Customer Reviews

Nazi Plunder: Great Treasure Stories Of World War II

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"Nazi Plunder: Great Treasure Stories Of World War II.
By Kenneth D. Alford. Da Capo Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2001.

Although the title of this book is "Nazi Plunder", most of the book is concerned with the American Army plundering all the Nazi loot that they ran across at the end of the war in Europe. As a conquering army and as an agent of the United States government, the American Army had the right and the duty to capture and hold the masses of gold, silver, jewels, painting and books that were scattered around the Third Reich in April/May 1945. But, as the author, Kenneth D. Alford, points out, there were many American soldiers, (officers and enlisted men) who were willing to pocket as much as they could of the captured Nazi loot. Alford tells engaging stories about golden reliquaries that were in Texas for half a century and later returned to the church in Germany and about Adolf Hitler's library which ended up in the Library of Congress in Washington. With the exception of the Russians and the "Amber Room", it seemed that all the looting had been done by Americans. What did the British, Canadian and French soldiers loot?

I found the book to lack continuity. The author announces a subject change by the simple expedient of placing a blank page in the book and then jumping from German War Art to "Fabulous Horses". Further, the book would benefit from more editing. On the same page, page 7, the author uses two different spellings for the town as (1) Frankfort and (2) Frankfurt. He does not tell you if it is Frankfurt Am Main or Frankfurt on Oder, but the context shows the town to be Am Main. On page 72, he calls Heinrich Himmler's home as "Haus Schmeewinkel". I would expect that the proper spelling is "Haus Schneewinkel". On page 123, he writes the "Unties States" instead of the United States.
When I was working on my MA thesis (History), my thesis advisor made me use an old-fashioned brown wooden ruler and go through the text line by line. Spell checker does not cut it. On page 187, the picture does not show a "...shape like a bishop's hat", but rather, a ... "shape like a bishop's mitre". In fact, many of the captions for the different photos just repeat the words found in the associated text.

For the great amount of research, four stars. For the lack of continuity of the story, one star. For the need for a more through editing, one star. Average: two stars.

I agree completely with "John's" assessment of the book. I found the numerous grammatical and spelling errors to be quite distracting. One wonders if the author was this sloppy with the writing, did he also make mistakes with the historical facts?

This was just a great book. These really are great treasure stories of World War II. What a fascinating history of the plunder, and, often, the return of artifacts from Nazi Germany.
This is a great piece of history and it's just a really good book!

I visited the new Amber Room in 2006 and was awestruck at its majesty. I can only wonder at what happened to the original, like so much more that was looted during World War II. Neither side is innocent but it does make you wonder about human nature. We are a very strange breed at times. It is such a shame that so much national heritage is destroyed or "redeployed" at these times. How much more is out there in private collections or still buried in unknown of vaults or caves or basements..... This was a very interesting read.