Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis (31 page)

On the morning of May 12, the three men reached the mountain hamlet of San Leonardo, “in a flurry of dust amid honking geese and screaming children,” and parked
Lucky 13
in front of the old jail. Only the iron bars on the ground-floor windows hinted at its previous use. After identifying themselves to the security detachment from the 349th Infantry, 88th Division (the “Blue Devils”), they waited while “the GI on guard fumbled long with the keys before he was able to let us into the dark hallway of the ground floor. . . . Here, piled against each other in damp and narrow cells, were the pictures from [Villa Bossi-Pucci in] Montagnana.”

The first cell alone left Hartt breathless. He immediately recognized Caravaggio’s painting of
Bacchus
, and then other paintings by Rubens, Titian, and Dosso Dossi leaning against the wall like prisoners from the pages of his art history books. Moments later, Rossi startled Hartt with a “cry of glee.” There before them were the two paintings by Cranach—
Eve
standing in front of
Adam
—that Colonel Langsdorff had stashed in his room at the Hotel Excelsior nine months earlier. The next cell housed Botticelli’s
Minerva and the Centaur
, Signorelli’s
Crucifixion,
Lorenzo Monaco’s
Adoration of the Magi
, and several other masterpieces. Museums often allocated an entire wall for paintings of such seminal importance, but in San Leonardo they were jammed together so tightly that Hartt and Rossi had an impossible time moving one painting to see what others might be behind it.

Cell after cell, floor upon floor, three hundred paintings—some among the world’s most important—had survived being transported hundreds of miles over bombed-out roads, stacked side by side on open trucks, many with no more protection than a few blankets and strands of straw. In fact, it had been raining the day the paintings arrived. Miraculously, aside from Frans Floris’s painting of
Adam and Eve,
which suffered a split down the entire length of the panel, most of the damage consisted of scratches from handling and transportation. They all marveled at the paintings’ good fortune.

The lateness of the day kept them from beginning an inventory, so Hartt and Rossi drove to Bolzano for the evening to meet with Ward-Perkins, who had just arrived. On Sunday morning, May 13, Ward-Perkins departed for San Leonardo to see firsthand what Hartt couldn’t stop discussing the previous night. He also intended to interrogate the Kunstschutz officials.
Lucky 13
carried Hartt and Rossi to Campo Tures. Hartt described the Castle Neumelans as a “fantastic situation; the typical Tyrolean sixteenth century, four-turret manor house, shadowed by enormous Alpine peaks, was guarded at the same time by Germans, partisans, and GI’s from the 85th Division.” Even more surprising was the man sent to greet him: SS Colonel Langsdorff, who had been ordered to report there by Wolff on April 30.

“The executor of the greatest single art-looting operation in recorded history received us with a certain amount of petulance,” Hartt later noted, “as if we had not really been fulfilling our duty to Art by arriving so late. He had been expecting us for days, anxious to turn over to us his responsibilities.” In contrast to the damp jail cells at Campo Tures, Castle Neumelans had proven to be an ideal storage facility, with dry, airy, high-ceilinged salons. Its rooms contained more of the missing museum paintings in addition to the private collections of Contini Bonacossi, Landau-Finaly, and Acton. Nearby rooms housed small bronzes, ceramics, and tapestries.

But the paintings inside Castle Neumelans paled in comparison with what Hartt and Rossi found in the adjacent carriage house. “When the garage doors were unlocked, we looked into the dark interior piled to the ceiling with the stout, Florentine boxes, knowing that within them were the
St. George
of Donatello, the
Bacchus
of Michelangelo, the
Donna Velata
of Raphael”—one of the two paintings Dr. Ringler had witnessed being photographed in the snow two months earlier. The masterpieces that defined Florence were safe.

THE CEASE-FIRE HAD
hardly changed Bolzano; even nine days later, the vanquished appeared to be the victors. German soldiers behaved as though they were in charge, leaving Keller and other Allied soldiers wondering who won the war. Days earlier, Hartt had observed “the colossal arrogance of the still-armed Germans, who outnumbered us on the streets of the city ten to one . . . the AMG provincial commissioner had to plod about the town on foot, hot, red-faced and dusty, while haughty and glittering SS generals sped past in motor cars loaded with blondes. . . .” Other German troops could be seen parading through the streets singing in unison, “Hitler Is My Führer.”

On this point Keller agreed with Hartt. It was one thing to eat dinner at a crowded restaurant alongside two German captains, but when one of them—a man who a few weeks earlier was trying to kill you—extended his hand across the table in a gesture of friendship, well, that was an offense greater than Keller knew how to describe. The greatest shock came when Keller heard that German paratroopers of the 1st Division wanted to enlist in the United States Army to fight the Japanese.

After the cessation of hostilities, Keller’s duties included interrogating German Kunstschutz officials and officers. Many Allied soldiers referred to the Germans as “Krauts.” [Deane Keller Papers, Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University]

The swiftness of the German surrender outpaced the speed of the Allied advance. Fifth Army commanders reluctantly accepted the fact that an interim period of chaos would have to be tolerated before a holding force could arrive. Germans still greatly outnumbered U.S. troops in the northern Italian cities. According to Keller’s sources, “there were 250,000 fully armed crack German troops in the area, as well as the headquarters of General Wolff [and] General von Vietinghoff. . . . Orders had been given from Allied Forces Headquarters that . . . German units were to remain intact where they were at time of surrender. These orders were interpreted to mean that they should remain in their billets which included all of the hotels, barracks, and suitable places in the city.”

May 13 marked General Wolff’s forty-fifth birthday. Side by side with his second wife and children, he hosted an elaborate celebration in which some two thousand people gathered in the beautiful park setting of his Bolzano headquarters at the Palazzo Reale. Inside were “hundreds of bags of the finest flour and rice, case after case of the rarest champagnes and liqueurs, sides of beef, bolts of silk and linen, typewriters by the dozen, the best of cameras, shoes, and clothing and blankets in enormous quantities. There were also books, prints, etchings and paintings, together with twenty-two boxes of wood bound with steel straps, and sealed with lead, containing [King Vittorio Emanuele III’s] coin collection.”

U.S. Colonel James C. Fry, recently appointed town commander, was appalled at the spectacle and ordered a column of troops and vehicles to make certain that Wolff and his SS forces understood that, literally, the party was over. The MPs, armed with machine guns, sprinted across the manicured lawn. Fry’s troops rounded up and then arrested Wolff and Vietinghoff, Frau Wolff, Dollmann, and most of the people at Wolff’s headquarters and the adjacent SS barracks. A later report of the 88th Division stated: “Frau Wolff was indignant at what she called high-handed procedure and threatened Colonel Fry with disciplinary action over what she called ‘the breaking of an agreement with Army higher-ups.’” The Blue Devil troops then packed up part of “the birthday feast, including fresh squab and champagne,” and delivered it to the headquarters of their commander, with compliments. Dollmann later claimed that American soldiers had shot Wolff’s German shepherd as they departed.

Keller finally connected with Hartt, Rossi, and Ward-Perkins for his first visit to the repositories on May 14. His one-to-two-day stay in Milan had turned into a week; he and Charley had arrived in Bolzano only the night before. They inspected Campo Tures first, then drove to San Leonardo the following day. The exuberance Hartt had experienced two days earlier turned out to be anticlimactic for Keller. After a month on the road conducting inspections and interrogating German officials, Keller was “impatient and irritable.”

The reactions of the two men highlighted major differences in their respective approaches to the job. Hartt saw his military service as a quest to save Italy’s works of art, churches, and historic structures that he had dedicated his life to studying. Finding the Tuscan treasures, intact and largely undamaged, was his triumphant moment. Keller found more satisfaction in helping people. Saving a revered monument, like the Camposanto, was part of his job. Getting a university operational was his joy.

The responsibility of returning the works to Florence belonged to Fifth Army, which meant it belonged to Keller. Others could rejoice about finding the masterpieces, but he was already focused on logistics: hundreds of paintings lying about uncrated, persistent shortages of packing materials, roads to Florence that were beaten to hell, and a railway system that didn’t function because Allied aircraft had destroyed it. On May 18, Keller composed a letter home using stationery taken from the desk of General Wolff just days after his arrest. “The war is not over for me,” he wrote to Kathy. “Yes—the shells and bombs are over, but the work goes on and on. When we have all the stuff they have stolen and transported around the country safe back where it belongs, then I’ll be through. I hope.”

*
It remains unclear whether this telegram, also reported by telephone to Allied troops operating in North Verona, led to the Allies locating the repositories. Another possibility could be the priest in Bolzano enlisted by Don Anelli, who may have relayed information to American soldiers passing through the area. A third possibility is a memorandum, dated May 2 and sent by Wolff through General Lemnitzer to General Mark Clark’s headquarters, that contained information on the repositories.

*
On May 4, troops of the 3rd Battalion also discovered a German prisoner-of-war camp that housed 56 Americans and 350 Allied soldiers, “many of them ill.” These were, in all likelihood, the prisoners Wolff promised Dulles he would be responsible for protecting. Another task force of the 339th Infantry found a hostage camp containing prominent political prisoners being held by the SS, including a number of the participants in the failed July 20, 1944, assassination attempt against Hitler. The wife and children of Colonel Stauffenberg, the man who planted the bomb and was later executed, were among them.

27

THE BIG MOVE

Late May–July 1945

T
he defeat of Nazi and Fascist forces opened up vast new areas with damaged cultural sites needing inspection. In the closing weeks of the war, Monuments officers inspected hundreds of newly discovered repositories in German and Austrian salt mines, caves, and castles containing hundreds of thousands of paintings, drawings, library books, and sculpture, along with gold bullion and paper currency. More would be found throughout the summer and fall. The expertise of the Monuments Men was in high demand, but their number remained few.

During his trip to Naples in late March, Keller learned that the U.S. Army planned to transfer the existing Italy-based Monuments officers to Austria to meet this increasing need. Hartt had already received orders to report there, but the discoveries at Campo Tures and San Leonardo provided a temporary reprieve. Lieutenant Colonel Ward-Perkins, who had been in uniform for six years, decided it was time to return to civilian life. He would depart at the end of the summer to take up a teaching position at the British School at Rome. This put even greater pressure on the remaining team to complete inspections and compile reports before their transfer. Few wanted to leave. They had worked in Italy for almost two years; most wanted to stay and finish the job.

Perry Cott finally received travel orders and arrived in Milan on May 10, five days later than expected. He had worked closely with Rome’s museum officials the previous summer while stationed in the capital. Drawing from the extraordinary—albeit temporary—collection of art stored at the Vatican, Cott organized a string of wildly successful exhibitions, allowing soldiers to see world-renowned masterpieces. They had endured the ugliness of war; it seemed fitting to provide them a chance to enjoy the objects of beauty their sacrifices helped preserve.

Unlike Rome, however, where the amount of damage was limited, Milan had been extensively bombed at the hands of the Allies. German troops had occupied the city for twenty months. Now everyone—from city officials to owners of villas, museum directors, and priests—wanted his attention. What Cott wanted was more help.

On his first day in Milan, Cott met with Fernanda Wittgens, who had just been reinstated at Milan’s Brera Picture Gallery after nearly a year in jail for her anti-Fascist activities and assistance to Jews. Wittgens asked Cott to arrange transportation to enable her mentor, Professor Ettore Modigliani, director of the Brera and a highly respected cultural figure, to return to the city. Approving the transportation turned out to be a very smart decision, as both Wittgens and Modigliani provided valuable assistance in the months that followed.
*

Cott timed his initial visit to the Refectory to coincide with the removal of the protective sandbags from
The
Last Supper
. By May 15, construction of the new east wall and Refectory roof was all but complete. The structural integrity of the north wall appeared uncompromised, despite the blasts; the scaffolding and steel braces had worked as planned. Until the sandbags were removed, however, experts could not examine the condition of the painted surface. Work proceeded slowly as laborers carefully removed each bag. Ten more days would pass before Mario Bezzola, a noted restoration expert, gained limited access to the wall to observe, “generally satisfying results. . . . Only in the area of James the Major’s tunic, which was always the sickest area of the whole famous painting, a very thin layer of plaster has lifted, with subsequent crumbling of the matter beneath. . . . It is necessary, and rather urgent, to intervene locally to reattach the areas that risk flaking off. Clearly, the whole plaster underneath has in itself disintegrating elements which doesn’t seem easy to eliminate.”

Those in the Milan Superintendent’s office weren’t the only people eager to see
The
Last Supper
. News that workers were removing the sandbags attracted large groups of soldiers hoping to catch a glimpse of Leonardo’s mural. Cott valued such interest on the part of the troops, especially after his experience curating the temporary art exhibits for soldiers in Rome. Now, however, at this anxious moment, their visits interfered with the restoration effort. On May 26, he reluctantly posted a notice prohibiting access to all military personnel.

On June 10, with
The
Last Supper
liberated of its sandbags, restoration experts including Modigliani, commenced a second, more thorough inspection. Milan’s Superintendent of Galleries had a favorable assessment:

The static conditions of the wall and of the plaster were not subject to any damage; during the explosions of August 1943, some chalk marks appeared on the few, minor cracks, that were surely caused by the air movement from the ground vibration caused by the explosion. . . . Small and partial detachments of paint concern restored spots or old touch-ups. . . . It is urgent to fix the color where it is lifted [from the surface], even if limited to very few spots and very small fragments.

The Superintendent also observed a “light veil expanding on the entire painting surface,” attributable to the bonding of dust with the dampness of a wall that had had no ventilation for almost two years. Compared to all the things that could have happened to
The
Last Supper
, inspectors deemed this a minor problem. It would require an “expert cleaning operation,” but in the opinion of all but one of the specialists, it was “not outstandingly urgent,” best done after the “dry and warm air of the summer months” could “desiccate”—dry out—the wall.

Five days later, Hartt and Rossi arrived in Milan, a detour on their return to Florence from the Alto Adige repositories, ostensibly for a short visit with Cott. In truth, Hartt wanted to see
The
Last Supper
. The following day, Cott proudly notified Ernest DeWald that “the Refectory of S. Maria delle Grazie is now open to the public. A descriptive label in English has been printed by this Division and posted in the Refectory.” Much work remained, but Leonardo’s masterpiece had survived the war.

IN PREPARING TO
transport the art back to Florence, Keller wrote to General Hume’s Executive Officer: “This is the biggest undertaking of all in the campaign with the possible exception of the Army’s interest in the protection of the frescoes at the Camposanto in Pisa. It is impossible to estimate the importance of the arrival under Allied Military protection of these things in Florence.” Keller then ticked off a list of items he would need to complete the mission: packing materials, workmen skilled in such packing, and trucks—a lot of them, perhaps as many as fifty-two, with drivers, fuel, water, and other supplies sufficient for the three-hundred-mile drive. The army wanted to avoid the negative publicity of some incident during the returns, so Keller also budgeted for additional security personnel and their needs. It would be a big operation.

Keller needed a written agreement with Giovanni Poggi, or some other high-ranking official, stating that the Italians not only approved of his plan for the return of their precious objects but also agreed to waive claims against Fifth Army for any accidents that might occur along the way. He also recommended that the arrival be marked with some sort of ceremony that would allow the Florentines to bear witness to the return of their art. Keller then ended the letter with a quip to underscore his point: “Remember how crowded Piazza della Signoria was when they put up Michelangelo’s
David
? You don’t, and neither do I, but that’s the idea.”

By mid-June, with planning complete pending final word on the availability of trucks, Keller and Bernholz made a several-day visit to Florence, their first trip outside the Alto Adige area in more than a month. As fortune would have it, their arrival coincided with the removal of the brick tomb covering Michelangelo’s
David
and his adjacent works, the
Slaves
. “The bright spot yesterday was seeing Michelangelo’s
David
at length divested of its air raid protection,” he wrote Kathy. “It was dusty and dirty, but it was a great thrill.”

The familiarity of being back on the road, and then in a city, with all its amenities, was an elixir for Keller’s weariness. The time spent with Charley also buoyed his spirits. Charley’s lightheartedness had, on many occasions, saved the more serious Keller from despair. “We get along fine and share all things together,” he told Kathy. “When I get whiskey, once a month, I give him half, and when he has beer or anything else, he gives me half or all I want. We are not like Capt. and soldier, but like companions.” Keller added, “Those that like the army, like Charley, say, ‘Free food, free clothes, a bunk, free education, all the gas you want to ride around, your social life taken care of for you, free medical attention. My only worry will come when I am discharged and I’ll be out of a job.’ Charley is an optimist and really likes this life.”

Keller and Charley returned to the Alto Adige several days later to discover that Keller’s primary plan—in truth, the only plan—for getting the treasures back to Florence had been thwarted. There would be no fifty trucks, no three-day journey, and no reception in Florence. With some frustration, he wrote DeWald: “Redeployment and winning the Japanese war have a priority over us. I have stated the case a dozen times to all concerned. Poggi knows that trucks are probably out and is not too happy. Hartt is very unhappy.” In truth, the war in Japan was only partly to blame. The army had a duty to feed the starving populations of Milan, Turin, and other northern cities. The fifty trucks Keller needed had been put to a more urgent use.

The alternative to trucks—transit by rail—had already been considered and rejected as infeasible. Between Allied attacks and German demolitions during their retreat, most of the bridges, including the one spanning the mighty Po River, had been damaged or destroyed. Completion of the replacement bridge across the Po was not expected before early to mid-July, so Keller modified his plan and set July 16 as the commencement date for the return operation. The delay burdened everyone involved, as he told DeWald: “This wait has been worrying and uncomfortable to me. . . . Poor Tuscany kid; he must have a constant GI condition waiting on ‘his’ pics from the north.” But Keller and the “Tuscany kid”—Fred Hartt—did on occasion find humor in the day-to-day frustrations of army life. Keller missed a phone call from Hartt because he was “in the toilet for two minutes. So the fate of nations is decided.”

By July 16, men working at Hartt and Rossi’s direction had constructed 109 crates at San Leonardo and forty-six crates at Campo Tures. All paintings and sculpture had been inventoried, noting any damage from rain and previous handling. The inventory at San Leonardo revealed that ten paintings from the Florentine deposit at Montagnana were unaccounted for, including masterpieces by Bronzino, Lorenzo di Credi, and Jan van Huysum, and a small pair of panel paintings by Antonio del Pollaiuolo. Someone, almost certainly German soldiers, had stolen them during the loading process at Montagnana or en route to San Leonardo.

Keller supervised the loadings at Campo Tures, which proved the more complicated of the two evacuations. Lifting the heavy sculpture required a special truck-mounted winch. Those objects were then taken by truck to the nearby train station at Brunico. Hartt handled the loadings at San Leonardo. After accompanying the first truckload down the mountain road to the station at Merano, Hartt said he felt “not only an unspeakable personal satisfaction but a deep pride in the Allied cause when I realized how sharply this journey contrasted with the manner in which the pictures had come up the same road.”

Emptying both repositories and getting their contents to the train stations at Merano and Brunico took two full days. By July 19, everything was in place to begin the final journey back to Florence. The shipment comprised thirteen fully packed freight cars. Six additional cars carried the security detachment of sixty military police and five officers. Rounding out the convoy were a kitchen car, a passenger and office car, and a flat car to carry Keller’s jeep and that of Lieutenant Colonel Holmgreen, who agreed to accompany the shipment as the senior officer and train commander. Keller even had the presence of mind to include fifty fire extinguishers, not easy items to find. Located in Livorno, they had been flown to the site in the private plane of Fifth Army Commander Lieutenant General Lucian Truscott, who had taken a personal interest in seeing the treasures returned to Florence.

The big move would begin the following morning, after the cars from each repository were connected in Bolzano. Hartt and his new driver, Florentine Alessandro Olschki, would depart for Florence to finalize details on the receiving end. They also needed to confirm that the return ceremony arrangements were in place. Keller would accompany the artwork on the train. He had shared with Kathy his anxiety about the shipment but also the pride he felt for the men who had worked so diligently on the preparations, the average soldiers “who do not know a Tiepolo from a croquet mallet.” “Things are rolling and I’ll hope in a week to write you that the Florentine Art is all back in Florence safe. . . . It’s a good omen to start on 16 July, for the most important choice I ever made took place happily on that day.” July 16 was Keller’s seventh wedding anniversary. Once again he had remembered to send flowers, including a yellow one, accompanied by a note “for my wife, who has born[e] herself like a good soldier through these trying times.”

IN MID-MAY 1945,
unofficial news stories began circulating that the missing Monte Cassino treasures had been found among the thousands of works of art stashed in the salt mine at Altaussee. Monuments Men Teddy Croft-Murray and Humphrey Brooke arrived at the mine on June 23 to find Monuments officer Lieutenant George Stout, the man who had first conceived of a Monuments and Fine Arts operation, presiding over an extraordinary packing and shipping project. Stout confirmed for them that at least some of the Naples treasures were present, but he hadn’t yet had time to conduct an inventory. Stout had orders to empty the mine of its contents and transport them to the Allied Central Collecting Point in Munich as quickly as possible.