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Neuschwanstein Castle storage room filled with looted art, Sept. 1945. (Photo by Thomas Carr Howe papers, Archives of American Art).

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Neuschwanstein Castle storage room filled with looted art, Sept. 1945. (Photo by Thomas Carr Howe papers, Archives of American Art).

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The coffin of Frederick the Great was found draped with a Nazi flag in the Bernterode Mine, May 1, 1945. (Walker Hancock Collection, courtesy of the Monuments Men Foundation).

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The coffin of Frederick the Great was found draped with a Nazi flag in the Bernterode Mine, May 1, 1945. (Walker Hancock Collection, courtesy of the Monuments Men Foundation).

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Monuments Men in Japan: Discoveries in the George Leslie Stout papers

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Monuments Men in Japan: Discoveries in the George Leslie Stout papers

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Ueno, Rihoko

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Blog | Monuments Men in Japan: Discoveries in the George Leslie Stout papers | Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

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Archivist Rihoko Ueno shares documents from the George Leslie Stout papers, which highlight the work of the Monuments Men in Japan.

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Smithsonian Cultural Research Institute

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Cultural heritage helps define our distinct national and ethnic identities. It brings us together when used as a diplomatic tool to promote peace and…

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Sikellis, Nicholas

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Defending Ukraineʻs art and culture from destruction

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Defending Ukraineʻs art and culture from destruction

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The Ukrainian people and their supporters worldwide are working to preserve Ukraine's culture and to document the damage Russia's military has caused.

For its part, the U.S. Department of State announced February 23 that its Ukraine Cultural Heritage Response Initiative will invest $7 million to support Ukrainian efforts to protect Ukraine's cultural heritage.

Working with experts in Ukraine and international partners, the funds will help:

Document damaged sites and collections.

Protect works and sites from damage and theft.

Stabilize damaged sites.

Provide specialized training.

Ukraine's Ministry of Culture reports that Russia's forces have damaged more than 550 sites and objects important to Ukraine's history and cultural identity.

Since the start of the Kremlin's full-scale invasion last February, Russia's forces have looted paintings, icons and sculptures from several museums. A December 2022 report from the Conflict Observatory, an independent research initiative supported by the U.S. government, used satellite imagery to document the looting in Kherson. By one count, occupiers stole 15,000 paintings from the Oleksii Shovkunenko Art Museum in Kherson.

The Ukrainian Institute in Kyiv has published online "Postcards from Ukraine," a series featuring photos and historical sketches of cultural facilities to record and demonstrate the damage Vladimir Putin's invasion has caused to Ukrainian culture.

"Destroying our culture is the purpose of everything the Russians are doing," said Marjana Varchuk, communications director at the Khanenko Museum, in 2022. "That's why the Russians are shelling our monuments, our museums, and our history."

Global efforts underway

While Ukrainians act to protect their cultural heritage, private and public organizations in the United States and around the world have also rallied to this cause.

Among initiatives to protect Ukraine's culture:

PEN America, a nonprofit in New York, created a $2.2 million fund to aid visual artists in Ukraine.

The J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles pledged $1 million to preserve museums, libraries and archives.

Google created a digital archive, Ukraine Is Here, showcasing more than 1,800 artifacts, 40 curated exhibitions with audio, 100 street views and several virtual immersive galleries.

The World Monuments Fund, a nonprofit organization based in New York, launched an initiative to preserve vulnerable sites.

The European Commission is providing 5 million Euros to national culture organizations and Ukrainian artists outside their country.

The international alliance for the protection of heritage in conflict areas, ALIPH, in Switzerland has invested nearly $4 million to support over 260 cultural organizations preserving Ukrainian culture.

Since 2001, the United States has provided $1.7 million to support 18 cultural preservation projects in Ukraine through the State Department's Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation. Some examples include helping to restore the Old Academic Building in Kyiv and the Lviv Historical Museum.

Reflecting on how Russia's attacks on culture have galvanized Ukrainians' spirit and global solidarity, Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych said, "It's quite ironic that each attempt Russia has made to destroy Ukrainian culture has had the opposite effect."

Invaluable items at risk

The International Council of Museums published a "red list" of 53 invaluable cultural objects in Ukraine that are at risk of being stolen, looted or traded illegally. The council hopes that by publishing the list, it will discourage individuals and collectors from taking items without researching their origins.

Categories of cultural heritage on the list include:

Rare books or manuscripts dating back to the 13th century.

Icons in wood or canvas of religious imagery.

Paintings or drawings from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Textiles and folk costumes.

On the one-year mark of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, "Putin's first objective was to erase Ukraine from the map, to erase its identity, to absorb it into Russia. That has failed and will never succeed."

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Defending Ukraine's art and culture from destruction

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The Ukrainian people and their supporters worldwide are working to preserve Ukraine's culture and to document the damage Russia's military has caused. For its part, the U.S. Department of State announced February 23 that its Ukraine Cultural Heritage Response Initiative will invest $7 million to support Ukrainian efforts to protect Ukraine's cultural heritage.

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Two men standing by racks of paintings inside a salt mine in Altaussee, Austria, circa 1945. (Photo by Thomas Carr Howe papers, Archives of American Art).

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Two men standing by racks of paintings inside a salt mine in Altaussee, Austria, circa 1945. (Photo by Thomas Carr Howe papers, Archives of American Art).

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Sgt. Major Harold Maus examines an Albrecht Dürer engraving, found among other art treasures in a salt mine in Merker, Germany.

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Sgt. Major Harold Maus examines an Albrecht Dürer engraving, found among other art treasures in a salt mine in Merker, Germany.

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Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, accompanied by Gen. Omar N. Bradley, left, and Lt. George S. Patton, Jr., inspects art treasures stolen by Germans and hidden in a salt mine in Germany.

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Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, accompanied by Gen. Omar N. Bradley, left, and Lt. George S. Patton, Jr., inspects art treasures stolen by Germans and hidden in a salt mine in Germany.

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Chaplain Samuel Blinder examines one of hundreds of Saphor Torahs, part of a cache of Hebrew and Jewish books that were stolen and collected from every occupied country in Europe.

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Chaplain Samuel Blinder examines one of hundreds of Saphor Torahs, part of a cache of Hebrew and Jewish books that were stolen and collected from every occupied country in Europe.

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American soldiers carry recovered paintings from Neuschwanstein castle in Germany under the supervision of Captain James Rorimer of the MFAA.

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American soldiers carry recovered paintings from Neuschwanstein castle in Germany under the supervision of Captain James Rorimer of the MFAA.

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The 90th Division of the U.S. Third Army discovered this cache of Reichsbank wealth, SS loot and Berlin museum paintings that were removed from Berlin to a salt mine vault in Merkers, Germany.

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The 90th Division of the U.S. Third Army discovered this cache of Reichsbank wealth, SS loot and Berlin museum paintings that were removed from Berlin to a salt mine vault in Merkers, Germany.

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U.S. soldiers examine a famous painting, “Wintergarden,” by French Impressionist Edouard Manet, part of a collection of Reichbank wealth, SS loot and paintings removed by the Nazis from Berlin to a salt mine vault. The 90th Div, U.S. Third Army, discovered the gold and other treasure.

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U.S. soldiers examine a famous painting, “Wintergarden,” by French Impressionist Edouard Manet, part of a collection of Reichbank wealth, SS loot and paintings removed by the Nazis from Berlin to a salt mine vault. The 90th Div, U.S. Third Army, discovered the gold and other treasure.

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First Lieutenant James J. Rorimer, at left, and Sergeant Antonio T. Valin examine recovered objects. Neuschwanstein, Germany, May 1945. Photograph by U.S. Signal Corps.

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First Lieutenant James J. Rorimer, at left, and Sergeant Antonio T. Valin examine recovered objects. Neuschwanstein, Germany, May 1945. Photograph by U.S. Signal Corps.

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Met Museum trains ‘Monuments Men’ to save Ukrainian cultural heritage

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Met Museum trains ‘Monuments Men’ to save Ukrainian cultural heritage

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Small, Zachary

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The Lasting Impact of the Washington Principles and Best Practices for the Restitution of Nazi-Confiscated Art

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The Lasting Impact of the Washington Principles and Best Practices for the Restitution of Nazi-Confiscated Art

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Eizenstat, Stuart

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World War II Looted Art: Turning History into Justice

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World War II Looted Art: Turning History into Justice

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World War II Looted Art: Turning History into Justice - Google Arts & Culture

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National Archives and Records Administration

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Morrison, Jim

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Captain Robert Posey and Pfc. Lincoln Kirstein were the first through the small gap in the rubble blocking the ancient salt mine at Altausee, high in the Austrian Alps in 1945 as World War II drew to a close in May 1945. They walked past one sidechamber in the cool damp air and entered a second one, the flames of their lamps guiding the way.

There, resting on empty cardboard boxes a foot off the ground, were eight panels of The Adoration of the Lamb by Jan van Eyck, considered one of the masterpieces of 15th-century European art. In one panel of the altarpiece, the Virgin Mary, wearing a crown of flowers, sits reading a book.

"The miraculous jewels of the Crowned Virgin seemed to attract the light from our flickering acetylene lamps," Kirstein wrote later. "Calm and beautiful, the altarpiece was, quite simply, there."

Kirstein and Posey were two members of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section of the Allies, a small corps of mostly middle-aged men and a few women who interrupted careers as historians, architects, museum curators and professors to mitigate combat damage. They found and recovered countless artworks stolen by the Nazis.

Their work was largely forgotten to the general public until an art scholar, Lynn H. Nicholas, working in Brussels, read an obituary about a French woman who spied on the Nazis' looting operation for years and singlehandedly saved 60,000 works of art. That spurred Nicholas to spend a decade researching her 1995 book, The Rape of Europa, which began the resurrection of their story culminating with the movie, The Monuments Men, based upon Robert Edsel's 2009 book of the same name. The Smithsonian's Archives of American Art holds the personal papers and oral history interviews of a number of the Monuments Men as well as photographs and manuscripts from their time in Europe.

"Without the [Monuments Men], a lot of the most important treasures of European culture would be lost," Nicholas says. "They did an extraordinary amount of work protecting and securing these things."

Nowhere, notes Nicholas, were more of those treasures collected than at Altaussee, where Hitler stored the treasures intended for his Fuhrermuseum in Linz, Austria, a sprawling museum complex that Hitler planned as a showcase for his plunder. On that first foray, Kirstein and Posey (portrayed in pseuodyminity by actors Bob Balaban and Bill Murray, respectively) had also discovered Michelangelo's Madonna, which was spirited out of Bruges, Belgium, by the Nazis in September 1944 as the Allies advanced on the city. Within days, they'd also found priceless works by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer.

They summoned the only Monuments Man for the job, George Stout, who had pioneered new techniques of art conservation before the war working at Harvard's Fogg Museum. Early in the war, Stout (given the name Frank Stokes as played by George Clooney in the film) unsuccessfully campaigned for the creation of a group like the Monuments Men with both American and British authorities. Frustrated, the World War I veteran enlisted in the Navy and developed aircraft camouflage techniques until transferred to a small corps of 17 Monuments Men in December 1944.

Stout had been crossing France, Germany and Belgium recovering works, often traveling in a Volkswagen captured from the Germans. He was one of a handful of Monuments Men regularly in forward areas, though his letters home to his wife, Margie, mentioned only "field trips."

Monuments Men like Stout often operated alone with limited resources. In one journal entry, Stout said he calculated the boxes, crates, and packing materials needed for a shipment. "No chance of getting them," he wrote in April 1945.

So they made do. Stout transformed German sheepskin coats and gas masks into packing materials. He and his small band of colleagues rounded up guards and prisoners to pack and load. "Never anywhere in peace or war could you expect to see more selfless devotion, more dogged persistence in going on, much of the time alone and empty-handed, to get it done," Stout wrote to a stateside friend in March 1945.

(Map designed by Esri)

The Allies knew of Altaussee thanks to a toothache. Two months earlier, Posey was in the ancient city of Trier in eastern Germany with Kirstein and needed treatment. The dentist he found introduced him to his son-in-law, who was hoping to earn safe passage for his family to Paris, even though he had helped Herman Goering, Hitler's second-in-command, steal trainload after trainload of art. The son-in-law told them the location of Goering's collection as well as Hitler's stash at Altaussee.

Hitler claimed Altaussee as the perfect hideaway for loot intended for his Linz museum. The complex series of tunnels had been mined by the same families for 3,000 years, as Stout noted in his journal. Inside, the conditions were constant, between 40 and 47 degrees and about 65 percent humidity, ideal for storing the stolen art. The deepest tunnels were more than a mile inside the mountain, safe from enemy bombs even if the remote location was discovered. The Germans built floors, walls, and shelving as well as a workshop deep in the chambers. From 1943 through early 1945, a stream of trucks transported tons of treasures into the tunnels.

When Stout arrived there on May 21, 1945, shortly after hostilities ended, he chronicled the contents based on Nazi records: 6,577 paintings, 2,300 drawings or watercolors, 954 prints, 137 pieces of sculpture, 129 pieces of arms and armor, 79 baskets of objects, 484 cases of objects thought to be archives, 78 pieces of furniture, 122 tapestries, 1,200-1,700 cases apparently books or similar, and 283 cases contents completely unknown. The Nazis had built elaborate storage shelving and a conservation workshop deep within the mine, where the main chambers were more than a mile inside the mountain.

Stout also noted that there were plans for the demolition of the mine. Two months earlier, Hitler had issued the "Nero Decree," which stated in part:

All military transport and communication facilities, industrial establishments and supply depots, as well as anything else of value within Reich territory, which could in any way be used by the enemy immediately or within the foreseeable future for the prosecution of the war, will be destroyed.

The Nazi district leader near Altaussee, August Eigruber, interpreted the Fuhrer's words as an order to destroy any objects of value, which required the demolition of the mines so the artwork would not fall into enemy hands. He moved eight crates into the mines in April. They were marked "Marble - Do Not Drop," but actually contained 1,100 pound bombs.

His plans, however, were thwarted by a combination of local miners wanting to save their livelihood and Nazi officials who considered Eigruber's plan folly, according to books by Edsel and Nicholas. The mine director convinced Eigruber to set smaller charges to augment the bombs, then ordered the bombs removed without the district leader's knowledge. On May 3, days before Posey and Kirstein entered, the local miners removed the crates with the large bombs. By the time Eigruber learned, it was too late. Two days later, the small charges were fired, closing the mine's entrances, sealing the art safely inside.

Stout originally thought the removal would take place over a year, but that changed in June 1945 when the Allies began to set the zones of post-VE day Europe and Altaussee seemed destined for Soviet control, meaning some of Europe's great art treasures could disappear into Joseph Stalin's hands. The Soviets had "Trophy Brigades" whose job was to plunder enemy treasure (it's estimated they stole millions of objects, including Old Master drawings, paintings, and books).

Stout was told to move everything by July 1. It was an impossible order.

"Loaded less than two trucks by 11:30," Stout wrote on June 18. "Too slow. Need larger crew."

By June 24, Stout extended the workday to 4 a.m. to 10 p.m., but the logistics were daunting. Communication was difficult; he was often unable to contact Posey. There weren't enough trucks for the trip to the collecting point, the former Nazi Party headquarters, in Munich, 150 miles away. And the ones he got often broke down. There wasn't enough packing material. Finding food and billets for the men proved difficult. And it rained. "All hands grumbling," Stout wrote.

By July 1, the boundaries had not been settled so Stout and his crew moved forward. He spent a few days packing the Bruges Madonna, which Nicholas describes as "looking very much like a large Smithfield ham." On July 10, it was lifted onto a mine cart and Stout walked it to the entrance, where it and the Ghent altarpiece were loaded onto trucks. The next morning Stout accompanied them to the Munich collecting point.

On July 19, he reported that 80 truckloads, 1,850 paintings, 1,441 cases of paintings and sculpture, 11 sculptures, 30 pieces of furniture and 34 large packages of textiles had been removed from the mine. There was more, but not for Stout who left on the RMS Queen Elizabeth on Aug. 6 to return to home on his way to a second monuments tour in Japan. In her book, Nicholas says Stout, during just more than a year in Europe, had taken one and a half days off.

Stout rarely mentioned his central role campaigning for the Monuments Men and then saving countless pieces of priceless art during the war. He spoke about the recoveries at Altaussee and two other mines briefly in that 1978 oral history, but spent most of the interview talking about his museum work.

But Lincoln Kirstein didn't hold back to his biographer. Stout, he said, "was the greatest war hero of all time - he actually saved all the art that everybody else talked about."

About Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison is a freelance writer whose stories, reported from two dozen countries, have appeared in numerous publications including Smithsonian.com, the New York Times, and National Wildlife.

Read more from this author | Follow @jimmor12

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Captain Robert Posey and Pfc. Lincoln Kirstein were the first through the small gap in the rubble blocking the ancient salt mine at Altausee, high in the Austrian Alps in 1945 as World War II drew to a close in May 1945.

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"Remembrance of Things Past": The Protection and Preservation of Monuments, Works of Art, Libraries, and Archives during and after World War II

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"Remembrance of Things Past": The Protection and Preservation of Monuments, Works of Art, Libraries, and Archives during and after World War II

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Hammond, Mason

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“Remembrance of Things Past”: The Protection and Preservation of Monuments, Works of Art, Libraries, and Archives during and after World War II on JSTOR

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Mason Hammond, “Remembrance of Things Past”: The Protection and Preservation of Monuments, Works of Art, Libraries, and Archives during and after World War II, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 92 (1980), pp. 84-99

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Cultural Heritage and Preservation: Lessons from World War II and the Contemporary Conflict in the Middle East.

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Cultural Heritage and Preservation: Lessons from World War II and the Contemporary Conflict in the Middle East.

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Moustafa, Laila Hussein

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JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources.