The Rape of Europa

by Lynn H. Nicholas

  This took place on September 25, 1945. The Commission had asked Crosby, Brown, Walker, Stout, and Plaut to appear as “technical advisers” and make statements. But, Brown recalled, when these gentlemen arrived they were treated in a most bizarre manner, being at first “herded into a separate room, and kept waiting one and a half hours before we were allowed to appear and then en masse, each to give a brief talk to the Commission. It was an embarrassing moment and one rather infra-dig. None of us felt we could express fully the more subtle of our feelings in so open a meeting.”53 Their written memos were accepted.

  Stout thought transportation equally dangerous as the unheated winter conditions of Germany, but noted that action would “probably be based on considerations of policy as well as physical protection.” Plaut of the OSS, who later withdrew his statement, wrote with some emotion that the action was no better than that of the Nazis, using quotes from ERR reports which had used almost identical language to explain their “safeguarding” activities to back up his points. Brown reiterated that the pictures should come only as a loan exhibition. John Walker, chief curator of the National Gallery, said that although the Collecting Points he had seen were adequate, there were hundreds more he had not visited, and that he did “not have the necessary information to approve or disapprove of General Clay’s recommendation.” He noted that every Monuments officer he had met was anxious to come home, and advised against antagonizing the Army, as “nothing can be done to preserve these works of art without the full and sympathetic cooperation of our Army leaders.” The moral question, he felt, had been answered by the assurances of the President and the Secretary of State, but Walker did say that due to the chaotic conditions in Germany, “the policy of a wise custodian would be to bring at least part of this irreplaceable treasure to the safest haven available, and that would seem to me, at the present time, to be the United States.”54 The Commission’s ultimate recommendation was a most strangely convoluted piece of buck-passing:

  After full consideration it was resolved that the Commission is not in possession of facts which would authorize it to conclude that General Clay’s recommendations, upon which the President’s decision was based, were unsupported by facts within his knowledge.

  To this they added the recommendation that objects held by the United States belonging to museums in other zones be treated in the same manner as those indigenous to the U.S. Zone.55 This, of course, opened the way to the removal of anything from the Berlin museums which might be at the Collecting Points.

  The next day press releases from the White House and the National Gallery announced the plan to bring the German works to the United States “with the sole intention of keeping such treasures safe and in trust for the people of Germany or”—tantalizingly—“other rightful owners” because “expert personnel is not available within the American Zone to assure this safety.” References to Germany’s need to “re-earn” its right to the works were eliminated. John Brown was philosophical; he wrote to LaFarge in Germany that “our protests have kept the Government clean.”56 George Stout was more cynical: “Did these fellows in Washington actually wangle the Army? And then use the Roberts Commission to cover themselves up? … I never thought that some of those big brass museum directors were anything more than a first class job of taxidermy, but gawdamighty, I thought they would manage to keep on looking like men.”57

  At the National Gallery, in response to the Army’s decision, Chief Curator Walker now ordered a list of Germany’s top masterpieces to be prepared by Hanns Swarzenski, a German exile who had been given temporary employment at the Gallery’s repository at Biltmore. From memory, prewar catalogues, and a microfilmed copy of the Berlin evacuation documents, he compiled a list of 254 paintings, 73 sculptures, and 39 objets. Swarzenski wrote to Walker that if he “had listed more than these, there would be no limit where to stop … but probably I have forgotten a lot from the smaller museums like Stuttgart and Karlsruhe.”58

  On the list, made without any reference to the present locations of the works, were 102 works from the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, Watteau’s Gersaint’s Shopsign from Charlottenburg, Daumier’s Don Quixote from the Nationalgalerie, 2 Chardins from Potsdam, 43 pictures from the Städel in Frankfurt, Manet’s Execution of Maximilian I from Mannheim, 26 works from the Alte Pinakothek in Munich—including Dürer’s Saints with the note “probably too fragile”—9 from Nuremberg, and more from Dresden, Vienna, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, and Kassel. Assembling this selection would not be easy. No one knew exactly where all the works were. John Walker had seen the unopened Kaiser Friedrich crates in Frankfurt prior to their transfer to Wiesbaden, but there were as yet no complete inventories of the holdings of the Collecting Points, where new items arrived daily and where priority was being given to those items slated for return to other Allied nations. The Munich pictures were still where the Germans had left them, in the rural repositories of Dietramzell, Ettal, and Raitenhaslach, and, despite Walker’s advice during his July visit, had not yet been brought to the Collecting Point.

  Requests to the MFAA officers, now aware of the possible removal of the works, for detailed information had purposely been delayed with encouragement from LaFarge and Kuhn at headquarters. Edith Standen, asked for lists of masterpieces at Marburg and Wiesbaden, “listed only things I saw with my own eyes, gave them fifteen paintings, … all belonging to museums outside our zone. I rather hated doing it; Bancel and Charles Kuhn take the line that supplying information is not actually supporting an infamous policy, so I go along.”59

  Indeed, most of those involved in Monuments work still doubted that anything would actually happen; Perry Cott, for instance, wrote from Vienna that everyone there was “completely agreed on the inanity of the project… it will probably die a natural death when the people who proposed it realize the material difficulties involved in putting the plan in operation.”60 Even Count Metternich had denied the circulating rumors of an American art grab when queried by friends. They were all overly optimistic. In early October, McCloy had commented on the pervasive fear of the Russians and the “almost medieval isolation of existing life” in Germany, over which hung the terrible dread of cold and disease in the coming winter, which could result from the lack of coal.61 This situation was not calculated to make Clay change his mind about ridding himself of the responsibility for Germany’s art treasures.

  The National Gallery immediately began arrangements to send its administrator and State Department troubleshooter, Colonel Henry McBride, to Germany to organize the transfer of the pictures. News of his arrival evoked unanimous reactions of rage and disbelief from the officers in the field. None of them knew of the top secret political and economic considerations which had led to his appearance, and they all resented the implications of incompetence the removals conveyed. Suspicions of the National Gallery and the Metropolitan were rampant. Hathaway wrote from Berlin of “the swindle by which the National Gallery’s to benefit.”62 Edith Standen described “the state of utter misery we are all in now…. Walker Hancock perfectly simply said it was absolutely impossible for him to be associated with the project; his dealings were primarily with the people, not the things. Col. McBride has threatened us all (in a nice way) with court martials.”63 The courage of these responses was extraordinary. Court-martial was not an idle threat, and defiance of superiors who might affect the rest of one’s career in the museum field was not to be ignored.

  The first exact orders were cabled to Walter Farmer at the Wiesbasden Collecting Point:

  Higher headquarters desires that immediate preparations be made for prompt shipment to the UNITEK [US] of a selection of at least two zero zero German works of art of greatest importance. Most of these are now in Art Collecting Point Wiesbaden. Selections will be made by personnel from Headquarters US Forces European Theater who will assist in packing and shipment by motor transport to Bremen.64

  McBride was not quite prepared for the brusqueness of his reception. Upon arrival at Frankfurt on
November 5, he approached Naval Lieutenant Charles Parkhurst, a former National Gallery registrar, to discuss details of the move. Parkhurst refused to have anything to do with it. Surprised, McBride reminded him that he had been “ordered to do this,” and told him, not in such a “nice way,” that he could not afford to refuse “because you have a wife and two children.” Parkhurst walked out on him. It was not until Bancel LaFarge from headquarters intervened that Lamont Moore, also a National Gallery alumnus, could be persuaded to do the packing and accompany the shipment to the United States. McBride found an old friend, Commander Keith Merrill, who had nothing to do with MFAA and who was bored with his paper-pushing job in Frankfurt, and assigned him as a second escort officer. “Lower folks have been difficult, but some gradually being convinced,” he optimistically cabled home.

  On November 7 LaFarge, Moore, and McBride arrived at the Wiesbaden Collecting Point to begin organizing the move. McBride immediately got off on the wrong foot with Walter Farmer by commenting negatively on the latter’s carefully placed pools of humidifying water, which, not unnaturally, he assumed were evidence of leaks in the roof. After McBride had left, a revolution began in Farmer’s office. Thirty-two of the thirty-five Monuments officers in the theater managed to come to or communicate with Wiesbaden in the next days and sign the document of protest, formally composed by Everett Lesley, which came to be known as the Wiesbaden Manifesto. After several eloquent introductory paragraphs it stated:

  The Allied Nations are at present preparing to prosecute individuals for the crime of sequestering, under the pretext of “protective custody,” the cultural treasures of German-occupied countries. A major part of the indictment follows upon the reasoning that even though the individuals were acting under military orders, the dictates of a higher ethical law made it incumbent upon them to refuse to take part in, or countenance, the fulfillment of these orders. We, the undersigned, feel it our duty to point out that, though as members of the armed forces, we will carry out the orders we receive, we are thus put before any candid eyes as no less culpable than those whose prosecution we affect to sanction.

  We wish to state that from our own knowledge, no historical grievance will rankle so long, or be the cause of so much justified bitterness, as the removal, for any reason, of a part of the heritage of any nation, even if that heritage may be interpreted as a prize of war. And though this removal may be done with every intention of altruism, we are none the less convinced that it is our duty, individually and collectively, to protest against it, and that though our obligations are to the nation to which we owe allegiance, there are yet further obligations to common justice, decency, and the establishment of the power of right, not of expediency or might, among civilized nations.65 The Founding Fathers would have been proud.

  Twenty-five officers signed. Five others, not present, wrote supporting letters. Three, including James Rorimer, agreed, but felt they could not sign. Rorimer instead, the next day, wrote to his commanding officer asking to be relieved.66 The request was refused. The Manifesto, meant as an internal protest, went to the chief MFAA officer at headquarters, Bancel LaFarge, who, to protect his colleagues, filed it away and sent it no farther.

  But such strong passions could not be concealed for long. Above all, the men who had been working day and night at the mines and Collecting Points with Germans felt shame. Walker Hancock thought he had betrayed them. When, with embarrassment, he told Professor Hamann of Marburg of the decision, Hamann said, “If they take our old art, we must try to create a fine new art.” Then, after a long pause, he added, “I never thought they would take them.”67 Farmer wrote, “You can’t imagine how hard it is to try to justify in the eyes of other people something that you think horrible.”

  The angry officers did not conceal their feelings from Janet Flanner, correspondent for The New Yorker, who was in Wiesbaden doing research for a series of articles on the ERR. On November 9 she cabled home that “a couple of days ago the Monuments men at Wiesbaden received official word to ship from their depository to the US 400 [sic] of its finest German owned pictures.” This “export project casually suggested by American officials at Potsdam,” she declared, “is already regarded in liberated Europe as shockingly similar to the practice of the ERR.”68 The artful leak appeared in the November 17 edition of Miss Flanner’s magazine.

  It was by now clear to McBride, struggling for the first time with the familiar problems of weather, transport, and the lack of packing materials, that this initial shipment would have to be limited to objects at one Collecting Point. Wiesbaden, which held so many German-owned pictures, was the obvious choice. He cabled back to Washington that the shipment would come almost exclusively from the list prepared by Walker and Swarzenski at the National Gallery. The final selection of 202 pictures, all but 2 from the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, was made by McBride and the officers in charge of the shipment.69 Both the delicacy and the high quality of the chosen paintings were staggering. Three-quarters of them were on panel, which is the most susceptible to changes in temperature and humidity. The list included 5 van Eycks, 5 Botticellis, 4 Dürers, a Bosch, several Breughels, 2 Vermeers, a Giorgione, 8 Masaccios, 3 Memlings, 15 Rembrandts, 4 Titians, a Velázquez, a Georges de la Tour, 2 van der Weydens, and much more.

  McBride was still determined to pursue one picture not at Wiesbaden which the National Gallery really did covet: the Czernin Vermeer. This was in an entirely different category, as it was considered to have been legitimately bought by Hitler, and therefore a possible candidate for reparations due the United States. But McBride was too late. When he arrived at the Munich Collecting Point on November 12, he found the picture packed and ready for return to Vienna, it having been decided that Austrian-owned property should be under control of the U.S. forces there. The transfer was to be effected personally by Andrew Ritchie, the MFAA officer responsible for Austria, who was adamantly opposed to the removal action. Collecting Point Chief Craig Smyth, another Wiesbaden Manifesto supporter, unpacked the picture for McBride but managed to turn odious military regulations to his own advantage: he refused to surrender the Vermeer on the grounds that he had no orders for this action from Third Army, under whose jurisdiction the Collecting Point came.70 McBride did not insist. Nor was there anything else on his list at Munich: the Alte Pinakothek pictures, and much else, had not yet been brought in. Impressed by operations at the Collecting Point, McBride intimated to Smyth that the whole policy of removal would be “reconsidered during the winter.”71

  At home, although no one had seen the Manifesto, rumors of the vehement response of the Monuments men caused consternation all around. John Nicholas Brown wrote to Edith Standen to say that he was “distressed to find the state of depression and disappointment now evident in the ranks of the MFAA.” The matter, he said, must “not be allowed to fall out of perspective.” He was sure of the good faith of the government, and although he deplored the whole project, he felt that “if a few works of art can possibly be shipped … by way of token to the USA the matter will blow over in time and all parties will be more or less satisfied.”72 Paul Sachs was disturbed by “all the silly talk reflected in the typical New Yorker article” and urged that Secretary of State Byrnes clarify the government’s intention. The latter was already defending himself at a higher level. Now that the removal was a fait accompli, he had deigned to answer the British Foreign Secretary’s letter of protest, written over two months before. Byrnes’s reply revealed a distinct change of heart. Stating that the delay was the result of “my desire to meet your wishes in this matter, which involved discussions with a number of officials,” he explained sheepishly that there would not be any large movement of art treasures to the United States, but only “one carload,” which, he lied, was an action “strongly recommended by our experts in the field who are convinced that the selection they have made cannot be properly cared for in Germany during this winter.”73 The fun was just beginning.

  Never had things been so well packed. The insides of
the cases were lined with waxed paper taken from Wehrmacht stores. Each selected picture, laboriously extracted for the first time from its original Berlin crate, which may have held a dozen or so items, was fixed in slots specially built into the interior of the box to be used for shipping, which was sealed and again wrapped in waterproof paper originally designed to be used as poison-gas protection.

  Rain poured down as the cases were loaded into trucks for their trip from Wiesbaden to the heavily guarded express train to which were attached two stripped-down but heated hospital cars which would bear the forty-five cases to Le Havre, from whence they would sail for New York. After the cars had been loaded, escort officer Merrill noticed that it was taking an extraordinarily long time for the German yard engineer to find the Paris Express. It soon became clear that the delay was deliberate: the Germans had perhaps learned a thing or two from the French Resistance. Merrill pulled out his pistol and held it to the engineer’s head. They got to the Express in time.

  On the way to Paris they had to detour around a train burning on the main line, and chop the ventilators off the roof when they could not get through one tunnel. The precious cargo then sat on the dock at Le Havre for a week in bitter cold, using a small steam engine connected to the cars to keep the temperature at 60 degrees. At last they were lashed down in the officers’ dining room of an Army transport, whose regular occupants were now forced to eat in two sittings while happy MPs, gorging on officer fare, guarded the cases day and night. The pictures arrived in New York on December 6 and were unloaded with impressive security and secrecy, after which they were driven to Washington in a convoy moving at thirty-five miles per hour, escorted by relays of troopers from the various states through which they passed. The transfer was officially described as “uneventful.”74

  Notoriety had, alas, preceded them. On November 24, before they had even left the Continent, the Washington Times Herald announced the shipment, proclaiming that “the preservation of German art treasures is considered more important than the fate of German women and children and the repatriation of war-weary G.I.s.”75 This was exacerbated by a report in Stars and Stripes—which should have known better—that the shipment was made up of paintings looted from other European countries by the Nazis. The story was picked up by The New York Times, intrigued by the secrecy surrounding the arrival of the ship and the refusal of its escorts to talk, and published under a headline reading, “$80 Million Paintings Arrive from Europe on Army Transport.” They too, apparently oblivious of a War Department press release giving the facts, assumed that the pictures were Nazi loot. Feelings about the National Gallery were not improved in professional museum circles in New York when Francis Henry Taylor, who had been given no details at all on the arrival of the shipment, or its final composition, was awakened in the middle of the night by the press and was unable to answer their questions about the mysterious cargo.76