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The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History
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About The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, And
Product 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. From Publishers Weekly WWII was the most destructive war in history and caused the greatest dislocation of cultural artifacts. Hundreds of thousands of items remain missing. The main burden fell to a few hundred men and women, curators and archivists, artists and art historians from 13 nations. Their task was to save and preserve what they could of Europe's great art, and they were called the Monuments Men. (Coincidentally or not, this book appears only briefly after Ilaria Dagnini Brey's The Venus Fixers: The Untold Story of the Allied Soldiers Who Saved Italy's Art During World War II, Reviews, June 1.) Edsel has presented their achievements in documentaries and photographs. He and Witter (coauthor of the bestselling Dewey) are no less successful here. Focusing on the organization's role in northwest Europe, they describe the Monuments Men from their initial mission to limit combat damage to structures and artifacts to their changed focus of locating missing items. Most had been stolen by the Nazis. In southern Germany alone, over a thousand caches emerged, containing everything from church bells to insect collections. The story is both engaging and inspiring. In the midst of a total war, armies systematically sought to mitigate cultural loss. (Sept. 3) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. About the Author Robert M. Edsel is the Founder and President of the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, a not-for-profit entity that received the National Humanities Medal, the highest honor given in the United States for work in the humanities field. He also serves as a Trustee at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. He lives in Dallas. Bret Witter cowrote the bestseller Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World (Grand Central). He lives in Louisville, KY. From The Washington Post From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Jonathan Yardley We tend in these permissive times to embrace an expansive and often sentimental definition of heroism, in the process elevating to heroic status men and women whose actions, however admirable, remarkable and courageous, fall short of the self-sacrificial. Were the Allied (mostly American) soldiers who rescued works of art stolen by the Nazis before and during World War II really heroes, as Robert M. Edsel claims in "The Monuments Men," or were they good men -- aided by one resourceful, determined French woman -- who were simply, in the best sense of the phrase, just doing their jobs? My vote is for the latter, and I suspect that most of those involved in the effort would have said the same. In civilian life they were professional art people or patrons of the arts, and they seem to have regarded their work during the war as an extension and amplification of their civilian careers. They worked very hard and very effectively, but they seem to have had no sense of (or inclination toward) heroics, and my judgment is that they should be viewed accordingly: with respect and gratitude, but not elevated to the exalted precincts of heroism. Still, for the most part they have receded into the fog of history -- the
