WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:01.079 --> 00:00:02.753 All right. Well, welcome everyone. 00:00:02.882 --> 00:00:07.731 My name is Kate Fitzgerald and I am a distance-learning specialist at 00:00:08.175 --> 00:00:12.539 the National World War II Museum here in New Orleans, Louisiana. 00:00:12.941 --> 00:00:17.426 We are here to talk today about Robert Edsel's new book, 00:00:17.668 --> 00:00:19.962 The Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. 00:00:20.305 --> 00:00:22.178 I'm going to quickly do a couple 00:00:22.633 --> 00:00:25.077 of webinar housekeeping things 00:00:25.667 --> 00:00:28.992 and talk about some questions and answers before we get started. 00:00:29.734 --> 00:00:30.813 On your screen 00:00:31.253 --> 00:00:35.015 you should see something that says, "Participation Technology Review." 00:00:35.440 --> 00:00:40.314 At the bottom of your screen you see a button that says Q&A. 00:00:40.826 --> 00:00:44.169 This is for if you have questions 00:00:44.416 --> 00:00:46.900 while the presentation is going on for myself, 00:00:47.326 --> 00:00:48.088 for Robert. 00:00:48.231 --> 00:00:49.564 We also have a special guest, 00:00:49.668 --> 00:00:52.096 one of our museum curators is here with us. 00:00:52.436 --> 00:00:55.325 Also, if you're having any technological problems, 00:00:55.619 --> 00:00:57.042 we might be able to help you out. 00:00:57.186 --> 00:00:58.789 You might be able to write that in there 00:00:59.116 --> 00:01:01.885 and we have somebody watching the Q&A. 00:01:02.603 --> 00:01:03.310 Again, 00:01:03.532 --> 00:01:05.908 please type your questions in there 00:01:06.004 --> 00:01:08.925 and at the end we will get to you as many as possible. 00:01:10.286 --> 00:01:11.938 Without further ado, 00:01:12.462 --> 00:01:16.584 because we're not here to talk about technology, we are here to talk about 00:01:16.921 --> 00:01:19.968 the new book, The Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. 00:01:20.337 --> 00:01:22.123 It is a true story 00:01:22.411 --> 00:01:25.872 of how American and British volunteers found themselves 00:01:26.209 --> 00:01:28.606 in a desperate race against time to locate 00:01:28.878 --> 00:01:31.077 and save many priceless treasures. 00:01:31.395 --> 00:01:33.268 When we learn about history, 00:01:33.405 --> 00:01:36.757 sometimes we don't think about all the other parts about history 00:01:36.989 --> 00:01:37.822 and how art 00:01:38.029 --> 00:01:40.402 plays such a big role in history, 00:01:40.770 --> 00:01:43.842 especially World War II. 00:01:44.189 --> 00:01:48.252 Robert is here with us today to talk about his new book. 00:01:48.573 --> 00:01:51.296 I also wanted to remind everyone, 00:01:51.685 --> 00:01:55.292 if you do not have the book with you or you haven't read it yet, 00:01:55.707 --> 00:02:00.796 we are offering a 20% discount in our museum store online. 00:02:01.102 --> 00:02:04.039 At checkout, just use the code ''webinar''. 00:02:04.384 --> 00:02:08.949 I'll put this information in our follow-up email as well. 00:02:09.334 --> 00:02:11.263 If you have the book with you today, 00:02:11.526 --> 00:02:13.827 I'm actually going to read a couple of passages, 00:02:14.004 --> 00:02:15.854 so make sure you have it with you. 00:02:16.247 --> 00:02:20.342 I'm going to let Robert take over now. 00:02:20.631 --> 00:02:23.187 He is going to tell us about the book. 00:02:23.809 --> 00:02:24.602 Robert, 00:02:25.196 --> 00:02:28.680 feel free to share your screen and go ahead and get started. 00:02:30.066 --> 00:02:31.200 Good morning everybody. 00:02:31.351 --> 00:02:33.577 I'm really excited that everybody can be here. 00:02:34.808 --> 00:02:37.823 It's a remarkable story and I look forward to 00:02:38.343 --> 00:02:43.146 having a chance to tell you more about who these remarkable heroes were, 00:02:43.526 --> 00:02:45.073 the Monuments Men and Women. 00:02:45.374 --> 00:02:46.749 This is the front cover of the book. 00:02:46.924 --> 00:02:49.521 It's the fourth book I've written but it's the first one I've written 00:02:49.642 --> 00:02:52.498 specifically for you, for this audience, 00:02:52.637 --> 00:02:56.232 to be able to tell the entire story in one book. 00:02:56.521 --> 00:02:59.403 It really begins with this aspiring 00:02:59.666 --> 00:03:01.510 student, Adolf Hitler, 00:03:01.670 --> 00:03:05.265 as a teenager wanting to be recognized as a great artist 00:03:05.754 --> 00:03:06.810 and architect, 00:03:06.961 --> 00:03:10.145 but he's rejected from the Vienna Academy of Arts 00:03:10.737 --> 00:03:11.871 as a student. 00:03:12.626 --> 00:03:17.135 He believes that he has been discriminated against by 00:03:17.978 --> 00:03:20.620 jurors who he accused of being Jews. 00:03:20.714 --> 00:03:22.199 This fueled this 00:03:22.509 --> 00:03:25.858 hatred that he had as he rose to power in Nazi Germany. 00:03:26.213 --> 00:03:28.649 Art became a weapon of propaganda. 00:03:28.895 --> 00:03:31.633 On his first state visit to Florence, Italy, 00:03:32.124 --> 00:03:36.330 in 1938, you can see the bridges and Florence in the background, 00:03:36.762 --> 00:03:38.095 Hitler only had 00:03:38.390 --> 00:03:41.123 ten hours in Florence, but he spent two hours 00:03:41.243 --> 00:03:43.338 walking through the museums in Florence, 00:03:43.667 --> 00:03:45.738 through the Pitti Palace in Uffizi 00:03:46.111 --> 00:03:49.286 feeling this sense of being an artist among artists. 00:03:50.126 --> 00:03:53.668 His failed ambitions not recognized, but he felt 00:03:53.996 --> 00:03:56.734 he had these great skills that had been overlooked. 00:03:57.139 --> 00:04:00.776 As he walked through the halls of these great collections, 00:04:01.280 --> 00:04:06.217 the idea for creating a museum in his own hometown of Linz, Austria, 00:04:06.500 --> 00:04:07.603 a museum that would be called 00:04:07.666 --> 00:04:10.551 the Führermuseum, [?] Art Gallery in Linz 00:04:11.046 --> 00:04:13.766 originated. He returned to Berlin 00:04:14.024 --> 00:04:17.936 and started making drawings of how the city was going to be rebuilt. 00:04:18.083 --> 00:04:20.330 At the center of the city was going to be this new 00:04:20.684 --> 00:04:22.342 cultural complex 00:04:22.668 --> 00:04:25.461 centered and anchored by this great museum. 00:04:26.068 --> 00:04:28.211 As Hitler consolidated power, 00:04:28.571 --> 00:04:31.897 paintings were one of the prefered gifts among Nazi leaders. 00:04:31.988 --> 00:04:33.282 You see in this photo 00:04:34.218 --> 00:04:36.816 Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, 00:04:37.428 --> 00:04:40.953 the police squad that was so instrumental 00:04:41.339 --> 00:04:44.685 in the creation of the Holocaust and the death camps, 00:04:45.272 --> 00:04:46.590 being handed to Hitler 00:04:46.725 --> 00:04:49.764 to recognize his birthday. This was just one 00:04:50.061 --> 00:04:52.348 of thousands of events where works of art were 00:04:52.446 --> 00:04:54.144 traded among the Nazi leaders. 00:04:54.941 --> 00:04:57.179 In 1939 in September, 00:04:57.419 --> 00:04:59.182 the Nazi invasion of Polland 00:04:59.262 --> 00:05:01.865 set off alarm bells throughout the museums in Europe. 00:05:02.424 --> 00:05:05.869 These photographs are from the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. 00:05:07.058 --> 00:05:11.177 Some 400,000 objects were evacuated in a period of 10 days, 00:05:11.514 --> 00:05:15.198 leaving the Grand Gallery of the Louvre completely empty. 00:05:15.565 --> 00:05:18.081 The great concern wasn't theft originally. 00:05:18.323 --> 00:05:20.609 It was what would happen to these works of art 00:05:20.914 --> 00:05:24.072 if the cities were bombed and fire started. 00:05:24.528 --> 00:05:27.473 Works like Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa 00:05:27.721 --> 00:05:32.650 were moved on six separate ocassions trying to keep them out of harm's way. 00:05:33.243 --> 00:05:35.775 The great sculpture Wings of Samothrace, 00:05:36.041 --> 00:05:38.652 which sits at the top of the stairwell in the Louvre, 00:05:38.957 --> 00:05:43.727 was lowered down on these wooded skids, and crated and moved to 00:05:43.937 --> 00:05:46.842 a countryside château outside the city of Paris. 00:05:47.279 --> 00:05:50.703 This situation was repeated in cities throughout Europe. In FLorence, 00:05:51.048 --> 00:05:54.500 Michelangelo's great sculpture of The David was entombed in brick 00:05:54.933 --> 00:05:57.553 by craftsmen along with other sculptures 00:05:57.617 --> 00:05:59.466 of his in the foreground known as The Slaves 00:05:59.891 --> 00:06:03.438 because of the concern that Allied bombing might damage the roof 00:06:03.744 --> 00:06:07.204 of the academia and cause the roof to collapse 00:06:07.276 --> 00:06:09.356 and destroy Michelangelo's great achievement. 00:06:10.035 --> 00:06:10.934 In Milan, 00:06:11.457 --> 00:06:15.254 local art officials were concerned about Leonardo Da Vinci's great painting, 00:06:16.137 --> 00:06:20.177 The Last Supper, painted on this dining hall, the north wall. 00:06:20.569 --> 00:06:22.745 They placed sandbags and 00:06:23.042 --> 00:06:25.805 wooden scaffolding held in place by these metal bars 00:06:25.871 --> 00:06:27.347 on both sides of the wall 00:06:27.593 --> 00:06:29.085 under the what-if chance 00:06:29.371 --> 00:06:30.950 that bombing might somehow 00:06:31.629 --> 00:06:32.970 cause vibration 00:06:33.327 --> 00:06:37.100 and place the painting at risk. It was fortuitous because 00:06:39.414 --> 00:06:42.099 a British bomb landed in the center of the courtyard 00:06:42.506 --> 00:06:45.466 and obliterated the courtyard 00:06:46.387 --> 00:06:50.194 of the cloister of the dead where the friars would walk each morning. 00:06:50.587 --> 00:06:54.341 It destroyed the east wall of the refectory, leaving the painting 00:06:54.670 --> 00:06:58.164 in the upper-left hand side behind this wooden scaffolding. 00:06:58.650 --> 00:07:02.041 You can see how precarious it was exposed to the elements, 00:07:02.297 --> 00:07:04.623 the sandbags protruding out the side. 00:07:04.888 --> 00:07:08.810 This is how it would be for two years before local art officials could rebuild 00:07:09.130 --> 00:07:11.345 the roof and the wall of the refectory. 00:07:12.523 --> 00:07:13.793 The Monuments Men 00:07:14.070 --> 00:07:18.177 were a group of museum curators, architects, artists, 00:07:18.411 --> 00:07:21.554 many of them were professors and teachers, some were librarians, 00:07:21.923 --> 00:07:24.526 who volunteered for service during World War II 00:07:24.844 --> 00:07:26.145 to try and protect 00:07:26.399 --> 00:07:29.074 some of the great cultural treasures of Western Europe 00:07:29.506 --> 00:07:31.546 from damage by Allied bombing. 00:07:32.157 --> 00:07:34.895 Then, in the course of their work there, as 00:07:35.393 --> 00:07:38.012 the revelations about the Nazi's theft 00:07:38.499 --> 00:07:41.309 became known, they became art detectives 00:07:41.495 --> 00:07:43.971 engaged in what was the greatest treasure hunt in history, 00:07:44.106 --> 00:07:46.941 trying to track down millions of stolen works of art. 00:07:47.452 --> 00:07:50.801 A couple of the Monuments officers who I profiled 00:07:51.059 --> 00:07:54.844 in my new book, one is Deane Keller. Keller was a professor of 00:07:55.253 --> 00:07:58.198 art and also an artist, a 42 year-old man 00:07:58.494 --> 00:07:59.986 with a three year-old son, 00:08:00.259 --> 00:08:01.259 Dino, 00:08:01.727 --> 00:08:04.951 who left school, volunteered for military service, 00:08:05.081 --> 00:08:08.113 put on a uniform and went in the harm's way into Italy. 00:08:08.880 --> 00:08:12.585 He had a lot of knowledge about Italy and spoke Italian. 00:08:13.448 --> 00:08:15.313 He was also 00:08:15.663 --> 00:08:16.513 a very 00:08:17.864 --> 00:08:21.079 committed father trying to figure out how to be a parent 00:08:21.385 --> 00:08:23.861 to a three year-old boy you've left behind, 00:08:24.126 --> 00:08:26.284 who's some 5,000 miles away. 00:08:26.676 --> 00:08:29.986 After writing letters and realizing his son couldn't read, 00:08:30.451 --> 00:08:33.101 he started sending him these drawings or cartoons, 00:08:33.755 --> 00:08:37.398 v-mails they were called. Long before email, there was v-mail. 00:08:37.783 --> 00:08:41.363 This is a sketch he did of himself sewing on his 00:08:41.653 --> 00:08:44.503 Fifth Army patch onto his jacket 00:08:44.791 --> 00:08:46.109 the night that he discovered 00:08:46.197 --> 00:08:50.038 that he was going to be the sole monuments officer for US Fifth Army. 00:08:51.687 --> 00:08:54.591 He walked through or arrived in Pisa 00:08:55.070 --> 00:08:57.435 shortly after combat operations ended 00:08:57.726 --> 00:09:02.067 and performed some extraordinarily important work there, 00:09:02.421 --> 00:09:04.437 but like so many visitors to Pisa 00:09:04.635 --> 00:09:08.170 who take photographs, Deane Keller drew this photograph of him 00:09:09.674 --> 00:09:12.795 standing where it looks like he's holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa 00:09:12.901 --> 00:09:15.901 to send to his son and stay in touch with him. These were just a couple 00:09:16.333 --> 00:09:18.372 of the dozens of drawings that 00:09:18.586 --> 00:09:19.891 we make reference to in the book, 00:09:20.010 --> 00:09:22.423 and hundreds of drawings that he sent to his son. 00:09:23.117 --> 00:09:26.252 Another key Monuments officer was Fred Hartt, who was 00:09:26.605 --> 00:09:30.065 a great and developing art historian 00:09:30.505 --> 00:09:33.259 who had a great passion for Italy. 00:09:34.201 --> 00:09:37.224 Keller, Hartt and a handful of other Monuments officers 00:09:37.506 --> 00:09:39.347 arrived in Italy in 00:09:39.768 --> 00:09:41.974 the fall of 1943. 00:09:43.010 --> 00:09:47.334 They started in Naples and worked their way up through Rome, 00:09:47.714 --> 00:09:50.349 through Siena and arrived in Florence 00:09:50.643 --> 00:09:52.916 fearful of the damage 00:09:53.012 --> 00:09:56.014 that may have taken place in this jewel-like city. 00:09:56.359 --> 00:09:57.914 They're stunned 00:09:58.159 --> 00:10:00.893 when they reach the outskirts of Florence and discovered that 00:10:01.052 --> 00:10:02.425 hundreds of works of art 00:10:02.830 --> 00:10:05.140 from the most important museums in Florence 00:10:05.434 --> 00:10:08.402 are lying in these villas outside the city 00:10:09.208 --> 00:10:11.726 unprotected without any crates or wrapping 00:10:11.853 --> 00:10:15.051 and you can see them leaning up against the walls of this villa. 00:10:15.493 --> 00:10:17.953 They have been moved there by the local art officials 00:10:18.041 --> 00:10:19.541 to try and get them out of the cities 00:10:19.878 --> 00:10:24.189 and when the oncoming ground warfare placed them in jeopardy, 00:10:24.976 --> 00:10:28.226 the local art officials had no trucks to move them back 00:10:28.324 --> 00:10:29.927 into the cities so they were stuck 00:10:30.229 --> 00:10:31.641 in the battle fields 00:10:31.868 --> 00:10:34.876 as the artillery and explosions 00:10:35.070 --> 00:10:37.014 took place all around these buildings. 00:10:37.681 --> 00:10:39.387 We speak not of minor works of art; 00:10:39.542 --> 00:10:41.708 this is Dean Keller standing next to 00:10:42.005 --> 00:10:45.965 Sandro Botticelli's extraordinary painting by Primavera. 00:10:46.261 --> 00:10:47.658 Just one of 00:10:48.502 --> 00:10:51.186 the works that was left behind because of its size, 00:10:51.314 --> 00:10:52.576 they wouldn't fit into the truck 00:10:52.934 --> 00:10:54.839 but hundreds of other works were taken 00:10:55.160 --> 00:10:58.351 by the Nazi soldiers up to northern part of Italy 00:10:58.720 --> 00:11:00.228 on their way into Germany. 00:11:00.865 --> 00:11:03.492 It was a theft of epic proportions that 00:11:04.185 --> 00:11:07.243 set the Monuments officers in Italy on this journey 00:11:07.357 --> 00:11:08.968 trying to find clues 00:11:09.214 --> 00:11:10.897 to where the works of art had been taken. 00:11:11.996 --> 00:11:13.520 When they arrived in Florence, 00:11:13.862 --> 00:11:15.729 these scenes of destruction greeted them, 00:11:15.864 --> 00:11:18.761 all of the bridges with the exception of one, destroyed 00:11:19.141 --> 00:11:21.339 by Nazi forces as they fled the city 00:11:21.458 --> 00:11:23.538 trying to slow down the allied advance. 00:11:24.032 --> 00:11:28.207 All the images in black are areas that were just obliterated, 00:11:28.466 --> 00:11:31.625 some of the rubble piles reached 30 feet high, 00:11:31.962 --> 00:11:34.605 the both sides of the river were impassable 00:11:34.903 --> 00:11:37.601 and it destroyed so much of the ancient city, 00:11:37.862 --> 00:11:41.355 the medieval portions of the city with its great towers and history. 00:11:41.734 --> 00:11:43.281 This is a photograph taken 00:11:43.497 --> 00:11:45.997 a top one of the buildings, and you get a sense of 00:11:46.636 --> 00:11:48.668 the degree of destruction, none of the buildings 00:11:48.819 --> 00:11:50.970 had even a glass left in them. 00:11:51.879 --> 00:11:54.451 Just extraordinary devastation to this 00:11:54.853 --> 00:11:57.146 great renaissance city. 00:11:58.379 --> 00:12:02.039 In northern Europe as general Eisenhower and his forces 00:12:02.178 --> 00:12:06.432 moved from Italy to England to prepare for the Normandy landings 00:12:06.741 --> 00:12:09.347 in June 1944. They took with them 00:12:09.629 --> 00:12:11.494 all the experiences of Italy, 00:12:11.867 --> 00:12:14.319 and some of course were mistakes that were made. 00:12:14.508 --> 00:12:17.262 General Eisenhower had issued in a historic court order, 00:12:17.494 --> 00:12:21.098 in December 1943 in Italy, shortly before leaving, 00:12:21.586 --> 00:12:24.586 saying that it was a responsibility not just of his commanders, 00:12:24.717 --> 00:12:29.414 but all troops to respect cultural treasures as much as were allowed. 00:12:29.928 --> 00:12:31.975 He went on to saying if it came down to the lives 00:12:32.065 --> 00:12:35.734 of his man or an object, obviously the lives of his men counted more, 00:12:36.323 --> 00:12:38.675 but he noticed that two often times 00:12:38.810 --> 00:12:41.223 that was used as an excuse of convenience 00:12:41.552 --> 00:12:43.457 and he pointed out to the troops that 00:12:44.792 --> 00:12:46.515 it was important to not only win the war 00:12:46.594 --> 00:12:48.435 but to try and avoid devastation 00:12:48.619 --> 00:12:50.857 to what is our shared cultural heritage. 00:12:51.577 --> 00:12:54.818 This order was only issued about six months after 00:12:54.929 --> 00:12:56.842 the troops had arrived in Italy, 00:12:57.242 --> 00:12:58.544 but in northern Europe 00:12:58.776 --> 00:13:00.658 in preparation for the Normandy landings, 00:13:00.795 --> 00:13:03.525 general Eisenhower issued it two weeks before 00:13:03.830 --> 00:13:07.854 the embarkment of this extraordinary crusade into Europe. 00:13:08.762 --> 00:13:12.486 They key Monuments officers in northern Europe were George Stout, 00:13:12.648 --> 00:13:15.569 and Stout was one of the older Monuments Man, he was 46, 00:13:15.681 --> 00:13:17.649 he actually fought in World War I, 00:13:18.145 --> 00:13:21.764 and he was a conserver of works of art at the Faught Museum in Harvard. 00:13:22.206 --> 00:13:26.008 Stout was the one who had the idea to create Monuments Man, 00:13:26.489 --> 00:13:29.687 he was convinced there was going to be a Second World War, 00:13:29.922 --> 00:13:34.533 he studied the impact of the new technologies in warfare 00:13:34.933 --> 00:13:37.434 on works of art and he developed pamphlets about 00:13:37.547 --> 00:13:39.587 how to go about protecting these works of art 00:13:40.073 --> 00:13:41.018 during combat. 00:13:41.663 --> 00:13:44.093 He was desisted by Jim Rorimer 00:13:44.214 --> 00:13:48.333 who was the curator at the Metropolitan Museums Cloister Museum 00:13:48.591 --> 00:13:50.138 just outside of New York City. 00:13:50.879 --> 00:13:55.054 Rorimer was a fluid in French and he loved all things French and was 00:13:55.313 --> 00:13:57.456 an enormous asset to the Monuments Man 00:13:57.697 --> 00:13:58.935 and Walker Hancock 00:13:59.173 --> 00:14:02.062 who was one of the United States great sculptors, 00:14:02.360 --> 00:14:04.027 who also volunteered for service. 00:14:04.465 --> 00:14:07.576 None of these men were likely drafted because of their age, 00:14:07.681 --> 00:14:09.873 but they all felt they had a contribution to make, 00:14:09.977 --> 00:14:13.104 many of them had been educated in Europe between the two wars, 00:14:13.611 --> 00:14:15.715 and they knew of these important works of art 00:14:15.802 --> 00:14:17.437 and wanted to do something 00:14:17.731 --> 00:14:19.715 to try and contribute to the war effort. 00:14:21.039 --> 00:14:23.697 As they landed in France 00:14:23.920 --> 00:14:25.380 and worked their way to Paris, 00:14:25.646 --> 00:14:29.854 they arrived at this important small musem, 00:14:30.024 --> 00:14:32.452 near the Louvre Museum, called [?] 00:14:32.788 --> 00:14:34.407 and inside this museum 00:14:34.758 --> 00:14:37.131 the Nazis had comandeerted 00:14:37.414 --> 00:14:40.795 in particular the number two man in the Nazi party, 00:14:40.931 --> 00:14:42.574 rights Marshall Hammond Garing, 00:14:43.069 --> 00:14:44.379 and Garing had made 00:14:44.529 --> 00:14:47.347 22 separate visits to this museum 00:14:47.644 --> 00:14:50.597 during the war. You see him sitting there on the lower left side 00:14:50.934 --> 00:14:54.230 holding a painting in his hand, he's got a cigar in his right hand. 00:14:54.317 --> 00:14:56.516 There's a bottle of champagne on the table, 00:14:56.897 --> 00:15:00.598 and this was the headquarters for the Nazi looting operation in France. 00:15:01.182 --> 00:15:04.365 Tens of thousands of works of arts stolen from collectors 00:15:06.188 --> 00:15:08.958 and important dealers, many of whom were Jews. 00:15:09.232 --> 00:15:10.866 Were brought to the museum, 00:15:11.034 --> 00:15:13.232 and we speak not just of paintings but also 00:15:13.593 --> 00:15:16.664 sculpture, drawings, tapestries, 00:15:16.953 --> 00:15:19.270 furniture, art objects. 00:15:19.815 --> 00:15:22.918 Including these two great paintings by Henri Matisse, 00:15:23.255 --> 00:15:24.978 and they were presented to Garing 00:15:25.232 --> 00:15:29.354 for him to decide which works of art he wanted to have for his own collection. 00:15:29.679 --> 00:15:32.731 Which works of art were going to go to Adolf Hitler’s collection, 00:15:33.267 --> 00:15:35.290 and then the others that were loaded onto trains 00:15:35.370 --> 00:15:36.616 and taken back to Germany. 00:15:37.231 --> 00:15:39.278 This was a premeditated theft, 00:15:39.548 --> 00:15:41.826 they knew were these great works of art were, 00:15:42.053 --> 00:15:44.633 many of them were traded for other works of art, 00:15:44.890 --> 00:15:48.327 but it was an extensive looting operation unlike anything 00:15:48.576 --> 00:15:49.552 we’ve ever seen. 00:15:50.698 --> 00:15:53.753 One of the great heroines of the story and a woman that I love, 00:15:54.265 --> 00:15:57.415 sharing her story about it in my book 00:15:57.728 --> 00:16:00.180 is a woman named Rose Valland. Rose was 00:16:00.462 --> 00:16:02.716 a custodian of the museum, in the United States 00:16:02.782 --> 00:16:06.513 we would call her a curator, responsible for the [?] Museum, 00:16:07.042 --> 00:16:10.150 and for four years she worked in this museum 00:16:10.520 --> 00:16:12.321 and without the Germans knowledge 00:16:12.417 --> 00:16:16.004 understood German and listened to their conversations 00:16:16.406 --> 00:16:20.201 and made secret notes about what she heard. 00:16:20.306 --> 00:16:22.584 She had practically a photographic memory, 00:16:22.865 --> 00:16:25.280 and she recognized so many of these works of arts 00:16:25.401 --> 00:16:27.298 that came to the museum and she was a spy 00:16:27.864 --> 00:16:30.372 for the museum director in France. 00:16:30.618 --> 00:16:33.157 Reporting which works had been stolen, 00:16:33.481 --> 00:16:35.316 were they had been taken in Germany 00:16:35.411 --> 00:16:37.181 and this information where she gathered, 00:16:37.356 --> 00:16:39.921 was essential to the work of the Monuments Man 00:16:40.289 --> 00:16:44.147 as they spread further and further into France and on their way into Germany 00:16:44.444 --> 00:16:46.936 looking for were these works of art had been taken. 00:16:48.098 --> 00:16:50.852 As the combat operations 00:16:50.959 --> 00:16:53.903 took them through France, into Belgium, into Holland 00:16:54.185 --> 00:16:56.471 and finally crossing the border into Germany. 00:16:56.720 --> 00:16:59.823 They started making extraordinary discoveries 00:17:00.142 --> 00:17:04.685 including this discovery at a salt mine in the German town of Merkers. 00:17:07.581 --> 00:17:09.279 Two of the Monuments officers 00:17:09.462 --> 00:17:12.255 were killed in combat, Ronald Balfour, 00:17:12.933 --> 00:17:14.663 a British Monuments officer 00:17:15.166 --> 00:17:19.747 and Walter Huchthausen, an American from Perry, Oklahoma. 00:17:20.077 --> 00:17:24.006 Both were killed in March and April respectively in 1945 00:17:24.280 --> 00:17:27.614 as they pursued leads about works of arts that were missing. 00:17:27.864 --> 00:17:29.079 In centrical Germany, 00:17:29.262 --> 00:17:31.827 troops of a third army uncovered Germanys gold reserve 00:17:31.957 --> 00:17:33.076 hidden in a salt mine. 00:17:35.079 --> 00:17:37.341 Gold and foreign currencies worth millions 00:17:44.873 --> 00:17:46.675 and odd treasures from German museums, 00:17:47.139 --> 00:17:48.654 [?] for safe keeping. 00:17:49.188 --> 00:17:51.521 [?] Raphael's, Leonardo's 00:17:51.898 --> 00:17:52.747 and [?]. 00:17:53.532 --> 00:17:55.548 It is not yet decided what shall be done with them. 00:18:00.546 --> 00:18:03.741 Inside this salt mine, the Monuments Man 00:18:03.861 --> 00:18:06.337 and American soldiers had found 00:18:06.698 --> 00:18:10.756 in today's equivalence, some $10 billion dollars of gold, 00:18:11.133 --> 00:18:13.482 gold coins, gold bars 00:18:14.318 --> 00:18:16.272 and it was an extraordinary discovery. 00:18:16.455 --> 00:18:20.439 Essentially like tripping over our Fort Knox in the United States, 00:18:20.919 --> 00:18:22.133 also they found 00:18:23.097 --> 00:18:25.146 thousands and thousands of works of art 00:18:25.352 --> 00:18:27.084 that had in fact not been stolen. 00:18:27.212 --> 00:18:29.142 They were from the great museums in Berlin 00:18:29.380 --> 00:18:33.207 that it had been evacuated to get them out of the destruction in the city 00:18:33.551 --> 00:18:34.813 and try and save them. 00:18:35.055 --> 00:18:38.340 You can see in this photograph, generals Eisenhower, Patting 00:18:38.796 --> 00:18:42.800 and Bradley standing there flipping through these paintings, 00:18:43.791 --> 00:18:46.583 amazed to see them in this salt mine, 00:18:46.800 --> 00:18:51.014 some almost three thousand feet below the surface of the earth. 00:18:51.804 --> 00:18:54.407 They also made horrific discoveries, 00:18:54.542 --> 00:18:56.852 there were some two hundred suitcases 00:18:57.287 --> 00:19:00.207 stuffed filled of gold fillings 00:19:00.455 --> 00:19:03.646 taken from concentration camp victims, 00:19:04.054 --> 00:19:05.062 jewelry, 00:19:05.626 --> 00:19:07.618 silver objects, watches 00:19:07.899 --> 00:19:10.701 and general Eisenhower can be seen standing here 00:19:11.008 --> 00:19:13.682 looking at one of these open suitcases 00:19:14.051 --> 00:19:15.987 disgusted knowing that 00:19:16.313 --> 00:19:21.093 the people that once owned these important personal Rolex 00:19:21.335 --> 00:19:23.653 had perished in concentration camps. 00:19:25.704 --> 00:19:28.950 The next discovery occurred in a castle in Neuschwanstein. 00:19:29.161 --> 00:19:32.321 That was a great part of the art treasures stolen by the Nazis. 00:19:32.569 --> 00:19:36.354 Taken from [?] families, the Rothchilds and private French collectors. 00:19:36.708 --> 00:19:39.771 Many of the 23 thousand pieces were never unpacked. 00:19:40.530 --> 00:19:43.586 Not contained with robbing people of their freedom and their lives. 00:19:44.145 --> 00:19:47.058 The Nazis tried to make off with their symbols of culture. 00:19:51.652 --> 00:19:57.274 At this castle known for being the model for Disneyland, 00:19:57.644 --> 00:20:00.629 this fairy tale castle, the Germans had hidden 00:20:00.870 --> 00:20:04.211 some 23,000 works of art stolen from France. 00:20:04.801 --> 00:20:08.104 Rose Valland, you see her now in a military uniform, 00:20:08.384 --> 00:20:09.853 left her position 00:20:10.101 --> 00:20:13.030 as a custodian once Paris was liberated 00:20:13.414 --> 00:20:16.176 and joined up in the French army. 00:20:16.529 --> 00:20:18.092 She was made a captain 00:20:18.195 --> 00:20:21.436 and she went to Germany at her first opportunity 00:20:21.875 --> 00:20:26.511 with these extraordinary collections of lists of the works of art 00:20:26.905 --> 00:20:28.302 and she provided them 00:20:28.548 --> 00:20:31.683 to a man who'd become her friend, Jim Rorimer. 00:20:32.018 --> 00:20:33.994 Rorimer, seen there on the left 00:20:34.754 --> 00:20:39.103 holding one of these Renaissance pieces of jewelry 00:20:39.719 --> 00:20:42.100 that had belonged to a French collecting family 00:20:42.166 --> 00:20:45.229 known as the Rothschilds, an important Jewish family. 00:20:46.034 --> 00:20:48.394 These were sent under 23,000 objects 00:20:48.465 --> 00:20:51.664 that Rorimer was able to successfully find and protect 00:20:51.993 --> 00:20:53.692 that had been stolen from France 00:20:54.124 --> 00:20:58.124 and he knew to go to this castle because of Rose Valland's heroism 00:20:58.502 --> 00:21:02.636 in gathering this information at the risk of her life over four years. 00:21:03.967 --> 00:21:06.714 You see this photograph of Rorimer standing on the steps 00:21:06.804 --> 00:21:09.758 with soldiers walking out of the castle with three paintings, 00:21:10.046 --> 00:21:12.919 just some of the 23,000 objects that were found there. 00:21:14.391 --> 00:21:18.494 In northern Italy, Deane Keller and Frederick Hartt finally received 00:21:18.634 --> 00:21:21.173 clues about where the works of art stolen from 00:21:21.558 --> 00:21:23.830 Florence in its museums have been taken. 00:21:24.093 --> 00:21:25.783 Inside this jail cell, 00:21:26.212 --> 00:21:28.857 packed inside this very small space 00:21:29.136 --> 00:21:30.882 were paintings by Rubens, 00:21:31.854 --> 00:21:33.631 Leonardo, Michelangelo 00:21:33.919 --> 00:21:35.427 and Botticelli, 00:21:35.601 --> 00:21:38.705 Caravaggio, some of the great, great artists 00:21:39.075 --> 00:21:41.877 of history that had been stolen by the Nazis. 00:21:43.773 --> 00:21:47.980 You see this photograph that was taken of the German soldiers 00:21:48.260 --> 00:21:52.752 when they had arrived with the stolen works of art on the back of the trucks 00:21:53.019 --> 00:21:55.685 with no more protection than this straw 00:21:55.967 --> 00:21:58.490 and in open-top trucks. 00:21:58.667 --> 00:22:02.024 In fact, it was misting on the day that these paintings arrived 00:22:02.329 --> 00:22:04.210 in the fall of 1944. 00:22:05.024 --> 00:22:07.540 The works of art that they found were extraordinary, 00:22:07.676 --> 00:22:10.637 this painting by Botticelli, this Annunciation, 00:22:12.174 --> 00:22:14.474 the sculpture by Michelangelo, Bacchus, 00:22:15.114 --> 00:22:19.535 Donatello one of the great sculptors, the sculpture of Saint George. 00:22:20.518 --> 00:22:24.652 By the early part of May 1945, 00:22:24.855 --> 00:22:26.959 Aldof Hitler now has committed suicide 00:22:27.406 --> 00:22:29.460 but the Monuments officers are frustrated because, 00:22:29.582 --> 00:22:32.828 despite all of the success of discoveries they've made 00:22:33.116 --> 00:22:36.370 and hundreds of salt mines and caves and castles, 00:22:36.796 --> 00:22:40.312 the works of art that were destined for Adolf Hitler's private collection 00:22:40.577 --> 00:22:44.489 and the museum in Linz continued to elude their grasp. 00:22:45.669 --> 00:22:48.939 It was the focus of two Monuments officers, Robert Posey, 00:22:49.570 --> 00:22:51.570 an architect from Alabama, 00:22:51.962 --> 00:22:53.488 and Lincoln Kirstein, 00:22:54.630 --> 00:22:58.923 a cultural impresario and co-founder of the New York City Ballet from New York 00:22:59.349 --> 00:23:02.584 who finally received a critical tip 00:23:02.910 --> 00:23:04.330 from a German dentist 00:23:04.830 --> 00:23:06.885 that led them to a salt mine 00:23:07.286 --> 00:23:09.608 outside of Salzburg, Austria 00:23:10.905 --> 00:23:14.349 in a small lake town called Altaussee. 00:23:15.289 --> 00:23:17.853 This was a photograph Robert Posey took himself. 00:23:18.165 --> 00:23:20.387 You see the immediacy of it with these 00:23:20.667 --> 00:23:23.111 shovels and picks in the foreground. 00:23:23.472 --> 00:23:27.575 They've literally burrowed their way up over the top of this rubble 00:23:27.912 --> 00:23:28.772 fearful that 00:23:30.631 --> 00:23:32.544 their worst nightmares have been realized, 00:23:32.632 --> 00:23:34.682 that the Germans have destroyed the works of art 00:23:34.795 --> 00:23:37.843 trying to keep them from the Allied victors. 00:23:38.797 --> 00:23:42.196 What they would later learn is that the miners, 00:23:42.438 --> 00:23:46.192 and you'd see one of the miners up there on the left with the flashlight, 00:23:46.799 --> 00:23:48.926 in an effort to try and protect their 00:23:51.231 --> 00:23:52.652 way of living 00:23:53.068 --> 00:23:55.298 destroyed the passageways 00:23:56.166 --> 00:23:59.627 of the mine to try and keep the Germans from getting into the mines 00:24:00.709 --> 00:24:03.559 to detonate the explosives that they placed there. 00:24:04.325 --> 00:24:05.563 Posey and Kirstein 00:24:06.144 --> 00:24:08.826 scurry over the top of this on their bellies 00:24:09.124 --> 00:24:10.934 and are stunned to see 00:24:11.452 --> 00:24:13.666 areas that have been hollowed out in this mine, 00:24:13.811 --> 00:24:15.478 some two stories in high. 00:24:15.599 --> 00:24:17.996 You see that ladder there in the center of the photograph, 00:24:18.084 --> 00:24:19.560 that's about 10 feet tall 00:24:19.841 --> 00:24:22.404 so you get a sense of how big the spaces are. 00:24:22.622 --> 00:24:25.654 They've placed boards on the floor of the stone mine. 00:24:26.356 --> 00:24:28.445 These mines I've been in they're very cold, 00:24:28.517 --> 00:24:32.572 the average temperature year-round is about 42 or 43 degrees. 00:24:33.642 --> 00:24:36.673 You see thousands of paintings that have been placed in these 00:24:37.533 --> 00:24:39.589 wooden racks that they constructed. 00:24:40.649 --> 00:24:43.117 There are some of the most important paintings in the world, 00:24:44.519 --> 00:24:48.518 the Ghent Altarpiece by Yann Van Eyck painted in 1432, 00:24:48.617 --> 00:24:51.315 that is today in Ghent, Belgium. 00:24:52.120 --> 00:24:53.604 This is a painting that's about 00:24:54.180 --> 00:24:57.839 20 feet in width and about 15 feet in height, 00:24:58.301 --> 00:25:02.202 that the Monuments Man, George Stout standing there in the center 00:25:02.305 --> 00:25:03.917 with the N on his jersey, 00:25:04.341 --> 00:25:06.960 is dealing with just the central panel 00:25:07.305 --> 00:25:11.099 of the Ghent Altarpiece and you see other portions of the works of art 00:25:11.332 --> 00:25:14.729 sitting on milk cartons over his shoulder leaning up against the wall 00:25:14.828 --> 00:25:16.050 the salt mine behind him. 00:25:17.213 --> 00:25:21.927 There are about 35 recognized paintings by Johannes Vermeer in the world, 00:25:22.217 --> 00:25:25.074 Adolf Hitler stole two of them, one The Artist's Studio 00:25:25.170 --> 00:25:27.551 which the Monuments officers are holding here 00:25:27.970 --> 00:25:31.461 and the other which is on the back cover of my new book, 00:25:31.941 --> 00:25:35.228 The Astronomer which was the very first work 00:25:35.411 --> 00:25:37.434 Adolf Hitler targeted for theft 00:25:37.716 --> 00:25:39.819 in Paris owned by the Rothschilds. 00:25:41.770 --> 00:25:46.079 The Monuments officers also found the only sculpture by Michelangelo 00:25:46.161 --> 00:25:48.147 that left Italy during his lifetime, 00:25:48.235 --> 00:25:50.068 the Bruges Madonna which is 00:25:51.032 --> 00:25:53.112 a sculpture of extraordinary beauty 00:25:53.369 --> 00:25:57.432 found by George Stout lying on its side inside the salt mine 00:25:57.674 --> 00:26:01.391 still wrapped in the burlap mattress that the Nazis brought 00:26:01.528 --> 00:26:05.567 when they stole it in the dead of [?] in September 1944. 00:26:06.868 --> 00:26:10.574 The thefts of the Nazis though it vastly exceeded just paintings, 00:26:10.666 --> 00:26:12.562 it included millions 00:26:12.951 --> 00:26:17.288 of important books from thousands of Europe's most important libraries. 00:26:17.390 --> 00:26:18.541 This is a warehouse 00:26:18.854 --> 00:26:20.084 containing some of 00:26:20.413 --> 00:26:23.795 the millions of books that the Monuments officers would spend years 00:26:23.926 --> 00:26:25.005 sorting through 00:26:25.331 --> 00:26:26.935 trying to determine what libraries 00:26:27.071 --> 00:26:29.214 had been stolen from so they could be returned. 00:26:30.122 --> 00:26:34.845 These are thousands of church bells stolen from churches throughout 00:26:35.198 --> 00:26:36.191 France and Belgium 00:26:36.359 --> 00:26:39.549 that the Monuments officers found on a shipyard in Bremen 00:26:39.934 --> 00:26:42.458 that they were preparing to be smelted 00:26:42.732 --> 00:26:46.684 and converted into war materials by the German war machine. 00:26:47.133 --> 00:26:50.657 These were lucky survivors, there were thousands of church bells 00:26:50.970 --> 00:26:55.938 that had already been melted down and converted to military use. 00:26:56.277 --> 00:26:58.572 The Monuments officers again spend years 00:26:58.683 --> 00:27:01.310 looking at the foundry marks on each of these bells 00:27:01.600 --> 00:27:05.068 trying to determine which church they belong to as they began this 00:27:05.494 --> 00:27:07.669 laborious process of returns that 00:27:07.923 --> 00:27:09.946 went on for years after the war. 00:27:10.847 --> 00:27:13.578 In this photograph of an American rabbi chaplain, 00:27:13.885 --> 00:27:16.075 standing on a pile of Torah scrolls, 00:27:16.765 --> 00:27:18.281 some 10 feet high, 00:27:18.834 --> 00:27:20.881 that had been protected 00:27:21.143 --> 00:27:23.032 ironically by the Nazis. 00:27:23.440 --> 00:27:28.648 They intended to create museums to show how in their view jews, 00:27:29.335 --> 00:27:31.224 gays, Slavs, 00:27:31.496 --> 00:27:33.099 and others were subhuman. 00:27:34.046 --> 00:27:37.095 While they destroyed and murdered millions of people 00:27:37.433 --> 00:27:39.830 and destroyed so much of their cities and cultures, 00:27:40.111 --> 00:27:43.413 they preserved these important religious objects 00:27:43.637 --> 00:27:46.684 as a way of putting them on display and ironically, 00:27:46.958 --> 00:27:49.561 paradoxically they survived the war. 00:27:49.890 --> 00:27:50.763 You see 00:27:51.365 --> 00:27:55.199 a rabbi chaplain, Sam Bender going through, holding these 00:27:55.568 --> 00:27:57.911 precious objects trying to determine 00:27:58.166 --> 00:28:01.086 what synagogue or what country they might have come from. 00:28:02.260 --> 00:28:05.863 The Monuments officers stayed in Europe until 1951 00:28:06.098 --> 00:28:07.812 and by the time they returned, 00:28:08.242 --> 00:28:11.053 they had returned some five million objects 00:28:11.125 --> 00:28:13.284 to the countries from which they've been stolen 00:28:13.557 --> 00:28:17.145 including a million objects that belong to German museums 00:28:17.514 --> 00:28:20.165 that they were the custodians of during the time 00:28:20.493 --> 00:28:22.945 that the German museums had to be rebuilt. 00:28:23.297 --> 00:28:26.464 One of the most famous works of art that they returned was this 00:28:26.730 --> 00:28:30.161 great portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, Lady with an Ermine, 00:28:30.242 --> 00:28:31.076 that was stolen 00:28:31.806 --> 00:28:33.377 from Krakow, Poland 00:28:33.737 --> 00:28:36.347 and it is now back in Poland today. 00:28:36.612 --> 00:28:38.042 You see Monuments officers 00:28:38.303 --> 00:28:40.946 standing there around this painting 00:28:41.601 --> 00:28:44.991 outside of a train, just a photo op that they decided, 00:28:45.073 --> 00:28:46.399 "Let's take a photograph 00:28:46.750 --> 00:28:49.051 and see what we've got." You see that they've 00:28:49.484 --> 00:28:52.413 gotten a hammer on the right side of the photograph and 00:28:52.605 --> 00:28:54.073 a screwdriver down the bottom 00:28:54.522 --> 00:28:58.547 and have quickly taken off the lid and the paper on top of it to pull this 00:28:59.279 --> 00:29:02.297 wooden panel out and take a photograph of what it looked like. 00:29:03.093 --> 00:29:05.514 This is a quick overview of 00:29:05.859 --> 00:29:07.788 an extraordinary story, 00:29:08.049 --> 00:29:09.742 the greatest theft in history 00:29:09.846 --> 00:29:12.227 which led to the greatest treasure hunt in history. 00:29:12.644 --> 00:29:15.652 It's been a remarkable privilege of mine 00:29:15.894 --> 00:29:20.252 to be able to tell this story and to be able to share with you today. 00:29:20.358 --> 00:29:22.500 I look forward to answering any question. 00:29:23.879 --> 00:29:26.308 All right. Thank you so much, Robert. 00:29:26.697 --> 00:29:28.983 We are going to get to questions in just a minute 00:29:29.288 --> 00:29:32.264 but I'm going to go ahead and dive a little bit deeper 00:29:32.553 --> 00:29:36.331 and talk about some themes 00:29:36.605 --> 00:29:40.176 that I found in the book when reading it. 00:29:40.768 --> 00:29:42.967 I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. 00:29:45.868 --> 00:29:47.931 The first theme I'm going to talk about 00:29:48.325 --> 00:29:50.737 are letters during wartime. 00:29:51.079 --> 00:29:52.803 If you have the book in front of you, 00:29:53.066 --> 00:29:56.693 you'll turn to chapter 10, page 141. 00:29:57.253 --> 00:29:59.333 It said, "Today is Christmas 00:29:59.788 --> 00:30:02.303 and my first thoughts are with you and Deane. 00:30:02.562 --> 00:30:06.728 As I write the roar of tanks and heavy vehicles is in the air. 00:30:07.066 --> 00:30:09.447 Some boys will eat a turkey leg in a pup tent 00:30:09.840 --> 00:30:10.871 or in a foxhole. 00:30:11.133 --> 00:30:12.411 Some will die this day. 00:30:12.763 --> 00:30:16.636 Downstairs the radio has come on and someone is singing a Carol. 00:30:17.092 --> 00:30:18.418 This is my Christmas, 00:30:18.600 --> 00:30:23.103 a big one filled with the highest ideals a man is capable of.'' 00:30:23.869 --> 00:30:27.355 This was a letter written by Captain Deane Keller 00:30:27.478 --> 00:30:29.525 from New Haven, Connecticut as you just learned, 00:30:29.741 --> 00:30:32.075 to his wife and his young son 00:30:32.503 --> 00:30:36.840 and he wrote it on something that is super interesting 00:30:36.945 --> 00:30:39.361 and I didn't actually know about him until pretty recently. That was 00:30:39.680 --> 00:30:41.911 Victory mail or V-mail 00:30:42.207 --> 00:30:45.135 and basically during World War II, 00:30:45.384 --> 00:30:50.193 the Allies, to save valuable room on cargo ships 00:30:50.581 --> 00:30:51.438 would use 00:30:51.708 --> 00:30:54.057 V-mail and it basically started in England 00:30:54.339 --> 00:30:59.706 and it was a process that involved microfilming special letter sheets. 00:31:00.059 --> 00:31:04.027 Instead of taking up cargo space full of letters, 00:31:04.309 --> 00:31:07.333 you would put them on microfilm and when they got overseas, 00:31:07.639 --> 00:31:12.305 then they would put it on the letter. You saw basically a template; 00:31:12.620 --> 00:31:15.374 you could write to someone overseas 00:31:15.525 --> 00:31:17.945 or someone overseas could write at home 00:31:18.745 --> 00:31:21.879 and the Monuments Man used these a lot. 00:31:22.026 --> 00:31:25.137 We can see here these two were not from the Monuments Man, 00:31:25.420 --> 00:31:27.388 but these are two examples, 00:31:28.064 --> 00:31:30.247 one from a guy named Frank actually, 00:31:30.519 --> 00:31:33.537 and some of them think of postcards, they were templates. 00:31:33.842 --> 00:31:35.414 He sent this 00:31:35.699 --> 00:31:38.572 from his overseas position during World War II 00:31:38.901 --> 00:31:40.433 and it basically said, 00:31:40.816 --> 00:31:42.641 ''Happy Birthday,'' to his wife. 00:31:43.247 --> 00:31:46.438 It was on a microfilm and when it got back to the States 00:31:46.759 --> 00:31:49.514 it was blown up and sent home to her. 00:31:50.014 --> 00:31:51.772 Letters play a really big role, 00:31:52.082 --> 00:31:56.440 not only in World War II in terms of keeping up the mural both 00:31:56.775 --> 00:31:59.006 at home and overseas, 00:31:59.263 --> 00:32:02.089 but also in studying World War II. 00:32:02.394 --> 00:32:05.117 Think about how much we have been able to learn about 00:32:05.263 --> 00:32:07.271 the Monuments Man and what they did, 00:32:07.582 --> 00:32:09.375 from their letters. 00:32:10.212 --> 00:32:13.267 If you don't have this book yet, you'll see once you read it, 00:32:13.550 --> 00:32:16.710 a lot of the letters and the pictures of letters are in here 00:32:16.982 --> 00:32:18.879 and they really help you understand 00:32:19.180 --> 00:32:22.657 what they were going through and what they were trying to achieve. 00:32:23.225 --> 00:32:27.155 The other I found really interesting theme, 00:32:27.420 --> 00:32:29.872 is of course, woman in service to country. 00:32:30.272 --> 00:32:34.615 We are going to jump to chapter 12 now, on page 165. 00:32:35.620 --> 00:32:37.342 ''There had been several close calls, 00:32:37.503 --> 00:32:40.424 but only one, in February 1944, 00:32:40.522 --> 00:32:42.784 did the Nazi lackeys catch her 00:32:43.055 --> 00:32:46.589 rand-handed trying to read addresses on shipping documents. 00:32:46.924 --> 00:32:49.187 Bruno Lohse, Goring's art buyer, 00:32:49.293 --> 00:32:50.499 confronted Valland, 00:32:50.801 --> 00:32:53.484 warning that she could be shot for such indiscretions. 00:32:53.799 --> 00:32:55.720 But she sloughed it off, telling him, 00:32:56.077 --> 00:32:58.188 ''No one here is stupid enough to ignore the risk,'' 00:32:58.357 --> 00:32:59.563 before walking away. 00:32:59.931 --> 00:33:01.518 Luck had favored her that day, 00:33:01.836 --> 00:33:03.804 but with the Allied landing at Normandy, 00:33:04.110 --> 00:33:07.372 threats became more frequent and menacing.'' 00:33:07.885 --> 00:33:13.355 Rose Valland is the only really female of the Monuments Man 00:33:13.716 --> 00:33:16.774 and she was a French heroine, 00:33:17.021 --> 00:33:20.356 she worked, as you heard, in that [?] Museum, 00:33:21.929 --> 00:33:24.582 wasn't allowed to have the term, curator, 00:33:24.743 --> 00:33:26.910 yet she doesn't get that until later on in life. 00:33:27.445 --> 00:33:29.668 She secretly maintained, 00:33:30.072 --> 00:33:32.794 and if she had been caught her life was in danger, 00:33:33.077 --> 00:33:35.411 records of countless looted artworks 00:33:35.637 --> 00:33:38.129 so that they could be recovered after the war. 00:33:38.371 --> 00:33:41.798 It's really due to her bravery and these recordings, 00:33:41.943 --> 00:33:44.675 she spoke German although the Germans did not know that, 00:33:45.598 --> 00:33:48.472 that we recovered a lot of art work. 00:33:48.936 --> 00:33:52.992 That brings me to American woman in World War II, 00:33:54.045 --> 00:33:56.950 they were called upon in many previous ways 00:33:57.133 --> 00:33:59.022 that were only reserved for man. 00:33:59.448 --> 00:34:01.250 Over 6 million 00:34:01.750 --> 00:34:05.345 war time jobs in factories were held by woman. 00:34:05.746 --> 00:34:07.857 Right here in New Orleans, Louisiana, 00:34:08.116 --> 00:34:11.250 we had the Higgins Industries that made the Higgins boats. 00:34:11.371 --> 00:34:14.419 The boats used on D-day, were 92 percent of them 00:34:14.946 --> 00:34:16.288 built right here in New Orleans. 00:34:16.569 --> 00:34:19.513 Many of those boats were built by woman, 00:34:19.962 --> 00:34:23.130 women exhilarate branches of everything from the marine court 00:34:23.218 --> 00:34:26.363 to the navary were created and it really opened 00:34:26.617 --> 00:34:29.117 many doors for woman. Not only in 00:34:29.350 --> 00:34:31.353 jobs but also in the military. 00:34:31.710 --> 00:34:33.520 Woman all over the world, 00:34:33.743 --> 00:34:37.468 here in America, but also as you can see, from Rose Valland in France, 00:34:37.907 --> 00:34:41.971 played a huge role in World War II. 00:34:42.859 --> 00:34:44.716 Those, when I was reading the book, were the two things 00:34:45.003 --> 00:34:47.138 that really stuck out to me. 00:34:47.602 --> 00:34:49.427 I'm going to go ahead and bring, 00:34:49.746 --> 00:34:51.619 and I'm going to introduce her first, 00:34:51.826 --> 00:34:55.457 our assistant director for curatorial services on, 00:34:55.666 --> 00:35:00.825 her name is Kim, and she is going to talk to us a little bit about our 00:35:01.125 --> 00:35:04.625 Monuments collection. Kind of what it's like to be 00:35:05.358 --> 00:35:07.104 a museum curator 00:35:07.493 --> 00:35:09.906 and kind of how we care for these things 00:35:10.133 --> 00:35:12.927 and what we are going to do with our Monuments collection. 00:35:13.803 --> 00:35:15.740 The first picture that you are going to see on your screen, 00:35:15.836 --> 00:35:19.248 I'm going to let Kim take it over, tell us about what you are looking at. 00:35:19.595 --> 00:35:22.914 Sure, that's not me, I'll just say to start. 00:35:23.956 --> 00:35:27.926 That's my colleague, Tony Keiser, who is assistant director 00:35:28.499 --> 00:35:30.444 for collection management. 00:35:31.632 --> 00:35:36.895 In her role, she is standing in our newly renovated vault space. 00:35:37.565 --> 00:35:39.139 Similar to the salt mine, 00:35:40.586 --> 00:35:46.738 it is a space that's designed to house and preserve artefacts. 00:35:47.602 --> 00:35:49.602 In this photograph you can see 00:35:49.849 --> 00:35:54.478 part of our collection of uniforms, that's just a small part, 00:35:54.926 --> 00:35:56.474 a small portion 00:35:57.009 --> 00:35:59.707 of the number of objects 00:35:59.812 --> 00:36:01.439 that the museum houses. 00:36:02.163 --> 00:36:07.085 We have roughly 250 thousand objects in the collection, 00:36:07.607 --> 00:36:11.281 as well as around 150 thousand documents. 00:36:11.714 --> 00:36:16.309 We have a vast collection, we’ve expanded space recently, 00:36:17.354 --> 00:36:20.364 were we can care for and preserve the artefacts, 00:36:20.451 --> 00:36:22.150 so in that photo you see Tony, 00:36:22.536 --> 00:36:25.949 she is wearing purple gloves, that's to protect 00:36:26.237 --> 00:36:28.904 the artefacts from handling. 00:36:29.734 --> 00:36:33.448 I have those on as well right now, but 00:36:33.823 --> 00:36:36.786 Tony is looking at all of the jackets, 00:36:36.874 --> 00:36:39.668 that you'll notice they all have tags on them. 00:36:40.475 --> 00:36:43.737 Those tags contain their identifiers, 00:36:43.952 --> 00:36:46.079 so we call them excision numbers. 00:36:46.470 --> 00:36:49.287 Each object that comes into our collection 00:36:49.602 --> 00:36:51.293 it receives a number, 00:36:51.650 --> 00:36:55.289 that way it can be identified and tracked within our system. 00:36:56.173 --> 00:36:58.769 Kim actually has purple gloves on right now, 00:36:59.098 --> 00:37:02.821 because she brought with her a few of our artefacts 00:37:02.943 --> 00:37:05.871 from the Monuments collection. 00:37:06.270 --> 00:37:08.993 We are just going to have Kim grab her favorite one, 00:37:09.188 --> 00:37:12.450 whichever one she wants to talk about 00:37:13.001 --> 00:37:16.869 and I'm going to actually stop sharing my screen so we can zoom in 00:37:16.988 --> 00:37:17.837 and see it. 00:37:19.952 --> 00:37:21.063 -Whichever one. -I got a few. 00:37:21.208 --> 00:37:24.264 Let's just sit, don't put me on the spot, my favorite. 00:37:24.410 --> 00:37:25.489 No favorites here. 00:37:27.315 --> 00:37:29.418 We will start with the dog tags; 00:37:30.320 --> 00:37:31.844 I have an assistant here. 00:37:35.589 --> 00:37:37.985 All right, I'm going to zoom in so you can see it. 00:37:40.721 --> 00:37:43.524 Robert if you want to jump in at all 00:37:43.834 --> 00:37:45.929 and talk about this as well. 00:37:47.077 --> 00:37:51.721 This is a dog tag here, from Dale Forth, Monuments Man. 00:37:53.376 --> 00:37:58.164 All soldiers, and those in service, received these dog tags 00:37:58.333 --> 00:38:01.153 so they could be identified. It contains their names, 00:38:01.232 --> 00:38:02.407 its stamped with their names, 00:38:02.856 --> 00:38:05.538 it's an identification tag. 00:38:05.745 --> 00:38:07.094 Robert do you want to share 00:38:08.685 --> 00:38:09.550 -anything? -Well, Dale Forth, 00:38:09.686 --> 00:38:12.767 was one of the Monuments Man at the end of the war. 00:38:12.928 --> 00:38:17.208 Went into these salt mines and was responsible for identifying 00:38:17.695 --> 00:38:19.648 works of art that had been placed there 00:38:19.815 --> 00:38:23.141 for safe keeping from German museums. He stayed in Europe, 00:38:23.526 --> 00:38:26.843 stayed in Germany for almost two years helping evacuate 00:38:27.164 --> 00:38:29.690 these museum works out of the mines, 00:38:29.801 --> 00:38:32.444 to get them back into the German museums as they were rebuilt. 00:38:32.887 --> 00:38:34.173 He was just one of 00:38:35.378 --> 00:38:38.743 probably three dozen Monuments Man and Woman that 00:38:38.861 --> 00:38:42.712 we have known in the courses of our work over the last 20 years 00:38:42.797 --> 00:38:46.262 whose family has donated to the Monuments Man foundation 00:38:46.703 --> 00:38:49.226 their collection and personal artefacts. 00:38:49.353 --> 00:38:50.361 Sometimes they were 00:38:50.577 --> 00:38:53.934 original drawings, like those you've seen of Deane Keller, 00:38:54.035 --> 00:38:55.884 sometimes they were dog tags, 00:38:56.620 --> 00:38:59.642 personal journals and you'll see some other examples of those things, 00:38:59.730 --> 00:39:00.833 some of their medals. 00:39:01.365 --> 00:39:05.059 That collection now resides at the National World War II Museum 00:39:05.204 --> 00:39:07.577 alongside so many of their other 00:39:08.401 --> 00:39:10.544 compatriots' collections. 00:39:10.981 --> 00:39:13.242 It's the greatest collection in the world, 00:39:13.555 --> 00:39:15.413 not only on World War II but certainly on 00:39:15.524 --> 00:39:18.280 the Monuments Man and their greatest achievements during the war. 00:39:18.967 --> 00:39:21.808 Speaking of one of those journals, Kim has in her hand, 00:39:21.864 --> 00:39:24.341 I'm going to zoom back in again, one of them. 00:39:25.759 --> 00:39:29.912 Robert I know you have a story that you shared about this particular piece. 00:39:30.017 --> 00:39:32.669 -This is a journal. -Turn that thing sideways, 00:39:33.359 --> 00:39:34.827 were we can see the spine of it, 00:39:35.754 --> 00:39:38.659 everyone can probably see that there's a little bit of a curve there. 00:39:38.948 --> 00:39:41.806 This is a mole skin notebook; 00:39:41.927 --> 00:39:44.236 you can go out to the store and buy them today 00:39:44.649 --> 00:39:46.506 just like you could 70 years ago. 00:39:46.820 --> 00:39:49.148 Walker Hancock who was, as I mentioned earlier, 00:39:49.236 --> 00:39:51.109 one of the great sculptors in our country, 00:39:51.429 --> 00:39:54.613 carried that with him and made notes everyday about 00:39:54.981 --> 00:39:56.171 thing that he saw. 00:39:56.386 --> 00:39:57.925 He carried it 00:39:58.310 --> 00:40:02.119 in the pocket, in one of his light pockets, and you can see 00:40:02.425 --> 00:40:05.028 where the mole skins bent 00:40:05.212 --> 00:40:08.029 where shapes over the cuadricep of his leg. 00:40:08.574 --> 00:40:10.321 These are the fascinating elements of 00:40:10.656 --> 00:40:11.919 having these documents, 00:40:12.023 --> 00:40:14.356 you can actually see how they lived with them every day. 00:40:14.867 --> 00:40:18.813 The page which she's got open, is showing you a diagram 00:40:19.141 --> 00:40:22.157 which he made of one of the salt mines that he entered 00:40:22.470 --> 00:40:23.597 that contained 00:40:24.374 --> 00:40:28.275 about 200 hugely important paintings and other works of art. 00:40:29.039 --> 00:40:32.428 The great shock was, there were also 00:40:32.885 --> 00:40:34.298 four coffins 00:40:34.536 --> 00:40:37.721 inside this mine and when they first discovered it, 00:40:37.866 --> 00:40:41.462 they were convinced that one of the coffins belonged to Adolf Hitler. 00:40:41.855 --> 00:40:43.585 It turned out to be wrong, 00:40:44.366 --> 00:40:48.391 they were the past German leaders whose bodies had been exhumed 00:40:48.514 --> 00:40:49.696 from where theyve been buried 00:40:50.032 --> 00:40:52.921 and placed inside this mine like a shrine 00:40:53.258 --> 00:40:55.678 and they were convinced that 00:40:55.966 --> 00:40:59.037 this was an effort on the part of the Nazi regime to 00:40:59.336 --> 00:41:01.018 preserve these figures 00:41:01.344 --> 00:41:03.004 and have a day that perhaps 00:41:03.084 --> 00:41:04.925 they survived the war they would retreat them. 00:41:07.383 --> 00:41:10.996 The last two artefacts that we are going to look at today 00:41:11.100 --> 00:41:13.941 are actually medals from one of the Monuments Men 00:41:14.223 --> 00:41:17.120 that we talked about. Of the Monuments Men there were two killed 00:41:17.426 --> 00:41:20.069 and one of them had the nick name Hutch, I believe. 00:41:20.508 --> 00:41:22.738 Kim, I'll zoom in again, 00:41:23.407 --> 00:41:24.502 we have a Purple Heart 00:41:24.949 --> 00:41:28.957 and a Bronze Star with us, we'll start with the Purple Heart. 00:41:29.406 --> 00:41:32.235 Sure. These objects here, 00:41:37.129 --> 00:41:38.385 they're examples of 00:41:39.514 --> 00:41:42.157 the risk that the Monuments Men 00:41:42.558 --> 00:41:46.241 undertook. They were serving in Europe 00:41:46.990 --> 00:41:50.086 when victory wasn't yet secure. 00:41:50.592 --> 00:41:54.092 It was still quite dangerous to 00:41:54.690 --> 00:41:56.150 be in some of the areas. 00:41:57.201 --> 00:41:58.796 These are the medals 00:42:00.520 --> 00:42:02.258 of Hutch, Walter Hutchausen. 00:42:02.620 --> 00:42:05.961 This is a Purple Heart, Purple Hearts were 00:42:06.355 --> 00:42:10.577 awarded to those who were wounded in action. 00:42:11.129 --> 00:42:13.042 Sometimes 00:42:14.281 --> 00:42:17.503 Purple Hearts were also given to those who were killed in action, 00:42:17.699 --> 00:42:19.794 the families of those who were killed in action. 00:42:24.305 --> 00:42:25.374 We have two medals, 00:42:25.493 --> 00:42:29.890 the Monuments Men collection contains two medals from Hutch, 00:42:30.349 --> 00:42:31.761 who you met earlier, 00:42:32.111 --> 00:42:34.531 and this is the Bronze Star. 00:42:36.154 --> 00:42:39.139 That's for heroic action 00:42:39.504 --> 00:42:40.481 during the war, 00:42:40.850 --> 00:42:43.263 -we can see-- -Hutchausen actually received 00:42:43.529 --> 00:42:47.386 two Purple Hearts because when he arrived in England, 00:42:47.961 --> 00:42:51.937 in May - June of 1944, 00:42:52.145 --> 00:42:55.989 shortly before the landings in France, 00:42:56.540 --> 00:43:00.032 he was severely injured 00:43:00.402 --> 00:43:03.878 by German bombs of the German bombing of London 00:43:04.399 --> 00:43:07.741 he had to go to a hospital and that's one of the reasons 00:43:08.006 --> 00:43:11.643 which I describe in my book that he didn't end up in service 00:43:11.739 --> 00:43:14.732 as a Monuments Officer until December 1944, 00:43:14.827 --> 00:43:16.518 because he was recovering from 00:43:16.776 --> 00:43:18.807 his serious of wounds from the bombing 00:43:20.276 --> 00:43:23.211 in London, he received a Purple Heart then. 00:43:24.589 --> 00:43:28.160 In April 1945, 00:43:28.279 --> 00:43:30.501 just a month before the war was over, 00:43:30.912 --> 00:43:33.729 none of the soldiers wanted to be killed, 00:43:34.056 --> 00:43:36.844 everybody was trying to avoid being that last casualty, 00:43:36.934 --> 00:43:38.982 they knew the war was going to end soon, 00:43:39.341 --> 00:43:43.031 everyone was looking forward just to getting back to their families. 00:43:43.456 --> 00:43:46.465 There was a report of Lieutenant Arthur Hutchhausen and another of 00:43:46.609 --> 00:43:48.275 the Monuments Officer Sheldon Keck 00:43:48.756 --> 00:43:51.900 went to check on and they found themselves behind enemy lines 00:43:52.030 --> 00:43:53.554 in the German machine gunner 00:43:53.912 --> 00:43:56.619 and the Nazis fired at their vehicle, 00:43:56.747 --> 00:43:59.144 Keck survived and Hutchausen was killed, 00:44:00.886 --> 00:44:03.944 it was one of the great losses to the Monuments Men to have 00:44:04.105 --> 00:44:08.480 two of their small group killed within a 30-day period. 00:44:08.657 --> 00:44:10.577 It's really a miracle, more were killed, 00:44:10.994 --> 00:44:14.812 Dean Keller in Italy was constantly going through booby trapped buildings, 00:44:15.205 --> 00:44:17.356 that the Nazis had not only destroyed 00:44:17.644 --> 00:44:20.890 cultural objects and destroyed buildings, but had left behind 00:44:21.701 --> 00:44:25.180 piano wires with bombs attached to them, they knew 00:44:25.653 --> 00:44:27.860 citizens would come and open doors, 00:44:27.947 --> 00:44:30.209 sometimes it happened with the kids, they would 00:44:30.991 --> 00:44:32.523 have musical instruments 00:44:32.611 --> 00:44:35.159 and they knew it would be an attraction to the soldier 00:44:35.351 --> 00:44:38.631 walking by and they would put a hand grenade underneath. 00:44:39.522 --> 00:44:43.879 There are difficult stories to read about but they're part of the war. 00:44:46.108 --> 00:44:49.429 To make sure that the Monuments Men are never forgotten 00:44:49.517 --> 00:44:52.033 and that their story is not forgotten, 00:44:52.343 --> 00:44:54.970 the National World War II Museum 00:44:55.273 --> 00:45:00.259 in our Liberation Pavilion will be housing this entire 00:45:01.558 --> 00:45:05.439 collection and showing it. Before we move to questions, 00:45:05.736 --> 00:45:08.609 are going to let Kim quickly talk about what 00:45:08.955 --> 00:45:12.805 that collection is going to look like in our Liberation Pavilion. 00:45:13.253 --> 00:45:16.382 Sure, and Robert, Jonathan here if you would like as well. 00:45:17.370 --> 00:45:22.421 In our Liberation Pavilion which is slated to open in 2021, 00:45:22.566 --> 00:45:26.455 we have a couple years still to work on it, we are already beginning 00:45:27.022 --> 00:45:32.675 to design this building and the exhibits inside the building. 00:45:33.195 --> 00:45:34.528 Also to talk about 00:45:34.832 --> 00:45:38.213 the objects that will be placed in the building and the stories. 00:45:38.598 --> 00:45:42.766 The Monuments Men story will be told in the Liberation Pavilion, which 00:45:43.095 --> 00:45:47.715 Liberation Pavilion mainly tells the story of the end of the war and 00:45:48.448 --> 00:45:52.045 the after effects of World War II. The Monuments Men story, 00:45:52.614 --> 00:45:54.447 certainly Robert talked about how 00:45:54.846 --> 00:45:56.894 some of the Monuments Men-- 00:45:58.452 --> 00:46:00.015 It's still and ongoing story, 00:46:00.573 --> 00:46:03.629 it's going on today but certainly in the years after the war, 00:46:04.067 --> 00:46:07.165 there were a lot of mysteries and a lot of puzzles 00:46:07.262 --> 00:46:08.913 still to be figured out. 00:46:10.631 --> 00:46:13.282 Those stories will all be told in this gallery. 00:46:13.528 --> 00:46:15.691 It's very environmental, 00:46:15.866 --> 00:46:18.447 you can see the slide that you're seeing now 00:46:19.552 --> 00:46:21.640 replicates a salt mine, 00:46:22.557 --> 00:46:24.763 you will see some of the artworks, 00:46:24.906 --> 00:46:27.497 it looks like you're coming on to the scene, 00:46:27.759 --> 00:46:30.513 similar to what some of the Monuments Men discovered, 00:46:30.939 --> 00:46:34.249 the treasures in place as they were 00:46:35.537 --> 00:46:37.378 hidden by the Nazis. 00:46:38.494 --> 00:46:39.312 -Thank you, Kim-- -This is-- 00:46:39.471 --> 00:46:42.820 The whole idea is, we recreate in a salt mine and 00:46:43.063 --> 00:46:46.739 try to have the visitors, you come to the museum, 00:46:47.051 --> 00:46:50.848 walk through and get a sense of the excitement, acceleration 00:46:50.946 --> 00:46:53.081 and care that the Monuments officers felt 00:46:53.487 --> 00:46:54.955 going to these dark spaces 00:46:55.051 --> 00:46:56.928 not knowing whether they were booby trapped, 00:46:57.056 --> 00:46:59.032 whether the works of art they would find 00:46:59.455 --> 00:47:02.971 were just fragments because they had been destroyed by the Nazis 00:47:03.054 --> 00:47:05.530 or whether they were in fact intact. 00:47:06.009 --> 00:47:10.133 It's an exciting way to secure the story, it's going to have a lot of 00:47:10.266 --> 00:47:13.351 the personal interviews that I've conducted with Monuments Men 00:47:13.470 --> 00:47:15.589 over the course of time and Monuments Women 00:47:15.972 --> 00:47:18.028 and we are really excited about it. 00:47:19.825 --> 00:47:21.755 Agreed. Stay tuned for that 00:47:22.655 --> 00:47:25.488 coming soon in the next couple of years here at the museum. 00:47:26.031 --> 00:47:29.937 Thank you Kim for joining us, it's always nice to have a curator to give 00:47:31.462 --> 00:47:34.942 their take on things. We are now going to turn it over to questions 00:47:35.045 --> 00:47:37.760 so teachers, if your students have questions 00:47:37.993 --> 00:47:39.073 or anyone watching, 00:47:39.362 --> 00:47:40.950 if you look to that Q and A, 00:47:41.038 --> 00:47:43.006 we already have a couple here that have come in, 00:47:43.309 --> 00:47:44.994 go ahead and type them in. 00:47:45.138 --> 00:47:48.709 Also, if you would like to put your name or the student's name, 00:47:49.356 --> 00:47:50.761 feel free to do that as well. 00:47:51.612 --> 00:47:54.351 Robert, we are going to start with our first question 00:47:54.735 --> 00:47:57.140 and it's from Anne. She's wondering, 00:47:57.569 --> 00:48:02.073 how much missing artwork still exists today? 00:48:03.450 --> 00:48:06.942 Hundreds of thousands of works of art that are missing from World War II, 00:48:08.201 --> 00:48:09.828 practically every week 00:48:09.988 --> 00:48:11.951 something surfaces somewhere in the world, 00:48:12.079 --> 00:48:13.769 the Monuments Men Foundation 00:48:14.209 --> 00:48:17.193 has found in return more than 30 objects 00:48:17.442 --> 00:48:20.315 over the last 15 years. 00:48:20.796 --> 00:48:25.804 The Foundation which I created in 2007 00:48:26.061 --> 00:48:29.299 works with a lot of soldiers' families that brought things back 00:48:29.376 --> 00:48:32.098 without understanding their cultural importance, 00:48:32.356 --> 00:48:33.965 they weren't supposed to be brought back 00:48:34.108 --> 00:48:37.172 but we identified who the rightful owners are and returned them. 00:48:37.656 --> 00:48:39.996 There are works of art all over the world, 00:48:40.195 --> 00:48:44.282 wherever soldiers or displaced persons from these countries lived, 00:48:45.256 --> 00:48:46.494 sometimes they were looted, 00:48:46.621 --> 00:48:48.844 sometimes they were taken as souvenirs, 00:48:51.438 --> 00:48:55.255 but it's kind of an unwritten chapter of this remarkable portion of 00:48:55.331 --> 00:48:57.339 World War II, the final chapter 00:48:57.684 --> 00:49:01.026 to track down these missing works of art and getting them back where they belong. 00:49:02.714 --> 00:49:05.072 If you go right to the Monuments Men website, 00:49:05.168 --> 00:49:06.731 can you see any of those 00:49:07.043 --> 00:49:09.487 works of art that they were still looking for? 00:49:10.291 --> 00:49:12.484 If you visit the Monuments Men Foundation website, 00:49:12.627 --> 00:49:14.588 www.monumentsmenfoundation.org, 00:49:15.004 --> 00:49:18.393 we have photographs of works of art that we found and returned, 00:49:18.731 --> 00:49:22.691 some of the return ceremonies which have been quite celebratory, 00:49:23.448 --> 00:49:26.228 we have works of art that are on our most wanted list 00:49:26.343 --> 00:49:30.295 that we continue to look for and they're hugely important artists, 00:49:30.533 --> 00:49:33.854 Vincent Van Gogh, Rembrandt and others. 00:49:35.160 --> 00:49:37.391 We have announcements from time to time about 00:49:37.566 --> 00:49:39.185 the works of art that we found 00:49:39.590 --> 00:49:40.963 and that are on their way back home. 00:49:41.931 --> 00:49:42.622 Awesome. 00:49:42.796 --> 00:49:46.981 I'm going to move away from World War II history for a second. 00:49:47.158 --> 00:49:50.515 I have a question from Michael from Caribum Middle School. 00:49:50.765 --> 00:49:55.972 This was, at what age did you start writing, and what inspired you? 00:49:57.898 --> 00:49:58.700 My writing-- 00:49:59.319 --> 00:50:02.926 The first book was published in 2006, 00:50:03.085 --> 00:50:06.236 Rescuing Da Vinci, which is a more photographic telling of the story. 00:50:06.892 --> 00:50:08.863 At the time, I was 00:50:11.910 --> 00:50:15.509 40 years old, I had been writing since I was young 00:50:15.607 --> 00:50:17.680 but not with ambitions of writing a book. 00:50:17.802 --> 00:50:19.707 I will tell you a funny story, when I was 00:50:19.969 --> 00:50:22.985 nine or ten, my younger brother and I went into 00:50:23.379 --> 00:50:25.824 the dining room of our house and we had this big 00:50:27.064 --> 00:50:29.803 box of pencils and my mother and father came in and said, 00:50:29.898 --> 00:50:32.152 ''What are you all doing?'' And we said, ''We are going to write a book,'' 00:50:32.786 --> 00:50:34.562 and they said, ''What are you going to write about?'' 00:50:34.716 --> 00:50:37.163 We looked at each other and sat there for about 15 minutes 00:50:37.259 --> 00:50:38.862 and realized we didn't have a clue 00:50:39.110 --> 00:50:40.293 what we were going to write about. 00:50:40.767 --> 00:50:42.879 But I guess my interest about writing 00:50:43.146 --> 00:50:46.336 did have some origins back to those early days 00:50:47.394 --> 00:50:50.499 in the 1990s I was living in Florence, 00:50:50.620 --> 00:50:52.049 and I wondered, 00:50:52.328 --> 00:50:55.315 purely out of curiosity, how so many works of art 00:50:55.403 --> 00:50:57.561 survived the most destructive war in history 00:50:57.905 --> 00:50:59.746 and who were the people that saved them. 00:51:00.084 --> 00:51:03.237 It was a question that seemed like it would have an easy answer 00:51:03.307 --> 00:51:06.240 but there wasn't an easy answer and the more I dug into it, 00:51:06.344 --> 00:51:07.463 the more fascinated 00:51:08.076 --> 00:51:10.409 I was and that curiosity 00:51:10.674 --> 00:51:14.176 took me on this journey that's now been under way for 20 years 00:51:14.255 --> 00:51:15.628 and has led me to meet 00:51:15.958 --> 00:51:18.673 20 different Monuments Man and Woman, three woman, 00:51:19.359 --> 00:51:20.382 17 man. 00:51:20.692 --> 00:51:24.281 Interviewed them, their family members, traveled to these museums 00:51:24.466 --> 00:51:25.665 and salt mines and 00:51:25.990 --> 00:51:27.442 write these four books, 00:51:28.232 --> 00:51:31.884 motivated by sharing what I think is one of the most exciting stories 00:51:31.998 --> 00:51:34.554 you'll ever hear and one of the most uplifting 00:51:34.797 --> 00:51:38.122 and noble stories about what difference 00:51:38.363 --> 00:51:39.601 one person can make. 00:51:41.040 --> 00:51:43.875 Awesome, and seeing Anthony's school. 00:51:43.947 --> 00:51:46.614 Going back to World War II and the pieces of art, 00:51:46.902 --> 00:51:47.759 want to know 00:51:47.910 --> 00:51:51.564 what is the most expensive piece of art that was recovered? 00:51:53.793 --> 00:51:54.571 Well, 00:51:55.555 --> 00:51:59.567 you saw the photograph, of the [?] altarpiece which George Stout was 00:51:59.634 --> 00:52:02.794 struggling to figure out how to put it back into a crate. 00:52:03.400 --> 00:52:05.582 While George Stout had the idea of 00:52:05.765 --> 00:52:08.609 creating these cultural preservation officers 00:52:09.152 --> 00:52:12.350 and envisioned that there was going to be some amount of looting. 00:52:12.720 --> 00:52:16.862 No one, even him, imagined that there would be looting 00:52:16.994 --> 00:52:20.161 to this extent and that such usually important paintings. 00:52:20.664 --> 00:52:23.164 I'm sure he was sitting there thinking, 00:52:23.494 --> 00:52:24.906 this very experienced 00:52:25.343 --> 00:52:28.796 conservator of works of art, inside this 00:52:29.053 --> 00:52:30.902 freezing cold salt mine, 00:52:31.389 --> 00:52:34.240 what the heck do you do when you have a painting 00:52:34.401 --> 00:52:37.210 that was painted in 1432 by 00:52:37.418 --> 00:52:39.990 a painter that was as important has Leonardo, 00:52:40.439 --> 00:52:41.670 Jan Van Eyck, 00:52:42.042 --> 00:52:45.784 how do you began to crate that thing up and get it out safely? 00:52:46.197 --> 00:52:49.034 What do you do in those kinds of conditions? 00:52:50.743 --> 00:52:54.544 The text book was being written as they were doing the work 00:52:54.988 --> 00:52:56.138 and that painting, 00:52:56.472 --> 00:52:58.687 if it could ever come onto the market, 00:52:58.799 --> 00:53:01.482 it would be a billion-dollar painting, perhaps more. 00:53:01.762 --> 00:53:05.231 I mean, these works of art we are talking about are so 00:53:05.679 --> 00:53:07.616 rare and so important 00:53:07.953 --> 00:53:11.413 that with the number of billionaires there are in the world today, 00:53:11.735 --> 00:53:15.887 there would be a conquest to trophy for anyone to have them. 00:53:16.054 --> 00:53:17.784 Because no one else in the world could have it. 00:53:19.352 --> 00:53:20.074 Awesome, 00:53:20.225 --> 00:53:23.917 we actually have two people ask this question. Molly asks, 00:53:24.287 --> 00:53:27.556 did Japan loot art and were there Monuments Man 00:53:27.846 --> 00:53:29.552 in the Pacific theater? 00:53:30.268 --> 00:53:31.514 Molly, great question. 00:53:32.133 --> 00:53:34.558 There were Monuments officers in the Pacific theater, 00:53:34.630 --> 00:53:35.749 the Japanese did 00:53:36.504 --> 00:53:39.615 loot along with all the other horrible things they did. 00:53:40.873 --> 00:53:42.389 The monuments officer's 00:53:42.812 --> 00:53:46.402 success in Europe was that they were on the ground 00:53:47.360 --> 00:53:50.573 doing work while the battle was ongoing and 00:53:51.330 --> 00:53:54.387 as territory was being lootherated, they were into these areas 00:53:54.548 --> 00:53:57.669 to affect temporary repairs and then began 00:53:58.051 --> 00:54:00.338 the treasure hunt to try to find what was stolen. 00:54:00.667 --> 00:54:03.714 As you probably know, in Japan, we did not have 00:54:04.107 --> 00:54:05.749 soldiers on the ground 00:54:06.140 --> 00:54:08.997 on the main island of Japan until 00:54:09.397 --> 00:54:12.436 after the second atomic bomb was dropped. 00:54:13.099 --> 00:54:16.409 The war had come to an end then, the effort to try 00:54:16.747 --> 00:54:19.993 and protect cultural treasures from damage of war was 00:54:20.210 --> 00:54:21.226 a moot point. 00:54:22.772 --> 00:54:25.491 There were only about a dozen or so of them, 00:54:25.781 --> 00:54:28.170 more than half were British because 00:54:28.512 --> 00:54:32.307 of these areas of Malaysia and South East Asia that had been 00:54:32.463 --> 00:54:34.058 British territorial posetions. 00:54:34.137 --> 00:54:36.812 Many of the British had more familiarity with the areas, 00:54:37.207 --> 00:54:39.453 but there were a number of important Monuments Man 00:54:40.018 --> 00:54:41.835 in Japan, in Tokyo. 00:54:42.208 --> 00:54:44.403 None more important than George Stout, 00:54:45.030 --> 00:54:47.229 Stout not only came with the idea 00:54:47.516 --> 00:54:50.104 and went to war in Europe, but after 00:54:50.433 --> 00:54:53.969 the main discoveries were made, he was pretty fed up and tired, 00:54:54.072 --> 00:54:56.937 he had taken one day of vacation in two years, 00:54:57.378 --> 00:54:59.608 one day of vacation in two years. 00:55:00.377 --> 00:55:02.037 He wanted to go back to Stanley, 00:55:02.470 --> 00:55:05.859 but he wasn't home more than a month before he decided, 00:55:06.421 --> 00:55:09.490 ''We need to have an operation like this in Japan,'' and 00:55:09.716 --> 00:55:11.820 he knew the most about it so off to Japan 00:55:11.901 --> 00:55:14.735 he went and he helped to get the office set up in Tokyo. 00:55:15.977 --> 00:55:16.858 Awesome. 00:55:17.746 --> 00:55:19.995 We have time for about one more question. 00:55:20.265 --> 00:55:22.418 Artie wanted to know, we talked a lot about 00:55:22.722 --> 00:55:25.436 the works that had been recovered or still missing, 00:55:25.750 --> 00:55:27.758 but what are some of the famous pieces 00:55:28.054 --> 00:55:30.896 that were destroyed or damashed that we know of? 00:55:31.581 --> 00:55:32.811 Another great question. 00:55:33.543 --> 00:55:37.226 There probably, the greatest loss in the history of art, 00:55:37.515 --> 00:55:38.999 took place in Berlin, 00:55:39.407 --> 00:55:42.812 in the days after the war was over, sadly, 00:55:42.884 --> 00:55:44.614 that makes it even more of a tragedy, 00:55:45.015 --> 00:55:47.761 the Soviet Red Army was in control of Berlin. 00:55:48.129 --> 00:55:49.240 There was 00:55:50.997 --> 00:55:52.227 a hugely 00:55:53.675 --> 00:55:55.714 significant flat tower, 00:55:55.812 --> 00:55:59.893 this concrete bunker that was about 12 stories high with walls 00:56:00.023 --> 00:56:02.554 that were about nine-foot-thick of concrete. 00:56:02.915 --> 00:56:05.661 You could park a tank in front of the wall and fire at it 00:56:05.799 --> 00:56:07.760 and the tank round would bounce off the wall. 00:56:08.199 --> 00:56:09.619 Inside these 00:56:10.254 --> 00:56:13.096 buildings which could house 30 thousand people, 00:56:14.227 --> 00:56:16.721 the German museum directors had placed 00:56:16.929 --> 00:56:20.127 some of the most important works of art from the museums in Berlin 00:56:20.195 --> 00:56:22.348 that were too large to put on trucks 00:56:22.690 --> 00:56:25.460 and take to hide in the salt mines. 00:56:26.209 --> 00:56:29.138 In the days after the war ended, 00:56:30.037 --> 00:56:32.507 there were people wondering the streets 00:56:32.747 --> 00:56:36.953 trying to avoid being killed, looking for food, trying to stay warm 00:56:37.341 --> 00:56:39.285 and the Soviet Red Army forces 00:56:39.429 --> 00:56:42.042 were aware that these works of art were inside 00:56:42.121 --> 00:56:45.043 one of these flat towers and they were supposed to be safe guarding it, 00:56:45.428 --> 00:56:48.245 but they really weren't paying attention and a fire started. 00:56:48.567 --> 00:56:51.376 No one knows for certain whether it was a deliberate fire 00:56:51.458 --> 00:56:52.530 to cover up the theft, 00:56:52.974 --> 00:56:56.417 whether it was an accident, someone just trying to stay warm and 00:56:56.721 --> 00:56:58.459 dropped a match on the ground, 00:56:58.831 --> 00:57:05.209 but some 450 paintings by painters like Caravallio, Rubens, [?] 00:57:05.959 --> 00:57:06.990 Botticelli. 00:57:07.407 --> 00:57:09.621 The most important painters in the world 00:57:09.980 --> 00:57:11.789 went up in flames, 00:57:11.949 --> 00:57:15.552 we know that contrary to the thoughts for some 60 years, 00:57:15.749 --> 00:57:18.899 a few of the paintings survived, but they were the smaller pictures 00:57:19.004 --> 00:57:21.695 that someone could carry or hide under their jacket 00:57:22.047 --> 00:57:24.771 and walk out with. But these pictures I'm speaking of, 00:57:25.130 --> 00:57:28.695 were paintings that were large format pictures 00:57:29.221 --> 00:57:33.000 about the size of that painting you saw Deane Keller standing next to. 00:57:34.719 --> 00:57:40.658 They were just incinerated in this extremely devastating fire. 00:57:42.332 --> 00:57:43.998 Thank you so much Robert 00:57:44.213 --> 00:57:47.834 for sharing your book and sharing your knowledge of the Monuments Man. 00:57:48.179 --> 00:57:50.299 Again, I'm going to share my screen, 00:57:50.508 --> 00:57:53.364 if you don't have the book already, 00:57:53.677 --> 00:57:56.748 you can go to our museum store. 00:57:57.068 --> 00:57:59.291 You just go to our website and click the store button 00:57:59.549 --> 00:58:02.247 and you type in, ''The greatest treasure hunt in history,'' 00:58:02.384 --> 00:58:05.234 or ''Robert Edsel.'' You will see his book pop up 00:58:05.539 --> 00:58:08.706 and at check out if you use the code, ''Webinar'' 00:58:09.009 --> 00:58:12.472 then you will receive a 20 percent discount. 00:58:12.856 --> 00:58:16.443 We just want to thank you all for taking your time on a Tuesday 00:58:16.532 --> 00:58:17.800 to spend with 00:58:17.923 --> 00:58:22.458 the National World War II Museum and Distance Learning Studio 00:58:22.580 --> 00:58:24.970 and Robert, I'll leave the last word to you, 00:58:25.313 --> 00:58:26.368 thank you again. 00:58:28.349 --> 00:58:30.340 Thanks to everybody for being with us, 00:58:30.463 --> 00:58:33.891 it's a great story, I hope you enjoy it and realize that 00:58:34.212 --> 00:58:36.880 all of these works of art belong to everybody 00:58:36.968 --> 00:58:38.604 and they haven't survived by accident. 00:58:38.709 --> 00:58:40.708 People that came before us wanted to make sure 00:58:40.844 --> 00:58:42.336 that we had a chance to see them 00:58:42.735 --> 00:58:45.179 and the responsibility for protecting them 00:58:45.518 --> 00:58:48.375 for your generation and future generations 00:58:48.512 --> 00:58:51.396 will someday soon rest in your hands. 00:58:51.626 --> 00:58:55.443 I hope you enjoy this story and I hope you'll be inspired 00:58:55.631 --> 00:58:59.100 by the actions of these remarkable brave man and woman 00:58:59.405 --> 00:59:02.580 who did this great thing that benefits all of us today. 00:59:03.742 --> 00:59:04.434 All right. 00:59:04.663 --> 00:59:08.053 Thanks guys and have a great day. We hope you read the book.