The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History

by Robert M. Edsel

Bret Witter (Secondary Author)

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 Momuments 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.

• ISBN10: 1599951509
• ISBN13: 9781599951508
• Publish Date: 17 September 2010 (first published 1 January 2009)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Center Street
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 512
• Language: English

Reviews

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

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Hitler is claiming the great works of history.

As World War II booms, mens lives are ripped away and the world hangs on the edge, wondering if the world of Nazism has yet been destroyed.  One of the most notorious aspects of the German Reicht has been its dissolution of cultures - most famously and horrifyingly seen in its "death camps".  As terrible and tragic and unforgivable as this is, there is another aspect of culture that the Germans are gobbling up:  art.  The great works of the masters are being torn from walls, brought to the Reicht headquarters.  Sometimes, they're destroyed.

The job of the monuments men is to get to the art before the Germans do, protect it, and reclaim what has been stolen.

It's an interesting story.

This book has been on my TBR since the film came out a few years ago.  While I don't typically go chasing stories of World War II (it breaks my heart, really) I do find it fascinating to see how Europe was nearly overrun by a madman.  It makes me fear for the choices that could be made by unstable leaders in today's day and age.  While the theme of the film and the book are similar ' save the art! - the characters and story are not.  We meet the real men who served in the Monuments Men.  Each was assigned to a different division and managed a different part of the map.  Each was left without supplies and vehicles to complete their task.  In the beginning, many were alone.  It was a gruesome task.

I also believe it must have been a difficult one to argue.  I cannot image a world without the richness of our modern museums.  One without Michelangelo or the collections in the Louvre.  In the same breath, the supplies that could have gone into the cultural rescue mission also needed to go to the soldiers - to save lives.  And yet, the men who saved the art in many ways contributed to the preservation of Europe's soul, which is also supremely important.

This book was incredibly scattered.

I suppose it's a personal preference, but I like my history to be as linear as possible.  Especially when a story is being told in so constrained a timeline as a couple years, and entirely in the same part of the world.  Every time Edsel wanted to switch to another of the Monuments Men and speak in his perspective for a while, we went back to the beginning.  What was this man's history - what were his contributions that led to his placement in this corps?  We would learn tidbits about a man's contributions just to hear them retold again from his own point of view.  There were many times as I was listening I needed to check and be sure I hadn't accidentally skipped backwards, because I heard all this before.

An interesting history, but not the best read.

The background of the chase after the Ghent altarpiece and Michelangelo's Madonna are fascinating, but we spent much less time looking at the historical artifacts than we spent hearing about the various letters these men would send home.  Having finished this book, I feel like I have a greater sense of one man's pride at being assigned to Patton's Third than I do about the art itself.  And that was a bit disappointing.

This book is best served for those interested in World War II than in the art side of it.  I believe it may have been a clearer read if I had gone with hardcopy instead of an audiobook, as it jumped around a lot.

[readingwithwrin]

“If, in time of peace, our museums and art galleries are important to the community, in time of war they are doubly valuable. For then, when the petty and the trivial fall way and we are face to face with final and lasting values, we… must summon to our defense all our intellectual and spiritual resources. We must guard jealously all we have inherited from a long past, all we are capable of creating in a trying present, and all we are determined to preserve in a foreseeable future. Art is the imperishable and dynamic expression of these aims. It is, and always has been, the visible evidence of the activity of free minds.…”



During WWII a group of art experts were sent to Europe in order to save the worlds most famous and historically important works of art. They had very little provisions provided for them and most of the time, the other people in charge had no idea what to do with them. They also had no real idea if some of the pieces had been taken by allies and hidden away, or if they had been stolen by the Nazi's. It was a constant race of trying to get pieces before they were taken and trying to convince the original owners that the pieces needed to be protected at all in some situations.



Overall I found it fascinating to learn more about art/monument history during WWII. We knew that some pieces had been protected by the allies, but no real idea how they got into their hands in the first place before the Nazi's got them. Without the museum men and women that saved the world's history from possibly being destroyed in the enemy's hands so much would have been lost. So to all of them, we thank you.



For the book to movie part. I think the movie did really well and I would highly recommend it. It's hard to imagine without the photos etc, of how much the Nazi's really took.



“To save the culture of your allies is a small thing. To cherish the culture of your enemy, to risk your life and the life of other men to save it, to give it all back to them as soon as the battle was won… it was unheard of, but that is exactly what Walker Hancock and the other Monuments Men intended to do.”