bravelass85 's review for:

The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel

3.0

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I really enjoyed reading about World War Two through the lens of the monuments men. I appreciated hearing the stories of a division that since the end of the war has not often had the chance to share the meaningful work they did. As a few dozen men and women scattered across every army division in dozens of counties, few of the monuments men knew each other well or at all. Without allegiance to one brigade or even army group there was little collective history of this group until Robert Edsel delved into the research. So many of the men and women had already passed away by the time he did the research and so they live on in their letters home and the commendations of the soldiers they worked with.

I knew that the Nazis had had a full out art looting operation and I had read previously in books like Ann Michael's fugitive pieces about the use of this artwork to prove the Aryan case for superiority (or in other cases, such as at Biskupin, to destroy ancient artifacts that disproved it) but until this book I was not aware of the extent of the looting done just for personal aggrandizement. And I was surprised to feel a tiny amount of empathy for hitler's sad dream of turning his hometown of Linz into a center of German culture. The image of him hiding in the bunker for weeks staring at his scale model of his plans for the town will stick with me.