Robert Edsel's Blog

We set aside two days a year to honor our Veterans:  Memorial Day and Veterans Day.  But other days of the year border on such importance…today is one of them.  More than 2,400 men and women were killed on this date 68 years ago as they innocently went about their duty and lives that Sunday morning.  It was a dastardly act by Japan and it’s warlords as they sought to knock out the Pacific fleet of the United States in one swift blow.  Within days the United States was at war with Japan and its allies, Nazi Germany and Italy.  World War II  had begun in earnest.

Less than three weeks later a meeting would take place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City that would have far reaching implications.  Visionary leaders such as George Stout, Paul Sachs, and Francis Henry Taylor, expressed concern about protecting this country’s cultural treasures from concerns about a Japanese invasion of the west coast and Nazi bombings on the east coast.  In time these specific fears subsided but were replaced with an even greater concern:  how to protect the cultural treasures of the western world from the path of war that inevitably would lead to the doors of the Reichschancellery in Berlin.

Fortunately we live in a world today that was spared the “what if” consequences of the Monuments Men never having been created. We can visit the world’s great museums and see the vast majority of the greatest accomplishments of man’s creative genius because of their vision and sacrifices.  Pearl Harbor set them into motion.

So on this day, let us remember the brave men and women who lost their lives at Pearl Harbor. May we also acknowledge those who acted and set in motion one of the most benevolent efforts in the history of mankind, an effort that preserved much of the accumulated art, music, and culture produced by thousands of years of civilization, from the path of war:  the Monuments Men and women.

September 11th and December 7th will forever be linked in our memory and remembrances.

More than 5,000 people lost their lives on those two days in surprise attacks that shocked the nation and commenced two very different types of war.  While there was horror in the loss of so many people and the surprise of each attack, there was also great heroism that emerged in the hours and days that followed.

It was fitting that the formal launch of The Monuments Men took place last Friday, September 11th in the shadow of these two epic moments in American history, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where museum directors gathered 68 years ago just days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  The creation of the Monuments Men was the most significant consequence of those meetings.

It serves as another reminder that these defining events, often-time tragic as they may be, provide unique opportunities for man to demonstrate the best and highest qualities that survive long after the crisis passes.  It is but another of the legacies left us by the Monuments Men and those whose vision led to their creation.