Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #133301 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-01
• Released on: 2009-09-01
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook, CD
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 6
• Binding: Audio CD

Features

• ISBN13: 9781427206916
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
WWII was the most destructive war in history and caused the greatest dislocation of cultural artifacts. Hundreds of thousands of items remain missing. The main burden fell to a few hundred men and women, curators and archivists, artists and art historians from 13 nations. Their task was to save and preserve what they could of Europe's great art, and they were called the Monuments Men. (Coincidentally or not, this book appears only briefly after Ilaria Dagnini Brey's The Venus Fixers: The Untold Story of the Allied Soldiers Who Saved Italy's Art During World War II, Reviews, June 1.) Edsel has presented their achievements in documentaries and photographs. He and Witter (coauthor of the bestselling Dewey) are no less successful here. Focusing on the organization's role in northwest Europe, they describe the Monuments Men from their initial mission to limit combat damage to structures and artifacts to their changed focus of locating missing items. Most had been stolen by the Nazis. In southern Germany alone, over a thousand caches emerged, containing everything from church bells to insect collections. The story is both engaging and inspiring. In the midst of a total war, armies systematically sought to mitigate cultural loss. (Sept. 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Jonathan Yardley We tend in these permissive times to embrace an expansive and often sentimental definition of heroism, in the process elevating to heroic status men and women whose actions, however admirable, remarkable and courageous, fall short of the self-sacrificial. Were the Allied (mostly American) soldiers who rescued works of art stolen by the Nazis before and during World War II really heroes, as Robert M. Edsel claims in "The Monuments Men," or were they good men -- aided by one resourceful, determined French woman -- who were simply, in the best sense of the phrase, just doing their jobs? My vote is for the latter, and I suspect that most of those involved in the effort would have said the same. In civilian life they were professional art people or patrons of the arts, and they seem to have regarded their work during the war as an extension and amplification of their civilian careers. They worked very hard and very effectively, but they seem to have had no sense of (or inclination toward) heroics, and my judgment is that they should be viewed accordingly: with respect and gratitude, but not elevated to the exalted precincts of heroism. Still, for the most part they have receded into the fog of history -- the notable exception is Lincoln Kirstein, who remains well known as a founder of the New York City Ballet -- and that is a pity, so it is good to have them given recognition in "The Monuments Men." It's a somewhat problematical book: There's a great deal of conversation, and Edsel's acknowledgment that "I have taken the liberty of creating dialogue for continuity, but in no instance does it concern matters of substance and in all cases it is based on extensive documentation" is not entirely convincing. But it's a terrific story, and it certainly is good to give these men (and that one remarkable woman) their due. In particular it is good to make the acquaintance of George Stout. When the United States entered the war, he was in his early 40s, working at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum, where he was doing pathfinding art conservation. The Monuments Men did not have an official field general, but Stout was the No. 1 man. "Stout was a leader," one of his comrades said, "quiet, unselfish, modest, yet very strong, very thoughtful and remarkably innovative. Whether speaking or writing, he was economical with words, precise, vivid. One believed what he said; one wanted to do what he proposed." He was "the resident expert upon whom all the other Monuments Men relied," leading both by his words and by his example. Stout had been in on the arts-rescue enterprise from the beginning. In December 1941, as the United States entered the war, he was instrumental in organizing a meeting of high-powered arts figures to try to determine how to protect the art of Europe from Nazi looters. These criminals were in many cases motivated by sheer greed, in others by the desire to honor Adolph Hitler, who was as fanatical about art as about everything else. He wanted to corner the world's greatest art and install it in his "Führermuseum . . . the largest, most imposing, most spectacular art museum in the world." Presumably it would last as long as the thousand-year Reich. Stout's dream was a long time in coming true, held up by infighting among the arts people and the slow-moving military bureaucracy, but in 1943 President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in Europe, which in turn led to the formation of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section in the armed forces. It was never more than a tiny operation -- at most it employed about 350 people -- and at first it was minuscule. Edsel -- who has a fondness for putting thoughts into people's heads and describing them in somewhat breathless prose -- describes Stout's reaction: "It was a good group, [Stout] had to admit. A group he himself might have chosen, if given the chance. Only eleven men, unfortunately, but eleven good men. Not trained conservators, but the next best thing: scholars, artists, museum curators, and architects, men who worked for a living, not ordered others to work. They were established professionals. Almost all had wives, and most had children. They were old enough to understand what was at stake, and perhaps young enough to survive the rigors of the battlefield." Of these, the one to whom Edsel gives most attention apart from Stout is James J. Rorimer. Before the war he worked at the Metropolitan Museum -- he had been a founder of its medieval branch, the Cloisters, and after the war became director of the museum itself -- and he embraced the art-rescue effort as "the mission of a lifetime." After Allied troops invaded Normandy, he got "the assignment he most desired: Monuments Man for Seine Section, which meant, essentially, Paris." But he soon determined that "the important work was not here, but in Germany, and Rorimer hated to be too far away from the important work." He got his wish, and in Germany he did brave and invaluable service to the cause. He had paved the way for that before leaving Paris, by slowly and patiently winning the trust and eventually the friendship of a Frenchwoman named Rose Valland. Throughout the Nazi occupation of Paris she had managed "the small Louvre outpost known as the Jeu de Paume, located at a far corner of the Jardin des Tuileries." She had done so at the specific request of Jacques Jaujard, director of the French National Museums. He knew that "before leaving Paris, the looted artwork was all brought to one spot for cataloguing and crating." The spot was the Jeu de Paume, and his "spy inside" was Rose Valland. He told Rorimer: "Her loyalty to France and to the artwork is beyond question. When you get to know her, you will understand that, too. . . . Rose Valland probably saved more important paintings than most conservators will work with in a lifetime." Saving those paintings and all the other works of art -- thousands upon thousands of them -- was a staggering task, one that lasted well past the surrender of Nazi Germany. As the war ground on and on, German outrages became ever more appalling, because "the greatest danger wasn't when the Germans were in complete control, but now, when they were losing control and realizing this was their last opportunity to act." In Paris alone, "Jaujard estimated that 22,000 pieces of important artwork had been stolen." Edsel writes: "The variety of items stolen was exceeded only by the volume. After all, five years was an eternity to commit robbery, and there were thousands of people involved in the looting operations: art experts, guards, packers, engineers. Thousands of trains, tens of thousands of gallons of fuel. Could a million objects have been taken? It seemed impossible, but Stout was beginning to think the Nazis had done it. Their appetite for plunder was boundless, and they were, after all, a model of efficiency, economy, and brutality." That so much of what they stole was eventually recovered by this tiny band of determined people was nothing short of miraculous. It makes for a terrific story, even when it's not told very well. yardleyj@washpost.com
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

About the Author

Customer Reviews

A FASCINATING ACCOUNT OF A NEGLECTED WW2 TOPIC
The most devastating damage and acts of looting of art objects in the annals of history took place during World War Two.These were perpetrated by the Nazi hordes ,carefully directed by the Fuhrer himself.The Nazi army was perpetually pillaging the finest art in Europe.The vain Goering and Alfred Rosenberg were among the main culprits involved in those brutal crimes against the human creative talent.
Fortunately,there was a Western Allied effort to mitigate combat damage, primarily to structures-churches,museums, and other various monuments.In the course of those brutal years, particularly during 1943-1944,the Allies paid much more attention to finding and protecting cultural items which were stolen from their owners,many of which were Jews.The bosses of the Third Reich transported more than five million cultural objects to many sites in Germany, where they hid them , hoping that one day they would not only be the masters of the world, but also the masters of art.
More than 350 men and women served as Monuments People.This number was culled from thirteen nations.In the end, only a handful of them were active and this book is their story.It was the responsibility of this group to save as much of the European culture as it could.
Mt. Edsel has been living in Florence ,Italy, in the 1990s when he wondered how so many of Europe's monuments and other works of art could have survived this unprecedented orgy of destruction.Thus, he set out to conduct a very careful process of extremely meticulous research which led him ultimately to interview those soldiers who have risked and dedicated their lives pursuing this mission.Many of them were art curators,scholars, educators, architects and archivists in their early forties.There are captivating chapters on the fate of museums in Western Europe, such those in France, Belgium,Holland and Italy.You will meet well-known paintings and the fate of them.Among these are the "Mona Lisa" and "The Night Watch".There arealso letters written by the heroes of this book to various relatives of theirs and some directives given or sent to Nazi officials.
Mr. Edsel's forte in the book is especially interesting when describing what happened during and after 1945 in Altaussee, Austria- a site where many tunnels served as sanctuaries for an enormous number of stolen works, as well as another chapter devoted to the Merkers salt mine in Germany where the largest paintings from the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Berlin were placed for safekeeping (along Germany's gold reserve and paper currency).
We are also informed that the castle of Neuschwainstein, which was built by Mad Ludwing of Bavaria in the ninetennth century, served as a key Nazi repository of the greatest works of art stolen from France.It took the Monuments Men six whole weeks to empty it.Some of the stolen art objects belonged to the Rothschild collection in France.
This is an originally told and well-researched chapter with a happy
end, not only because of the outcome of those devoted men and women, but also because they finally got the right historian and researcher who is responsible for bringing up their extrordinary achievements, and for whom humanity shoud be more than grateful.I must warn you: once you start reading the book, you will not put it down easily.
Five points go to this book!

Great book that offers an interesting take on the subject of art looting and rescue during WWII
This is a great read. There are several other books on the subject, but all are very academic in nature and tend to omit the exciting adventure and personal stories of the Monuments Men. As the title suggests, this is really a story about the Monuments Men themselves. Mr. Edsel has done a very good job bringing the characters who are at the center of the story to life. His use of the Monuments Men's personal letters interspersed throughout the book really helps to develop their characters and they allow the reader to truly connect with the Monuments Men.
I also enjoyed seeing some Nazi documents inserted in the first section. Those who are well read on the subject know about the Nazis' plans to confiscated Jewish owned art collections and also Hitler's desire to build the Führermuseum in Linz with his massive collection, but rarely do you get a chance to see the actual documents ordering the massive looting of art.
Mr. Edsel's accounts of the events at Altaussee were obviously well researched as he offers some new opinions and much more detailed explanations than most books offer about what happened in the final days of the war when there were attempts to destroy the mine.
I think anyone who enjoys books on WWII, art history, or even just a good adventure or love story will really like The Monuments Men. It is an engaging book, and it moves quickly so it is easy to finish in a few days.

Heroes of Civilization
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2ZBXQ50PL0IHB The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History

The Monuments Men brings to life the untold story of the heroes who risked everything to save the treasures stolen by Hitler and the Nazis. The world owes much to them for their selfless acts. In one word, this story is remarkable and every school library, military base, and political leader should own a copy as a reminder of the legacy of the Monuments Men and of the importance of protecting culture in times of conflict.