Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis (20 page)

Kesselring felt great “psychological pressure” from Hitler concerning the fate of the bridges of Florence. He believed that any decision he made would be criticized. On the one hand, he had already incurred the Führer’s wrath for ordering his troops to retreat from Rome without having first destroyed its bridges—despite orders from OKW to
avoid
their destruction. Muddled, even contradictory, orders were not uncommon, especially those from Germany’s mercurial leader. Still, Kesselring had no intention of making the same mistake twice.

At a meeting with Hitler on July 19—the day before Hitler’s own officers tried to kill him, Kesselring had been ordered “to pursue his retreat, fighting to hold on south of Florence as long as possible and to stem the enemy advance to the best of his ability. Florence itself would not be defended, so as to spare its art treasures.” Hitler made it clear that under no circumstances was Kesselring to destroy the city’s bridges, adding: “Their artistic and historical value should be respected, the military disadvantages, which should not be overestimated, [are] to be accepted.”

Kesselring, interpreting the Allied leaflets as a sort of call to arms, contacted Hitler’s headquarters seeking clarification of his orders. Informed that the Führer wanted to ensure “it was only the enemy who ignored the irreplaceable cultural values of this city,” he was told there would be no destruction of the bridges except on Hitler’s specific order. Based on Kesselring’s assessment of the situation, there would be no declaration of Florence as an open city. He could only assure Ambassador Rahn that the Ponte Vecchio would be spared.

As the Allies drew ever closer, tensions mounted. On Monday, July 31, Fourteenth German Army Command sent written orders to the 1st Para Corps in Florence instructing them to “prepare
Feuerzauber
.” Operation Feuerzauber called for the destruction of all bridges “in and near Florence,” except for the Ponte Vecchio. Everyone understood that the operation could only proceed with Kesselring’s express authorization. Nevertheless, travel anywhere near the bridges was forbidden. Rahn, Poggi, and the others remained nervous. Florence had become a city divided.

The only civilian in Florence who had permission to cross the bridges using his own car was the Swiss Consul, Steinhäuslin, who later recounted that experience: “While we argue[d] with the guards to let us cross Ponte alla Carraia, a car arrives. Colonel Seubert tells me that the ‘soldiers’ are moved more by the romanticism of Ponte Vecchio than by the incomparable artistic beauty of Ponte Santa Trinita.” Steinhäuslin was sickened when a municipal guard informed him that the Germans had mined the bridges. After making another plea to one of the German commanders to at least spare the central bridges, he crossed the Ponte Santa Trinita and observed that “5 separate rows of boxes, measuring between 70 by 50 by 30 centimetres [28 by 20 by 12 inches], had been placed under the great arches of the bridge, joined together with electrical fuses.” Military officials aside, Steinhäuslin was in all likelihood the last person to traverse the 374-year-old masterpiece.

That evening, the southern sky flickered with light from the Allied bombardment of nearby German positions. Florentines experienced their third successive night of blackness due to German sabotage of the central power plant. The explosions backlit the hills of Poggio Imperiale, San Miniato, Belvedere, and Arcetri. German forces had evacuated the southern defensive position and were now in the city preparing to execute their retreat.

On August 3, German Fourteenth Army Command reported: “The enemy artillery fire was now aimed at the south and the bridges of the city. . . . it was clear that the enemy saw the Arno bridges as a military target.” After weeks of internal debate, and relying on the Fourteenth Army report,
*
Kesselring made his decision, stating, “I could not accede to [the] request to renounce the defence of the city as I could not obtain a similar concession from the enemy so the road through it was blocked by various demolitions, which unfortunately involved the destruction of the wonderful bridges across the Arno.”

At 2 p.m., Thursday, August 3, German officials declared a state of emergency. Notice was given, under threat of death, for all citizens to remain inside, away from windows, preferably in basement areas. No one was permitted outdoors, pending further edicts. Shortly before 10 p.m., the first of two explosions shook the ground beneath the Pitti Palace and its Boboli Gardens. Among the thousands of citizens—now refugees—living in the Pitti Palace was an art official of the Florence Superintendence, Dr. Ugo Procacci, who described the experience: “It seemed that the earth was trembling and that the great palace would be conquered from one moment to the next; at the same time from every side glass and pieces of window rained on the crowd, and the air became unbreathable. Terror seized the crowd; a few began to cry ‘The bridges, the bridges.’”

Another round of explosions began around midnight, this time less violent but continuous. From a villa just north of the city, Bernard Berenson observed “the Neronian spectacle of a huge fire which flared up like an immense column of thick, glowing flame, thinner in the middle than at the ends. At the same time a great explosion seemed to burst from the heart of Florence.”

Around 2 a.m. on August 4, the genius of the design of the Ponte Santa Trinita was revealed in the saddest of ways. Great engineering had masked with delicate and genteel lines a bridge built to stand for centuries. It had endured both the fury of a raging Arno and the grinding weight of modern-day vehicles. For a short while, it seemed the formidable bridge might even survive the work of German demolition experts. The first blast caused the bridge to “heave its shoulders”—but it stood, intact. A second blast followed; the bridge survived. Just before dawn, however, the third blast left nothing but the prow-shaped piers. The sun would rise moments later, but it would never again cast the same shadow on the Arno.

Giovanni Poggi was one of the first Florentines to witness the aftermath of the demolitions. “At dawn, from my house in Piazza San Felice, I was able to go near the Arno on Via Maggio, and through debris covered with corpses, the fog and dust which were still weighing down on the river, tears like a veil to my eyes, I was able to verify with unforgettable horror, that the beautiful arches of the bridge of S. Trinita did not exist anymore.”

Sometime before 7 a.m., Consul Gerhard Wolf, suffering from exhaustion and a nervous breakdown, awoke to the news that German forces had destroyed the Ponte Santa Trinita. As he stood in “stunned silence,” his thoughts must have been not of the bridge but of the man who first introduced him to it when he arrived in Florence, his good friend Professor Friedrich Kriegbaum, who had been killed during the bombing of Florence in 1943. Kriegbaum had once remarked to Wolf, “I’d rather be dead than see all I love destroyed!” Sadly, he had gotten his wish.

*
Steinhäuslin subsequently convinced Fuchs to extend the deadline to 6 p.m.

*
The report on which Kesselring relied was wrong. Allied artillery aimed at the south side of the Arno in an effort to dislodge German troops. Unintentionally, some shelling of the city did occur, nicking one of the bridges, the Ponte alla Vittoria. Even then, that bridge, the most westerly of the city’s six main bridges, was located more than a mile from the city center.

16

“LITTLE SAINTS, HELP US”

AUGUST 1944

O
n July 31, while at British Eighth Army AMG Headquarters, Regional Monuments Officer for Tuscany Fred Hartt and others heard a stunning announcement broadcast by BBC Radio. Wynford Vaughan Thomas, a veteran correspondent, accompanied by Major Eric Linklater of the Royal Engineers, had, in the course of visiting the Castle of Montegufoni, a villa located in the center of a major battle zone, stumbled upon a repository containing masterpieces from Florence’s Uffizi Gallery and Pitti Palace. This discovery greatly alarmed the Monuments Men. In June, Rome officials had led them to believe that the Florence repositories had been emptied and their contents returned to the city. But this sudden announcement cast doubt on that assumption and called to mind jarring images of unprotected, art-filled villas dotting the Tuscan countryside.

With orders to drive to Montegufoni as quickly as possible, Hartt, “armed and helmeted,” jumped into a “battered” jeep that had survived the North Africa and Sicily campaigns. “Its windshield was shattered, it had only four, much worn tires, its radiator leaked, its springs were weak, its shock absorbers defective. It possessed neither mirrors nor canvas top, and its rattling body threatened momentarily to disintegrate.” But unlike Keller’s vehicle, Hartt’s jeep had come with a name. Someone had painted on the metal riser that once contained a windshield:
13 Lucky 13
.

Heavy artillery fire blocked Hartt’s route, forcing him to navigate roads so small they didn’t appear on his maps. Hours later, he reached Eighth Army press camp at San Donato in Poggio. Night was falling. “The hills beyond, sloping down toward Florence, shook continuously with gunfire in the darkness while their ridges stood out fitfully against the constant flashes of the artillery.”

Linklater and Vaughan Thomas, just returning to camp after a day spent checking on three other nearby repositories, were greeted by “a tall, eager, bespectacled, wildly excited American lieutenant, an expert in the fine arts, who had been sent forward by the Allied Military Government to take charge of the pictures. He had brought no camp-kit with him, but as he was too agitated to sleep much he did not suffer unduly from the lack of it.” Linklater and Vaughan Thomas then proceeded to tell Lieutenant Fred Hartt the most astonishing story he had ever heard.

LINKLATER, WHO HAD
been commissioned to write the official history of the Eighth Army campaign, was eager to visit the 8th Indian Division, just one of the many multinational components of British Eighth Army. He and Vaughan Thomas arrived at the Castle of Montegufoni, property of Sir Osbert Sitwell, on the afternoon of July 30. The castle had been designated field headquarters of the First Battalion, Indian Maratha Light Infantry, a distinguished group of fighters with a history dating back more than a century. Enemy forward positions were now just a little more than a mile away from the castle. While waiting to interview the senior commander, Linklater and Vaughan Thomas wandered through the capacious building, which reminded them of Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio, and noticed various groups of panel paintings leaning against the wall, painted surfaces exposed to view.

“But they’re very good!” one of the men remarked. “They must be copies!” As they entered another room, Linklater saw many more paintings—a few crated, most not—and then heard Vaughan Thomas give a yelp. “The whole house is full of pictures. . . . They’ve come from the Uffizi and Pitti Palace!” Hearing the excitement, a group of villagers who had taken refuge in the castle gathered round the two men as they moved from one painting to the next.

The group then wandered into the spacious, high-ceilinged living room, which had been divided by a large cluster of paintings in the center. To their amazement, Paolo Uccello’s
Battle of San Romano
sat before them. The panel, depicting the 1432 battle between Florence and Siena, was more than ten feet long. Nearby, they found Giotto’s
Ognissanti
Madonna,
a gold-ground panel painted around 1310. It measured almost eleven feet high and seven feet wide.

Moments later, Vaughan Thomas, who had walked to the other side of the cluster of paintings, shouted, “Botticelli!” More refugees had wandered into the room; they rushed around to see him gazing at
Primavera
, an instantly recognizable work of art. Suddenly, a short middle-aged man appeared in the room, wearing a gray tweed knickerbockers suit. The man was beside himself with excitement—not because of the works of art but because the liberators had finally arrived.

Cesare Fasola, Librarian of the Uffizi, had reached Montegufoni on July 20. He had left Florence on foot, walking the seventeen-mile distance, through battlefields, to guard the Uffizi collection. He first stopped at the Villa Bossi-Pucci in Montagnana. By the time of his arrival, German troops had already taken 291 masterpieces—everything except those too large to fit in their trucks. The doors of the villa had been pried off their hinges, windows were wide open, and books from the library had been tossed on the ground and trampled by the soldiers’ boots.

With nothing more to do at Villa Bossi-Pucci, Fasola walked to the Castle of Montegufoni, fearful he would discover a similar scene. While the paintings were still inside the castle, so, too, were enemy soldiers. It was a scene of filth: “The packing-cases had all been opened, the pictures taken out and flung about. Some had been piled up in a dark corridor where a fetid smell left no doubt as to the use that had been made of this passage.”

Fasola had arrived too late to prevent the removal of paintings from Montagnana, but he hoped to prevent German and SS troops from harming the works at Montegufoni. As the days passed, he befriended the soldiers in an effort to keep them away from the paintings. Sometimes he succeeded, other times he did not. German soldiers’ use of fifteenth-century Florentine Domenico Ghirlandaio’s round panel painting,
Adoration of the Magi
, as a tabletop was a low moment. When Fasola asked the soldiers to remove their wine and glasses, one of the soldiers pulled out his knife and flung it at the wood, gouging the surface.

Lacking any authority, Fasola could do little more than accompany the castle’s custodian on his nightly rounds. It was a helpless feeling, but not hopeless. One evening, Fasola watched as the custodian stared at a group of religious paintings and whispered to himself, “Little Saints, help us!”

THE FOLLOWING DAY,
August 1, Hartt, accompanied by Linklater and Vaughan Thomas, made the short journey from the San Donato press camp to Montegufoni, where “the thunder of the British guns placed all around us, and an occasional German shell screamed overhead to explode nearby among the vineyards and cypresses.” Hartt knew every work of art: the
Rucellai Madonna
painted for Santa Maria Novella; Andrea del Sarto’s
Annunciation
from the Pitti Palace; Rubens’s
Nymphs and Satyrs
; Raphael’s
Madonna del Baldacchino
and
Descent from the Cross
, from the Pitti and the Uffizi; and of course Botticelli’s
Primavera
, which had so startled Vaughan Thomas. As he would later observe, “A description of these pictures would constitute a history of Italian painting.” The halls contained 246 works in all.

From Montegufoni, the group made the short trip to the repository in Poppiano, where Hartt viewed the damage to several works of art. He was elated to discover that Pontormo’s masterpiece—the
Deposition from the Cross
, from Santa Felicita in Florence—was intact and looking as beautiful as it had the last time he had seen it. But further inspections revealing the quantity and importance of the works still at Montegufoni confirmed that the Tuscan repositories had not been evacuated back into Florence.

Hartt sounded the alarm. His cable to Ernest DeWald was blunt and to the point: “Five deposits located. Reference BBC broadcast. Situation in hand. All safe save for damage to Pontormo
Visitation
and Bronzino
Portrait
.” He then prepared a memo to Lieutenant General Oliver Leese, Commander of Eighth Army, marked “SECRET,” which contained map references, a list of twelve deposits, and a terse summation of the situation: “The fate of these priceless treasures lies in the hands of the Eighth Army.”

That night, Hartt drove ninety miles back to Eighth Army Headquarters. Hours later, after finding Norman Newton, Monuments officer for AMG Eighth Army, Hartt pleaded to “be assigned the job of the deposits, and be the first to reach each one before there was time for much damage by troops.” Realizing the dangers at hand, Newton promptly approved Hartt’s plan. Within hours, Hartt was on his way back to Montegufoni and the other repositories, posting guards and rearranging many of the paintings to provide more safety until the situation on the battlefield stabilized. Days later, General Alexander arrived to inspect the collection and urge that “everything possible [to safeguard the works of art] be done.” Five Monuments officers now rushed to the Montegufoni area. Deane Keller, who found himself amid horrific destruction in the seaside city of Livorno, was not among them.

AT 5 A.M.
on August 4, eight trucks carrying more Florentine treasures from the repository at Dicomano reached the northern city of Verona via back roads. The final leg of the five-day trip had been harrowing. While crossing the Po River, the German convoy came under attack by Allied planes. Bomb fragments hit the cab of one truck, injuring the driver, but the works of art arrived safely. Almost three weeks had passed since SS Colonel Alexander Langsdorff had notified German Military Government that he intended to coordinate “rescue operations of art objects at the front by our troops.” While Langsdorff initially had neither the trucks nor the fuel to mount such an operation, he knew someone who did.

On the afternoon of July 21, Langsdorff, in possession of both of the Cranach paintings, had arrived at the headquarters of SS General Karl Wolff—Villa Besana in Gardone on Lake Garda—to enlist his help. Wolff’s pending appointment as General of the Wehrmacht “behind the battlefront” would place the Kunstschutz, a department of the Military Government, firmly under his command.
*
Eager to assist Langsdorff and his rescue operation, the general provided the Kunstschutz chief with the trucks he needed, along with formal orders to “go and remove whatever could be saved of the endangered works of art belonging to the Uffizi and the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.” Langsdorff now had operational authority in the field, reporting to Wolff as SS Commander in Italy, who then cleared decisions through Himmler in Berlin.

Having taken control of the two Cranach paintings from Infantry Regiment 71, Langsdorff was eager to see them reach what he assumed would be their final destination in Germany. On July 25, Wolff sent a telegram to Himmler, informing him that Langsdorff had just rescued and brought to Wolff’s headquarters the two paintings by Lucas Cranach, “which the Führer greatly admired upon his visit to Florence.” Wolff also sought guidance as to “whether these art treasures should be brought to the Führer’s headquarters so that the Führer can decide next steps with regards to these world-famous pictures saved by us.” Himmler’s reply came the following day, advising that the Cranach paintings, and any others from Florence, should remain in South Tyrol, “which guarantees a good safekeeping of the pictures, without initially undermining the authority of the Italian State. It must however be certain that the area in which the pictures are then kept is in all events protected by Germany.”

On July 28, Langsdorff returned to Florence to oversee more evacuations of the Florentine repositories. He arrived at a deserted hotel, now emptied as German troops prepared their exit from the city. “Everyone awaited numb and in suspense of the things to come.” At 11 a.m., Langsdorff met with Giovanni Poggi. Upset at Langsdorff’s betrayal, Poggi expressed surprise at seeing him. Langsdorff explained that he had located the two Cranachs and that they were safe at an undisclosed location. In what would prove to be their last conversation, Poggi recalled that Langsdorff “was worried about the fate of certain recoveries located in dangerous areas.” Once again Poggi demanded the return of the Cranachs to Florence. And once again Langsdorff promised to do what he could “to provide for their safety.”

Langsdorff did put his team of soldiers and their trucks to good use removing endangered works of art from the repository at Dicomano—but not back into Florence, as he had promised Poggi. The art traveled northward, temporarily landing in the northern city of Verona. On August 5, meeting again at Wolff’s headquarters in Gardone, Wolff and Langsdorff ironically had to address the same dilemma that had confounded Poggi and Italian museum directors years earlier: finding a safe place to hide the art. Each option carried a different risk.

On June 18, Langsdorff had written Poggi, reminding him that he “created a repository for the works of art of northern Italy in Lago Maggiore, on the Isola Bella [one of three islands making up the Borromean Islands].” This remote island, accessible only by boat, provided a secure storage facility away from any bombing targets. The Wehrmacht must have concurred, because on August 3, it issued an order stating, “The Borromean Islands are to be kept clear of any occupation and [are] to be offered as art-depots.” But now, Wolff refused to transfer the works of art to Italian custody. Acting on Himmler’s instruction, he pursued another, more elegant solution, finalizing it during a phone call with Franz Hofer, the Austrian Gauleiter of Tyrol-Vorarlberg.

Italy’s most northern province, known as South Tyrol in English and Alto Adige in Italian, forms an autonomous region that, from the time of Charlemagne until 1919, was part of the Holy Roman and Austrian Empires. The majority of its inhabitants speak German; names of the province’s cities, towns, and streets are displayed in German and Italian. Following the September 1943 armistice between Italy and the Allies, German forces occupied the province and declared the region part of Operational Zone Alpenvorland. The area was subsequently added to Gauleiter Hofer’s territory. One partisan commented, “The laws of the Social Republic did not apply there.” By hiding the works of art in repositories in the Alto Adige, Wolff could keep the Florentine treasures on Italian soil, thus avoiding a transfer across the border but still under the de facto control of the German Reich.