military had on its plate, like feeding and clothing Europe.” Especially when you consider there were a lot of things the U.S. It should be a source of pride to Americans.
But 60 years later, the records MFAA kept are still used regularly by museum professionals like Nancy Yeide of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., who researches the ownership history of paintings - their “provenance.” The contribution of MFAA was, she says, “absolutely inestimable. Assembling this jumbled material at “collecting points,” they began the tedious process of repatriating 5 million objects, a herculean task that took until 1951 to complete.Įdsel calls their efforts “a completely overlooked part of history,” so little public attention have they received. After the Third Reich collapsed, MFAA officers undertook the daunting task of finding lost art, which the enemy had scattered for safekeeping across more than a thousand secret locations in Germany alone - including deep underground in salt mines. They tagged along with the advancing troops, warning them of art landmarks to avoid and performing emergency restorations as needed to paintings, sculpture, and architecture. As described in a new book by Robert Edsel, a former Texas oilman who recently set up the Monuments Men Foundation to honor their memory, and co-author Bret Witter, these soldiers volunteered for the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Service (MFAA). Key to this noble effort were art historians serving in the ranks of the American, British, and Canadian forces, including more than a dozen young Princetonians. Ernest DeWald *14 *16 is at far right, and Lt. It was a first in military history.Ībove, “Monuments Men” examine relics of the Holy Roman regalia upon their return to Vienna in 1946. “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” - and so he ordered his commanders to safeguard those treasures as their armies swept violently forward. Dwight Eisenhower told his commanders just before D-Day in a historic message signaling an enlightened new attitude. “Shortly we will be fighting our way across the continent of Europe in battles designed to preserve our civilization,” Gen. Culture had suffered grievously in countless wars of the past why should this, the most horrific conflict in all human history, be any different?īut it was different: The Allies took remarkable measures to protect threatened art. Many observers expected to see heartrending destruction of art and architectural treasures as bombs rained from the sky and soldiers ransacked and looted. Late in World War II, the Allies prepared for their bloody invasion of Fortress Europe.
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