Robert Edsel's Blog

German poet Heinrich Heine said: “Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bucher verbrennt, verbreent man auch am Ende Menschen.” (“This was only foreplay. Where books are being burned there will eventually be humans burned.”)  That was in 1821!!!!  How did he foretell the events that 110 years later would lead to the greatest war the world has ever known?

Of course, the gap between burning books out of fear and ideology and the taking of human lives is thinner than any of us want to consider.  Events in Nazi Germany proved that point in painful detail.  Heine could have also expanded his observation to include the burning of paintings because that, too, was part of Hitler’s determination to influence how people thought, what they believed in, and who they obeyed.

The importance of Heine’s observation is timeless:  they are words of warning to us all…to pay attention…to think for ourselves, and to speak up and act when the very freedoms all people of good will cherish are under attack.

I am Harry Ettlinger, the youngest and one of the very, very few WWII Monuments Men still alive.

As we go through life, we keep learning and bring to our minds a great variety of experiences.  Recently I saw a film about the destruction of Buddhist figures by the Taliban in Afghanistan.  It ended with a showing of a banner over the entrance of the Art Museum in the Capital of that country.  Its message: “No nation can exist without culture and history.”

I realize today that as Monuments Men, we started the work to restore the culture taken away by Nazis from hundreds of millions of human beings. Today, we must distribute that important part of history to the billions of men and women in this world.

In a tiny way, I, having been given the privilege of working as a Monuments Man, feel now compelled to aid in spreading the message, so eloquently stated on that banner.

You can start by reading Robert Edsel’s new book The Monuments Men.

Monuments Men Bernard Taper, Harry Ettlinger and Horace Apgar and myself at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. This preceded the Senate Ceremony honoring these men and women on June 6, 2007. (Photo Courtesy of Robert M. Edsel Collection.)

The outpouring of support and words of encouragement for the launch of The Monuments Men is tremendously gratifying. Thanks go to the hundreds of friends and well-wishers who have contacted me beginning last evening.  No calls and emails have meant more than those I’ve received from the Monuments Men themselves and their kids.  I hasten to add that my publisher, Center Street, a division of Hachette, and our team led by my editor Michelle Rapkin, have thrown their full resources behind this book.  The full force of their effort will be known to all in the coming weeks.

Interviewing my father, a World War II veteran of the Pacific, at the World War II Memorial. (Photo Courtesy of Robert M. Edsel Collection.)

An undertaking such as the epic telling of these heroes’ story and, to a degree, the illumination of a critical seam to a distinct but major new understanding of World War II and the role of art does not cause an overnight result.  A friend wisely commented to me yesterday, it is a marathon race, not a sprint.  Endurance and steadfastness are critical components of the endeavor.

It continues to be my honor to represent these heroes and their families and to share their stories with people around the world.  I hope you will tell others about their story….that word of mouth recommendation is where the battle will be won!

Tomorrow begins the realization of more than 7 years of work:  publication of my new book entitled The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. This is the narrative telling of these heroes’ stories through the experiences of just 8 men and 1 woman–the unlikeliest of spies–who are in a race with time to save the greatest cultural treasures from Nazi fanatics.  The book can be ordered online and will be in bookstores nationwide.  It is being published in more than 16 languages, and will also be available as an audio book.  I hope you will read the amazing stories of the men and women which I have told using their letters home to loved ones written during combat.

Harry Ettlinger speaking at the Hope for Humanities Dinner in Dallas, November 2008. (Photo Courtesy of Robert M. Edsel Collection.)

This Friday we will have the first of many Guest Blogs…appropriately, the first guest blogger will be Monuments Man Harry Ettlinger.  Harry figures prominently in The Monuments Men.  He provides a fresh insight into these events and speaks eloquently as to why this part of history is so vitally important.

Please check it out this Friday!

In the course of research for my new book, The Monuments Men, and while filming The Rape of Europa, I had a chance to get to know the country of Poland and its remarkable people. During the period we were filming in both Cracow and Warsaw, I took a couple of days off to visit some other sites, in particular Auschwitz…the ghastly site of the concentration camps where millions of Jews and other victims of Hitler’s “final solution” were murdered.

When visiting such places, I go with a mind full of images and stories I have seen and heard, eager to merge them with the physical experience of being there. No matter how many images a person sees of Warsaw and the devastation it experienced as a consequence of World War II, it doesn’t really take hold until you walk the streets of the city, look into people’s eyes (especially those of the children), and see the great attractions which illuminate so well the history of the city and its citizens. This was my experience in Warsaw, a beautiful city today but one that looked like the pock-marked surface of the moon after the Nazis lade waste to it as they fled. You can’t believe the city is the same place.

One image that spoke volumes about how determined the Nazis were to destroy not just the Polish people’s lives and property but also the very soul of the nation and its values concerns the statue of the great music composer Frederic Chopin. This remarkable sculpture was unveiled in Lazienki Park in 1926. During summer, piano recitals are held at the foot of the monument. Note its scale by focusing on the people sitting on the bench to the left in the photo below. This is how it appears to visitors today.

The bronze monument to Poland's greatest musician, Frederic Chopin, was designed by Waclaw Symanowski and erected in Warsaw in 1910.

However, in 1941, a little more than a year after the Nazi invasion of Poland, the statue was dissected by the Nazis and placed on a flatbed railcar for transport to a smelter. This was but just one of enumerable acts by Hitler and the Nazis to destroy the most treasured cultural icons of each conquered city. In Russia notable such examples were the homes of the great poet Pushkin, and the remarkable composer Peter Tchaikovsky

Fryderck Chopin Monument cut up on rail car. (Photo Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administratiion.)

When I boarded the plane to depart Poland, I couldn’t help but admire so deeply the courage and fortitude of the Polish people. The Poles were the first victims of the Nazi invasion on this day 70 years ago. By war’s end more than 6 million Poles had died. Nazi Concentration camps had been built throughout the country at which millions of innocent people were murdered. The list of horrifying events that took place during World War II seems endless. Yet through it all, the Polish people found the will not just to survive, but to flourish. Their determination to rebuild their great cities and society as it was before the war is a living testament to the pride they have for the great history of Poland, and their courage and determination to triumph.

Nazi Party number 2 man Goering announced his intentions plainly, and well in advance, when he said, “I intend to plunder and to do it thoroughly”.  And plunder he did.  By the time of his arrest, he had amassed more paintings in his personal collection than exist today in the National Gallery of Art’s European painting section, some 1800 plus works.

My colleague, and the world’s leading authority on Hermann Goering and his painting collection, historian Nancy Yeide, Head of Curatorial Records at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C., has recently completed a seven year study and has written a masterpiece entitled Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection.  Nancy’s exhaustive analysis is groundbreaking research that will no doubt lead to the identification of works of art previously unknown to have been a part of the Reichsmarschall’s collection.  More importantly, in time it will make possible the return of paintings to the victims of the greatest theft in history.  It is active detective work of the highest caliber.

There was a wonderful interview with Nancy in The Washington Times yesterday.  To read about her and her tremendous accomplishment, please click on the following link.

On the night of August 24, 1940, German bombs fell on London for the first time during World War II.

The Luftwaffe began bombing industrial targets in England in early July, and had recently increased night bombing runs. Perhaps worried that Churchill would be even less likely to negotiate, or out of fear that British bombs would fall on Berlin in retaliation, Hitler had been ignoring his military advisor’s urgings to bomb the capital itself. However on the night of August 24, 170 Heinkel HE 111s set out to bomb oil installations at Thameshaven and an aircraft factory in Rochester, but veered off course and bombed parts of London by mistake.

It might not have been an intentional military maneuver, but the first bombings of London marked a turning point early in the war. Churchill angrily ordered the bombing of Berlin, which had also been avoided until this point. On the night of August 25-26, the RAF Bomber Command sent 95 planes to hit industrial targets in the German capital, most notably the Tempelhof Airport and the Siemensstadt area of factory buildings. 81 of the planes dropped bombs on Berlin that night. Five more raids on Berlin occurred within the next two weeks, but damage was minimal.

Hitler was in turn angered by the retaliation bombing, and decided to proceed with a sustained attack on London. He was convinced that the terror bombing would make the British more likely to negotiate after all, and ordered “for disruptive attacks on the population and air defenses of major British cities, including London, by day and night.”

Chief Archivist of the United States, Professor Allen Weinstein and Robert M. Edsel standing before one of the two "Hitler Albums" (Photo Courtesy of Robert M. Edsel Collection)

Hundreds of thousand of works of art and millions of cultural treasures, including library books, manuscripts, and religious objects, stolen by Hitler and the Nazis, or taken by others during World War ll, remain missing.  The collective value of these items is well into the billions of dollars! Does anyone really believe they were all destroyed during the war?

Two years ago we located the Hitler Albums, two albums filled with photographs of paintings stolen by the Nazis from French collectors, many of whom were Jewish, that were presented to Adolph Hitler for his enjoyment and selection of the best works for his Führermuseum in Linz.  These albums were found in his home – the Berghof – in Berchtesgaden by an American soldier and taken as war booty.  They had been sitting in the attic of his home ever since.

Years later they surfaced when a family member contacted us seeking assistance with determining what they were and their importance. In time they expressed a desire for us to put them to their best use.  We – me personally and the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art – subsequently donated them to the National Archives at a ceremony in Washington in 2007.  Allen Weinstein, Chief Archivist of the United States, hailed their discovery as “the most significant find related to Hitler’s premeditated theft of art and other cultural treasures to be found since the Nuremberg trials.”

I believe there are many more such albums that will surface in the coming years along with missing paintings, drawings, books, and tens of thousands of other items displaced by the war or stolen during those years.  As the World War II generation passes, their belongings will be distributed to family members and, in many cases, sold.  During this sorting and identification process, many missing items from the war will surface.

The internet is also proving invaluable in helping both claimants and others seeking to find such stolen items recover their belongings.  Still, there is much to be done, by certain governments, museums, collectors, even the public at large.  It begins, however, with a far greater public awareness of the volume and importance of what is missing from World War II.

Everyone can participate!  Everyone can help us write the final chapter to this amazing story, the final chapter to this part of World War II, and in so doing, complete the mission of the Monuments Men.

To learn more about how you can help please contact me.

I am very excited to announce the launch of our new website as we prepare for the release of my new book entitled The Monuments Men:  Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History.  This site has been designed to provide visitors with an overview of the Monuments Men story and a sense of the excitement and heroism they experienced during their efforts to save the greatest and most beloved works of art and other cultural treasures from the destruction of World War II and from theft by Hitler and the Nazis.  It also provides an insight into just how big this story is becoming with links to our speaking engagement site and related activities.  We’ve included a fantastic one minute and a half promotional video about the book which shares the excitement of this unknown and hugely important story about World War II.

As a compliment to the incredible letters and documents included in my new book, this website provides visitors with many additional letters and documents from the Monuments Men and women, many never before seen since they were written in 1944 and 1945, oftentimes during combat.  Also included are additional authentic copies of Nazi documents and letters including orders issued by Hitler and Goering.  We have added a great collection of photos as well.

A complete list of all the 350 or so Monuments Men from 13 nations is included with those biographies we have assembled and photos of each man and women where we have them.  This is an important part of our ongoing story:  to gather and make publicly available a complete summary with photo of each of these heroes of civilization.  It is just one example of how the public can play a key role and make a significant difference by helping us write the final chapter of this story.

We have provided a number of links to related parts of this story and components that might be of further interest, such as Rescuing Da Vinci, a photographic telling of the Monuments Men story, Nancy Yeide’s recently released book about the collection of Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering entitled Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection, and the 9 hour, 3 disc The Rape of Europa: Collector’s Edition.  We also have details on The Greatest Theft in History Educational Program. These are all unique and important resources to further the telling of this amazing story which we hope you will visit and share with others.

Today also marks my resumption of blog entries after quite a hiatus due to work on finishing the writing of The Monuments Men book.  OUR BLOG NOW ALLOWS FOR READERS TO PROVIDE THEIR COMMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS, OR TO SHARE SOME CONNECTION THEY HAVE TO THIS GREAT STORY.  We want to hear from you often.  The blog has been incorporated into our new web design to make it easy to read and participate in this story and all the events that continue to unfold each day, especially as we march towards the launch of the new book.  We have created a Facebook Fan page for those that follow Facebook with a prominent link to make it easy to participate….and Twitter for those that are connected to this new and rapidly unfolding medium.  New entries and content from me, every day, and lots of photos as I travel and continue with research for my next book!

So please visit and motor your way around.  We’re excited to present to you this historic and currently unfolding story using all the modern tools of communication available to us!!!  And don’t forget…we want your participation and involvement so please share your comments and reactions with us.