Publisher Description
At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the western world, his armies were methodically seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe. The Fuehrer had begun cataloguing the art he planned to collect as well as the art he would destroy: “degenerate” works he despised.
In a race against time, behind enemy lines, often unarmed, a special force of American and British museum directors, curators, art historians, and others, called the Monuments Men, risked their lives scouring Europe to prevent the destruction of thousands of years of culture.
Focusing on the eleven-month period between D-Day and V-E Day, this fascinating account follows six Monuments Men and their impossible mission to save the world’s great art from the Nazis.
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“For history buffs, art lovers and WWII mavens, this is a seriously good read. Many art and history lovers mourn the losses of cultural icons to WWII, while at the same time, military buffs marvel that more was not lost. Both sorts of people have sound reasoning behind these viewpoints. This is the book that relates how those views clashed and commingled in the Allied command during WWII, resulting in the formation of a group of unsung and underpaid heroes who didn’t hesitate to risk their flesh and blood to save paint and wood and stone. They braved record cold, enemy fire and contempt and disbelief from their own side to rescue and preserve great art, architecture and cultural oddities from fire, flood and thieving Nazis. Using written records and the memories of surviving “Monuments Men”, Edsel tells us their stories. Most of us are at least minimally aware that the Nazis were enthusiastic art thieves, storing their loot in some wildly improbable places. In the last days of the war and immediately thereafter, the monuments men became detectives, searching medieval castles, salt mines, railroad sidings and lake bottoms for looted treasures. They found and restored incredible marvels, created by great geniuses from our human past, and yet not all that was looted has been located. What a tale they lived! These guys earned their pay and our respect and admiration. This book is thick and heavy, but worth the the heavy lifting.”
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Libby (4 out of 5 stars)
