SALT MINES AND CASTLES
[Illustration: The Special Evacuation Team. Lieutenants Kovalyak, Moore
and Howe, who removed the Göring Collection from Berchtesgaden to Munich,
were photographed in the Luftwaffe Rest House at Unterstein.]
[Illustration: Hermann Göring, his daughter Edda, Frau Göring and Adolf
Hitler. This photograph was taken at Karinhall, the Reichmarschall’s
estate near Berlin.]
Salt Mines
AND
Castles
The Discovery and Restitution of
Looted European Art
_By_
THOMAS CARR HOWE, JR.
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
_PUBLISHERS_
_INDIANAPOLIS_ · _NEW YORK_
COPYRIGHT, 1946, BY THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_First Edition_
TO MY MOTHER
NOTE
From May 1945 until February 1946, I served as a Monuments, Fine Arts
and Archives Officer in Germany. During the first four months of this
assignment, I was engaged in field work which included the recovery of
looted works of art from such out-of-the-way places as a monastery in
Czechoslovakia, a salt mine in Austria, and a castle in Bavaria. Later,
as Deputy Chief of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section, Office
of Military Government, U. S. Zone, I participated in the restitution of
recovered art treasures to the countries of rightful ownership.
This book is primarily an account of my own experiences in connection
with these absorbing tasks; but I have also chronicled the activities of
a number of my fellow officers, hoping thereby to provide the reader with
a more comprehensive estimate of the work as a whole than the _resumé_ of
my own duties could have afforded.
For many helpful suggestions, I am indebted to Captain Edith A. Standen,
Lieutenant Lamont Moore and Mr. David Bramble; and for invaluable
photographic material, I am particularly grateful to Captain Stephen
Kovalyak, Captain P. J. Kelleher, Captain Edward E. Adams and Lieutenant
Craig Smyth, USNR.
For permission to reproduce three _International News Service_
photographs, I wish to thank Mr. Clarence Lindner of the San Francisco
_Examiner_.
THOMAS CARR HOWE, JR.
San Francisco
July 1946.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
1 PARIS—LONDON—VERSAILLES 13
2 ASSIGNED TO FRANKFURT 35
3 MUNICH AND THE BEGINNING OF FIELD WORK 54
4 MASTERPIECES IN A MONASTERY 80
5 SECOND TRIP TO HOHENFURTH 104
6 LOOT UNDERGROUND: THE SALT MINE AT ALT AUSSEE 130
7 THE ROTHSCHILD JEWELS; THE GÖRING COLLECTION 171
8 LOOTERS’ CASTLE: SCHLOSS NEUSCHWANSTEIN 219
9 HIDDEN TREASURES AT NÜRNBERG 243
10 MISSION TO AMSTERDAM; THE WIESBADEN MANIFESTO 259
APPENDIX 297
INDEX 321
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Special Evacuation Team. Lieutenants Kovalyak,
Moore and Howe _Frontispiece_
Hermann Göring, his daughter, Frau Göring and Hitler _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
The Residenz at Würzburg 30
Ruined Frankfurt. The Cathedral 30
The Central Collecting Point at Munich 31
A typical storage room in the Central Collecting Point 31
The bronze coffin of Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia 40
Canova’s life-size statue of Napoleon’s sister 40
The administration buildings at the Alt Aussee salt mine 41
Truck at the mine being loaded with paintings 41
Sieber and Kern view Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child 56
The Madonna being packed for return to Bruges 56
The famous Ghent altarpiece 57
Sieber, Kern and Eder examine the altarpiece 57
Vermeer’s _Portrait of the Artist in His Studio_ 64
One of the picture storage rooms at Alt Aussee 64
Panel from the Louvain altarpiece, _Feast of the Passover_ 65
The Czernin Vermeer 65
Major Anderson supervising removal of the Göring Collection 96
One of the forty rooms in the Rest House 96
The GI Work Party which assisted the Evacuation Team 97
Truck loaded with sculpture from the Göring Collection 97
German altarpiece from the Louvre Museum 128
The panel, _Mary Magdalene_, by van Scorel 128
Wing of an Italian Renaissance altarpiece by del Garbo 129
_The Magdalene_, by Erhardt 129
_Mary Magdalene_, by Cranach 160
_The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine_ by David 160
_Diana_, by Boucher, from the Rothschild Collection 161
_Atalanta and Meleager_, by Rubens 161
_Portrait of a Young Girl_ by Chardin and _Young Girl with
Chinese Figure_ by Fragonard 192
_Christ and the Adulteress_, the fraudulent Vermeer 193
_Portrait of the Artist’s Sister_ by Rembrandt 193
Removal of treasures from Neuschwanstein 224
Neuschwanstein—Ludwig II’s fantastic castle 224
Packing looted furniture at Neuschwanstein 225
Typical storage room in the castle 225
The Albrecht Dürer house—before and after the German collapse 256
The Veit Stoss altarpiece from the Church of Our Lady at Cracow 257
The Hungarian Crown Jewels 288
Treasure Room at the Central Collecting Point, Wiesbaden 289
The celebrated sculpture, Queen Nefertete 289
SALT MINES AND CASTLES
(1)
_PARIS—LONDON—VERSAILLES_
“Your name’s not on the passenger list,” said Craig when I walked into
the waiting room of the Patuxent airport. “You’d better see what you can
do about it.” It was a hot spring night and I had just flown down from
Washington, expecting to board a transatlantic plane which was scheduled
to take off at midnight.
“There must be some mistake,” I said. “I checked on that just before I
left Washington.” Craig went with me to the counter where I asked the
pretty WAVE on duty to look up my name. It wasn’t on her list.
“Let’s see what they know about this at the main office,” she said with
an encouraging smile as she dialed Naval Air Transport in Washington.
The next ten minutes were grim. The officer at the other end of the
line wanted to know with whom I had checked. Had it been someone in his
office? I didn’t know. All I knew was that I had to get on that plane.
I had important papers which had to be delivered to our Paris office
without delay. Was I a courier? Yes, I was—well, that is, almost, I
faltered to the WAVE ensign who had been transmitting my replies. “Here,
you talk to him,” she said, adding, as she handed me the receiver, “I
think he can fix it up.”
After going through the same questions and getting the same answers a
second time, the officer in Washington asked to speak to the yeoman who
was supervising the loading of the plane. He was called in and I waited
on tenterhooks until I heard him say, “Yes, sir, I can make room for the
lieutenant and his gear.” Turning the phone over to the WAVE, he asked
with a reassuring grin, “Feel better, Lieutenant?”
I was so limp with relief that I scarcely noticed the tall spare man in
civilian clothes who had just come up to the counter. “That’s Lindbergh,”
said Craig in a low voice. “Do you suppose he’s going over too?”
Half an hour later we trooped out across the faintly lighted field to
the C-54 which stood waiting. Lindbergh, dressed now in the olive-drab
uniform of a Naval Technician, preceded us up the steps. There were ten
of us in all. With the exception of three leather-cushioned chairs, there
were only bucket seats. Craig and I settled ourselves in two of these
uninviting hollows and began fumbling clumsily with the seat belts.
Seeing that we were having trouble, Lindbergh came over and with a
friendly smile asked if he could give us a hand. After deftly adjusting
our belts, he returned to one of the cushioned seats across the way.
Doors slammed, the engines began to roar and, a few seconds later, we
were off. We mounted swiftly into the star-filled sky and, peering
out, watched the dark Maryland hills drop away. We dozed despite the
discomfort of our bent-over positions and didn’t come to again until
the steward roused us several hours later with coffee and sandwiches.
Afterward he brought out army cots and motioned to us to set them up if
we wanted to stretch out. As soon as we got the cots unfolded and the
pegs set in place, he turned out the lights.
Craig was dead to the world in a few minutes but I couldn’t get back to
sleep. To the accompaniment of the humming motors, the events of the past
weeks began to pass in review: that quiet April afternoon at Western Sea
Frontier Headquarters in San Francisco when my overseas orders had come
through—those orders I had been waiting for so long, more than a year. It
was in March of 1944 that I first learned there was a chance of getting
a European assignment, to join the group of officers working with our
armies in the “protection and salvaging of artistic monuments in war
areas.” That was the cumbersome way it was described. The President had
appointed a commission with a long name, but it came to be known simply
as the Roberts Commission. Justice Roberts of the Supreme Court was the
head of it. It was the first time in history that a country had taken
such precautions to safeguard cultural monuments lying in the paths of
its invading armies.
It was the commission’s job to recommend to the War Department servicemen
whose professional qualifications fitted them for this work. I had
been in the Navy for two years. Before that I had been director of the
California Palace of the Legion of Honor, one of San Francisco’s two
municipal museums of the fine arts. The commission had recommended me,
but it was up to me to obtain my own release. I had been in luck on that
score. My commanding officer had agreed to let me go. And more important,
my wife had too. Only Francesca had wanted to know why Americans should
be meddling with Europe’s art treasures. Weren’t there enough museum
directors over there to take care of things? Of course there were in
normal times. But now they needed men in uniform—to go in with the armies.
And after all that planning nothing had happened, until three weeks ago.
Then everything had happened at once. The orders directed me to report to
SHAEF for duty with the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section, G-5,
and additional duty with the Allied Control Council for Germany.
The papers had been full of stories about German salt mines—the big one
at Merkers where our troops had found the Nazi gold and the treasures
from the Berlin museums. I was going to Germany. Would I find anything
like that?
I had flown to Washington to receive last-minute instructions. I was
to make the trip across by air and was given an extra allowance of
twenty-five pounds to enable me to take along a dozen Baedekers and a
quantity of photographic paper for distribution among our officers in the
field. I had been introduced to Craig Smyth while in the midst of these
final preparations. Like me, he was a naval lieutenant and his orders
were identical with mine. He was a grave young Princetonian, formerly on
the staff of the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
It was raining when we reached Stevensville, Newfoundland, early the
next morning. After an hour’s stop we were on our way again. Shortly
before noon we struck good weather and all day long sea and sky remained
unvaryingly blue. Late in the afternoon we landed on the island of
Terceira in the Azores. We had set our watches ahead two hours at
Stevensville. Now we set them ahead again. We took off promptly at seven.
This was the last lap of the journey—we’d be in Paris in the morning.
Presently our fellow passengers settled down for the night. Two of the
cushioned chairs were empty, so Craig and I took possession. They were
more comfortable than the cots, and as soon as the steward turned out the
lights I dropped off to sleep.
It was still dark when I awoke hours later, but there was enough light
for me to distinguish two black masses of land rising from the sea. On
one, the beacon of a lighthouse revolved with monotonous regularity. We
had just passed over two of the Channel Islands. The dawn came rapidly
and a pink light edged the eastern horizon. It was not long before we
sighted the coast of France. We flew into rosy clouds and, as they
billowed about the plane, we caught tantalizing glimpses of the shore
line below. The steward pointed out one promontory and told us it was
Brest. Soon we had a spectacular view of Mont St. Michel and the long
causeway over which I had driven years before on a sketching tour in
Normandy. I wondered what had become of Mère Poulard and her wonderful
omelettes and lobster. Some people said they had brought more visitors to
Mont St. Michel than the architecture. Very likely she was dead and the
Germans had probably disposed of her fabulous cuisine.
We had lost two more hours in the course of the night, so it was only
seven-thirty when we swooped down at Orly field, half an hour from
Paris. It was a beautiful morning and the sun was so bright that it
took us a few minutes to get accustomed to the glare. As we walked over
to the airport office, we had our first glimpse of war damage at close
range—bombed-out hangars and, scattered about the field, the wreckage
of German planes. But the airport was being repaired rapidly. Trim new
offices had been built and additional barracks were nearing completion.
Craig and I booked places on the afternoon plane for London and then
climbed onto the bus waiting to take us into Paris.
Thanks to various delays in getting out of Washington, we had missed
the Paris celebration of VE-Day by a margin of three days. So we were
about to see the wonderful old city at the beginning of a period of
readjustment. But a peaceful Sunday morning is no time to judge any
city—least of all Paris. Everything looked the same. The arcades along
the right side of the Rue de Rivoli and the gardens at the left were
empty, as one would expect them to be. We turned into the Rue Castiglione
and came to a halt by the column in the Place Vendôme.
After we had checked our bags at the ATC office, we walked over to the
Red Cross Club on the Place de la Concorde. We shaved, washed and then
had doughnuts and coffee in the canteen.
Our next move was to call Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Webb, the British
officer who was head of the MFA&A Section at SHAEF headquarters in
Versailles. Before the war, Colonel Webb had been Slade Professor of
Art at Cambridge. I explained to him that Smyth and I had arrived but
that our orders directed us to report first to Naval Headquarters in
London—ComNavEu—and that as soon as we had complied with them we would
be back. That was all right with the colonel. He said that Lieutenant
Kuhn, USNR, his deputy, was away on a three-day field trip and wouldn’t
be returning before the middle of the week. And we were primarily Charlie
Kuhn’s problem.
With that formality out of the way, we retrieved our luggage and
wheedled the ATC into giving us transportation to the Royal Monceau,
the Navy hotel out near the Étoile. It was time to relax and luxuriate
in the thought that it was May and that we were in Paris—that climatic
and geographic combination so long a favorite theme of song-writers. I
thought about this as we drove along the Champs Élysées. The song writers
had something, all right—Paris in May was a wonderful sight. But they
had been mooning about a gala capital filled with carefree people, and
the Paris of May 1945 wasn’t like that. Architecturally, the city was
as elegant as ever, but the few people one saw along the streets looked
anything but carefree. And there were no taxis. Taxis have always seemed
to me as much a part of Paris as the buildings themselves. In spite of a
superficial sameness, Paris had an air of empty magnificence that made
one think of a beautiful woman struck dumb by shock. I wondered if my
thoughts were running away with me, but found that Craig’s impressions
were much the same.
These musings were cut short by our arrival at the hotel. The Navy had
done all right for itself. The same efficient French staff that had
presided over this de luxe establishment in prewar days was still in
charge. I left the Baedekers and photographic paper for Charlie Kuhn, and
then Craig and I walked to Naval Headquarters in the Rue Presbourg. There
we attended to routine matters in connection with our orders. It was
almost noon by the time we got squared away, so we retraced our steps to
the Monceau. Lunch there was a demonstration of what a French chef could
do with GI food.
Midafternoon found us headed back to Orly in a Navy jeep. Our plane was
scheduled to leave at four. This was no bucket-seat job, but a luxurious
C-47 equipped with chairs of the Pullman-car variety, complete with
antimacassars. We landed at Bovingdon less than two hours later and
from there took a bus up to London. Naval Headquarters was in Grosvenor
Square. With the American Embassy on one side of it, the Navy on another,
and the park in the center used by the Navy motor pool, the dignified old
square was pretty thoroughly Americanized.
London was still crowded with our armed forces. The hotels were full, so
we were assigned to lodgings in Wimpole Street. These were on the third
floor of a pleasant, eighteenth century house, within a stone’s throw
of No. 50, where Elizabeth Barrett had been wooed and won by Robert
Browning. An inspection of our quarters revealed that the plumbing was
of the Barrett-Browning period; but the place was clean and, anyway, it
wasn’t likely that we’d be spending much time there. It had been a long
day and we were too tired to think of anything beyond getting a bite to
eat and hitting the sack.
For our two days in London we had “Queen’s weather”—brilliant sunshine
and cloudless skies. Our first port of call early the next morning
was the Medical Office, where we were given various inoculations. From
there Craig and I went across the square to the American Embassy for
a long session with Sumner Crosby, at that time acting as the liaison
between the Roberts Commission and its British counterpart, the Macmillan
Committee. Sumner provided us with a great deal of useful information.
The latest reports from Germany indicated that caches of looted art
were being uncovered from day to day. The number of these hiding places
ran into the hundreds. The value of their contents was, of course,
incalculable. Only a fraction of the finds had as yet been released to
the press.
Craig and I began licking our chops at the prospect of what lay ahead.
Had we made a mistake in planning to stay two days in London? Perhaps
we could get a plane back to Paris that evening. Sumner thought not.
There were several things for us to do on the spot, things that would be
of use to us in our future activities. One was to call on Colonel Sir
Leonard Woolley, the British archaeologist who, with his wife, was doing
important work for the Macmillan Committee. Another was to see Jim Plaut,
a naval lieutenant at the London office of OSS. He would probably have
valuable information about German museum personnel. It would be helpful
to know the whereabouts of certain German scholars, specifically those
whose records were, from our point of view, “clean.”
Sumner made several appointments for us and then hurried off to keep one
of his own. Craig and I stayed on at the office to study the reports.
Sumner had already given us the glittering highlights. By noon our heads
were filled with facts and figures that made E. Phillips Oppenheim seem
positively unimaginative. And _The Arabian Nights_—that was just old
stuff.
It was late afternoon when we finished calling on the various people
Sumner had advised us to see, but plenty of time remained to do a little
sightseeing before dinner. The cabbie took us past Buckingham Palace,
along the Embankment, Birdcage Walk, the Abbey, the Houses of Parliament
and finally to St. Paul’s. What we saw was enough to give a cruel picture
of the damage the Germans had inflicted on the fine old monuments of
London.
Craig and I flew back to Orly the following evening, arriving too late
to obtain transportation into Paris. We spent an uncomfortable night in
the barracks at the airport and drove to the Royal Monceau early the
next morning. It was stiflingly hot and I was in a bad humor in spite of
the soothing effect of a short haircut—the kind Francesca said needed a
couple of saber scars to make it look right. My spirits fell still lower
when Craig and I were told that we could stay only two nights at the
hotel. Since we were assigned to SHAEF, it was up to the Army to billet
us. It seemed rather unfriendly of the Navy, but that’s the way it was
and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.
After lunch we set out for Versailles in a Navy jeep. It was a glorious
day despite the heat, and the lovely drive through the Bois and on
past Longchamps made us forget our irritation at the Navy’s lack of
hospitality. The office of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section
was in two tiny “between-floor” rooms in the Grandes Écuries—the big
stables which, together with their matching twin, the Petites Écuries,
face the main palace.
When we arrived Colonel Webb was deep in conference with a lady war
correspondent. The tall, rangy colonel, who reminded me of a humorous
and grizzled giraffe, came out to welcome Craig and me. His cordiality
was overwhelming at first, but we soon learned the reason. Miss Bonney,
the correspondent, was giving the colonel a bad time and he needed moral
support. She was firing a rapid barrage of searching questions, and in
some cases the colonel didn’t want to answer. I was fascinated by his
technique. He obviously didn’t wish to offend his inquisitor, but on the
other hand he wasn’t going to be pressed for an expression of opinion
on certain subjects. At times he would parry her query with one of his
own. At others he would snort some vague reply which got lost in a
hearty laugh. Before the interview was over, it was Miss Bonney who was
answering the questions—often her own—not the colonel.
Neither Craig nor I could make much of what we heard, but after Miss
Bonney’s departure the colonel took us into his confidence. Somewhere
this indomitable lady had got hold of stray bits of information which,
properly pieced together, made one of the most absorbing stories of the
war, as far as Nazi looting of art treasures was concerned. The time was
not yet ripe to break the story, according to the colonel, so it had been
up to him to avoid giving answers which would have filled in the missing
pieces of the puzzle.
Then the colonel proceeded to tell us about the _Einsatzstab Rosenberg_,
the infamous “task force”—to translate the word literally—organized
under the direction of Alfred Rosenberg, the “ideological and spiritual
leader” of the Reich, for the methodical plundering of the great Jewish
collections and the accumulated artistic wealth of other recognized
“enemies of the state.” Rosenberg was officially responsible for cultural
treasures confiscated in the occupied countries. He had virtually
unlimited resources at his command. In the fall of 1940, not long after
his appointment, Rosenberg received a congratulatory letter from Göring
in which the Reichsmarschall promised to support energetically the work
of his staff and to place at its disposal “means of transportation and
guard personnel,” and specifically assured him the “utmost assistance”
of the Luftwaffe. Even before the war, German agents had accumulated
exhaustive information concerning collections which were later to be
confiscated. The whereabouts of every object of artistic importance was
known. Paintings, sculpture, tapestries, furniture, porcelain, enamels,
jewels, gold and silver—all were a matter of record. When the Nazis
occupied Paris, the Rosenberg Task Force was able to go into operation
with clocklike precision. And so accurate was their information that
in many instances they even knew the hiding places in which their more
foresighted victims had concealed their valuables.
The headquarters of the E.R.R.[1] had been set up in the Musée du Jeu
de Paume, the little museum in the corner of the Tuileries Gardens
overlooking the Place de la Concorde. The large staff was composed mainly
of Germans, but some of the members were French. Looted treasures poured
into the building, to be checked, labeled and shipped off to Germany.
But it was more than a clearing house. The choicest things were placed
on exhibition and to these displays the top-flight Nazis were invited—to
select whatever caught their fancy. Hitler had first choice, Göring
second.
It did not occur to the members of the E.R.R. staff that their every move
was watched. A courageous Frenchwoman named Rose Valland had ingratiated
herself with the “right people” and had become a trusted member of the
staff. During the months she worked at the museum, she had two main
objectives. One was to sabotage the daily work as much as possible by
making intentionally stupid mistakes and by encouraging the French
laborers, engaged by the Germans, to do likewise. The other, and far and
away the more important, was the compilation of a file, complete with
biographical data and photographs, of the German personnel at the Jeu
de Paume. How she ever accomplished this is a mystery. The colonel said
that Mlle. Valland, now a captain in the French Army, was working with
the official French committee for Fine Arts. She had already provided
our Versailles office with a copy of her E.R.R. file. Later in the
summer I met Captain Valland, a robust woman with gray hair and the most
penetrating brown eyes I have ever seen. I asked her how she had ever
had the courage to do what she had done. She said with a laugh, “I could
never do it again. The Gestapo followed me home every night.”
After regaling us with this account of the E.R.R., Colonel Webb whetted
our appetites still further with an outline of what his deputy, Charlie
Kuhn, was up to. As the result of a “signal,” he had taken off by plane
for Germany, and at the moment was either in the eastern part of Bavaria
or over the Austrian border, trying to trace two truckloads of paintings
and tapestries which two high-ranking Nazis had spirited away from the
Laufen salt mine at the eleventh hour. Latest information indicated
that the finest things from the Vienna Museum had been stored at
Laufen, which was in the mountains east of Salzburg; and it was further
believed that the “top cream” of the stuff—the Breughels, Titians and
Velásquezes—was in those two trucks. These pictures were world-famous
and consequently not marketable, so there was the appalling possibility
that the highjackers had carried them off with the idea of destroying
them—Hitler’s mad Götterdämmerung idea. There was also the possibility
that they intended to hold the pictures as a bribe against their own
safety.
Back at the hotel that night, Craig and I reviewed the events of the day.
What we had learned from Colonel Webb was only an affirmation of the
exciting things we had gleaned from the reports in the London office.
We were desperately anxious to get into Germany where we could be a
part of all these unbelievable adventures instead of hearing about them
secondhand. Strict censorship was still in force, so we weren’t able to
share our exuberance with our respective families in letters home. But we
could at least exult together over the fantastic future shaping up before
us.
We found Charlie Kuhn at the office the next morning. He was a tall
quiet fellow with a keen sense of humor, whom I had first known when
we had been fellow students at Harvard back in the twenties. During
the intervening years we had met only at infrequent intervals. He had
remained to teach and had become an outstanding member of the Fine Arts
faculty in Cambridge, while I had gone to a museum. His special field
of scholarship was German painting and it was this attribute which had
led the Roberts Commission to nominate him for his present assignment as
Deputy Chief of the MFA&A Section. He had already been in the Navy for
two years when this billet was offered him. Notwithstanding his obvious
qualifications for his present job, he had so distinguished himself in
the earlier work upon which he had been engaged—special interrogation
of German prisoners—that it had required White House intervention to
“liberate” him for his new duties. No closeted scholar, Charlie chafed
under the irritations of administrative and personnel problems which
occupied most of his time.
That morning at Versailles he was fresh from his adventures in the field,
and we buttonholed him for a firsthand account. Yes, the trucks had been
located. They had been abandoned by the roadside, but everything had
been found intact. The reports had not been exaggerated: the trucks had
contained some of the finest of the Vienna pictures and also some of
the best tapestries. They were now in a warehouse at Salzburg and would
probably remain there until they could be returned to Vienna. As to
their condition, the pictures were all right; the tapestries had mildewed
a bit, but the damage wasn’t serious.
It was hard to settle down to the humdrum of office routine after his
recital of these adventures. Charlie said he wanted to ship us off to
Germany as soon as possible because there was so much to be done and so
few officers were available.
It turned out that we weren’t destined for nearly so swift an invasion of
Germany as we had hoped. Later that afternoon Charlie received a letter
from the Medical Officer at Naval Headquarters in Paris informing him
that Lieutenants Howe and Smyth had not completed their course of typhus
shots, and that he would not recommend their being sent into Germany
until thirty days after the second and final shot. Charlie wanted to know
what this was all about, and we had to admit that we had not been given
typhus injections before leaving the States, and had only received the
first one in London. After deliberating about it most of the following
morning, Colonel Webb and Charlie decided that, if we were willing to
take the chance, they’d cut the waiting period to ten days. We were only
too willing.
Craig and I made good use of the waiting period. We were put to work on
the reports submitted at regular intervals by our officers in the field.
These reports contained information concerning art repositories. It was
our job to keep the card file on them up to date; to make a card for each
new one; to sort out and place in a separate file those which had become
obsolete; to check duplications. Each card bore the name of the place, a
brief description of the contents, and a map reference consisting of two
co-ordinates. In Germany there was much duplication in the names of small
towns and villages, so these map references were of great importance.
There was also a file on outstanding works of art which were known to
have been carried off by the Germans or hidden away for safekeeping, but
the whereabouts of which were as yet unknown—such things, for example, as
the crown jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, the Michelangelo _Madonna and
Child_ from Bruges, the Ghent altarpiece, the treasure from the Cathedral
of Metz, the stained glass from Strasbourg Cathedral, and the Veit Stoss
altarpiece. The list read like an Almanach de Gotha of the art world.
So far as our creature comforts were concerned, they suffered a great
decline when we moved out to Versailles. Our lodging there was a barren,
four-story house at No. 1 Rue Berthier. Craig had a room on the ground
floor, while I shared one under the eaves with Charlie Kuhn. Judging from
the signs still tacked up in various parts of the house, it had been
used as a German billet during the occupation; and judging by its meager
comforts, only the humblest ranks had been quartered there. No spruce
Prussian would have put up with such austerity. A couple of British
soldiers also were living there. They were batmen for two officers
quartered in a near-by hotel and, for a hundred francs a week, they
agreed to do for us as well. They brought us hot water in the morning,
polished our shoes each day and pressed our uniforms.
Outwardly our life was rather magnificent, for we usually had our meals
at the Trianon Palace Hotel just inside the park grounds. It was a
pleasant walk from the Rue Berthier, and an even pleasanter one from
the office, involving a short cut behind the main palace and across the
lovely gardens. On the whole the gardens had been well kept up and a
stroll about the terraces or through the long _allées_ was something to
look forward to when the weather was fine. Craig and I got into the habit
of retiring to a quiet corner of the gardens after work with our German
books. There we would quiz each other for an hour or two a day. We made
occasional trips into Paris but, more often than not, we followed a
routine in which the bright lights—what few there were—played little part.
At the end of our ten-day “incubation” period, Charlie gave us our
instructions. We were to go to Frankfurt by air and from there to Bad
Homburg by car. At Bad Homburg we were to report to ECAD headquarters,
that is, the European Civil Affairs Division, where we would be issued
further orders. As members of a pool of officers attached to ECAD, we
could be shifted about from one part of Germany to another.
Charlie told us that he and Colonel Webb would be moving to Frankfurt in
a few days as SHAEF Headquarters was soon to be set up there. The MFA&A
office would continue to function with a joint British and American
staff until the dissolution of SHAEF later in the summer. But that would
not take place, he said, until the four zones of occupation had been
established.
We left for the airport at six-thirty in the morning. Our French driver
asked us which airport we wanted. Craig and I looked at each other in
surprise. What field was there besides Orly? The answer was Villacoublay.
We had never heard of it, so we said Orly. We couldn’t have been more
wrong. When we finally reached Villacoublay we found great confusion. We
couldn’t even find out whether our plane had taken off.
After making three attempts to get a coherent answer from the second
lieutenant who appeared to be quietly going mad behind the information
counter, I gave up.
“This is where you take over, Craig,” I said. I had suddenly developed an
evil headache and had lost all interest in going any place. I walked over
to my luggage, which I had dumped in front of the building, and plunked
myself down on top of it, put on dark glasses and went to sleep. An hour
later, Craig shook me.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ve found a B-17 that’s going to Frankfurt.” We
piled our gear onto a truck and rumbled out over the bumpy field for a
distance of half a mile. One of the B-17’s crew was sitting unconcernedly
in the grass.
“We’d like to go to Frankfurt,” said Craig.
“Okay,” he said, “we’ll be going along pretty soon.” He was
disconcertingly casual. But the trip wasn’t. We ran into heavy fog
and got lost, so it took us nearly three hours to make the run which
shouldn’t have taken more than two.
We finally landed in a green meadow near Hanau. Craig said he’d look for
transportation if I’d stand guard over our luggage. It was an agreeable
assignment. The day was warm, the meadow soft and inviting. I took out my
German book and a chocolate bar, curled up in the grass and hoped he’d be
gone a long time.
Craig came back an hour and a half later with a jeep. We were about
twenty miles outside Frankfurt. On the way in the driver said that the
city had been eighty percent destroyed. He hadn’t exaggerated. As we
turned into the Mainzer Landstrasse, we saw nothing but gutted buildings
on either side. We continued up the Taunus Anlage and I recognized the
Opera House ahead. At first I thought it was undamaged. Then I saw
that the roof was gone, and only the outer walls remained. Most of the
buildings were like that. This was just the shell of a city.
Our first stop was SHAEF headquarters, newly established in the vast I.
G. Farben building which, either by accident or design, was completely
undamaged. There we got another car to take us to Bad Homburg.
The little resort town where the fashionable world of Edward VII’s day
had gone to drink the waters and enjoy the mineral baths consisted
mostly of hotels. Some of them were occupied by our troops. Others were
being used as hospitals for wounded German soldiers. The big Kurhaus
had received a direct hit, but the rest of the buildings appeared to be
undamaged.
At ECAD headquarters we were assigned a billet in the Grand Hotel Parc.
That sounded pretty snappy to us—another Royal Monceau, maybe. The
billeting officer must have guessed our thoughts, because he shook his
head glumly and said, “’Tain’t anything special. Don’t get your hopes up.”
It was nice of him to have prepared us for the rat hole which was the
Grand Hotel Parc. This shabby structure, built around three sides of
a narrow courtyard, had an air of vanished refinement about it, but
it could hardly have rated a star in Baedeker. Yet it must have had a
certain cachet fifty years ago, for in the entrance hallway hung a white
marble plaque. Its dim gold letters told us that Bismarck’s widow had
spent her declining years “in peaceful happiness beneath this hospitable
roof.”
Our room was on the fourth floor. The stairs, reminiscent of a
lighthouse, might have been designed for a mountain goat. We thought we
had struck the ultimate in drabness at the Rue Berthier, but this was
worse. The room itself was worthy of its approach. When I opened the
big wardrobe I half expected a body to fall out. Two sofas masquerading
as beds occupied corners by the window. The window gave onto the dingy
courtyard. We silently made up our beds with Army blankets and sprinkled
them lavishly with DDT powder.
“Do you suppose there’s such a thing as a bathroom?” Craig asked.
“I’d sooner expect to find one in an igloo,” I said. “Maybe there’s a
pump or a trough somewhere out in back. Why don’t you go and see?”
[Illustration: The Residenz at Würzburg. The palace of the Prince-Bishops
was gutted by fire in March 1945. The magnificent ceiling by Tiepolo
miraculously escaped serious damage.]
[Illustration: Ruined Frankfurt. In the center, the cathedral. Only the
tower and the walls of the nave remain standing. _International News
Photo_]
[Illustration: The Central Collecting Point at Munich, formerly the
Administration Building of the Nazi Party. The director of the Central
Collecting Point was Lieutenant Craig Smyth, USNR.]
[Illustration: A typical storage room in the Central Collecting Point at
Munich. The racks for pictures were built by civilian carpenters under
the direction of American Monuments officers.]
When he returned fifteen minutes later he was in high spirits. “There’s
a bathroom all right and it’s got hot water,” he said, “but you have to
be a combination of Theseus and Daniel Boone to find it. Come along, I’ll
show you the way.”
It was clever of him to find it a second time. I took a piece of red
crayon with me and marked little arrows on the walls to show which turns
to make. They were a timesaver to us during the next couple days.
After breakfast the next morning, we telephoned 12th Army Group
Headquarters in Wiesbaden and talked with Lieutenant George Stout, USNR,
who, with Captain Bancel La Farge, was in charge of the advance office
of MFA&A in Germany. Stout suggested that we come on over. It was a
pleasant drive along the Autobahn, with the blue Taunus mountains in the
distance. Parts of Wiesbaden had been badly mauled, but the destruction
was negligible compared with Frankfurt. Although many buildings along the
main streets had been hit, the colonnaded Kurhaus, now a Red Cross Club,
was intact. So was the Opera House.
We found George on the top floor of a dingy building in the center of
the town. I hadn’t seen him for fifteen years but he hadn’t changed.
His face was a healthy brown, his eyes were as keen and his teeth as
dazzlingly white as ever. George was in his middle forties. His oldest
boy was in the Navy but George didn’t look a day over thirty. The Roberts
Commission had played in luck when they had got him. Of course he was an
obvious choice—tops in his field, the technical care and preservation
of pictures. He was known and respected throughout the world for his
brilliant research work at Harvard, where he presided over the laboratory
of the Fogg Museum.
“Bancel’s got jobs lined up for you fellows, but I think he’d like to
tell you about them himself,” George said. “He ought to be back tonight.”
“Can’t you tell us in a general way what they are?” I asked.
“I think one of them is going to be in Frankfurt and the other will
probably be in Munich. You see, all the stuff from the Merkers mine is in
the vaults of the Reichsbank at Frankfurt and it ought to be moved to a
place where it can be permanently stored.”
The “stuff” he referred to was the enormous collection of paintings and
sculpture—comprising the principal treasures of the Berlin museums—which
George himself had brought out of the Merkers mine in Thuringia. He had
carried out the operation virtually singlehanded and in the face of
extraordinary difficulties just before the end of hostilities.
“As for Munich,” he continued, “repositories are springing up like
mushrooms all through Bavaria. Most of it is loot and we’re going to have
to set up some kind of depot where we can put the things until they can
be returned to the countries from which the Nazis stole them.”
“What are your plans?” I asked.
“Well, if the trucks show up,” he said, “I want to get started for Siegen
this afternoon. That’s in Westphalia. It’s another mine—copper, not
salt—and it’s full of things from the Rhineland museums. I’ve got to take
them up to Marburg. We have two good depots there.”
We lunched with George and then returned to Bad Homburg. There wasn’t
anything for us to do but wait around until we heard from Captain La
Farge. To fill in the time we took our German books and spent the
afternoon studying in the Kurpark.
The telephone was ringing in the entrance lobby as we walked in at five.
It was Captain La Farge. He had just returned and wanted to see us at
once. I said I didn’t know whether we could get transportation. He
chuckled and said, “Tell them a general wants to see you.” Craig and I
dashed over to the Transportation Office and tried it out. It worked.
So, for the second time that day, we found ourselves on the road to
Wiesbaden.
Captain La Farge was waiting for us in the office where we had seen
George that morning. He was a tall, slender man in his early forties.
With a high-domed head and a long, rather narrow face, he was the classic
New Englander. His eyes were hazel and, at that first meeting, very
weary. But he had one of the most ingratiating smiles and one of the
most pleasant voices I had ever heard. He reminded me of an early Copley
portrait.
Without much preamble he launched into a detailed explanation of the
plans he had for us.
“I want you to take over the Frankfurt job,” he said to me, “and I am
sending you down to Munich, Smyth. As George probably told you, we’ve
got to set up two big depots. The one in Frankfurt will be mainly for
German-owned art which is now coming in from repositories all over this
part of Germany. The one in Munich will be chiefly for loot, though there
will be German-owned things down in Bavaria too. Both jobs are equally
interesting, equally important and, above all, equally urgent.”
We were to get started without delay. Craig would be attached to the
Regional Military Government office in Munich, I to the Military
Government Detachment in Frankfurt. Captain La Farge suggested that I
investigate the possibility of requisitioning the university buildings
for a depot, and advised Craig to consider one of the large Nazi party
buildings in Munich which he had been told was available.
On the way home that night Craig and I compared notes on our new
assignments. I was frankly envious of Craig, not only because there was
something alluring about all that loot, but because I loved Munich and
the picturesque country around it. In turn, Craig thought I had drawn
a fascinating job—one that involved handling the wonderful riches of
Berlin’s “Kaiser Friedrich,” admittedly one of the world’s greatest
museums.
The following morning we parted on the steps of the Grand Parc Hotel.
Craig took off first, in a jeep with trailer attached, a crusty major for
his companion. Half an hour later a jeep appeared for me. On the way over
to Frankfurt I thought about the experiences of the past three weeks.
It had been fun sharing them with Craig and I wished that we might have
continued this odyssey together. I didn’t realize how soon our paths were
to cross again.
(2)
_ASSIGNED TO FRANKFURT_
The Military Government Detachment had its headquarters in a gray stone
building behind the Opera House. It was one of the few in the city that
had suffered relatively little damage. I reported to the Executive
Officer, a white-haired major named James Franklin. After I had explained
the nature of the work I was expected to do, he took me around to the
office of Lieutenant Julius Buchman, the Education and Religious Affairs
Officer, who had also the local MFA&A problems as part of his duties.
Buchman couldn’t have been more pleasant, and said he’d do everything
he could to help. There was an air of quiet good humor about him that I
liked at once. I learned that he was an architect by profession and had
studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau before the war. He spoke fluent German.
I told him that first of all I’d like to get settled, so he guided me to
Captain Wyman Ooley, the Billeting Officer.
Ooley was a happy-go-lucky fellow, the only Billeting Officer I ever
met who was always cheerful. He had been a schoolteacher in Arkansas.
Together we drove out to the residential section where a group of houses
had been set aside for the Military Government officers. This part of the
city had not been heavily bombed and each one of the houses had a pretty
garden.
“I’ll tell you, I’ve got a real nice room in that house over there,” he
said, pointing to a gray stucco house partly screened by a row of trees.
“But it’s for lieutenant colonels. It’s empty right now, but I might have
to throw you out later.” Thinking that lieutenant colonels would be very
likely to have ideas about good plumbing, I quickly said I’d take the
chance.
The front door was locked. Ooley called, “Lucienne!” One of the upper
windows was instantly flung open and a woman, dust-cloth in hand,
leaned out, waved and disappeared. A moment later she reappeared at the
front door. Lucienne, all smiles, was as French as the tricolor. Ooley
explained in pidgin French, with gestures, that I was to have a room on
the second floor, wished me luck and departed. Lucienne bustled up to the
second floor chattering away at a great rate, expressing surprise and
delight that I was “officier de la Marine” and also taking considerable
satisfaction in having recognized my branch of the service.
She threw open a door and then dashed off to the floor above, still
chattering and gesticulating. I was left alone to contemplate the
splendor before me—an enormous, airy bedroom looking out on a garden
filled with scarlet roses. This couldn’t be true. Even lieutenant
colonels didn’t deserve this. The room had cream-colored walls, paneled
and decorated with chinoiserie designs. A large chest of drawers and
a low table were decorated in the same manner. In one corner was an
inviting chaise longue, covered in rose brocade. Along the end wall
stood the bed—complete with sheets and a pillow. The built-in wardrobe
had full-length mirrors which reflected the tall French windows and the
garden beyond.
As I stood there trying to take it all in, Lucienne appeared again. With
her was a dapper little fellow whom she introduced as her husband, René.
He acknowledged the introduction and then solemnly introduced Lucienne.
After this bit of mock formality, he explained that he and Lucienne had
charge of all the houses in the block. If anything was not to my liking I
was to let them know and it would be righted at once.
Further conversation revealed that the two of them had been deported from
Paris early in 1941 and been obliged to remain in Frankfurt, working
for the Germans, ever since. All through the bombings, I asked? But of
course, and they had been too terrible. During one of the worst raids
they had been imprisoned in the bomb shelter. The falling stones had
blocked the exit. They had had to remain under the ground for forty-eight
hours. They had been made deaf by the noise, yes, for two months. And the
concussion had made them bleed from the nose and the ears. I asked if
they expected to go back to Paris. Yes, of course, but they were in no
hurry. It was very nice in Germany, now that the Americans were there.
With that they left me to unpack and get settled.