Lynn H. Nicholas

This is the story of the millions of pieces of art stolen and hidden by the Germans or hidden from the Germans during the Second World War. The blurb on the cover says "A scholarly work that reads like a gripping adventure story." This is not true. It is an adventure story, but it reads like a tedious laundry list.

Sadly, this is a poorly written book on a fascinating subject. Its 444 pages provide you with hundreds of names, places, organizations, and most important, works of art. But making sense of who did what to whom and where the stuff went is difficult to accomplish unless, perhaps, you make a spreadsheet while you read. Most annoying were all the hundreds of declarative sentences that opened paragraphs and led nowhere, creating paragraphs that made no sense. I read and reread. Maybe the problem is that there really are so many bits of information and maybe this book is intended for someone doing research, in which case dry doesn't matter, and it would probably be excellent.

I found this book on Amazon when I was looking at The Monuments Men (the book) and read one or more reviews that gave The Rape of Europa higher marks for being more informative. Because the subject interests me I may give the other book a go and see if perhaps, for me, less is more.… (more)

If you’ve ever watched “The Monuments Men” movie and wondered ‘How did all the art the Nazi’s looted end up in those mines?’ Well this is the book that answers that question.

But it covers so much more in its densely packed, detailed research driven pages of which The Monuments Men is just a small part.

While the Nazi art confiscation is well documented and told, this book also covers the less talked about destruction of art by both sides (the Allies being particularly destructive in Italy), the bargaining and using of art to buy things such as transit visas, the boom in the world-wide art trade as items previously held in museums or private collections came on the market. While the Nazis did steal a lot, they were also the most rapacious buyers of art and dealers, and forgers, around the world made fortunes off them.

I found it fascinating to read how certain parts of the German infrastructure would hinder the confiscation and transfer of looted art, such as the Army in Paris refusing to supply trucks, or people starting shell companies that could then claim certain collections were “German owned” and stop them from being moved.

There are also stories of ingenious methods used to hide art treasures (sometimes in plain sight), and not so clever (a member of the Rothchild family in Holland burying art under a sand-dune and not marking it or even writing down its location!)

Academic in tone it can be a bit of a slog to get through, but it’s full of interesting stories.… (more)

I liked this book a great deal. For one thing, the author remembered to include copious illustrations, which is a must for a book of this kind. For another, I thought the presentation was cogent and coherent, no easy task when you consider that the transactions involved in this matter -- the wholesale theft and destruction of artwork across Europe in World War II -- were meant to be covered up for one reason or another. A number of other books on this subject have come out ("The Book Thieves," "Nazi Plunder" and "The Lost Museum," to name three), but this one was one of the first, and deserves credit. Recommended.… (more)