The Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel
He ran his finger south from the major city of Cologne, First Army’s next objective, along the Rhine to the big triangle at Bonn. It represented the last known location of Count Franz von Wolff-Metternich, former head of the Kunstschutz in Paris and now Konservator of the Rhine Province. Wolff-Metternich was probably one of the most knowledgeable fugitive art officials in Germany, and if reports from Paris could be believed, one of the most likely to cooperate with Allied officials.
But Stout’s finger didn’t stop at Bonn, just as his mind never stopped thinking ahead to the next step, and the next step, and the one after that. Beyond the Rhine, a few inches to the east, was Siegen.
He tapped the word twice. Siegen. The city came up again and again. At Aachen, at Metz, from other Nazi sources. Stout felt sure an art repository was there, probably a sizable one. It had to be. In every liberated territory, from the Brittany coast to Germany itself, artwork was missing. And not just any art, but works by the immortals—Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, Vermeer. They were gone, but they had to be somewhere.
And then there were the religious relics, altars, Torah scrolls, church bells, stained-glass windows, jewelry, archives, tapestries, historic objects, books. Even the trolley cars from the city of Amsterdam were rumored to have been stolen. The variety of items stolen was exceeded only by the volume. After all, five years was an eternity to commit robbery, and there were thousands of people involved in the looting operations: art experts, guards, packers, engineers. Thousands of trains, tens of thousands of gallons of fuel. Could a million objects have been taken? It seemed impossible, but Stout was beginning to think the Nazis had done it. Their appetite for plunder was boundless, and they were, after all, a model of efficiency, economy, and brutality.
But the Nazis, for all their artistic zeal, were not careful conservators, at least not from what he had seen. In Western Europe, the government repositories were clean, well-lit places marked on maps and prepared years, or even hundreds of years, in advance. It took a full year for the British to retrofit their great underground art storage facility at Manod quarry in Wales. Nazi art officials Stout had interrogated in Metz had claimed the Germans only started preparing their repositories in 1944. Most of the stolen works already found by the Allies had been simply stashed in damp basements, where some yellowed and others became covered with mold. The canvases of some paintings were punctured or torn. Objects were improperly crated, or not crated at all. Urgency always seemed to have superseded planning.
What was it Walker Hancock always repeated during their days on the road? The Germans were wonderfully disciplined and “correct” while they had the upper hand—and went berserk when it was obvious their visit was at an end.
What if the Germans damaged artwork out of spite? Or destroyed the evidence of their crimes? What if rogue Nazi gangs or common criminals stole prized pieces? After all, works of art were often used as barter for a meal, safe passage, even a life during times of conflict. This was especially true during the Nazi rise to power.
And what if the Nazis did try to move them? Paintings could be destroyed by Allied pilots strafing a column of German trucks, only to discover afterward they contained a sculpture by Michelangelo, not German troops. What if the trucks hit mines? Or got caught in a bombing run? And a new consideration was beginning to loom: The Soviets had launched a two-million-troop advance on the Eastern front. Who was to say they wouldn’t get to the artwork first?
Stout thought of his old partner, Squadron Leader Dixon-Spain, who had departed the MFAA contingent but left him one nugget of wisdom: “In war, there is never a reason to hurry.” 3 After Cologne, the Monuments Men might very well be in a race: against Hitler, against rogue elements of the Nazi Party, against the Red Army. They would be tempted to run, but they needed to be prepared. Doing something once, and doing it right, was better than doing the same thing quickly but having to do it twice. That was one lesson George Stout had learned quite well over the years.
He put away his maps and turned to his paperwork. The monthly reports had gone out two days ago to the army. His monthly report to the navy had been dispatched soon after. The report on his recent inspection tour, completed a few days ago, was signed and filed. He had reviewed the field reports for February from Lesley, Posey, Hancock, and Hutch, then tallied the numbers. There were 366 MFAA-protected monuments currently in the occupied zone, but only 253 had been inspected.
Almost four hundred sites, and that was west of the Rhine. Once Twelfth Army Group jumped the Rhine there could easily be a thousand square miles of front, and he still had only nine Monuments officers to cover it. At least they’d finally gotten four men for the enlisted staff. It seemed SHAEF agreed with Dixon-Spain: There was never any need to hurry.
At least he had his old reliable captured Volkswagen; most of the Monuments Men still didn’t have their own vehicles. They’d have to be satisfied for now with the new cameras delivered from SHAEF. This time they’d even been given film. The cameras were French hand-me-downs, but they would have to do.
Damn the Germans. Why did they continue to fight? The war had been decided when the Western Allies broke through the Bulge. Everyone knew that. It was not if victory now, but when—and at what cost… to soldiers, civilians, guilty, innocent, old, young, not to mention historical buildings, monuments, and works of art? Victory on the battlefield was far different than a victory in the preservation of mankind’s cultural legacy, and the results would be measured far differently, too. Sometimes Stout felt he was fighting another war entirely, a war within a war, a backward-circling eddy in a downward-rushing stream. What if we win the war, he thought, but lose the last five hundred years of our cultural history on our watch?
“You ask why the Germans don’t give up the fight and stop the slaughter,” Stout would write his wife. “You know I have never put that nation on any pedestal and my low esteem of them drops lower as we go along. I think they are immature, mean, and scheming at the top, and immature and incredibly stupid at the bottom. They have nothing to gain by surrender, in their own idiotic view, but by fighting on they can hold up to themselves the illusion of military glory.” 4 And yet George Stout would do everything he could to protect German culture.
He looked at his watch. It was past dinnertime, the mess hall was closed. Again. His stomach rumbled, but he knew it wasn’t hunger, it was the grippe he’d been suffering for the last few days. Carefully he rolled up his map of Germany, slid it into its tube, and placed it back on the shelf. Then he moved the brown box to the center of the table. It was an artifact from another world, a connection with his old life, and he stared at it fondly. Finally, he removed the tape and opened the flaps. Inside, surrounded by wrapped gifts, was a fruitcake. He thought of his kitchen back home, and of his wife over the mixing bowl, and of his sons—one still clutching his mother’s apron strings, the other recently enlisted in the navy. He believed in duty and honor, but like everyone, he was homesick. He wanted to break off a chunk of the fruitcake and shove it into his mouth, but propriety told him a knife was better. He pulled out his dagger and carefully cut himself a slice. The cake was still good, moist and delicious. It is amazing how the world can change, he thought, during the life span of a fruitcake.
That night, as he often did at the end of a long day, he picked up his pen. 5
Dear Margie:
It’s half past eight and I’ve knocked off work for the day except for a telephone call I’m waiting on. And while waiting I take the great pleasure to report that your two Christmas packages reached me this afternoon. They got somewhat battered… but it all made me very happy. The fruit cake was entirely unharmed and is now largely consumed. They were very nice things. I needed the socks, I relish everything else. Bertha’s handkerchief nearly made me bawl; and all the pretty ribbons and wrappings. The Christmas candle is not a frill. They are valuable things and hard to get.…
There is a lot to do. Right at the moment we’re pushed somewhat, but it will get itself worke
Thank you darling.
Love,
George
CHAPTER 28
Art on the Move
Göring’s Estate at Carinhall
March 13, 1945
The Soviet Red Army, having wrested Poland from Nazi control, crossed the Oder River into Germany on February 8, 1945. Days before, a line of buses and trucks had begun an evacuation from Carinhall, Hermann Göring’s hunting lodge/art gallery/imperial palace located in the Schorfheide Forest northeast of Berlin. At a nearby train station, the evacuated items were loaded for transport on the rail system, filling both of Göring’s private trains, plus eleven extra boxcars. The shipment was predominantly art.
A month later, on March 13, 1945, Walter Andreas Hofer, the man in charge of Göring’s art collection, filled a second train with more of the Reichsmarschall’s precious art collection. Göring, more concerned with the fate of his personal possessions than the loss of eastern Germany, had visited Carinhall personally and chosen the pieces to be sent in each shipment. His inclination had been to leave behind the artwork he had acquired through his ERR operation in Paris. Göring prided himself on his honesty, and these pieces—viewed from a certain perspective—might appear less than legitimately acquired. Hofer had argued vehemently with the Reichsmarschall and eventually had won out. Most of the works that had made their way from the Jeu de Paume to Carinhall were now en route, along with hundreds of others, to Göring residences farther south, away from the Red Army.
Several astonishing small paintings—including six by Hans Memling and one by Rogier van der Weyden—went with him and his wife. They were her financial safety net, Göring told her, in case of disaster. She also carried with her the Reichsmarschall’s prized possession, Jan Vermeer’s Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery. Having lost out to Hitler on two previously available Vermeers (of only thirty-eight believed at the time to have been painted by the master), Göring wasn’t about to let this one slip through his hands. He had traded an astonishing number of valuable paintings for it: 150.
Other pieces remained behind. After years of “acquisitions”—Hofer could not bring himself to even think the word “looting”—the Reichsmarschall had amassed thousands of valuable artworks. The walls of his galleries and living quarters at Carinhall had been lined with paintings, sometimes with two or three hanging right above each other because of a chronic lack of space. Paintings had even been clustered over doorways and around the furniture, with little attention to period or style. It was a frankly ostentatious display of abundance over quality, for the Reichsmarschall had no eye for true genius. Most art dealers in Europe knew he couldn’t resist a famous name and pawned off on the unsuspecting Nazi inferior works by well-known artists. He had thirty paintings by Dutch master Jacob van Ruisdael, almost an equal number of works by the Frenchman François Boucher, and more than forty paintings by the Dutch artist Jan van Goyen. He possessed a staggering sixty paintings by his favorite artist, the great German master Lucas Cranach the Elder. 1 Hofer had helped him deepen and enhance the collection, moving the lesser-quality works to Göring’s secondary residences at Veldenstein and Mauterndorf, and storing the best of his collection in the air raid bunker at Kurfürst, but there was still no chance that two trains, even extra-long trains, could empty the volume of art treasures of Carinhall. With the Red Army less than fifty miles away, Hofer knew the second shipment might very well be the last train out, and the thought of leaving all that art behind made him sick.
A final shipment would eventually take shape in early April, but even after those traincars were packed Carinhall wasn’t empty. Much of the heavier statuary and decorative works had been buried on the grounds. A few exceptionally large paintings and numerous pieces of ERR-looted furniture were still in the vast rooms. The body of Göring’s first wife, Carin, for whom the estate was named, was left buried in the nearby forest. 2 The artifacts were joined on the estate by several hundred pounds of explosives. On Göring’s orders, Luftwaffe experts had rigged the estate for destruction. The Reichsmarschall had no intention of letting his prized possessions fall into Soviet hands—even if that meant blowing up his imperial hall and everything left in it.
CHAPTER 29
Two Turning Points
Cleves, Germany
March 10, 1945
*
Paris, France
March 14, 1945
In Cleves, Germany, Ronald Balfour, the British Monuments officer attached to First Canadian Army on the northern flank of the Western Allied advance, inspected the packing and crating of the treasures of Christ the King Church, which had been heavily bombed and was in danger of collapse. Supplies were tight, as always, and the only transportation available in the city was a wooden handcart. Now four German civilians had to pull the loaded handcart to the Cleves train station for temporary evacuation.
This would be a lot easier with a truck, Balfour thought. But since his truck accident in late November 1944, which knocked him out of commission for almost two months, things had gotten complicated. The two officers he knew at First Canadian Army headquarters had been replaced, and the new men always had an excuse. First they said the army didn’t have any spare vehicles. Then he was told he couldn’t get a new truck because he had lost the old one. He found the old truck in the camp lot, only to be told that locating the old truck wasn’t enough; he needed a “BLR certificate”—whatever that was!—to requisition a new one. The new officers, of course, refused to give him a BLR certificate. He finally received one, but he was never given a truck since the latest allocation of vehicles didn’t include any for the MFAA.
Meanwhile, he had heard nothing about the Bruges Madonna. This wasn’t surprising given the chaotic situation in Belgium. In some weird way, the absence of information merely added to the intrigue of this particular work. It seemed appropriate, as the statue had long been shrouded in secrecy. Michelangelo had insisted, as an item of the sale, that no one be allowed to view it without permission. In other words, it could not be simply placed out for public viewing. Some scholars thought this was out of shame at the quality of the finished product, but there’s a more likely explanation. The sculpture had been promised to the pope, but was sold secretly to a Flemish merchant family, the Mouscrons, when the young Michelangelo, only in his early twenties, received a financial offer he couldn’t refuse. 1
The Mouscrons spirited the sculpture out of Italy to their hometown of Bruges in 1506. In the 1400s, Bruges had been a center of commerce and the home of three of Belgium’s most celebrated artists—the Van Eyck brothers, creators of Hitler’s coveted Ghent Altarpiece, and Hans Memling, a Göring favorite. But by 1506 the city had begun a rapid decline in importance as its harbor, vital to commerce during that era, silted up and became impractical for shipping. Stuck in a floundering northern European city, where the city’s inhabitants had never even heard of a young artist named Michelangelo, the Madonna dropped into obscurity. The famous artist biographer Giorgio Vasari, writing in the mid-1500s, knew so little about the statue—the master’s only work located outside Italy during his lifetime—that he thought it was made of bronze, not white marble.
And yet to look at the Madonna—the beautiful face of the Virgin, the carved robes so reminiscent of Michelangelo’s contemporary masterpiece the Pietà, the Christ Child not cradled in his mother’s arms, but standing within the folds of her gown, still protected by her—was to know immediately you were in the presence of greatness. By the 1600s, with Michelangelo elevated to exalted status, the Belgians had come to regard the statue as a national treasure, and a century later the French had begun to covet its glory. In 1794, after conquering Belgium in the Napoleonic Wars, they demanded that the Bruges Mad
The answer, Ronald Balfour had believed, lay in Flushing, Holland, a port city near the outlet of the Rhine. If evacuated by sea—and how else would it have gone with the Allies blocking the roads and rails and the piece too heavy for many airplanes?—the Bruges Madonna would have had to travel through Flushing. Balfour had been making enquiries all along the Rhine, with little success. Flushing, he felt, was his last good chance to generate a solid lead. But it took him until the last few days of February to reach the city, and by then the trail was cold. The Dutch knew nothing. Any German official high enough placed to know of the shipment had fled. The Madonna, moving east, had eluded his grasp again.
But the disappointment he felt in Flushing was relieved, to some extent, in Cleves. It was still cold, but the snows of early March made the historic town, the home of Henry VIII’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, more beautiful. He had a scholar’s appreciation for historic papers, and it was a personal honor to rescue the archives and treasures of Cleves. He looked across the street at the four Germans pulling the cartload of gold chalices, silk robes, and silver relics. The world might marvel at such grandeur, but Balfour would trade it all for the soft warmth of old paper.