by organizing cooperative artistic happenings

were doomed to failure from the very beginning by their

inability to conceal the totally cynical objectives behind

such undertakings.”20 If occupying their country was not

enough of a problem for the French, German cynicism

certainly contributed to their resentment as well. Matila

Simon’s book, The Battle for the Louvre: The Struggle to Save French Art in

World War II, details how the 1936 Nazi policy of confiscating

“degenerate” art impacted the Louvre museum.21 By the time

the war in Europe had started, the Louvre had closed its

doors to the public and its staff had started packing its

most important treasures for transport. By August 27, 1939,

“the first and most precious cases were ready,” and the

process of transporting them to chateaus in neighboring

towns had begun.22 Simon documents the movement of these

19 Ibid, 136.20 Ibid, 179.21 Matila Simon, The Battle of the Louvre: The Struggle to Save French Art in World War II (New York: Hawthorn, 1971), 12.22 Simon, The Battle of the Louvre, 23.

Beecroft, 12

treasures, the Nazi effort to prevent them from eluding

their grasp, the French struggles during Nazi occupation,

and the elaborate task of finding and returning what the

Nazis had taken.

The scholarship focusing exclusively on the efforts of

the Monuments Men during WWII can be attributed to Robert M.

Edsel, who has taken it upon himself to illuminate the

often-overlooked MFAA. Edsel has written three books which

detail their accounts in Europe, giving appropriate credit

to the men and women that served their respective countries

for the preservation of the world’s cultural treasures. The

most book relevant for this paper is The Monuments Men: Allied

Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. After

introducing the major players involved in the MFAA campaign,

he notes that in his efforts to “faithfully convey”23 their

stories without losing them in the topic’s vastness, he

excludes the MFAA’s activities in Italy, which was “a

completely separate operation run by a separate chain of

23 Edsel, The Monuments Men, xv.

Beecroft, 13

command, under the Allied Control Commission (ACC).”24 This

allows Edsel to focus on the movements of the eight

Monuments Men on the front lines as they moved through

France, Germany, and Austria in search for buildings to

protect and treasure to repatriate. Along the way, Edsel

provides insights into each of their lives and personalities

prior to the war, often including personal letters sent

between them and their loved ones. Serving as a wonderful

supplementary source to The Monuments Men is Edsel’s book

Rescuing da Vinci: Hitler and the Nazis Stole Europe’s Great Art, American and

Her Allies Recovered It, which includes brief chapters

highlighting Nazi propaganda campaigns, European

preparations for war, and the plight of the Monuments Men in

Europe. Accompanying these chapters are hundreds of

pictures, which document all facets of the operation and

perfectly encapsulate what the Monuments Men were fighting

to preserve. Together, Edsel’s work and that of previously

scholars provide a comprehensive study of the context

24 Ibid, 52. For Edsel’s description of the Monuments Men in Italy, see Robert M. Edsel, Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis (New York: W.W. Norton, 2013).

Beecroft, 14

surrounding the greatest treasure heist in history and the

efforts made on behalf of the Monuments Men to save

centuries worth of artistic achievements. Without the work

of the aforementioned scholars and those who also

contributed to the subject, the story of the Monuments Men

may have been lost to history, just as centuries of tangible

culture would have been if not for the men and women who

risked their lives to save it.

To best tell the story of the Monuments Men, one must

devote some time to Adolf Hitler. As a teenager, Hitler had

longed to be an artist and an architect, but that dream was

shattered after his application to the Academy of Fine Arts

in Vienna was rejected on two separate occasions, the first

in 1907, and the second a year later in 1908.25 The anger

and humiliation Hitler experienced after his repeated

denials stayed with him until he became Chancellor of

Germany in January 1933, at which point he no longer needed

the approval of anyone else to pursue his artistic and

architectural ambitions.26 His role as Chancellor, and 25 Roxan and Wanstall, The Rape of Art, 5.26 Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 9.

Beecroft, 15

ultimately Führer, allowed Hitler to promote the superiority

of the Aryan race while eliminating inferior cultures,

mainly Jews, and their works of art. From 1933-1945, the

Nazi regime based their racist ideology on the notion that

their cultural expression was that “of the superior race,

with the art of other cultures [being] viewed as inferior,

if not degraded.”27 Consequently, in May 1936 a new law

went into effect “that authorized the confiscation of

‘degenerate’ art hanging in German museums,” specifically

art that was created by Jews or featured any Jewish

themes.28 These confiscated paintings were displayed in

“Degenerate Art Shows” where they “were hung as badly as

possible, usually without frames, much too close together,

[and] often simply on the floor and leaning against the

wall.”29 In stark contrast, German art was displayed in

grand fashion with proper conditions, thereby exhibiting the

superiority of the German people. By 1938, the

27 Michael J. Kurtz, America and the Return of Nazi Contraband: The Recovery of Europe’s Cultural Treasures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 13.28 Simon, The Battle of the Louvre, 12.29 Ibid, 15.

Beecroft, 16

extraordinary amount of confiscated paintings in Hitler’s

personal collection, both “degenerate” and pure, was worth

“well over a hundred million pounds,” and soon there was a

need for a grand museum to hold the finest works.30

The site chosen for Hitler’s Führermuseum was Linz,

Austria, his adoptive hometown.31 His plan was to “remodel

the city’s riverfront along the Danube into a cultural

district” with the Führermuseum, “the most spectacular art

museum in the world,” at its center.32 To prepare for

possible artwork acquisitions from countries his army might

successfully invade, Hitler had German art scholars travel

throughout Europe to “secretly prepar[e] inventories so that

when Hitler conquered each country […] his agents would know

the name and location of every important object of artistic

and cultural value.”33 In theory, “the museum’s collections

would be constituted through massive acquisitions but also 30 Roxan and Wanstall, The Rape of Art, 11.31 For the commission of the buildings construction, see Image 2. Source: Edsel, Monuments Men, 15. For Hitler’s sketch of the proposed Führermuseum, see Image 3. Source: Edsel, Rescuing da Vinci, 30. For a scale model of the Führermuseum, see Image 4. Source: Ibid, 30.32 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 12.33 Ibid, 13.

Beecroft, 17

through the seizure or exchange of paintings from public and

private collections in the occupied countries.”34 To build

the Führermuseum’s prestige, Hitler’s appointed Hans Posse

as his grand acquisitor on June 26, 1939.35 Within his

first year, Posse acquired 475 paintings for the

Führermuseum, and by 1945 he had acquired 8,000, adding to

the museums clout, which by then owned works by Rubens,

Hals, Lorenzo Lotto, Guardi, and Vermeer, among others.36

In 1940, Nazi Germany saw an even greater influx in the

amount of art it was looting from European countries. That

year the Kümmel Report was compiled by Dr. Otto Kümmel, art

historian and general director of the Berlin State Museums,

which sought to “repatriate works of art taken from Germany

and dispersed throughout the world.”37 The list of items

needed repatriation included every work of art from the

Western world that rightly belonged to Germany. This

included works taken from Germany since 1500, those created

by artists of German or Austrian descent, those commissioned34 Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 21.35 Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 44.36 Ibid, 49.37 Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 24.

Beecroft, 18

or completed in Germany, and those “deemed to have been

executed in Germanic style.”38 The Kümmel Report is an

example of the Nazis establishing “new laws and procedures

to ‘legalize’ [their] looting activities.”39 The most

important item Hitler hoped to acquire through the Kümmel

Report was van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, otherwise known as

the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, a 12ft x 16ft collection of

twenty-four individual but thematically linked works

depicting the Lamb of God on an altar and the Holy Spirit in

the form of a dove in its central panel.40 Believing that

six panels of the Altarpiece were stolen from Germany as a

result of the Versailles Treaty after WWI, Hitler was able

to use the Kümmel Report as justification for stealing the

Altarpiece from Belgium, which occurred on July 29, 1942.41

Two years later on the evening of September 7 or the morning

of September 8, 1944, the famed Bruges Madonna by

Michelangelo was stolen from the Cathedral of Notre Dame in

38 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 118.39 Ibid, 117.40 Ibid, 116. Completed in 1432. See Image 5. Source: Edsel, Monuments Men.41 Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 143.

Beecroft, 19

the Belgian city of Bruges, adding another priceless

cultural artifact to Hitler’s collection.42

The Nazi occupation of France from 1940-1944 also

provided Hitler with plenty of opportunities to add to his

personal art collection. Although many of the museums in

France had removed their most important artwork in

preparation for the incoming Nazi invasion, the Louvre in

particular, there was still plenty for Hitler to plunder.

Unwillingly facilitating this looting were wealthy families

with private collections, namely those with Jewish heritage.

The ERR was responsible for confiscating these private

Jewish collections, and the most notable confiscation was

that of the Rothschild art collection. In the first year of

Nazi occupation in France, the ERR seized, among others,

eleven Rothschild collections in Paris alone, including

Vermeer’s Astronomer and paintings by Picasso, Braque,

Matisse, and Renoir.43 All told, the ERR in France was

responsible for confiscating more than 20,000 items from 20342 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 100. See Image 6. Source: Edsel, Rescuing da Vinci, 197.43 Simon, The Battle of the Louvre, 49-50. For Vermeer’s Astronomer, see Image 7. Source: Rescuing da Vinci, 203.

Beecroft, 20

Jewish-owned collections, with the Rothschilds accounting

for 5,009 works lost.44

While Nazi Germany was invading European countries and

looting thousands of cultural artifacts during the first two

years of the war, the United States was reluctant to get

involved and “expressed little interest in the early stages

of the war in cultural protection or restitution.”45 It

took civilian intellectual groups to press the issue for

cultural preservation after important historical sites like

Leptus Magna in North Africa and Monte Cassino in Italy were

poorly treated, and in the case of Monte Cassino, destroyed.

One of the first intellectuals to advocate for the need to

preserve historical buildings and artifacts was George

Stout, head of the Fogg Art Museum’s Department of

Conservation and Technical Research at Harvard University.

He suggested there needed to be an “immediate training of a

large new class of conservators, ‘special workmen’ who could

handle the largest, most dangerous upheaval in the history

44 Kurtz, American and the Return of Nazi Contraband, 28.45 Ibid, 48.

Beecroft, 21

of Western art.”46 Stout was aware of the fact that over

two million European works had already been transplanted

from their museums as a result of the Nazi invasion plans,

and he thought it imperative to assist our allies in

Europe.47 His proposal fell on deaf ears at first, and he

expressed frustration after his letter to Kenneth Clark,

director of the National Gallery in London, came back with

the following response: “Even supposing it were possible for

an archaeologist to accompany each invading force, I cannot

help feeling that he would have great difficulty in

restraining a commanding officer from shelling an important

military objective just because it contained some fine

historical monuments.”48 Clark’s sentiment would echo

throughout the early efforts of the MFAA, as its members

were routinely looked down upon because they were not “true”

soldiers.

However, in 1943 President Roosevelt became convinced

of the “unavoidable probability that Europe’s beauty would

46 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 22.47 Ibid, 22.48 Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 245.

Beecroft, 22

suffer martyrdom when the Allies invaded the continent,” and

created the American Commission for the Protection and

Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas, or

the Roberts Commission.49 In theory, there would have been

an “Allied advisory staff, topped by a lieutenant colonel,

with sixteen majors […] aided by a number of predominately

American field officials; plus an officer attached to the

H.Q. G-5 of each army, and three more under him at the

front, assisted by six enlisted men.”50 They were also

supposed to be equipped with trucks, jeeps, cameras, and

typewriters so they could relay “a constant flow of reports

and information” to their superiors.51 In reality, however,

they were without a formal mission statement, a set chain of

command, and nobody knew where in Europe they were headed.

It appeared as though “there was no one even handling the

military side of the operation, such as procuring weapons,

jeeps, uniforms, or rations.”52 Even though this was the

49 Janet Flanner, Men and Monuments (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 267.50 Ibid, 267.51 Ibid, 267.52 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 54.

Beecroft, 23

case, the Monuments Men had officially been established and

were heading to Europe shortly after the D-Day invasion of

June 6, 1944. They were also going with the assurance that

there would be items of significance for them to preserve,

given the order General Eisenhower issued on May 26, 1944,

stating:

“…Inevitably, in the path of our advance will be found historical monuments and cultural centers which symbolize to the world all that we are fighting to preserve. It is the responsibility of every commander to protect and respect these symbols whenever possible…There are many circumstances in which damage and destruction are not necessary and cannot be justified. In such cases, through the exercise of restraint and discipline, commanders will preserve centers and objects of historical and cultural significance…”53

Now all that was left for the Monuments Men to do was step

foot onto European soil and fulfill their obligations to

their respective countries and the cultures of Europe.

My story of the Monuments Men and their travels across

Europe will feature five of the eight men who reached shore

after the invasion of Normandy: Second Lieutenant James

Rorimer, Captain Walker Hancock, Captain Robert Posey,

Private First Class Lincoln Kirstein, and Lieutenant George

53 Report of the American Commission, 102.

Beecroft, 24

Stout. Based on source material I have acquired these men

played integral roles during the MFAA operation, but in no

way am I diminishing the efforts of those who participated

and lost their lives in the name of cultural preservation.

Upon their arrival in Normandy, the Monuments Men would have

been divided into separate military units: the U.S. First

Army, the U.S. Third Army, the British Second Army, or the

Communications Zone—an area behind the front lines where

roads are built and supplies are directed.54 James Rorimer

was first assigned to the Communications Zone, and it was

his job to record the condition of the monuments on the

protection lists and supervise any repair work that was

needed in the wake of front-line movements. Recalling the

conditions upon is arrival in Normandy on August 3, 1944,

Rorimer writes in his memoir: “The attempt to record

[cultural] damage amid the gaping craters and fire-swept

hulks of buildings would be like trying to scoop up wine

with a broken keg.”55 The amount of destruction he saw upon

his arrival could not have prepared him for what he 54 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 76.55 Rorimer, Survival, 2.

Beecroft, 25

witnessed when he reached Saint-Lô in Normandy less than two

weeks later. Saint-Lô represented a very important

strategic military location that provided high ground from

which the Allies could “pinpoint artillery and aerial

strikes on the heart of the German defenses,” and the

eventual capture of Saint-Lô “was a linchpin of Allied

success.”56 However, the city also had historical

significance as it was the home of the Hotel de Ville, which

housed the charter of William the Conqueror, and a museum,

which contained centuries of historical treasures.57 After

the battle it was estimated that the level of destruction

was 95 percent, and as a result, private art collections,

ceramics collections, and “a large selection of illuminated

manuscripts prepared and collected by the monks at the

monastery of Mont Saint-Michel” were completely destroyed.58

Edsel writes that “if ever a city symbolized the complexity

of the Monuments Men’s mission, the difficulty of balancing

preservation and strategic advancement, it was Saint-Lô.”59

56 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 85.57 Rorimer, Survival, 15.58 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 85.59 Ibid, 85.

Beecroft, 26

Captain Walker Hancock of the U.S. First Army

experienced a similar level of destruction upon arriving in

the German city of Aachen in October, 1944. Aachen

represented the type of fight the Allies wanted to avoid, if

possible. There was little industry or tactical value in

fighting there, but it carried an immense amount of symbolic

importance for Hitler. Not only was the city the seat of

the Holy Roman Empire, it also was the location where

Charlemagne consolidated his power and united Central

Europe. Moreover, it was also the first German city that

Allied troops came across on their way east from Normandy.60

Although the fighting only lasted eight days, later

estimates by MFAA officer George Stout put the number of

Allied bombing runs at 262, resulting in the destruction of

about 75 percent of the monuments in the city.61 Walking

around amidst the rubble, Hancock described the city as “a

skeleton” before reaching the Palatine Chapel, which served

as the coronation hall for previous German kings and

60 Ibid, 140.61 Ibid, 253.

Beecroft, 27

queens.62 Inside he found a Vicar named Stephany and six

German boys who worked feverishly to put fires out in

efforts to safe the building.63 Although there was a fair

amount of damage to the building, the young boys had

prevented it from collapsing. The Vicar informed him about

the relics the Germans had moved prior to the skirmish,

including a gold and silver-gilt bust of Charlemagne which

contained a piece of his skull, and a 10th century jewel-

encrusted processional cross of Lothar II set with the

ancient cameo of Augustus Caesar.64 Hancock added those to

the list of historical artifacts he needed to find.

In mid-September, 1944, James Rorimer was transferred

to the Seine Section where he would be a Monuments Officer

in Paris near the tale end of Nazi occupation.65 During his

time in Paris he formed a partnership with Rose Valland who

acted as a temporary custodian of the Jeu de Paume museum.

Disgusted with the Nazi occupation and someone who

appreciated art, Valland played the role of a spy, serving 62 Hancock, “Experiences of a Monuments Officer,” 273.63 Ibid, 274.64 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 145.65 Rorimer, Survival, 45.

Beecroft, 28

as “the quiet mouse that slowly but surely chewed a hole

[sic] in the foundation of the house.”66 For the four years

of Nazi occupation, the Jeu de Paume served as “the central

storehouse for the staggering quantities of [Nazi] loot,”

and although distrustful of Rorimer’s intentions at first,

she eventually provided him with valuable information that

made it possible to track items being shipped out of

Paris.67 By the time Nazi occupation of France ended,

hundreds of public sculptures were missing, especially the

city’s famous bronzes, but the Germans had only two objects

from the national collections, both being of German origin

and of “middling importance.”68 Now that the Allies were

defeating German armies and the French resistance had won

out, it was time to begin the process of locating and

returning the items that had been looted by Nazi treasure

thieves. In her undercover work at the Jeu de Paume,

Valland had acquired the railcar numbers for the trains the

French artwork was being transported in, finding that they

66 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 181.67 Simon, The Battle of the Louvre, 36.68 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 130.

Beecroft, 29

were being shipped to Aubersvilliers, just outside of

Paris.69 In August 1944, using this information, and

perhaps receiving some luck that the railroad men had gone

on strike and one of the carts was too heavy to move down

the track, the French Resistance movement had seized one of

the train carts containing 148 crates of artwork, 36 of

them, including work from Renoir, Degas, Picasso, and

Gauguin, were sent back to the Louvre for proper display.70

With the Allied Armies moving into the Rhineland and

Germany nearing unconditional surrender, the Big Three of

Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin meet at the Yalta

Conference in February 1945 to discuss and agree upon a

German post-war reconstruction plan that divided the German

state and Berlin into different zones of control.71 A month

later on March 19, 1945, perhaps due to deteriorating health

and increased paranoia, Hitler issues the Nero Decree,

stating that “all military, transportation, communications,

industrial, and food-supply facilities, as well as all

69 Ibid, 181.70 Ibid, 183.71 Ibid, 297.

Beecroft, 30

resources within the Reich which the enemy might use either

immediately or in the foreseeable future for continuing war,

are to be destroyed.”72 In April, MFAA Officers began

finding German art repositories in mines throughout the

country. The first to be discovered was a copper mine in

Siegen on April 2 by MFAA Officers George Stout and Walker

Hancock. After travelling a half a mile into a hill, Stout

and Hancock discovered a room measuring about 230ft with

racks filled with crates as high as the ceiling. Hidden

amongst the treasures were nearly 600 high-quality paintings

from Rhineland museums,73 including those by Rembrandt, Van

Dyck, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cranach, Renoir, and Peter Paul

Rubens.74 Additionally, the manuscript of Beethoven’s Sixth

Symphony and the lost treasures from Aachen Cathedral.75

Less than a week later, on April 8, 1945, MFAA Officers

Robert Posey and Lincoln Kirstein arrive at the Merkers salt

mine repository in Germany, which consisted of 35 miles of

72 Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Macmillian, 1970), 562.73 Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 300.74 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 281.75 Simon, The Battle of the Louvre, 162.

Beecroft, 31

tunnels and 12 different entrances. Inside they found a

vault labeled Room #8, which was approximately 75ft wide by

150ft long with a 12ft tall ceiling and had railroad tracks

in the middle. Around the tracks were over 7,000 bags in 20

rows. At the back of the cavern was 18 bags, 189 suitcases,

trunks and boxes.76 The total contents of these bags

amounted to 8,198 gold bars, 711 bags of American $20

pieces, over 1,300 bags of other gold coins, hundreds of

bags of foreign currency, and $2.76 billion in Reichsmarks,

along with other various currencies, silver and platinum,

and the stamping plates the German government used to print

money, all of which represented most of the reserves from

Germany’s national treasury.77 At the end of the month, on

April 30, 1945, seeing Germany’s accumulated treasures being

taken away from him, Hitler committed suicide in Berlin.78

The following day, on May 1, 1945, Monuments Man George

76 Greg Bradsher, “Nazi Gold: The Merkers Mine Treasure,” Prologue Magazine 31.1 (Spring 1999) accessed 28 April 2014. http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1999/spring/nazi-gold-merkers-mine-treasure.html. See Image 8. Source: Edsel, Rescuing da Vinci, 16577 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 290-291.78 Ibid, 332.

Beecroft, 32

Stout finds the Bernterode mine, which had been used as a

munitions dump and contained 400,000 tons of explosives.79

In addition to the explosives, the MFAA found 225 German

regimental flags and banners from the early Prussian Wars

until WWII and a number of caskets that were Hitler’s

tributes to the founders of the German state.80 These

coffins contained the remains of Field Marhsal von

Hindenburg, Frederick the Great, and Frederick William I,

otherwise known as the “Soldier King.”81 The room also

contained the Reich Sword of Prince Albrecht from 1540, and

a scepter, orb, and crown used at the coronation of

Frederick William I in1713.82 The salt mine at Alt Aussee

was discovered by MFAA Officers Robert Posey and Lincoln

Kirstein on May 16, 1945, which contained 6,577 paintings,

230 drawings or watercolors, 954 prints, 137 pieces of

sculpture, 129 pieces of armor, 78 pieces of furniture, 122

tapestries, and 181 cases of books, as well as the treasured

79 Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 338.80 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 340.81 Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, 338.82 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 341.

Beecroft, 33

Ghent Altarpiece, the priceless Bruges Madonna and Vermeer’s

The Artist’s Studio and The Astronomer.83

By June 4, 1945, less than one month after the war

officially ended, an additional 175 repositories were found

in U.S. Seventh Army territory alone.84 By the end of their

efforts, the Western Allies had located a total of 1,000

repositories in southern Germany, and the packing,

transporting, cataloguing photographing, archiving, and

returning of those items fell almost exclusively to the

Monuments Men, which took them about six years to

accomplish.85 For those Monuments Men who risked their

lives, and for the two that paid dearly for them, Major

Ronald Edmund Balfour of the First Canadian Army, and

Captain Walter “Hutch” Huchthausen of the U.S. Ninth Army,

their courage and bravery in the face of insurmountable odds

will always be remembered. Not only did they serve their

country to preserve the greatest artistic and cultural

achievements in the history of Western civilization, they 83 Edsel, The Monuments Men, 383-384. For The Artist’s Studio, see Image 9. Source: Edsel, Rescuing da Vinci, 205.84 Ibid, 391.85 Ibid, 400.

Beecroft, 34

returned millions of items that we taken away unjustly by

Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. If it were not for the men and

women of the MFAA, performing with improper equipment,

without the proper chain of command, and with their limited

availability due to their small personnel numbers, our

collective history may be in the Führermuseum or lost

forever. Either way, it does not sound good.

Beecroft, 35

Bibliography

Bradsher, Greg. “Nazi Gold: The Merkers Mine Treasure.”

Prologue Magazine 31.1

(Spring 1999). Web. 28 April 2014.

http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1999/

spring/nazi-gold

merkers-mine-treasure.html

Edsel, Robert M., and Bret Witter. The Monuments Men: Allied

Heroes, Nazi Thieves,

And the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. New York: Center

Street, 2009. Print.

Edsel, Robert M. Rescuing Da Vinci: Hitler and the Nazis Stole Europe's

Great Art,

America and Her Allies Recovered It. Dallas: Laurel LLC, 2006.

Print.

Feliciano, Hector. The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the

World's Greatest

Works of Art. New York: Basic, 1997. Print.

Flanner, Janet. Men and Monuments. New York: Harper &

Brothers, 1957. Print.

Hancock, Walker. “Experiences of a Monuments Officer in

Germany,” College Art

Journal 5.4 (May 1946): 271-311. JSTOR. Web. 27 April

2014.

http://0-www.jstor.org.opac.sfsu.edu/stable/773217

Kurtz, Michael J. America and the Return of Nazi Contraband: The

Beecroft, 36

Recovery of Europe's

Cultural Treasures. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. Print.

Nicholas, Lynn H. The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in

the Third

Reich and the Second World War. New York: Knopf, 1994.

Print.

Report of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic

and

Historic Monuments in War Areas. Washington, D.C.: U.S.

Government Printing

Office, 1946. Print.

Rorimer, James J. Survival: The Salvage and Protection of Art in War. New

York:

Abelard, 1950. Print.

Roxan, David, and Ken Wanstall. The Rape of Art: The Story of Hitler's

Plunder of the

Great Masterpieces of Europe. New York: Coward-McCann, 1965.

Print.

Simon, Matila. The Battle of the Louvre: The Struggle to Save French Art in

World War

II. New York: Hawthorn, 1971. Print.

Speer, Albert. Inside the Third Reich. New York: Macmillian,

1970. Print.

Beecroft, 37