difficulties. Two of the trucks broke down on the way up to the mine to
be loaded. It took half a day to get replacements, so the convoy was
delayed. One night the guard on duty at the mine entrance developed an
unwarranted interest in art and poked around among the pictures which
Lamont and I had carefully stacked according to size for loading the next
morning. No harm was done, but it caused a delay. He was under strict
orders to let no one into the temporary storage room and was not to go
in there himself. It was partly our fault; we shouldn’t have trusted
him with the key. The captain of the guard was notified and appropriate
disciplinary action taken. The gnomes developed a tendency to prolong
their regular rest periods beyond a point Steve considered reasonable,
and we had to come to an understanding about that. On the whole, however,
the work went fairly well.
Even the great chambers of the Kammergrafen were beginning to thin out.
They were far from empty, but we had cleared them of a substantial part
of the external loot, that is, the loot which had come from countries
outside Germany. There were still quantities of things taken from
Austrian collections, but they had not been our primary concern. The time
had come to make a final check, to make sure that we had not overlooked
anything important in the category of external loot.
Together with Sieber, we started this last inspection. We checked off the
pictures first. Our work there had been pretty thorough. After that the
sculpture. This also seemed to be well weeded out. And the furniture too.
Sieber was ahead of us with his flashlight. The light fell on two cartons
standing in a dark corner behind a group of Renaissance bronzes. I
asked what was in them. Sieber shrugged his shoulders. They had never
been opened. He had forgotten that they were there. We dragged them out
and looked for an identifying label. Sieber recalled that one of the
former custodians at the mine had said the things inside were “_sehr
wertvoll_”—very valuable, but he knew nothing more.
We carried the boxes to a table where there was better light. They were
the same size, square, and about two feet high. They were not heavy. We
pried open the lid of one of them with great care. It might be Roman
glass, and that stuff breaks almost when you look at it. But it wasn’t
Roman glass. Inside was a row of small cardboard boxes. I lifted the lid
and removed a layer of cotton. On the cotton beneath lay a magnificent
golden pendant studded with rubies, emeralds and pearls. The central
motif, a mermaid exquisitely modeled and wrought in iridescent enamel,
proclaimed the piece the work of an Italian goldsmith of the Renaissance.
The surrounding framework of intricate scrolls, shells and columns blazed
with jewels.
There were forty boxes filled with jewels—necklaces, pendants and
brooches—all of equal splendor. The collection was worth a fortune. Each
piece bore a minute tag on which appeared an identifying letter and a
number. These were Rothschild jewels. And we had stumbled on them quite
by accident.
Lamont and I agreed that they should be taken to Munich without delay.
There they could be stored in a vault. Furthermore we decided to deliver
them ourselves. It wouldn’t do to risk such precious objects with the
regular convoy. We admonished Sieber to say nothing about our find. In
the meantime we would keep the two boxes under lock and key in our room.
That night we told Steve we had a special surprise for him. After barring
the door against unexpected visitors, we emptied the boxes onto one
of the beds. We told him not to look until we were ready. We arranged
each piece with the greatest care, straightening out the links of the
necklaces, adjusting the great baroque pearls of the pendants, balancing
one piece with another, until the whole glittering collection was spread
out on the white counterpane. Then we signaled to Steve to turn around.
“God Almighty, where did you find those?” he asked.
While we were telling him how we had happened onto the two cartons that
afternoon, he kept shaking his head, and when we had finished, said
solemnly, “They’re beyond my apprehension.” The expression stuck and from
that time on we invoked it whenever we were confronted with an unexpected
problem.
Early the following morning we stowed the jewels in the back seat of our
command car and set out for Munich. Halfway to Salzburg we encountered
Captain Posey, headed in the opposite direction. He was surprised to
see us, and still more surprised when we told him what we had in the
car. He was on his way to the mine. There were some things he wanted to
tell us about our next job—at Berchtesgaden—but if we would come to his
office the next day that would be time enough. He wasn’t going to stay
at the mine more than a couple of hours. He should be back in Munich
before midnight. He said there was one thing we could do when we reached
Salzburg—call on the Property Control Officer and arrange for clearance
on the removal of the Vienna Museum pictures to the Munich depot. This
was an important part of the plan which George had outlined, so we said
that we’d see what we could do.
We had some difficulty finding the right office. There were two Military
Government Detachments in Salzburg—one for the city, and the other
for the region. They were on opposite sides of the river. We caught
Lieutenant Colonel Homer K. Heller, the Property Control Officer, as
he was leaving for lunch. I explained that it was our intention to
call for the paintings and tapestries on our way to Berchtesgaden the
following week. He said he could not authorize the removal; that we would
have to see Colonel W. B. Featherstone at the headquarters across the
river. If the colonel gave his O.K., it would be all right with him. He
didn’t think that the colonel would take kindly to the idea. This was a
surprise. Who would have the temerity to question the authority of Third
Army? Lamont was amused. He told me I could have the pleasure of tackling
Colonel Featherstone alone.
It was after two o’clock before the colonel was free. Nothing doing on
the Vienna pictures. That would require an O.K. from Verona. Why Verona,
I asked? “General Clark’s headquarters,” was the answer. Didn’t I know
that the Fifth Army was taking over the area very shortly? Then the
colonel, in accents tinged with sarcasm, expressed his satisfaction at
finally meeting one of the Monuments officers of the Third Army. He had
heard such a lot about them and the wide territory they had covered. He
had been told that a group of them was working at the Alt Aussee mine,
but I was the first one he had laid eyes on.
I gathered that he was mildly nettled by Third Army in general and by
me in particular. As a matter of fact, the colonel’s attitude about
the Vienna pictures was logical: why move them out of Austria? If, as
he supposed, they were to be returned to Vienna eventually, why take
them all the way to Munich? I had no answer to that and took refuge in
the old “I only work here” excuse. He found it rather droll that the
Navy should be mixed up in this high-class van and storage business. I
had too, once, but the novelty had worn off. I rejoined Lamont and the
jewels. I wondered what Captain Posey would have to say to all this.
We reached Munich too late that afternoon to see Craig at the depot, so
we took the jewels with us to his quarters. I had not seen him since my
departure for Alt Aussee some weeks before. In the interim, there had
been a tightening up on billeting facilities. As a result he and Ham
Coulter were now sharing a single apartment. I was the only one adversely
affected by this arrangement. Craig no longer had a spare couch for
chance guests.
When Lamont and I walked in, we found them talking with a newly arrived
naval lieutenant. He was Lane Faison, who had been around Harvard in
my day. In recent years he had been teaching at Williams and was at
present in OSS. After we had been there a little while, Lamont asked very
casually, “Would you boys care to see the Rothschild jewels?”
Ham wanted to know what the hell he was talking about. “Well, we have two
boxes filled with them here in the hall,” Lamont said.
For the second time we displayed the treasures. Craig’s enthusiasm was
tempered with concern for their safety. He was relieved when we said we
had come purposely to put them in one of the steel vaults at the depot.
We went with him to the Königsplatz forthwith and stowed them safely for
the night.
Lamont and I continued on our way to Third Army Headquarters. Lincoln was
working late. When we walked in he looked up from his typewriter and said
“Hello” in a flat voice. Lincoln was in one of his uncommunicative moods.
We left him alone and busied ourselves with letters from home which
we found on Posey’s desk. Lincoln went on with his typing. Presently
he stopped and said, “George’s orders came through. He’s gone to the
Pacific.”
“It ought to be interesting work,” said Lamont.
“Oh, you knew about his orders?” asked Lincoln.
“No,” said Lamont.
That broke the mood. We had a lively session for the next hour. Lincoln
was always a reservoir of information, a lot of it in the realm of rumor,
but all of it fascinating. That evening he was unusually full of news. He
had a perfect audience in Lamont and me because we had been completely
out of touch with things while at the mine.
After exhausting his stock of fact and fiction, he produced his latest
box of food from home. There were brandied peaches, tins of lobster and
caviar, several kinds of cheese, dried fruits and crackers. It was a
combination you’d never risk at home, if you were in your right mind.
“You do very well for yourself,” I said when he had the refreshments
spread out on his desk.
“My wife knows the enlisted men’s motto: ‘Nothing is too good for our
boys, and nothing is what they get.’”
We finished the box and Lincoln showed us an article he had written on
Nazi sculpture. We were reading it when Captain Posey came in. He asked
if we had stopped in Salzburg to see Colonel Heller. I told him what had
happened there. If he was annoyed, he gave no sign of it. He rummaged
in his desk and brought out a list of instructions for us in connection
with the operation at Berchtesgaden. He suggested that we stop there on
the way back to Alt Aussee; it wouldn’t be very much out of our way. He
gave us the names of the officers we should see about billeting, and
so on. It would be well to have all these things settled in advance.
Then he gave us some special orders for Lieutenant Shrady, who was to be
transferred to Heidelberg, now that the evacuation of the mine was ending.
Captain Posey said that I was to take over the Mercedes-Benz. It had been
obtained originally for the evacuation team. We were to take it with
us to Berchtesgaden. I could make good use of the car, transportation
facilities being what they were, but I didn’t relish the prospect of
taking it from Shrady. He had spent money of his own fixing it up and
looked on it as his personal property. I told Captain Posey how I felt.
He said he had a letter for me which would take care of the matter. It
was a letter directing me to deliver Lieutenant Shrady’s orders and to
appropriate the car.
When we saw Faison at the depot the next morning, he asked if he might
drive back with us. He was joining Plaut and Rousseau at House 71 to
work with them on the investigation of Nazi art looting. I said we’d be
glad to have him. The three of us started off after early lunch. We were
looking forward to the Berchtesgaden detour. None of us had been there
during the Nazi regime and I, for one, was curious to see what changes
had taken place in the picturesque resort town since I had last seen it
fifteen years before.
We took the Salzburg Autobahn past Chiemsee almost to Traunstein, and
then turned off to the southwest. This was the finest secondary road I
ever traveled. It led into the mountains and the scenery was worthy of
Switzerland. Thanks to perfectly banked turns, we made the ninety-mile
run in two hours.
The little town was as peaceful and quiet as I remembered it. In fact it
was so quiet that Lamont and I had difficulty locating an Army outfit to
give us directions. We learned that the 44th AAA Brigade had just moved
in and that the last remnants of the famous 101st Airborne Division were
pulling out. There was no love lost between the two, as we found out
later. Consequently, when I asked an officer of the AAA Brigade where I
would find Major Anderson of the 101st Airborne, he informed me curtly
that that outfit was no longer at Berchtesgaden. Then I asked if he
knew where the Göring collection was. He didn’t seem to know what I was
talking about, so I rephrased my question, inquiring about the captured
pictures which had been on exhibition a short time ago. Yes, he knew
vaguely that there had been some kind of a show. He thought it had been
over in Unterstein, not in Berchtesgaden. Well, where was Unterstein?
He said it was about four kilometers to the south, on the road to the
Königssee.
His directions weren’t too explicit, but eventually we found the little
back road which landed us in Unterstein ten minutes later. In a clearing
on the left side of the road stood the building we were looking for.
It was a low rambling structure of whitewashed stucco in the familiar
Bavarian farmhouse style. It had been a rest house for the Luftwaffe.
The center section, three stories high, had a gabled roof with widely
overhanging eaves. On either side were long wings two stories high,
similarly roofed. The casement windows were shuttered throughout.
We found Major Harry Anderson on the entrance steps. He was a husky
fellow with red hair and a shy, boyish manner. He was not altogether
surprised to see us because George had stopped by on his last trip to
Munich and told him we’d be arriving before long. How soon could we start
to work on the collection? In four or five days’ time, we thought. Could
he make some preliminary arrangements for us? We would need billets for
three officers, that is, the two of us—and Lieutenant Kovalyak. No, there
would be four, we had forgotten to include the Negro lieutenant in
charge of the truck drivers. Then there would be twenty drivers. Could
we say definitely what day we’d arrive? Lamont and I made some rapid
calculations. It was a Tuesday. How about Friday evening? That was fine.
The sooner the better as far as the major was concerned. He was slated to
pull out the minute the job was done, so we couldn’t start too soon to
suit him.
He asked if we’d care to take a preliminary look around but we declined.
It was getting late and we still had a hard three-hour drive ahead of us.
As we turned to go, Jim Plaut and Ted Rousseau came out of the building.
They had been expecting Faison but were surprised to find him with us.
Wouldn’t we all have dinner with them that night at House 71? They had
come over from Bad Aussee that afternoon, bringing Hofer with them. They
had been quizzing him about certain pictures in the collection and he had
wanted to refresh his memory by having a look at them. They pointed to
a stocky German dressed in gray tweeds who stood a little distance away
talking with a tall, angular woman. We recognized him as the man we had
seen pacing the garden at House 71 weeks before—the evening Lamont and I
first reported to George at the mine. That was his wife, they said. Would
we mind taking Hofer back with us? If we could manage that, they’d take
Faison with them. There were some urgent matters they’d like to talk over
with him in connection with their work. We agreed and Ted brought Hofer
to the car.
As we left he called out, “Wiederschauen, liebe Mutti,” and kept waving
and throwing kisses to his tall wife. I was struck by the stoical
expression on her face. She watched us go but made no effort to return
his salutations. I wondered if she gave a damn.
Hofer was a loquacious passenger. All the way to Bad Aussee he kept up a
line of incessant chatter, half in English, half in German, on all sorts
of subjects. He gesticulated constantly with both hands, notwithstanding
the fact that one of them was heavily bandaged. He explained that he had
scalded it. The bandage had been smeared with evil-smelling ointment
which had soaked through. As he gestured the air was filled with a
disagreeable odor of medication. Did we know Salzburg? Ah, such a lovely
city, so musical! Did we know Stokowski? He knew him well. “Then you’ll
probably be interested to know that he has just married one of the
Vanderbilt heiresses, a girl of nineteen,” I said. But I must be joking.
Was it really so?
I was getting bored with this chatterbox when he suddenly began to talk
about Göring and his pictures. We asked him the obvious question: What
did Göring really like when it came to paintings? Well, he was fond of
Cranach. Yes, we knew that. And Rubens; he had greatly admired Rubens.
And many of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century. But according
to Hofer it was he who had directed the Reichsmarschall’s taste. Then,
to my surprise, he mentioned Vermeer. Did we know about the Vermeer
which Göring had bought? After that he went into a lengthy account of
the purchase, leading up to it with an involved story of the secrecy
surrounding the transaction, which had many confusing details. When we
pulled up before House 71, Hofer was still going strong. Lamont and I
were worn out.
Shrady departed the following morning in compliance with the orders I had
brought him. He left the Mercedes-Benz behind. If I could have foreseen
the trouble that car was going to cause us, nothing could have tempted me
to add it to our equipment. Even then Lamont eyed it with suspicion, but
we were both talked out of our misgivings by Steve, who rubbed his hands
with satisfaction at the prospect of the éclat it would lend our future
operations.
With Shrady’s going, we fell heir to his duties. During our last three
days at the mine they complicated our lives considerably. There were
records to be put in order, reports to be finished, pay accounts to be
adjusted, ration books to be extended for the skeleton crew which would
remain at the mine. In addition, I had to see Colonel Davitt about
the reduction and reorganization of the guard, and make provision for
different billeting and messing facilities.
In the midst of these preparations, Ted Rousseau telephoned from House
71. Were we planning to take Kress, the photographer, with us to
Berchtesgaden? We certainly were. Steve would sooner have parted with
his right eye. Well, they wanted to interrogate him before we left. How
long would they need him? A few days. I suggested they start right away.
We’d be needing him too. Steve was wild when he heard about it. I agreed
that it was a nuisance but that we’d have to oblige. The OSS boys came
for Kress that afternoon. Steve watched them, balefully, as they drove
off down the mountain. Then he resumed the work he had been doing on his
big Steyr truck. This was a cumbersome vehicle which he and Kress had
been putting in order. It had belonged originally to the _Einsatzstab
Rosenberg_ and was part of Kress’ photographic unit. He and Steve were
refitting it to serve our purposes in a similar capacity. It was a fine
idea, but so far they hadn’t been able to get it in running order. Steve
had had it painted. When he had nothing better to do, he tinkered with
the dead motor. Next to Kress, the truck was his most prized possession.
I returned to Shrady’s old office where I found Lamont in conversation
with Dr. Hermann Michel. Michel was a shadowy figure who had been working
at the mine with Sieber and Eder throughout our stay. When Posey and
Lincoln Kirstein had arrived at Alt Aussee in May, he had identified
himself as one of the ringleaders of the Austrian resistance movement and
vociferously claimed the credit of saving the mine. Since then he had
been working in the mine office. Captain Posey had given him permission
to make a routine check of the books and archives stored there. He was
such a talkative fellow that we kept out of his way as much as possible.
And we didn’t like his habit of praising himself at the expense of
others. He was forever running to Plaut and Rousseau at House 71 with
written and oral reports, warning them to beware of this or that man in
the mine organization.
Lamont looked decidedly harassed when I walked in. Michel was protesting
our demands for a complete set of the records. We were to leave them
in Colonel Davitt’s care when we closed the mine. Michel had taken the
opportunity to say a few unpleasant things about Sieber. We finally made
it clear to him that there would be no nonsense about the records, and
also that what we did about Sieber was our business. We finally packed
him off still protesting and shaking his head.
The afternoon before our departure Lamont and I had to go over to St.
Agatha. The little village lay in the valley on the other side of the
Pötschen Pass. We were to verify the report that a small but important
group of paintings was stored in an old inn there. A fine Hubert Robert
_Landscape_, given to Hitler by Mussolini, was said to be among them.
We went first to the Bürgermeister who had the key. He drove with us to
the inn. It was an attractive Gasthaus, built in the early eighteenth
century. The walls were frescoed and a wrought-iron sign hung over the
doorway. When we arrived the proprietress was washing clothes in the
arched passageway through the center of the building.
She took us to a large corner room on the second floor. There were some
fifty pictures, all of them enormous and unframed. The Bürgermeister
helped us shift the unwieldy canvases about, so that we could
properly examine them. They were, for the most part, of indifferent
quality—sentimental landscapes by obscure German painters of the
nineteenth century.
But we did find five that were fine: the mammoth landscape with classical
ruins by Hubert Robert, the eighteenth century French master—this was
the one Mussolini had given the Führer; an excellent panel by Pannini—it
too a landscape; a Van Dyck portrait; a large figure composition by Jan
Siberechts, the seventeenth century Flemish painter; and a painting by
Ribera, the seventeenth century Spanish artist. We set them aside and
said we’d return for them in a few days.
We had hoped to leave for Berchtesgaden by midmorning the next day, but
we didn’t get off until three in the afternoon. At the last minute I
received word from Colonel Davitt’s office that the Mercedes-Benz was to
be left at the mine. I said that since we had no escort vehicle, it was
an indispensable part of our convoy. That being the case, the colonel’s
adjutant said we could take the car, but on condition that we return it
within twenty-four hours. I said I’d see what I could do about that.
Steve fumed while I talked. When I hung up the receiver he said, “Don’t
be a damn fool. Once the car’s out of his area, the colonel hasn’t got a
thing to say about it. Let’s get going.”
Sieber and Eder, together with a dozen of the gnomes, were waiting in
front of the mine building when we came down the stairs. Lamont was
already in the car. I gave final instructions to the captain of the
guard, said good-bys all around, and got in the car myself. Everybody
smiled and waved as we drove off.
The evacuation had been a success. Ninety truckloads of paintings,
sculpture and furniture had been removed from the mine during the past
five weeks. Although it was by no means empty, the most important
treasures had been taken out. Third Army was withdrawing from the area.
From now on the mine would be the responsibility of General Clark’s
forces.
We were a lengthy cavalcade. Lamont and I took the lead. Steve followed
in the Steyr truck, in running order at last. Behind him trailed five
trucks. We were to pick up eight more at Alt Aussee. It wasn’t going
to be easy to keep such a long convoy in line. If we could only stay
together until we got over the pass, the rest of the trip wouldn’t be too
difficult.