The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, And The Greatest Treasure Hunt In History

by Robert M. Edsel

If, in time of peace, our museums and art galleries are important to the community, in time of war they are doubly valuable. For then, when the petty and the trivial fall way and we are face to face with final and lasting values, we… must summon to our defense all our intellectual and spiritual resources. We must guard jealously all we have inherited from a long past, all we are capable of creating in a trying present, and all we are determined to preserve in a foreseeable future. Art is the imperishable and dynamic expression of these aims. It is, and always has been, the visible evidence of the activity of free minds.… Therefore be it resolved: 1) That American museums are prepared to do their utmost in the service of the people of this country during the present conflict 2) That they will continue to keep open their doors to all who seek refreshment of spirit 3) That they will, with the sustained financial help of their communities, broaden the scope and variety of their work 4) That they will be sources of inspiration illuminating the past and vivifying the present; that they will fortify the spirit on which victory depends.

He ordered an escort of two motorcycles, three jeeps, two armored cars, a weapons carrier, and fifteen soldiers for Hancock and the treasures, even though the area between Weimar and Frankfurt had been cleared of enemy forces and was safer, Hancock felt, than the Merritt Parkway back in Connecticut. He wondered what the general would have thought of the first part of the journey, when Hancock had driven the jewels alone through the forests of Thuringia on a road where six convoys had been ambushed in the last week alone.