Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis (33 page)

In March 1948, after numerous interrogations at Nuremberg, and half a dozen appearances during the trials as a witness, Wolff was transferred to a detention center while his case was reviewed as part of the German government’s de-Nazification process. Later that year, the court found Wolff guilty on the lesser charge of “minor offender.” Time served offset the four-year sentence; Wolff was released immediately.

The sensational capture and arrest of Nazi fugitive Adolf Eichmann in Argentina by agents of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, and his subsequent trial in Jerusalem in 1961, brought renewed worldwide interest to the so-called desk-murderers—Nazi bureaucrats who claimed to have had no involvement in the actual killings. During the trial, Eichmann characterized Wolff as “one of the salon officers who wishes to keep their hands in white gloves and did not want to hear anything about the solution of the Jewish problem.” In fact, Wolff later asserted that he knew nothing about the Holocaust—despite his longstanding service to SS leader Himmler and closeness to the Führer—until spring 1945. Eichmann’s testimony contributed to Wolff’s subsequent arrest and trial by a court in Munich. In 1964, he was found guilty of complicity in genocide and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He was released in 1969 due to ill health.

Wolff spent his final years arguing for his innocence through lectures, publications, and an occasional television appearance. He died on July 15, 1984, in Prien on Lake Chiemsee, Germany.

Gauleiter Franz Hofer, who tried to sabotage Wolff’s efforts and scuttle the Operation Sunrise negotiations, had no such protection. Following his arrest near Innsbruck on May 6, 1945, Hofer was placed in detention at Dachau. Three years later, he escaped and began working in Germany under an assumed name. In 1949, an Austrian court sentenced Hofer to death in absentia for high treason, but authorities eventually stopped pursuing him. Hofer died in 1975 and was buried in Mülheim on the Ruhr River, Germany. To the end, he remained an ardent believer in Adolf Hitler.

After surrendering on May 6, 1945, Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring was arrested and transferred to an Allied detention center. Kesselring believed that “the battle for Italy was not only justified but even imperative.” While he later acknowledged that the late-stage events of Operation Sunrise resulted in forty-eight hours that “embarrassed both sides intolerably,” he believed he had made the correct decision to hold out to the last minute in a desperate attempt to save the lives of his soldiers.

Kesselring was charged with war crimes for his role in the Ardeatine Caves massacre. A second charge accused him of inciting forces under his command “to kill Italian civilians as reprisals.” The trial began in Venice, Italy, on February 10, 1947. In preparing his client’s case, Kesselring’s attorney wrote to the Archbishop of Florence, Elia Dalla Costa, requesting “testimony in favor of the accused.” He received a short reply: “Dear Counselor . . . I must declare that there is nothing I can say to benefit the defense of Field Marshall Kesselring. Instead, I could tell of the horrendous massacres in my diocese, if these can be attributed to Kesselring.”

The British Military Court hearing the case found Kesselring guilty on both charges and sentenced him to death by firing squad. Believing this outcome too severe, many in the British government, including Winston Churchill and Kesselring’s former adversary in battle, Harold Alexander, argued for a lesser sentence. Two months later, the commander of British forces in the Mediterranean commuted Kesselring’s death sentence to life imprisonment. In October 1952, after further support from such éminences grises as noted British historian Major General J. F. C. Fuller, Kesselring was released from prison on the grounds of ill health. On July 16, 1960, Albert Kesselring died of a heart attack at the age of seventy-four in Bad Nauheim, Germany. He was buried in his native Bavaria in the village of Bad Wiessee, still admired by the men who served under him.

By September 1945, the remaining major participant in Operation Sunrise, OSS spymaster Allen Dulles, found himself unemployed. After the surrender of Japan and the formal end of World War II, President Truman signed an Executive Order dissolving the OSS. But the administration soon saw the value of a full-time intelligence service. Twenty-two months later, Truman signed into law the National Security Act that formally created the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1953, Dulles, who had resumed a private law practice after the war, returned to government service during the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower, becoming the fifth director of the CIA. Under his aegis, the agency renewed its commitment to covert operations. Dulles, with his extensive contacts from the war, was ideally suited to oversee the task. His leadership lasted until November 1961, when President John Kennedy demanded his resignation over the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba.

Dulles wrote several books after the war, including
The Secret Surrender
, originally published in 1966, in which he asserted that Karl Wolff received no immunity from prosecution. In the book, he chose to avoid mention of a June 1950 letter he wrote to his former Swiss intelligence counterpart, Max Waibel, by that time the Swiss military attaché in Washington, DC. Incensed that Wolff sought to be reimbursed for his property and financial losses “incurred through the handling of the Italian capitulation as agreed,” Dulles wrote Waibel, stating, “Between you and me, [Wolff] doesn’t realize what a lucky man he is not to be spending the rest of his days in jail, and his wisest policy would be to keep fairly quiet about the loss of a bit of underwear, etc. He might easily have lost more than his shirt.”

*
Each of these men served as officers in the SS. As early as September 1941, Walter Rauff established his role in the Holocaust through the development of mobile extermination vans, known as “Black Raven gas chambers.” The fleet of these vehicles, with their modified carbon-monoxide exhaust systems, soon provided an alternative to execution squads for the liquidation of Jews on the Eastern Front.

As German historian Dr. Kerstin von Lingen notes, “Not one of the senior SS figures involved in these cease-fire negotiations was brought before an Allied court.”

29

THE HEROES AND THEIR LEGACY

T
oday visitors to the Capodimonte Museum in Naples will find a remarkable collection of paintings, including Titian’s
Danaë
, Bruegel’s
The Blind Leading the Blind
, and Raphael’s
Holy Family
showing no signs of having been hauled more than sixteen hundred miles by the Hermann Göring Division to the salt mines of Altaussee.
*
The central panel of Duccio’s
Maestà
, which Deane Keller found in a villa amid wounded soldiers during an artillery barrage, is once again safely back in Siena’s Museo dell’Opera del Duomo. Lucas Cranach’s paintings of
Adam
and
Eve
, so admired by Hitler that his subordinates stole them, can be found in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, among its holdings of German School paintings.

But reminders of the war in Italy are, alas, easy to find. The Abbey at Monte Cassino has been rebuilt, but the most visible landmarks from its reconstructed walls are the Polish and British Commonwealth Cemeteries on the hills below, containing thousands of gravestones memorializing the soldiers who fought the gruesome battle. American soldiers who fell during that battle are buried alongside their brothers at Anzio, seventy miles away.

The bridges of Florence have been reconstructed, the Ponte Santa Trinita appearing largely as it did before its demolition, thanks in part to the extensive archival photographs taken at the direction of German scholar (and member of the Kunstschutz) Professor Heydenreich, as Director of the Kunsthistorisches Institut. However, the bridge’s
Four Seasons
statues, with their thousands of hairline fractures and reassembled parts, inform visitors of what took place some seventy years ago. So, too, do the incongruous modern buildings that line the south side of the Arno nearest to the Ponte Vecchio, occupying space where the medieval towers once stood.

Today the Ponte Vecchio appears much the same as it did before the demolitions of August 1944. But a reminder of wartime events does exist. Opposite the bust of Benvenuto Cellini, under the arches on the south wall, hangs a small plaque honoring Dr. Gerhard Wolf, placed there in 2007 by city officials (albeit citing incorrect dates of birth and death) to honor the man who worked so valiantly to save the city. Gerhard Wolf had come to the city as the Consul of Germany; by virtue of his actions, he departed as the Consul of Florence.

Dedicated technicians in Padua continue their painstaking work reassembling fragments of the war-damaged frescoes painted by Mantegna on the walls of the Ovetari Chapel. Dr. Clara Baracchini devoted fifteen years to the repair of the Camposanto; the work continues today. Other reminders of the Monuments Men may be found in the most surprising places, such as the off-limits sign that still hangs on the wall of the Castello di Masino, near the Lombard town of Ivrea, exactly where it was placed by Monuments officer Captain Rodrick E. Enthoven almost seventy years ago.

Milan bore the brunt of the Allies’ effort to bomb Italy out of its alliance with Nazi Germany. The Poldi Pezzoli Gallery had to be completely rebuilt. Repairs to La Scala allowed the theater to reopen on May 11, 1946, with a performance directed by Arturo Toscanini. The Duomo still has a few pockmarks and discolorations from Allied bombs that nicked its façade during the summer of 1943. The paintings of the Brera and Ambrosiana Picture Galleries survived, despite multiple moves during the war. They returned to their respective museums, home to some of the most important and beautiful paintings in the world, but only after extensive reconstruction of both buildings.

The
Last Supper
survived the August 1943 bombings—barely. When the last of the sandbags that supported the north wall were removed, Monuments officer Perry Cott observed, “The
Last Supper
may be getting worse and it surely isn’t getting any better. It is a miracle that it was saved at all.” The Refectory reopened to the public on June 19, 1945. Newspaper accounts cited just one four-inch square on the tunic of St. James the Greater as being problematic. Lurking unseen, however, was the problem that has bedeviled the north wall since Leonardo painted on it: humidity.

On February 12, 1946, Fernanda Wittgens, the sole dissenting voice in May 1945 concerning the painting’s condition, accompanied Superintendent Ettore Modigliani for a detailed inspection of the mural. Her report was shocking: “The surface was inflated with humidity; its appearance was rubbery and would move by the slightest touch up . . . to the second layer of plaster base.” In addition to the changes in climate caused by the sudden loss—and then reconstruction—of the walls and roof, the sandbags that had stabilized the fresco side of the north wall had become rotted with moisture. The close quarters between the sandbags and the painted wall created a thick layer of mold on the surface.

By December 1946, the condition of the painting was dire. “The head of Christ has nearly vanished,” wrote a correspondent for
Time
magazine. “The faces of Philip and James the Elder appear to be completely corroded and are covered by a layer of saltpetrous calcinate which threatens to spread over the entire fresco [
sic
].
*
From a few feet away, the apostles are an indiscriminate blur. The landscape originally visible in the background has disappeared.” Professor Emilio Lavagnino, who played such a critical role in transporting so many of the nation’s artistic masterpieces to the safety of the Vatican, commented that another in a continuous series of restorations “offers a possible guarantee to keep the picture in some recognizable form for another 30 years—not more.”

Today, limited groups of visitors gain entry into the Refectory by passing through a glass-enclosed passageway just fifty or so feet from the impact site of the bomb that landed in the cloister. Upon entering the climate-controlled space, they will discover that Lavagnino’s assessment proved wrong.
The
Last Supper
survived its postwar humidity problems. Thanks to the dedication of Dr. Pinin Brambilla Barcilon, who spent twenty years standing on scaffolding restoring the painting, centimeter by centimeter, it has been restored to a condition not seen in hundreds of years. Her work, uniting state-of-the-art technology with the knowledge gained from failed experiments of the past, has preserved this masterpiece for future generations.

The Refectory is in fact a microcosm of the wartime events in Italy: local art officials and volunteers taking measures to protect their cultural legacy; an Allied bombing policy that initially gave no consideration to the consequences of nighttime firebombing of a cultural capital; the miraculous survival of one of the great examples of man’s creative genius; a revised Allied policy that aimed to avoid such damage; and the introduction of a new kind of soldier charged with saving, not destroying, what lay in the path of the conquering army. It serves as a physical reminder that the creative genius of man must somehow be reconciled with his capacity for destruction.

In September 1945, Monuments officer John Bryan Ward-Perkins presciently stated, “The process of restitution and reparation is likely to be long drawn-out.” Almost two years would pass before the paintings and sculpture belonging to the Naples museums were turned over to Italy’s designated representative, Rodolfo Siviero.

The Monuments Men followed the tip from Pietro Ferraro and found seven hundred crates containing the library and photographic collection of the Kunsthistorisches Institut of Florence hidden in a German salt mine in Kochendorf, near the town of Heilbronn. The collections of the Kunsthistorisches Institut and the Hertziana Library in Rome, which the Monuments officers found in three different repositories, were eventually returned to Italy, but not until 1953.

Fred Hartt’s May 1945 inventory of the two German repositories in the Alto Adige region revealed that ten paintings from the Villa Bossi-Pucci at Montagnana were missing and presumed stolen. Eighteen years would pass before the first one surfaced. The small pair of panel paintings by Antonio Pollaiuolo, perhaps the most important works of art from Italy that eluded recovery by the Monuments Men, were found in the possession of Johannes Meindl, a German waiter working in Pasadena, California, in 1963. Meindl had been a veteran of the Wehrmacht 362nd Infantry Division. The paintings were returned to the Uffizi Gallery by Rodolfo Siviero and Luisa Becherucci, Director of the Uffizi, after intervening assistance by U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

The story that emerged shed some light on how such lootings occurred. At the end of June 1944, Meindl and other soldiers from his division were removing works of art from the Tuscan repository when they came across a crate that had been split open. Upon seeing the contents—paintings from the Uffizi Gallery and the Pitti Palace—Meindl commented, “These are worth something!” He and another soldier then took some of the paintings.

A subsequent investigation led prosecutors to a man in Munich who served with Meindl. In his possession were five paintings that he had taken from the same crate. The remaining three paintings from that particular crate remain missing. The whereabouts of two of the paintings, School of Van Dyck (
Madonna with Child and Saints,
Palatine Gallery inventory #282), and School of Bronzino (
Christ on the Cross
, Palatine Gallery inventory #263), remain unknown. The most important of the three, Dutch Master Jan van Huysum’s
Flowers and Fruit
(Palatine Gallery inventory #462), is in the possession of a European private collector. It remains one of many complicated cases where the person possessing the work of art has ownership, but not clear title.

Almost seven decades later, the search for missing works of art continues. By mid-2012, the Cultural Heritage Division of the Carabinieri was still on the hunt for more than two thousand works of art stolen or lost during World War II. This figure doesn’t begin to cover works of art that were taken out of Italy during the chaos of war, in violation of the nation’s export laws, that have since found new owners. The fate of the missing art and other cultural treasures forms a significant part of a yet-to-be-written history of World War II.

ONE MYSTERY PUZZLED
the Monuments Men well after the war ended. When did Giovanni Poggi learn about the location of the two Alto Adige repositories, and why didn’t he provide that information to Hartt, Keller, or one of the other Monuments officers? This issue fell outside the scope of DeWald and Cooper’s investigation.

Poggi had faithfully discharged his duties to protect the extraordinary wealth of Tuscany, even when threatened by a German officer for his lack of cooperation. The Monuments Men admired Poggi’s dedication, but not without some criticism of his methods. Fred Hartt, who understood the importance Florence might play in his postwar career, held Poggi in reverence: “Both sides, at the end of the war, recognized Poggi as being, ‘the most authoritative and esteemed Superintendent in Italy.’” Hartt added, “He is a person of immense learning, of unassailable taste and judgment in matters of restoration and repair, and of infinite capacity for hard, devoted labor.”

Deane Keller saw Poggi as a peer and was more measured in his assessment than the enthusiastic Hartt. While he recognized Poggi as a man of “devotion and loyalty, integrity and intelligence,” Keller questioned his judgment on two important matters. “One thing is the carelessness of . . . letting the Florentine pictures out on a long trip without proper crating and packing,” he wrote in his June 7, 1945, report. “This should be explained by him. Further, he knew the stuff was in the Alto Adige all during the winter of ’44 and ’45 and hedged on the questions.”

Keller’s assertion that Poggi knew the Germans had stashed the Florentine artworks at Campo Tures and San Leonardo as early as December 1944 was, in part, wrong. We now know that Poggi became aware of the Campo Tures repository by November 15, 1944. He may have known even sooner. A series of notes handwritten by Poggi that record precise details about the transport of the works have been found in his papers, but they are difficult to date with any certainty. The first of Poggi’s notes is dated “July 4, 1944,” but includes details that transpired months afterward. Other notes are dated “July 20–30–31, August 11,” “August 20,” “August 22,” and “August 23 and 26” and record further details of the shipments to the two repositories. We are left to wonder whether some were written on the indicated dates, or whether this was Poggi’s own attempt to construct a timeline after the fact.

By 1946, Poggi and his team had reopened most of the Florentine museums. He spent much of his time promoting cultural events with museums and other institutions in the United States in an effort to generate funds for restorations. Three years later, after serving the cause of Italian art and culture for almost fifty years, through two world wars, Poggi retired. Despite a remarkable career, he always lamented the works of art he could not save during the war. Giovanni Poggi died on March 27, 1961.

ANOTHER MAN WHO
risked his life to locate and secure the two repositories was Don Guido Anelli, “the flying priest.” His story reveals how Allied forces and Italian art officials in Venice arrived at the two locations so quickly. Had it not been for Marchese Serlupi Crescenzi, who later insisted that Anelli write a summary of his activities and provide it to Poggi, perhaps to set the record straight, Anelli’s service to Italy and its art would have remained unknown. He ended his note to Poggi by saying, “I am grateful for this opportunity to convey to you my sense of great esteem and regard.”

On May 11, 1945, the unpretentious Anelli was presented with a Certificate of Appreciation, signed by OSS leader General William Donovan, expressing official gratitude for his “selfless help to this office and to the United States of America Army in the fight for the liberation of Italy.”

As a hard-line Christian Democrat in postwar Italy, Anelli was outspoken against Communism. His stance, especially as a priest, became increasingly uncomfortable for Catholic Church officials as well as some of his colleagues and parishioners. Tired of the bickering, Anelli accepted a position at an important parish in Maracay, Venezuela, in March 1955. Two years later, “the flying priest” suffered a stroke and died at the age of fifty-six. On May 10, 1990, his remains were returned to Italy and buried near those of his parents in the town of Orzale Neviano degli Arduini.