The Rape of Europa

by Lynn H. Nicholas

  Desperate, the curators now even considered sending someone to be captured by the Americans, but in the end limited themselves to enlisting the aid of the salt workers, who had long suspected that something was afoot. Their cooperation was not entirely altruistic. The miners were very anxious that their sole source of livelihood not be made unworkable. Soon the conspirators had also subverted the head of Eigruber’s guard.

  Von Hummel, meanwhile, produced a useless letter which stated that the Führer had “last week” again decided that the works of art should be kept from the enemy but not be destroyed.71 He had to write “last week” because Hitler had in the meantime committed suicide. Who was now the ultimate authority? Bormann had disappeared and the telephone lines to Berlin had ceased to work on April 27. Eigruber’s opponents turned to the highest Party authority still available—SS Intelligence Chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who was well known in Alt Aussee, where he kept a mistress.

  Kaltenbrunner authorized the immediate removal of the bombs and promised to so inform Eigruber. At 7:30 p.m. on May 3 the operation began. It seemed to take forever. Moving anything in the mines was difficult, and the five-hundred-pound bombs had to be hoisted onto the tiny shaft trains and be moved miles to the entrances. But by the time Eigruber had heard of the operation they were out, and he could only demand that they be kept “for future use.” They were duly hidden in a pile of brush. On May 5 the mine entrances were blasted shut. Inside, the scattered masterpieces rested safely in the darkness.

  The major Vienna museums had also put their things in mines, not at Alt Aussee, but just down the road in the Lauffen mine at Ischl. The facilities at Alt Aussee were far better, but upon reflection the Viennese, well aware of the eventual arrival of the Allies, preferred not to mix their collections with those of Hitler.72 To this repository came the most precious things from the Kunsthistorisches and the Albertina. Lauffen was put in the charge of Dr. Victor Luithlen, who after April 8, when the Russians were just outside Vienna, had no further contact with his home office. He feared that his mine too would soon come to Eigruber’s attention and quickly ordered sealing operations to begin.

  Before these could be completed, Hermann Stuppack, cultural assistant to Baldur von Schirach, the Nazi governor of Vienna, appeared saying that his chief wished to remove the Viennese masterpieces in order to protect them from Eigruber and scatter them around the Tirol, one impossible site suggested being an island in the middle of the Bodensee. The curators protested. This was of no avail and packing up began once again. It was extremely slow packing, the hope being that the Americans would arrive before the trucks were loaded. Four days after his first visit, Stuppack returned to find that little had been done. Fed up, he sent six officers and twenty men from the task force of a Major Fabian of the elite Grossdeutschland Regiment, which was assigned to protect von Schirach, to Lauffen with orders to load the Viennese pictures on their trucks whether they were packed or not. The next day, at news of Hitler’s death and von Schirach’s subsequent flight, Stuppack ordered the operation cancelled; but Major Fabian had other ideas, and at gunpoint ordered the packing to continue. On May 3 the convoy moved off onto roads under constant Allied bombardment, destination unknown. Dr. Luithlen had had good reason to try to stop the shipment. Included in the 184 paintings taken were all the great Breugels, 5 Rembrandts, 7 Velázquezes, 9 Titians, and 2 Dürers, plus 49 tapestries from the renowned collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.73

  In January 1945 Goering too decided to send his family and his collections away from Carinhall, which was now uncomfortably close to the Red Army. For some time he had been putting things in his own bunkers at Carinhall proper and at Kurfuerst, near Potsdam; but Carinhall was still full to the ceilings. He would not leave his beloved house to the Russians. In preparation for his flight it was mined, and items too heavy to be moved were buried in the grounds, along with a quantity of wine and silver. With Hofer, Goering toured his collections, picking out what should go. The Reichsmarschall did not at first wish to include any of the incriminating objects obtained from the ERR, but after a long argument, Hofer persuaded him to send them.74

  Several large buses were hastily requisitioned to take the works from the enormous lodge to two of Goering’s special trains, beefed up with eleven extra boxcars, which were waiting at the Forst Zinna station near Jüterbog. Hofer brought more truckloads.

  At one point all had to be rearranged for Frau Goering, who complained that she had not been given enough room for her personal baggage, somewhat inflated by the presence within it of a number of very valuable small paintings, Goering favorites, which he thought would provide his wife with a little nest egg in case of emergency. There were two Memling Madonnas—one from the Rothschilds and the other bought from Renders in Holland—another by van der Weyden from the same collection, the four small Memling angels from Goudstikker, and Goering’s prized “Vermeer,” Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery.75 Of this impressive-sounding lot, only two, the Rothschild picture and the van der Weyden, were of unquestioned attribution.

  Goering’s favorite Vermeer, Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery—alas, a fake

  Carinhall was blown up and the first two trains went off to Goering’s Schloss Veldenstein, near Nuremberg. Another shipment followed, but by early April this area too was under fire, and the best things were repacked and sent to Berchtesgaden on April 10. When they arrived, SS policeman Franz Brandenburg, a member of the personal bodyguard of Frau Goering, noticed that another of Goering’s special trains, the “Flitzer,” was already there with the last shipment from Berlin. For safety, the cars were parked in the station tunnels of both Unterstein, just up the line, and Berchtesgaden, where Hofer, lodged in one of them, awaited Goering.

  The Reichsmarschall, having attended Hitler’s last birthday in the depths of his Berlin bunker, arrived on April 21 and began to decide where everything should be stored. But affairs of state intervened. On April 23, Goering, who had been convinced by confused messages from Berlin that Hitler could no longer govern, cabled the Führer to say that unless he heard otherwise, he would assume the “total leadership of the Reich.” He heard otherwise. Hitler cabled back accusing him of treason and demanded that he resign all his offices. Bormann ordered Goering arrested by the SS.76 He was held in his house at Berchtesgaden, and, after this was bombed, taken to his family castle of Mauterndorf.

  Meanwhile, Hofer continued unloading the trains. A number of cases were stuffed into a dampish room in an air-raid bunker just outside Berchtesgaden, and covered for protection with tapestries. The room was sealed with a foot-thick wall of cement, which was covered with timbers made to look as if they were ceiling supports.77 Far more remained in the trains. Brandenburg was amazed, when he arrived at Unterstein, to see men, women, and children carrying off rugs and tapestries. Food and other objects littered the station. Another policeman later testified that he had “observed innumerable persons moving antlike, from all directions toward Unterstein station…. The whole population seemed to be on their legs fighting to get into the cars, carrying heavy loads, sawing up big carpets, beating and scratching each other in their greed to capture a part of Goering’s heritage.”78 Armed railroad guards were doing nothing to prevent the pillage. Brandenburg, trying to save something, managed to chase people off the trains by giving them the food and wine on board. There was plenty of that. The Reichsmarschall, Renaissance man that he was, had not planned to suffer in exile; he had put on two boxcarsful at Carinhall, and more had come from Veldenstein.

  The good burghers of Berchtesgaden, tempted by the empty houses of the fallen mighty, were also busy in town on these final days of the Reich. They broke into the little chalet called Haus Schneewinkel, which Himmler had built for his mistress, and took the furniture. The all-powerful Bormann lost his collection of more than a thousand watercolors and drawings by Rudolf Alt to the mob. In the midst of this saturnalia the first Allied elements arrived in the outskirts of the town.79 Brandenburg dryly repor
ted that the station “was empty in a second.”

  While much of this amazing activity was taking place, Mason Hammond and Calvin Hathaway, slogging away in London at plans for the occupation of Germany, had lapsed frequently into depression at the seeming lack of interest in their doings. They were not alone in feeling that their work was for naught. Much more important issues were equally unresolved. On September 12, 1944, the European Advisory Commission had produced a vague draft plan for the occupation of Germany after months of maddening negotiations during which the Big Three avoided any precise commitments on the subject. Germany would be divided into three zones, with the Russians in the East, but no precise lines of demarcation had been drawn. The United States and Britain would have the West, but could not even decide who would have the North and who the South. No zone was yet planned for France. How these zones would be governed and how Germany would be treated was even less clear. The American Army plans were, as a result, no more firm. Although the Civil Affairs people were organizing for the immediate problems of occupation, Robert Murphy, Eisenhower’s political adviser, noted that Ike “was not paying much attention to what would happen in postwar Germany. He rightly believed that this was not his responsibility.” Eisenhower felt that the occupation government should have a civilian head, and commented to Murphy: “Thank the Lord that will not be my job.”80

  Opinion in the Roosevelt administration at home was very divided on the issue of the coming occupation. The President and particularly Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau took a hard line, the latter proposing to do to Germany more or less what Germany had done to Poland. All heavy industry, including coal production, would be eliminated. The country, rid of Nazi archcriminals who could be shot on sight, would become a barely self-sustaining agricultural nation whose excess labor would be conscripted to work in the formerly occupied lands. Secretary of War Stimson termed this idea “a beautiful Nazi program.”81 His colleague Secretary of State Hull called it “a plan of blind vengeance.”

  Both the State and War Departments, conscious of the disastrous aftermath of the punitive measures that followed World War I, had far more moderate plans which provided for limited economic rehabilitation of Germany. Roosevelt, in the midst of his campaign for a fourth term, indicated to Hull and Stimson that he would not necessarily adhere exactly to the draconian Morgenthau plan. It was “all very well to make all kinds of preparations for the treatment of Germany, but… speed on these matters is not essential at the present moment. It may be in a week, or it may be in a month, or it may be several months hence. I dislike making detailed plans for a country which we do not yet occupy.”82 As for the EAC, Roosevelt considered it an advisory organization on a “tertiary level” whose directives were not binding.83

  In December it became clear that “several months hence” was all too accurate. The Germans, in a last desperate offensive, attacked the Allied armies, bringing their headlong advance to a halt in the snowy hill country of the Ardennes, which the Germans themselves had exploited so cleverly four years before. In the months which followed, the discussions on the treatment of Germany continued in all the committees and departments. Morgenthau’s ideas were modified, but not eliminated. Unconditional surrender was confirmed, as was his proposed dismemberment of Germany, by the agreement at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 to cede East Prussia and Silesia to Poland as compensation for the large piece the Soviet Union was taking from the Poles in the East. Yalta also brought the first concrete discussion of reparations, the establishment of a zone of occupation for France, and the tentative fixing of the boundaries of the zones. It was agreed that each power would be totally independent within these areas, but that the whole would be run by a joint Allied Control Council in Berlin, which would also be divided into four sectors. Renewed planning to adapt to these decisions now continued in Washington and London.

  The gentlemen at Yalta had not specified who would actually do the work in occupied Germany. Roosevelt, wanting to bring the troops back as soon as possible, returned to his visions of a civilian occupation government and offered the post of High Commissioner of Germany to Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy. But McCloy knew that it would take a military presence to deal with the horrendous problems of devastated Germany. He declined the offer and recommended General Lucius Clay, a brilliant organizer who had been in charge of keeping supplies flowing to the armies in Europe. On March 31 Clay was appointed Deputy Military Governor under Eisenhower. McCloy was sent over to present this surprise assignment to the Supreme Commander, who had not been consulted. After some soothing, Eisenhower agreed that, as in Italy, a Military Government was the most suitable solution, at least for the early stages of occupation.

  After Yalta the Departments of State, War, and Treasury had combined to produce a detailed policy directive for the Military Government commander. Negotiations and maneuvers of Byzantine complexity followed. The result of these efforts was the infamous document known as JCS 1067, in which Morgenthau’s ideas were considerably softened and many loopholes were left for improvisation, but which still retained a punitive approach. Germany, it declared, “will not be occupied for the purpose of liberation, but as a defeated enemy nation.” The occupiers were urged to be just, but firm and aloof, and fraternization with German officials and population was forbidden. Living conditions were to be kept below those of the Allied nations. Reparations programs were to be enforced, and the economy “decentralized.” Works of art, classified as one type of property in the financial section of the directive, were to be “impounded regardless of the ownership thereof.” There was little useful detail in this document, which noted only that “all reasonable efforts should be taken to preserve historical archives, museums, libraries and works of art.”84 Moreover, because of their “top secret” classification even these deceptively simple instructions could be revealed only to a very few high-ranking officers. The plan’s vague and negative requirements would, if taken literally, make the governing of Germany essentially impossible. The Army, stuck with a job it never wanted, would be forced to improvise as situations presented themselves. Clay read this document for the first time in early April 1945, as he flew to Paris to take up his duties. The surrender of Germany was a month away.

  During all these highly secret machinations the Roberts Commission representatives, in consultation with Hammond and Hathaway at SHAEF, continued to work on the formulation of a restitution policy with representatives of the Allied and occupied nations. Their requests for guidance, sent to the State Department, were virtually ignored (not surprising given the battles over occupation policy which were in progress). In London the Allied nations had produced a number of ideas, having finally agreed on such basics as the precise definition of a work of art, and what exactly was meant in legal documents by the French word spolié, or “looted.”85 These weighty matters having been resolved, there was general agreement that all property “taken to Germany during the occupation would be presumed to have been transferred under duress and accordingly treated as looted property.”

  It was also agreed that identifiable works should be returned to the governments of the countries from which they had been taken, and not to individual owners. A United States Military Government law ordered a freeze on all trade and the importation or exportation of works of art from Germany. And again it was proposed that Germany should be obligated to replace lost works with comparable objects from its own collections. To carry out this process, referred to as “restitution in kind,” some sort of international commission was envisioned which would adjudicate claims. These ideas were sent for approval to the State Department by the Roberts Commission in July and November 1944, and again in February 1945.86 The Allied governments avoided commitment on this subject, as they had on everything else. The State Department finally informed the RC that all restitution matters would have to be referred to a Reparations Commission which the Big Three had ordered to be established at the Yalta Conference. The only trouble was that as
of April 1945 no Reparations Commission had yet been appointed.

  Monuments men (left to right) Mason Hammond, Henry Newton, John Nicholas Brown, Calvin Hathaway, and Kenneth Lippman

  John Nicholas Brown, whom the RC expected to advise Eisenhower on these matters, had arrived in London on March 9, 1945. He found a “blind town,” whose blank, boarded-up windows offered only slight protection against Hitler’s ultimate weapon: the V2. Indeed, shortly after his arrival he was slightly wounded by flying glass during an attack. All the iron railings in the parks had long since been melted down. Dressed in the uniforms of many nations, the inhabitants groped their way around the dimmed-out streets. But the knowledge of imminent victory gave a feeling of hope and there were jonquils in the fenceless parks and plenty of theater, the new Olivier film of Henry V, some heat and hot water, and amazingly good food still served with style at the Connaught and other watering spots. Hammond, Hathaway, and Crosby took Brown around London and taught him all the tricks of wartime living and transportation. They introduced him to various generals “who greeted me warmly and told me they wanted a long talk soon,” he wrote to his wife.

  To Brown’s surprise, Newton, about whom he had been briefed in Washington, now appeared to be the acting head of a new division called Reparations, Deliveries and Restitution, to which Brown seemed to be assigned. After five days it was painfully clear that “General Hilldring and David [Finley] had given me a complete misconception. There was no question of heading up a brand new project, choosing personnel, etc. It was all chosen and going and more or less cut and dried, at least in this planning phase. Thus there was no great grandeur. I had no aide, no great field of usefulness, and as for Gen. Ike, well he was just titular head way out yonder. To say I am aide to Gen. Ike is really ludicrous.”87