From 1943 to 1951, 350 or so men and women from thirteen Allied nations served as the men and women of the Monuments, Fine Arts & Archives section (MFAA) of the Allied armed forces, the eyes, ears and hands of the first and most ambitious effort in history to preserve the world's cultural heritage in times of war. They were known simply as Monuments Men. But during the thick of the fighting in Europe, from D-Day to V-E Day, when Germany surrendered, there were only 65 Monuments Men in the forward operating area. Sixty-five men to cover thousands of square miles, save hundreds of damaged buildings and find millions of cultural items before the Nazis could destroy them forever. Monuments Men is the story of eight of these men in the forward operating theatre: America's top art conservator; an up-and-coming young museum curator; a sculptor; a straight-arrow architect; a gay New York cultural impresario; and an infantry private with no prior knowledge of or appreciation for art, but first-hand experience as a victim of the Nazi regime.
They built their own treasure maps from scraps and hints: the diary of a Louvre curator who secretly tracked Nazi plunder through the Paris rail yards; records recovered from bombed out cathedrals and museums; overheard conversations; a tip from a dentist while getting a root canal. They started off moving in different directions, but ended up heading for the same place at the same time: the Alps near the German-Austrian border in the last two weeks of the war, where the great treasure caches of the Nazis were stored: the artwork of Paris, stolen mostly from Jewish collectors and dealers; masterworks from the museums of Naples and Florence; and the greatest prize of all, Hitler's personal hoard of masterpieces, looted from the most important art collections and museums in Europe and hidden deep within a working salt mine - a mine the Nazis had every intention of destroying before it fell into Allied hands. How does the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History end? As is often the case, history is often more extraordinary than fiction.
Author Biography
Robert M. Edsel is the author of the non-fiction books, Rescuing Da Vinci and The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, and the new book Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis, which tells the dramatic story of the Monuments Men in Italy during the Allied invasion of World War II. Mr. Edsel is also the co-producer of the award-winning documentary film, The Rape of Europa. In addition, he is the Founder and President of the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, a not-for-profit entity which received the National Humanities Medal, the highest honor given in the United States for work in the humanities field. Mr. Edsel has been awarded the "Texas Medal of Arts" Award; the "President's Call to Service" Award; and the "Hope for Humanity" Award, presented by the Dallas Holocaust Museum. He also serves as a Trustee at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. Academy Award winner George Clooney will direct and star in a film based on Mr. Edsel's book, The Monuments Men, which is set for theatrical release in December 2013.
