Balfour looked up and noticed the train station was now only half a block ahead. “Hold on,” he called to Hachmann, the sexton of Christ the King Church, who was following the cartload on the other side of the street. “I’ll be right over.” Out of habit he looked both ways, although there was no traffic in the deserted town. And then, just as he stepped off the curb, the world exploded.
Across the street, the sexton staggered from the effect of the blast. A cloud of smoke engulfed him, and his ears rang like fire alarms. As the smoke cleared, the world came rushing back. The buildings stood as they always had, but he was alone in the street. The four Germans had lunged for shelter. A dozen yards away, Monuments officer Ronald Balfour was leaning against a railing, covered in blood.
On March 14, 1944, four days after the explosion in Cleves and the day after the second evacuation of Carinhall, recently promoted First Lieutenant James Rorimer rode his bicycle to Rose Valland’s apartment in the fifth arrondissement, an ancient section of Paris known as the Latin Quarter. The quarter had been popular with tourists before the war, but few tourists, Rorimer suspected, had ever visited Valland’s middle-class residential area, a lonely and secluded stretch just beyond the site of a massive fire started by German bombardment in August 1944. As he used his flashlight to navigate the dark stairwell—even seven months after liberation there was still no electricity in parts of Paris—Rorimer was reminded of how easy it would have been for the Nazis to make Rose Valland disappear.
He was heading to the front. Finally. He had discussed a transfer with his superior officers on December 28, 1944, just after his conversation with Valland over champagne. He had not been surprised to discover the French had already approached the Americans suggesting just such a transfer, especially as he recalled hearing that when Jaujard held a reunion of his staff at the Louvre on August 26, 1944, and described Rorimer’s early entry into Paris, tears were said to have flowed. 2 He was sure this long-hoped-for development was the behind-the-scenes work of Jacques Jaujard and Rose Valland. She had been telling him he was needed at the front, and he knew her well enough to know that, in her low-key, unobtrusive way, she had been advocating his transfer within her own bureaucracy as well. Still, it had taken more than two months, until March 1, 1945, for Rorimer to receive official word that he would be soon become the Monuments officer for U.S. Seventh Army.
Valland called him soon after, and invited him to her apartment. For the last few months, she had been ladling information to him in dribs and drabs. Rorimer had wanted to know everything, and Valland knew that. But as their relationship evolved, he accepted that she would provide him the information he wanted and needed, when needed, not sooner. The more he learned, the more excited he became. He had visited Lohse’s apartment in Paris with Valland, but it had been taken over by a French colonel who knew nothing of the previous tenant. Undaunted, he returned the next day and spent an hour outside the building trying to “fix” the flat tire of his bicycle, from which he had removed the air. But this wasn’t a movie, and no one suspicious entered or left the building.
This time, when he arrived at Rose Valland’s apartment he could sense a change in her demeanor. She knew about his assignment to U.S. Seventh Army; she was almost as excited as he was. She had all the information he needed.
“Here is Rosenberg,” she said, showing him the first photograph in a large stack, “the man Hitler selected to oversee the spiritual and philosophic training of the Nazis. In other words, the chief racist.”
He was sitting in her living room, which was lit only by the small fire and one dim bulb. There were flowers in a vase on the coffee table; a bottle of cognac on the bureau. As Valland showed him each photograph—Göring, Lohse, von Behr, and the other key Nazi and ERR figures—Rorimer tried to appear interested in the small cakes she had baked for his visit. But the ordinary nature of the scene could not diminish the extraordinary nature of the discoveries.
She showed him more photographs of Göring, inspecting artwork with Walter Andreas Hofer, Bruno Lohse, and Colonel von Behr at his side. In another he was manhandling a small landscape, a silk scarf around his neck and a cigar in his hand. There was Lohse handing his patron a painting; von Behr in uniform behind his enormous desk, his lackeys sitting on the nearby chairs. Usually, Rorimer recognized them before she even told him their names. He knew them, he realized, because Valland had spoken about them so descriptively many times before.
She’s grooming me, he thought. She’s been grooming me all along. 3
She disappeared and came back with more material. Receipts, copies of train manifestos, everything the Western Allies would need to prove which items had been stolen and shipped to Germany through the Jeu de Paume. She got up and returned with another stack: photographs of some of the works themselves, many stripped of their frames for ease of transport and hung carefully on the walls. Behind a curtain out of sight, another photograph showed artwork squeezed onto every inch of wall space and stuffed viewing stands.
“Vermeer’s Astronomer,” Valland said, stopping on one particularly important work. “Stolen by the ERR right off the wall of Edouard de Rothschild’s sitting room. Göring had a mania for paintings by Vermeer.”
Even after everything he had seen, Rorimer was stunned. The Astronomer was one of those rare works that had become an acknowledged masterpiece.
“This went into Göring’s private collection?”
“No. This one went to Hitler. They say he coveted it more than any work in France. So Göring sent it to him in November 1940, soon after he decided to assume control of the ERR operations from Rosenberg. Göring wanted to prove to Hitler the operation would redound to the glory of Germany, and that the very best works, those reserved for the Führer, were being located and transported home. Many others, though, went into Göring’s private collection.”
“And the rest?”
“They burned some of them,” she said. “In the summer of 1943. Mostly works by modern masters, considered by the Nazis degenerate for their depictions of the world. They kept several they thought could be sold. The ‘worthless’ pieces were slashed with knives and trucked to the Jeu de Paume, then burned in the adjacent gardens. I would estimate one military truck full, about five or six hundred works. Klee, Miró, Max Ernst, Picasso. The frames and stretchers crackled first. Then the paintings would explode into flame, burn hotly, and dwindle swiftly into ash. It was impossible to save anything.” 4
“Just like Berlin in 1938,” Rorimer said, remembering a bonfire of modern art that had, in those more innocent times, shocked the world. By now the world understood there was nothing the Nazis wouldn’t do.
“What about the rest?” he said.
Valland got up and went to her bedroom. When she returned, she had yet another stack of evidence. “The rest is in Germany,” she said, handing him documents on the Nazi art repositories at Heilbronn, Buxheim, Hohenschwangau, all names he had heard from her before. As she explained their locations and importance, Rorimer had a realization: the repositories were in southern Germany, which meant they were all going to fall into Seventh Army territory. His army. His territory. Suddenly, he could feel the weight. For more than four years, the preservation of these treasures had been Rose Valland’s responsibility; today, she was sharing that burden—that privilege, that obligation—with him.
She picked up a photograph and handed it to him. It didn’t require an extensive knowledge of art of history for Rorimer to immediately recognize the soaring fairytale towers of the enormous castle at Neuschwanstein.
“At this castle,” Valland said, “the Nazis have gathered thousands of works of art stolen from France. Get there, and you will find all the records and documentation of the ERR along with the works of art.” She paused. “I only hope the Nazis will not make our treasures suffer for their defeat.”
Rorimer stared at the photograph. The world knew Neuschwanstein as the great romantic folly of Mad Ludwig, a nineteenth- century king of Bavaria. Valland was
telling him it was perhaps the greatest treasure house in the world. But Neuschwanstein was high on a rocky outcrop in the Bavarian Alps, isolated and barely accessible to modern vehicles. It would take a tremendous effort to transport hundreds of heavy crates containing works of art to such a location, so much of which would have to be carried, much less the twenty thousand pieces Valland had documented moving through the Jeu de Paume.
“How can you be sure?” he said finally.
“Trust me,” Rose Valland replied. “This is more than a woman’s intuition.” 5
CHAPTER 30
Hitler’s Nero Decree
Berlin, Germany
March 18–19, 1945
Albert Speer, Hitler’s personal architect and the Nazi minister of armaments and war production, was at a loss. Speer was not an early joiner of the Nazi Party—he was official party member number 474,481—but he had been close with Hitler since the mid-1930s. The Führer fancied himself an amateur architect, after all, and always had a special fondness for fellow “artists.” In their decade of working together, Speer had never disobeyed a direct order. But recently, Hitler had developed a plan to destroy Germany’s infrastructure—bridges, railroads, factories, warehouses, anything to impede the progress of the enemy. For weeks, Speer had successfully argued for prudence and restraint.
Then on March 18, 1945, Speer received word that four officers had been executed on Hitler’s orders because they had not blown up the bridge at Remagen, allowing the Western Allies their first advance across the Rhine. Fearing the failure at Remagen was the excuse the Führer needed to implement his “scorched earth” policy, Speer hurriedly composed a twenty-two-page memo on the apocalyptic effects of the planned destruction. “If the numerous railroad bridges over the smaller canals and valleys, or the viaducts, are blown up,” he wrote the Führer, “the Ruhr area will be unable to handle even the production needed for repairing the bridges.” 1 He was even more pessimistic about the effect on German cities. “The planned demolition of the bridges in Berlin would cut off the city’s food supply, and industrial production and human life in this city would be rendered impossible for years to come. Such demolitions would mean the death of Berlin.”
On March 19, only one day later, he received the Führer’s response. It came in the form of a command to all military officers: 2
The Führer
Führer’s Headquarters
March 19, 1945
The struggle for the very existence of our people forces us to seize any means which can weaken the combat readiness of our enemy and prevent him from advancing. Every opportunity, direct or indirect, to inflict the most lasting possible damage on the enemy’s striking power must be used to the utmost. It is a mistake to believe that when we win back the lost territories we will be able to retrieve and use these transportation, communications, production, and supply facilities that have not been destroyed or have been temporarily crippled; when the enemy withdraws he will leave us only scorched earth and will show no consideration for the welfare of the population.
Therefore, I order:
1. All military, transportation, communications, industrial, and food-supply facilities, as well as all resources within the Reich which the enemy might use either immediately or in the foreseeable future for continuing the war, are to be destroyed.
2. Those responsible for these measures are: the military commands for all military objects, including the transportation and communications installations; the Gauleiters and defense commissioners for all industrial and supply facilities, as well as other resources. When necessary, the troops are to assist the Gauleiters and the defense commissioners in carrying out their task.
3. These orders are to be communicated at once to all troop commanders; contrary instructions are invalid.
Adolf Hitler
CHAPTER 31
First Army Across the Rhine
Cologne, Germany, and Bonn, Germany
March 10–20, 1945
Walker Hancock, the Monuments Man for U.S. First Army, pushed down on the accelerator, urging the jeep through the outskirts of Bonn, Germany. For the last several days, he had been traveling with his new boss (and former colleague) George Stout, and it was exhilarating to share both his company and his expertise. In Aachen, Hancock walked the city. On one block was an open restaurant, a few people on the sidewalk, one with a bag of groceries on her hip. Around the next corner, Aachen was a dead city, a graveyard of snapped wires, rusted metal, and rubble filthy with dog droppings. He imagined, looking down some streets, that no one would ever come back. Perhaps, he thought, they were all dead. At that moment, he had thought Aachen was as bad as it could get. Then he saw Cologne.
As a matter of policy, Germany was being pounded into submission. Hancock knew that fact, had heard it many times, but didn’t understand what “massive aerial bombardment” meant until he entered Cologne. The city had been hit by repeated Allied bombing runs—262 to be precise, although Walker Hancock had no way of knowing that—and the downtown area had been decimated. Not broken, but gone, knocked to the ground and then hit again and again until it was pulverized. It was “more devastation,” he wrote Saima, “than is possible for the human imagination to grasp.” 1 George Stout estimated 75 percent of the monuments in the area were destroyed, but that didn’t tell the whole story. Those spared were on the outskirts of town. In the center of the city, there wasn’t even anything to examine. The only thing standing was the cathedral, the Dom, untouched in the middle of a wasteland. It should have been an inspiring sight, an example of Western Allied compassion, but Hancock couldn’t see it that way. The scale of the destruction—the brutality of the Allied campaign to break the German will—was painful to contemplate. It was almost as if there was a message in this madness. We could have spared any building, the untouched cathedral seemed to imply. This is the only one we chose.
“All this has made me spend more time,” Hancock confessed to Saima, “escaping in my thoughts to our world, our plans and our hopes. Somehow they seem more actual to me than what my eyes have been seeing.” 2
The Allies were angry. There was no other conclusion. The Allies were angry at Germany and everything in it. The anger had been building for months, maybe since Normandy, but it had accelerated during the terrible winter. Before the war, Cologne had a population of nearly 800,000; Hancock figured there were fewer than 40,000 citizens still left in the city. Those left seemed scarred and bitter, or worse. “I felt [their] bitterness, hatred, the way you feel a raw, north gale,” Stout would write of the citizens of Cologne. “Out of curiosity, I kept looking for some kind of feeling in their faces. It seemed always the same. A kind of hate and something like despair—or else a blank.” 3
Looking at those blank and broken faces, Walker Hancock thought of Saima, and of their plans to build a house (he was saving his army paychecks), to settle down, to have a family. He couldn’t help but wonder: If he had dinner with a family in Cologne, would he feel the same about them as he had about Monsieur Geneen and his family in La Gleize? Or were his feelings tied to the fact that Geneen was Belgian, a victim, and not an aggressor?
The thought came back to him, as it often did: To save the culture of your allies is a small thing. To cherish the culture of your enemy, to risk your life and the life of other men to save it, to give it all back to them as soon as the battle was won… it was unheard of, but that is exactly what Walker Hancock and the other Monuments Men intended to do.
The treasures of Aachen lay out there somewhere. It was his duty to find them. But he wouldn’t drive himself like this, he knew, just for duty. Success took conviction, a belief that the Monuments mission was not only right, but necessary. It couldn’t be just a duty; it had to be a passion. And the more Hancock saw of destruction, the more passionate he became.
Cologne had produced no clues. The movable works of art were gone, evacuated before the worst of the destruction. He and Stout had arrived with the names of a few local officials, culled fro
m past interviews in other broken cities, but none could be found. The monuments were dust. After only a day, Stout left to inspect some smaller towns in the area; Hancock headed to Bonn and the last known office of the former Paris Kunstschutz leader Count Wolff-Metternich. Word had filtered up from Paris that Wolff-Metternich was a good man, that he had been not just sympathetic but active in the French cause. In fact, he had lost his position for siding one too many times with the French against his Nazi bosses. If anyone had information, it would be him. And if he was gone, there was always the paperwork. The Nazis were fastidious about paperwork. The long months of not knowing, Hancock felt, were coming to an end.
On the outskirts of Bonn, the sun was shining. The buildings were untouched. But like so many other cities, the farther toward the center he drove, the more damage he saw. The town center was mostly destroyed, the result of Western Allied bombing runs, but even here he saw cherry trees in bloom, twisting up among the ruins. He stopped outside an eighteenth-century house. The arched stone doorway was just a few feet from the street, spiral metal grillwork hanging from the keystone but the door open for access. Entering the dark hallway, he ascended a small wooden staircase and moments later stood awestruck in the tiny upper room where Ludwig van Beethoven had been born. In the countryside outside town, he had seen peasants with their whole lives loaded on rickety carts, coal mines on fire, the world black from their smoke. But this sanctuary, this artistic reliquary, stood. He thought of the cherry trees among the ruins. Even in Germany, slivers of hope and beauty—and happiness, and art—survived.