Customer Reviews

The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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!

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.

Length:: 1:24 Mins

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.

Even before the first shots of World War II were fired in September 1939, Adolf Hitler was dreaming of transforming his hometown of Linz into a kind of Nazi cultural capital, and his political aides were helping him earmark works of art from around Europe that could be added to his collection. Unlike today's avid collectors, however, Hitler opted to obtain his works via looting, confiscation or as a kind of trade for the owner's survival, safety or escape from the Nazi regime. The fight to retrieve this art and return it to its former owner goes on to this day; the Amber Room is still missing from the Tsarist palaces of St. Petersburg, while works by Klimt have only recently been returned to the families of their original owners.

That's the backdrop against which Robert Edsel (and his writer, Brett Witter) craft their story of the adventures of six very different "Monuments Men", a motley crew of artists, curators and other types who landed on the beaches of Normandy in the wake of D-Day and, hitchiking from one town to another, battled to protect, rescue and, later, retrieve lost masterpieces. The material in the book is compelling, but the way in which it's delivered and presented falls short, which astonished me given the sheer drama of the quixotic adventures of the monuments men. Part of the problem are the ultra-short chapters (sometimes only three or four pages), which just gave me a chance to immerse myself in what one of the monuments men was up to before it jumped, sometimes both geographically and thematically, to another chapter dealing with something else. I ended up feeling dizzy and distracted.

I also struggled with two elements in the writing of the book. Firstly, Edsel has chosen to pay tribute to the individuals involved by providing a lot of detail of their personal lives. Alas, this doesn't do much for the narrative, even in the case of Harry Ettlinger, whose dramatic last-minute emigration to the United States in 1938 opens the book. (He later becomes one of the monuments men.) Most of their lives are relatively ordinary, and while I'm sure they loved their wives and children and worried about their ability to pay the bills, in the context of the rather choppy structure, this just becomes a distraction that doesn't propel the book forward. (That's not to say the same information couldn't have been conveyed in vignettes scattered throughout the book; it simply felt like I was struggling through a rather dull preamble.) Secondly, for a book about the preservation of monuments, there's little attention to the art history itself. Reading about the preparation of the lengthy list of buildings that the Allies had labeled as to be protected, I wondered about how it was composed. What criteria were used? Did people argue over the inclusion or exclusion of some locations? I did ferret out some tidbits, but this is a book more about the people and the derring-do than about the art, and anyone not well-informed about the importance of Van Eyck, Michaelangelo, etc. could find this frustrating.

There's already an excellent book that deals with similar material in print -- The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War -- and the stark contrast between the two doesn't favor Edsel's offering. True, he goes into greater depth than Nicholas on the adventures associated with the recovery of the art work. But returning to glance into Nicholas's book, I realized that I, at least, valued the broader context it offered me into the whole tragic episode, from the first thefts and the persecution of artists like Chagall, to the pesky issues that still surround the debate over who owns some of these works of art. If you've read Nicholas's book, and want to delve more deeply into this particular part of the story, this is a laudable effort. It's just not a great book in its own right.

The search for artwork stolen by the Nazis in WWII has been aptly described as "the greatest treasure hunt in treasury." As the soldiers who participated in this hunt were also charged with saving historical churches and other historical monuments, they were referred to as "Monument men."

The heoric quest of the Monument Men is an undertold story of WWII. Outside of art scholars and musuem curators, few are aware of the details of their saga. In his book, Robert Edsel provides us the details. He spent many years conducting research for this book and, particularly in the latter half of the story, the reader is rewarded by his effort.

While the research is impressive, I give "Monument Men" just four stars. With some better editing, it could have been a five star book. Here are some examples of the poor editing:

1) Early in the re-telling we are introduced to the only female character of importance, but we do not learn her backstory until some chapters later. Keeping the reader "in the dark" about the background of a main character is a literary technique fit for a mystery --- not an important work of non-fiction.

2) About halfway in the story we are told about an explosion behind allied lines. However, we do not learn the results of that explosion into well into the next chapter -- a chapter that concerns a different monument man hundreds of miles away. Again, the reader is given a mystery, and has to wait for the facts.

3) Seperate from the main body of the text, the author includes several relevant (and some marginally relevant) letters. The typeface used for German/Nazi sources is very similar, if not identical, to the typeface used from allied sources. Since the first few letters are from Nazi sources, the reader is setup to expect letters with the particular typeface will be from Nazi sources. In any reprinting of this book, there should be clearly different typefaces for Nazi and Allied sources.

Still, these flaws aside, a strong four stars.

The Monuments Men shows what a gifted storyteller Mr. Edsel is along with his co-writer Bret Witter (loved Dewey as well!). Following up to his first book Rescuing DaVinci and the documentary film The Rape of Europa (co-producer)- Monuments Men takes us even further into the adventures of 10 of the men and women serving in the Monuments Fine Arts & Archives section. I would have read it in one sitting if I had the time!! You will never again look at art or WWII in the same way once your eyes are opened the awe-inspiring stories of these inviduals and the role they played in rescuing art and other cultural treasures from the hands of the Nazi thieves. I highly recommend the film The Rape of Europa as a companion to this memorable story - an enlightening documentary of the highest quality rarely seen in today's media which seems more concerned with the latest celebrity shenanigans or mindless reality shows.

Monuments Men is a great way to present history so that it sounds like a novel. It make the reading easy and brings out the human side of history,the sacrifices people made, their successes and failures. That is above and beyond just bringing back to our attention this moment in history when the winning armies aimed to preserve the art of the countries affected.

Mr. Edsel has produced a true gem by revealing this little known story about the Monuments Men to the world. The Monuments Men are an important element of art history of the era. Edsel truly honors the Monuments Men by preserving their stories in this book. The author is a gifted story teller that helps give each Monument Man (or woman) a distinct personality and character. This book gives a more in depth understanding of what the Monuments Men endured, continuing from the first book, Rescuing Da Vinci. This book is facinating and hard to put down. Robert Edsel is a true American hero and I'm happy to give this book my full endorsement.

The Monuments Men follows the story of the lives of eight soldiers very closely and also includes some of their correspondence in a revealing look on a rare subject. The Monuments Men were a small band of soldiers whose jobs were to assess damages to cathedrals, statues, and other relics during WWII and to advise on the appropriate measures to restore or protect such treasures. As the Monuments Men advanced with the front in Europe, their job focused on reclaiming the works illicitly confiscated by the Nazis. The end of the book describes the discovery of hidden German repositories of art. The volume and quality of art found in these hiding places is absolutely staggering. A beautiful read.

If I had written this review when I was only 25% of the way through this book, I would have given it 2 stars. The beginning of the book can only be described as plodding and in my opinion was not very well constructed. However, I hung in there and the payoff came in the remainder of the book.

The book describes an overlooked group of men and women who served during WWII to save priceless buildings and works of arts in Europe. It also describes the internal conflicts of these folks who wondered, for example, if the German people deserved the return of their Nazi-stolen art. The efforts of these dedicated service-men and -women were, naturally enough, largely overshadowed by the inarguably more important discoveries at the end of WWII, such as the truths revealed by the liberation of the concentration camps. This book is thus a wonderful contribution to an overlooked history of the time.

The end of the book describes the discovery of hidden German repositories of art; the volume and quality of art found in these hiding places is absolutely staggering. I had the pleasure of seeing Michelangelo's flawless Madonna when I was in Bruges and was riveted by her WWII story, which was not described in any detail in the materials given out by the museums there.

In summary: stick with it. The book had some problems with flow, especially in the beginning, but the payoff of the middle and ending was worth it.