to see someone connected with Property Control. They had brought with
them a flour sack filled with gold wedding rings; a large carton stuffed
with gold teeth, bridgework, crowns and braces (in children’s sizes);
a sack containing gold coins (for the most part Russian) and American
greenbacks. As we looked at these mementos of the concentration camp, I
thought of the atrocity film I had seen at Versailles and wondered how
anyone could believe that those pictures had been an exaggeration.
I went back with Craig to his office at the Königsplatz. The damage to
Munich was worse than I had realized. The great Deutsches Museum by the
river was a hollow-eyed specter, but sufficiently intact to house DPs.
Aside from its twin towers, little was left of the Frauenkirche. The
buildings lining the Brienner-Strasse had been blasted and burned. Along
the short block leading from the Carolinen Platz to the Königsplatz,
the destruction was total: on the left stood the jagged remnants of the
little villa Hitler had given D’Annunzio; on the right was a heap of
rubble which had been the Braun Haus. But practically untouched were the
two Ehrentempel—the memorials to the “martyrs” of the 1923 beer-hall
“putsch.” The colonnades were draped with the same kind of green
fishnet that had been used to camouflage the Haus der Deutschen Kunst.
The classic façades of the museums on either side of the square—the
Glyptothek and the Neue Staatsgalerie—were intact. The buildings
themselves were a shambles.
I followed Craig up the broad flight of steps to the entrance of the
Verwaltungsbau, or Administration Building. It was three stories high,
built of stone, and occupied almost an entire block. True to the Nazi
boast, it looked as though it had been built to “last a thousand
years.” And it was so plain and massive that I didn’t see how it could
change much in that time. There was nothing here that could “grow old
gracefully.” The interior matched the exterior. There were two great
central courts with marble stairs leading to the floor above.
Although the building had not been bombed, it had suffered severely
from concussion. Craig said that when he had moved in two weeks ago
the skylights over the courts had been open to the sky. On rainy days
one could practically go boating on the first floor. There had been no
glass in the windows. Now they had been boarded up or filled in with a
translucent material as a substitute. All of the doors had been out of
line and would not lock. But the repairs were already well under way
and, according to Craig, the place would be shipshape in another month
or six weeks. He said that his colleague, Hamilton Coulter, a former New
York architect now a naval lieutenant, was directing the work and doing
a magnificent job. Even under normal conditions it would have been a
staggering task. With glass and lumber at a premium, to say nothing of
the scarcity of skilled labor, a less resourceful man would have given up
in despair.
[Illustration: Vermeer’s _Portrait of the Artist in His Studio_ in the
Alt Aussee mine was purchased by Hitler for his proposed museum. It has
been returned to Vienna.]
[Illustration: One of the picture storage rooms in the mine, constructed
with wooden partitions and racks. The temperature was constant, averaging
40° Fahrenheit in summer, 47° in winter.]
[Illustration: Panel from the Louvain altarpiece, _Feast of the
Passover_, by Bouts, was stored at Alt Aussee.]
[Illustration: Hitler acquired the Czernin Vermeer for an alleged price
of 1,400,000 Reichsmarks.]
Craig was rapidly building up a staff of German scholars and museum
technicians to assist him in the administration of the establishment.
It would soon rival a large American museum in complexity and scope.
Storage rooms on the ground floor had been made weatherproof. Paintings
and sculpture were already pouring in from the mine at Alt Aussee—six
truckloads at a time. In accordance with standard museum practice, Craig
had set up an efficient accessioning system. As each object came in, it
was identified, marked and listed for future reference. Quarters had been
set aside for a photographer. Racks were being built for pictures. A
two-storied record room was being converted into a library.
Craig had also requisitioned the “twin” of this colossal building—the
Führerbau, where Hitler had had his own offices. This was only a
block away on the same street and also faced the Königsplatz. It was
connected with the Verwaltungsbau by underground passageways. It was in
the Führerbau that the Munich Pact of 1938—the pact that was to have
guaranteed “peace in our time”—had been signed. Craig showed me the table
at which Mr. Chamberlain had signed that document. Craig was using it now
for a conference table.
Repairs were being concentrated on the Administration Building, since its
“twin” was being held in reserve for later use. At the moment, however, a
few of the rooms were occupied by a small guard detail. The truck drivers
and armed guards who came each week with the convoys from the mine were
also billeted there.
Just as Craig and I were finishing our inspection of the Führerbau,
a convoy of six trucks, escorted by two half-tracks, pulled into the
parking space behind the building. The convoy leader had a letter for
me. It was the one George Stout had mentioned on the telephone. Lincoln
was right. The repository George had in mind was the monastery at
Hohenfurth. In his letter he stressed the fact that the evacuation should
be undertaken at once. He suggested that I try to persuade Posey to send
Lincoln along to help me.
Craig had a comfortable billet in the Kopernikus-Strasse, a four-room
flat on the fourth floor of a modern apartment building. The back windows
looked onto a garden. Over the tops of the poplar trees beyond, one could
see the roof of the Prinz Regenten Theater where, back in the twenties, I
had seen my first complete performance of Wagner’s _Ring_. Craig told me
that the theater was undamaged except for the Speisesaal where, in prewar
days, lavish refreshments were served during intermissions. That one room
had caught a bomb.
I accepted Craig’s invitation to share the apartment with him while
in Munich and made myself at home in the dining room. It had a couch,
and there was a sideboard which I could use as a chest of drawers. The
bathroom was across the hall and he said that the supply of hot water
was inexhaustible. By comparison, the officers’ billets at Third Army
Headquarters were tenements.
Ham Coulter had similar quarters on the ground floor. We stopped there
for a drink on our way to supper at the Military Government Detachment.
“Civilized” was the word that best described Ham. He was a tall,
broad-shouldered fellow with sleek black hair, finely-chiseled features
and keen, gray eyes. When he smiled, his mouth crinkled up at the
corners, producing an agreeably sarcastic expression. Ham poured out the
drinks with an elegance the ordinary German cognac didn’t deserve. They
should have been dry martinis. I liked him at once that first evening,
and when I came to know him better I found him the wittiest and most
amiable of companions. He and Craig were a wonderful combination. They
had the greatest admiration and respect for each other, and during
the many months of their work together there was not the slightest
disagreement between them.
The officers’ dining room that evening was a noisy place. The clatter
of knives and forks and the babble of voices mingled with the rasping
strains of popular American tunes pounded out by a Bavarian band. As we
were about to sit down, the music stopped abruptly and a second later
struck up the current favorite, “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the
Time.” Colonel Charles Keegan, the commanding officer, had entered the
dining hall. I was puzzled by this until Ham told me that it happened
every night. This particular piece was the colonel’s favorite tune and he
had ordered it to be played whenever he came in to dinner. The colonel
was a colorful character—short and florid, with a shock of white hair.
He had figured prominently in New York politics and would again, it was
said. He had already helped Craig over a couple of rough spots and if
some of his antics amused the MFA&A boys, they seemed to be genuinely
fond of him.
While we were at dinner, three officers came and took their places at
a near-by table. Craig identified one of them as Captain Posey. I had
been told that he was in his middle thirties, but he looked younger than
that. He had a boyish face and I noticed that he laughed a great deal as
he talked with his two companions. When he wasn’t smiling, there was a
stubborn expression about his mouth, and I remembered that Lincoln had
said something about his “deceptively gentle manner.” On our way out I
introduced myself to him. He was very affable and seemed pleased at my
arrival. But he was tired after the long drive from Frankfurt, so, as
soon as I had arranged to meet him at his office the next day, I joined
Ham and Craig back at the apartment.
I got out to Third Army Headquarters early the following morning and
found Captain Posey already at his desk, going through the papers which
had accumulated during his absence. We discussed George’s letter at
considerable length, and I was disappointed to find that he did not
intend to act on it at once. Somehow it had never occurred to me that
anyone would question a proposal of George’s.
For one thing, Captain Posey said, he couldn’t spare Lincoln; and for
another, there was a very pressing job much nearer Munich which he wanted
me to handle. He then proceeded to tell me of a small village on the road
to Salzburg where I would find a house in which were stored some eighty
cases of paintings and sculpture from the Budapest Museum. He showed me
the place on the map and explained how I was to go about locating the
exact house upon arrival. I was to see a certain officer at Third Army
Headquarters without delay and make arrangements for trucks. He thought I
would need about five. It shouldn’t take more than half a day to do the
job if all went well. After this preliminary briefing, I was on my own.
My first move was to get hold of the officer about the trucks. How many
did I need? When did I want them and where should he tell them to report?
I said I’d like to have five trucks at the Königsplatz the following
morning at eight-thirty. The officer explained that the drivers would be
French, as Third Army was using a number of foreign trucking companies to
relieve the existing shortage in transportation.
Later in the day I had a talk with Lincoln about my plans and he gave me
a piece of advice which proved exceedingly valuable—that I should go
myself to the trucking company which was to provide the vehicles, and
personally confirm the arrangements. So, after lunch I struck out in a
jeep for the west side of Munich, a distance of some seven or eight miles.
I found a lieutenant, who had charge of the outfit, and explained the
purpose of my visit. He had not been notified of the order for five
trucks. There was no telephone communication between his office and
headquarters, so all messages had to come by courier, and the courier
hadn’t come in that day. He was afraid he couldn’t let me have any trucks
before the following afternoon. I insisted that the matter was urgent and
couldn’t wait, and, after much deliberating and consulting of charts, he
relented. I told him a little something about the expedition for which I
wanted the trucks and he showed real interest. He suggested that I ought
to have extremely careful drivers. I replied that I should indeed, as we
would be hauling stuff of incalculable value.
Thereupon he gave me a harrowing description of the group under his
supervision. All of them had been members of the French Resistance
Movement—ex-terrorists he called them—and they weren’t afraid of God,
man or the Devil. Well, I thought, isn’t that comforting! “Oh, yes,” he
said, “these Frenchies drive like crazy men. But,” he continued, “one
of the fellows has got some sense. I’ll see if I can get him for you.”
He went over to the window that looked out on a parking ground littered
with vehicles of various kinds. Here and there I saw a mechanic bent over
an open hood or sprawled out beneath a truck. The lieutenant bellowed,
“Leclancher, come up here to my office!”
A few seconds later a wiry, sandy-haired Frenchman of about forty-five
appeared in the doorway. Leclancher understood some English, for he
reacted with alert nods of the head as the lieutenant gave a brief
description of the job ahead, and then turned and asked me if I spoke
French. I told him I did, if he had enough patience. This struck him as
inordinately funny, but I was being quite serious. What really pleased
him was the fact that I was in the Navy. He said that he had been in
the Navy during the first World War. Then and there a lasting bond was
formed, though I didn’t appreciate the value of it at the time.
Eight-thirty the next morning found me pacing the Königsplatz. Not
a truck in sight. Nine o’clock and still no trucks. At nine thirty,
one truck rolled up. Leclancher leaped out and with profuse apologies
explained that the other four were having carburetor trouble. There
had been water in the gas, too, and that hadn’t helped. For an hour
Leclancher and I idled about, whiling away the time with conversation
of no consequence, other than that it served to limber up my French. At
eleven o’clock Leclancher looked at his watch and said that it would
soon be time for lunch. It was obvious that he understood the Army’s
conception of a day as a brief span of time, in the course of which one
eats three meals. If it is not possible to finish a given job during the
short pauses between those meals, well, there’s always the next day. I
told him to go to his lunch and to come back as soon as he could round up
the other trucks. In the meantime I would get something to eat near by.
When I returned shortly after eleven thirty—having eaten a K ration under
the portico of the Verwaltungsbau in lieu of a more formal lunch—my
five trucks were lined up ready to go. I appointed Leclancher “chef de
convoi”—a rather high-sounding title for such a modest caravan—and he
assigned positions to the other drivers, taking the end truck himself.
Since my jeep failed to arrive, I climbed into the lead truck. The driver
was an amiable youngster whose name was Roger Roget. During the next
few weeks he was the lead driver in all of my expeditions, and I took to
calling him “Double Roger,” which I think he never quite understood.
To add to my anxiety over our belated start, a light rain began to fall
as we pulled out of the Königsplatz and turned into the Brienner-Strasse.
We threaded our way cautiously through the slippery streets choked with
military traffic, crossed the bridge over the Isar and swung into the
broad Rosenheimer-Strasse leading to the east.
Once on the Autobahn, Roger speeded up. The speedometer needle quivered
up to thirty-five, forty and finally forty-five miles an hour. I pointed
to it, shaking my head. “We must not exceed thirty-five, Roger.”
He promptly slowed down, and as we rolled along, I forgot the worries
of the morning. I dozed comfortably. Suddenly we struck an unexpected
hole in the road and I woke up. We were doing fifty. This time I spoke
sharply, reminding Roger that the speed limit was thirty-five and that we
were to stay within it; if we didn’t we’d be arrested, because the road
was well patrolled. With a tolerant grin Roger said, “Oh, no, we never
get arrested. The MPs, they stop us and get very angry, but—” with a
shrug of the shoulders—“we do not understand. They throw the hands up in
the air and say ‘dumb Frenchies’ and we go ahead.”
“That may work with you,” I said crossly, “but what about me? I’m not a
‘dumb Frenchy.’”
For the next hour I pretended to doze and at the same time kept an eye on
the speedometer. This worked pretty well. Now and again I would look up,
and each time, Roger would modify his speed.
Presently we came to a bad detour, where a bridge was out. We had to
make a sharp turn to the left, leave the Autobahn and descend a steep
and tortuous side road into a deep ravine. That day the narrow road was
slippery from the rain, so we had to crawl along. The drop into the
valley was a matter of two or three hundred feet and, as we reached
the bottom, we could see the monstrous wreckage of the bridge hanging
drunkenly in mid-air. The ascent was even more precarious, but our five
trucks got through.
We had now left the level country around Munich and were in a region of
rolling hills. Along the horizon, gray clouds half concealed the distant
peaks. Soon the rain stopped and the sun came out. The mountains changed
to misty blue against an even bluer sky. The road rose sharply, and when
we reached the crest, I caught a glimpse of shimmering water. It was
Chiemsee, largest of the Bavarian lakes.
In another ten minutes the road flattened out again and we came to the
turnoff marked “Prien.” There we left the Autobahn for a narrow side
road which took us across green meadows. Nothing could have looked more
peaceful than this lush, summer countryside. Reports of SS troops still
hiding out in the near-by forests seemed preposterous in the pastoral
tranquillity. Yet only a few days before, our troops had rounded up a
small band of these die-hards in this neighborhood. The SS men had come
down from the foothills on a foraging expedition and had been captured
while attempting to raid a farmhouse. It was because of just such
incidents, as well as the ever-present fire hazard, that I had been sent
down to remove the museum treasures to a place of safety.
The road was dwindling away to a cow path and I was beginning to wonder
how much farther we could go with our two-and-a-half-ton trucks, when we
came to a small cluster of houses. This was Grassau. I had been told
that a small detachment of troops was billeted there, so I singled out
the largest of the little white houses grouped around the only crossroads
in the village. It had clouded over and begun to rain again. As I entered
the gate and was crossing the yard, the door of the house was opened by a
corporal.
He didn’t seem surprised to see me. Someone at Munich had sent down word
to Prien that I was coming, and the message had reached him from there. I
asked if he knew where the things I had come for were stored. He motioned
to the back of the house and said there were two rooms full of big
packing cases. He explained that he and one other man had been detailed
to live in the house because of the “stuff” stored there. They had been
instructed to keep an eye on the old man who claimed to be responsible
for it. That would be Dr. Csanky, director of the Budapest Museum, who,
according to my information, would probably raise unqualified hell when I
came to cart away his precious cases. The corporal told me that the old
man and his son occupied rooms on the second floor.
I was relieved to hear that they were not at home. It would make things
much simpler if I could get my trucks loaded and be on my way before
they returned. It was already well after two and I wanted to start back
by five at the latest. I asked rather tentatively about the chances of
getting local talent to help with the loading, and the corporal promptly
offered to corral a gang of PWs who were working under guard near by.
While he went off to see about that, I marshaled my trucks. There was
enough room to back one truck at a time to the door of the house. A few
minutes later the motley “work party” arrived. There were eight of them
in all and they ranged from a young fellow of sixteen, wearing a faded
German uniform, to a reedy old man of sixty. By and large, they looked
husky enough for the job.
I knew enough not to ask my drivers to help, but knew that the work would
go much faster if they would lend a hand. Leclancher must have read my
thoughts, for he immediately offered his services. As soon as the other
four saw what Leclancher was doing, they followed suit.
There were eighty-one cases in all. They varied greatly in size, because
some of them contained sculpture and, consequently, were both bulky and
heavy. Others, built for big canvases, were very large and flat but
relatively light. We had to “design” our loads in such a way as to keep
cases of approximately the same type together. This was necessary for
two reasons: first, the cases would ride better that way, and second, we
hadn’t any too much space. As I roughly figured it, we should be able to
get them all in the five trucks, but we couldn’t afford to be prodigal in
our loading.
The work went along smoothly for an hour and we were just finishing the
second truck when I saw two men approaching. They were Dr. Csanky and
his son. This was what I had hoped to avoid. The doctor was a dapper
little fellow with a white mustache and very black eyes. He was wearing
a corduroy jacket and a flowing bow tie. The artistic effect was topped
off by a beret set at a jaunty angle. His son was a callow string bean
with objectionably soulful eyes magnified by horn-rimmed spectacles. They
came over to the truck and began to jabber and wave their arms. We paid
no attention whatever—just kept on methodically lifting one case after
another out of the storage room.
The dapper doctor got squarely in my path and I had to stop. I checked
his flow of words with a none too civil “Do you speak English?” That drew
a blank, so I asked if he spoke German. No luck there either. Feeling
like an ad for the Berlitz School, I inquired whether he spoke French.
He said “Yes,” but the stream of Hungarian-French which rolled out from
that white mustache was unintelligible. It was hopeless. At last I simply
had to take him by the shoulders and gently but firmly set him aside.
This was the ultimate indignity, but it worked. At that juncture he and
the string bean took off. I didn’t know what they were up to and I didn’t
care, so long as they left us alone.
Our respite was short-lived. By the time we had the third truck ready to
move away, they were back. And they had come with reinforcements: two
women were with them. One was a rather handsome dowager who looked out of
place in this rural setting. Her gray hair, piled high, was held in place
by a scarlet bandanna, and she was wearing a shabby dress of green silk.
Despite this getup, there was something rather commanding about her. She
introduced herself as the wife of General Ellenlittay and explained in
perfect English that Dr. Csanky had come to her in great distress. Would
I be so kind as to tell her what was happening so that she could inform
him?
“I am removing these cases on the authority of the Commanding General
of the Third United States Army,” I said. If she were going to throw
generals’ names around, I could produce one too—and a better one at that.
Her response to my pompous pronouncement was delivered charmingly and
with calculated deflationary effect. “Dear sir, forgive me if I seemed to
question your authority. That was not my intention. It is quite apparent
that you are removing the pictures, but where are you taking them?”
“I am sorry, but I am not at liberty to say,” I replied. That too
sounded rather lordly, but I consoled myself by recalling that Posey had
admonished me not to answer questions like that.
She relayed this information to Dr. Csanky and the effect was
startling. He covered his face with his hands and I thought he was going
to cry. Finally he pulled himself together and let forth a flood of
unintelligible consonants. His interpreter tackled me again.
“Dr. Csanky is frantic. He says that he is responsible to his government
for the safety of these treasures and since you are taking them away,
there is nothing left for him to do but to blow his brains out.”
My patience was exhausted. I said savagely, “Tell Dr. Csanky for me that
he can blow his brains out if he chooses, but I think it would be silly.
If you must know, Madame, I am a museum director myself and you can
assure him that no harm is going to come to his precious pictures.”
I should never have mentioned that I had even so much as been inside
a museum, for, from that moment until we finished loading the last
truck, the little doctor never left my side. I was his “cher collègue,”
and he kept up a steady barrage of questions which the patient Madame
Ellenlittay tried to pass along to me without interrupting our work.