The Monuments Men (38 page)

He had no doubts. This was the important mission; this was the one he wanted more than anything to be given. As he prepared his gear for departure, he no doubt looked back fondly on his days in the City of Light, but looked ahead even more eagerly to the adventures ahead: the great ERR repositories, the Nazi villains, the chance to save the patrimony of France. And despite his excitement—or perhaps because of it—he wondered about Rose Valland. Jacques Jaujard was right. She was a hero. Perhaps
the
hero of French culture. But what would she do now? She had turned over to her protégé the work for which she had risked her life. What does the teacher do once the student is gone?

Rorimer thought more deeply about it and realized he knew the answer. Rose Valland, often underestimated but never deterred, was angling for a commission in the French army. She was convinced she had found the right man in James Rorimer, but the importance of rescuing France’s patrimony was too great to rely on any one person to do the work. Rose Valland was no timid art official or wilting flower; she was a fighter hiding behind a façade. And she had every desire and intention of making it to the front and finding France’s precious art.

In Berlin, Albert Speer stood once more before his Führer. Soviet artillery and Western Allied bombers were pounding the city, and Adolf Hitler, the indispensable man, had descended into his vast, impenetrable bunker beneath the Reichschancellery. He had cut himself off from the world, from even the catalogues of artwork destined for Linz that in better times had brightened his dark days. He could no longer, for instance, gaze at the photograph of Vermeer’s
The Astronomer
, his most cherished painting, with its image of a great man of intellect, turned slightly away from the viewer with the light streaming in through his window, reaching a hand to his globe as if grasping the world. But Hitler still had his building plans for Linz, which had descended with him into the bunker. (The scale model of Linz was nearby in a cellar of the New Chancellery.) He still had his vision. He may have been pale and drained, but he was still iron-willed, a man aware of his predicament but not yet capable of grasping that his empire was doomed.

He was not one to delay. He had been informed by his personal secretary, Martin Bormann, that Speer had been to the Ruhr to convince the gauleiters to disobey Hitler’s Nero Decree and leave intact the infrastructure of Germany.

Speer did not deny it. Hitler, a man of lethal anger but not yet debilitating paranoia, suggested his friend and minister of armaments take a sick leave. “Speer,” he said, “if you can convince yourself the war is not lost, you can continue to run your office.”

“I cannot,” Speer replied, “with the best will in the world. And after all I do not want to be one of the swine in your entourage who tell you they believe in victory without believing in it.”

“You have twenty-four hours to think over your answer,” Hitler said, turning on his heel. “Tomorrow let me know whether you hope that the war can still be won.”
2

As soon as Speer left, Hitler ordered his chief of transportation to issue a teletype reaffirming the “Nero Decree.” “Included in the list of facilities slated for destruction,” Speer wrote, “were, once again, all types of bridges, tracks, roundhouses, all technical installations in the freight depots, workshop equipment, and sluices and locks in our canals. Along with this all locomotives, passenger cars, freight cars, cargo vessels, and barges were to be completely destroyed and the canals and rivers blocked by sinking ships into them.”
3
Hitler was asking for nothing less than the complete destruction of the Reich.

That night, Speer wrote Hitler a letter. “I can no longer believe in the success of our good cause,” it said in part, “if during these decisive months we simultaneously and systematically destroy the foundations of our national existence. That is so great an injustice to our people that should it be done, Fate can no longer wish us well…. I therefore beg you not to carry out this measure so harmful to the people. If you could revise your policy on this question, I would once more recover the faith and the courage to continue working with the greatest energy. It no longer lies in our hands to decide how Fate will turn. Only a higher Providence can still change our future. We can only make our contribution by a strong posture and unshakable faith in the eternal future of our nation…. May God Protect Germany.”
4

Hitler refused to accept the letter and demanded a verbal answer. On March 30, 1945, standing before the Führer he had loved and served so well, Albert Speer lost his resolve. “
Mein Führer
,” he said. “I stand unreservedly behind you.”
5

Three days later, 350 miles west of Berlin, Monuments Men Walker Hancock and George Stout approached the town that for months had tantalized them with its mystery and its promise of artistic treasures: Siegen, Germany.

Letter from Walker Hancock

To his wife, Saima

April 4, 1945

Dearest Saima:

The last few days have been the most incredible of my whole life. For
instance
, the other day I made a long trip with George Stout and the vicar from Aachen to see a place where the greatest art treasures of western Germany are hidden. We entered the town the same day that it was taken. Only one road into it could be used as there were still “pockets of resistance” in the surrounding hills. Shelling and machine gun fire were heard intermittently. (No real danger, but it all added to the excitement.) The town had been solidly bombed for three months, and for two weeks battles had raged in the streets, so you can (or can’t) imagine how the place looked. An occasional civilian ventured out of hiding, but mostly it was empty desolation—a pool of blood with an American helmet beside it told a story—the ruin that we know so well was everywhere.

Our priest-guide found us the entrance to the tunnels where the works of art were hidden. In contrast to the deserted town, here all was teeming with wretched humanity. We entered the narrow passage into the dark, suffocating mine. People were packed in so tightly that survival under such conditions for a day seemed a miracle. None of them had left the place for a fortnight. We went deeper and deeper into the hillside and when our eyes became accustomed to the darkness, and our ears to the hushed words we became somewhat aware of the drama of the situation. (Our noses did
not
become accustomed to the sickening smells.) We were the first Americans these people had seen. There were gasps—“Amerikaner! Amerikaner! Sie kommen!” Mothers called their children to them in fear.

But some others were not afraid. One little tot took George by the hand and held him for a long part of the way. Some tried to talk in English. There were the old, and young, and the sick of the city, piled on bunks or huddled together. We walked on and on—more than a quarter of a mile into the hill.

Walker

Letter from George Stout

To his wife, Margie

April 4, 1945

Dear Margie:

I’ve not written for four days—a field trip and every hour used up… [but] there was an occurrence day before yesterday which was of such a character that it deserves better than the poor sketchy account that I am now able to give of it. I cannot tell you the name of the city—it is well east of the Rhine—because as yet the fact of what it holds is not allowed out. We had known about a storage depot there from information we got last November [in Aachen] and since then more had come in. We knew it was somewhere in an iron mine at the edge of the city. We found a German priest, a really dauntless fellow, who had been there and offered to go as our guide.

An armored force had been in, and elements of an infantry regiment had followed. There was fighting during the day, but most of the German troops had pulled out. We came in at 4:30 (1630), Walker Hancock, two enlisted men, the priest and I. The streets were not very safe for a vehicle because of debris and fallen trolley lines. There was very little artillery shelling, sporadic and weak. The German soldiers were being round up with no evident resistance. We saw three civilians, two German nurses, and a man who walked with a limp, a young man. He said he was trying to find his sister on the other side of town and wanted to know if it was dangerous to go there. All this was commonplace and had happened many times before.

One of the enlisted men had been left with the vehicle. The rest of us walked about a half mile across the broken town and came to the mine. Our intrepid priest was then not too sure of the entrance. What followed was not commonplace.

Around a hole in the steep hill stood some twenty people. They fell back and we went in. The tunnel—an old mine shaft—was about six feet wide and eight high, arched and rough. Once away from the light of the entrance, the passage was thick with vapor and our flashlights made only faint spots in the gloom. There were people inside. I thought we must soon pass them and that they were a few stragglers sheltered there for safety. But we did not pass them.

It was a hard place to judge distance. We walked more than a quarter mile, probably less than half a mile through that passage. Other shafts branched from it. In places it had been cut out to a width of about twenty feet.

Throughout we walked in a path not more than a foot and a half. The rest was compressed humanity. They stood, they sat on branches and on stones. They lay on cots or stretchers. This was the population of the city, all that could not get away. At one time the priest had to stop and speak to a woman who was ill. Many must have been ill. There was a stench in the humid air. Babies cried fretfully.

We were the first Americans they had seen. They had no doubt been told that we were savages. The pale grimy faces caught in our flashlights were full of fear and hate. Children were snatched out of our path. And ahead of us went the fearful word, halfway between sound and whisper—“Amerikaner.” That was the strange part of the occurrence, the impact of hate and fear in hundreds of hearts close about us and we the targets of it all.

Yet, there was some indifference. There was a boy of about ten blowing at a cup. Somewhere out of the damp and the stink he had got something hot to drink and he was trying to bring it down to a tolerable temperature. He paid us no attention at all. And there was some little sign of a thing, not fear and not unconcern. We must have been more than halfway through. I felt a touch on my free hand, and turned my light there. It was a boy of about seven. He smiled and took hold of my hand and walked along with me. I should not have let him do it, but I did and was glad. I wonder why he felt that way. What could have made him know that I was not a monster. He and another followed us out into the good air.

We found our storage depot through another entrance and I’m not really sorry that we made a blunder on the first.

This has been quite long and quite inadequate, but I thought you would like to hear about it.

Much love, darling,

George

CHAPTER 34

Inside the Mountain

Siegen, Germany

April 2, 1945