The Monument Mens' Other Story

There is an episode of the television show Justified, in which U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (played by Timothy Olyphant) is asked to investigate a possible neo-Nazi who is buying up the remaining artwork of Adolf Hitler.  Concerned about the possibility that the man intends to open a Nazi museum, the good marshal tracked the man down, only to discover that the art collection consisted of a dozen jars of ashes.  The man had been burning the remaining paintings of Hitler.

Justified is an excellent television show, but it very unlikely that anyone would ever make a career of buying and burning all of der Fuehrer’s paintings.  The few museums that have them don’t particularly like them but won’t sell them.  In addition, there are all those paintings by Hitler that the United States “stole” in World War II.  You know…the ones the Monument Men stole.

Assuming that you have seen the George Clooney movie, then we are all experts about the Monument Men, the U.S. Army group that President Roosevelt authorized to save and repatriate the artwork that the Nazis had stolen from all over Europe.  These men did an extraordinary job, saving tens of thousands of priceless pieces of art.  

It is not mentioned in the movie, but the Monuments Men were also tasked with removing artwork commissioned by the German government to glorify the Nazi leaders or the war movement.   Adolf Hitler was generally considered to be a failure as an artist.  (Or as a human, for that matter.). He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, and spent several years creating postcards and dabbling in street art.  Though unsuccessful as an artist, Hitler never lost in interest in creating (or stealing) artwork.  

Giving the devil his due, Hitler understood the use of artwork as a propaganda tool and how the German people would react to it.  Hitler commissioned a small army of artists to create paintings glorifying war, promoting the father land, and occasionally, portraying the Nazi hierarchy (particularly Hitler) as half man and half God.  After the paintings were copied into countless posters, the original works went to museums or were sold to high-ranking military officers.  

At Yalta, President Roosevelt had agreed to removing as much of this artwork as possible and after the war was over, the Army began scouring the German countryside to do just that, confiscating original artwork displaying the swastika that glorified war or depicted the Nazi elite such as Hitler, Goebbels, or Goehring.  The post-war Monument Men found paintings in cellars, in caves, in government offices, under the floorboards of mountain cabins, and in the homes of the Nazi hierarchy.  There is something ironic about the Monument Men, the guys that recovered so much stolen art, making off with the art of the defeated.  I understand why they did it, and approve, but it is still a little ironic.  I can understand why George Clooney left that part out of his movie.

When the propaganda art had been gathered, 8,722 pieces in all were shipped back home to the United States and hidden away at a military base in Virginia to prevent its being used to rekindle a far-right regime in Germany.  But, in the haste to gather the propaganda art, some of the legitimate artwork of German artists was also seized.  Within a few years after the artwork had been gathered and stored, some Germans were demanding that the non-political works be returned.

After carefully sorting through the artwork, the United States sent over 1500 pieces back to Berlin for return to their rightful owners.  The postwar German Republic was not exactly happy to have any reminders of the Nazis back, and simply warehoused the paintings away until the 1970’s, ignoring the claims of the rightful owners.

Three decades after the war’s end, most of the seized artwork was no longer deemed very threatening—the pompous over-the-top poses of “The Master Race” looked more comical than threatening.  Perhaps three decades of movies and television shows in which the Germans always lost to the Allies, had diminished the threat.  A painting showing the guards from Hogan’s Heroes was nothing to be worried about.  

So, the Army returned all but the most offensive pieces.   Today, almost eighty years after the war, Fort Belvoir still houses a three-foot bust of Adolf Hitler, hundreds of paintings showing the SS in heroic poses, statues of Nazis, and an undisclosed number of rather creepy watercolors done by Adolf Hitler.

What exactly should be done with such art is still a dilemma.  Who are the rightful owners?  If the owners could be located, would they even want the art?  Should this type of art even be exhibited in a museum?  There are probably no good answers to these questions, which explains why the US Army is still warehousing the art so long after the war.  For now, Hitler’s watercolors stay safely locked up in a filing cabinet drawer.

These works are not shown to the public and by now, the Army probably wishes that they were elsewhere.  Most of the artwork has been photographed and I could show you a few examples of Hitler’s art….but I won’t.  Perhaps this is a case in which life should imitate art, and the paintings, at least those done by Hitler, should be burned.