The Monuments Men (48 page)

In Bavaria, Hermann Göring rode, with all the tassels and regalia of his exalted rank (officially stripped from him by Hitler a few days before), in an open car and in the custody of SS guards. The guards had been ordered to kill the Reichsmarschall and his family, but even the SS knew Germany had entered a leaderless void, and they ignored the order. The convoy was headed to Mauterndorf, one of Göring’s many estates; the Reichsmarschall was planning to wait there until he received an audience with Eisenhower. He was sure the two would meet and talk together, one military man to another.

His artwork, meanwhile, was in transit to the town of Unterstein, six miles from Berchtesgaden. In the last two weeks, it had traveled a hazardous journey over the bombed-out rail lines of Germany. First it had gone to Berchtesgaden, where three cars had been decoupled despite the fact that the bomb shelters were damp and proved too small to hold the entire collection. The remaining cars had gone to Unterstein, but once they arrived the Reichsmarschall rethought his decision and decided to deposit the collection back in the bomb shelters outside Berchtesgaden. The paintings were covered with tapestries for protection, then the doors to the bomb shelters were sealed with a foot-thick wall of concrete and disguised with timbers that looked like ceiling beams. The bulk of the artwork still wouldn’t fit, of course, so while bombs fell on Germany, Allied troops rushed across the rubble of what had once been its great cities, and Nazi fanatics worked to blow up every railroad, factory, and bridgehead in the Fatherland, the Reichsmarschall sent the overflow of his massive collection of stolen paintings, sculpture, tapestries and other cultural treasures back to Unterstein. He kept in the possession of himself and his wife only the ten small masterpieces they had been holding since evacuating Carinhall, which were valuable enough for the two of them to live like royalty for the rest of their lives.

Across the Austrian border in the Alpine Redoubt, the defenders of Altaussee were in disarray. Eigruber had sent a demolition team to arm and detonate the bombs. A reliable source—the husband of a friend of a sympathetic miner—had seen the demo experts in a valley only a few miles away, awaiting a Gestapo escort. Pöchmüller and Högler had discussed a few days before sending someone down the mountain to Salzburg to inform Western Allied forces of the situation. They had decided it was too risky. The idea of rebellion against the armed guards seemed foolish, especially if the Gestapo was arriving with the demolition experts. And there was no time or means to move the heavy bombs out of the mine.

At this pivotal moment, one of the miners, Alois Raudaschl, came forward with an idea. Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, chief of Hitler’s security police and the second-highest-ranking member of the SS, had fled Hitler’s bunker in Berlin and was on his way to the area to visit his mistress. Raudaschl, a Nazi Party member, knew how to contact him. Might Kaltenbrunner help?

The scenario was appealing. As the Nazi security chief, Kaltenbrunner outranked Eigruber. He had been in the bunker and knew Hitler’s mind. And he had many personal traits the gauleiter would doubtlessly admire. A native Austrian, he was well known for his violent adherence to Hitler’s most vile practices: the establishment of concentration camps, the execution of prisoners of war, and the disappearance of thousands of “undesirables” from German-occupied territories. In short, he was a ruthless, heartless bastard: exactly the type of man who would command the respect of August Eigruber.

But would such a man really go out of his way to save art?

CHAPTER 46

The Race

Berchtesgaden, Germany, and Neuschwanstein, Germany

May 4, 1945

T
he Third Infantry Division of U.S. Seventh Army, “the Rock of the Marne,” had fought its way from North Africa, through Sicily, Anzio, France, southern Germany, and finally into the Bavarian Alps. It had taken part in the capture of Munich in late April, and toured the nearby Dachau death camp. On May 2, 1945, its Seventh Infantry Regiment, known as the “Cottonbalers,” advanced on Salzburg, Austria’s gateway to the Alpine Redoubt. They expected a fight, but in the last few days resistance had suddenly disappeared, and they took the city without firing a shot. This left them in perfect position to push on to the last jewel in the war: the Nazi stronghold at Berchtesgaden, the heart of the Alpine Redoubt.

On the morning of May 4, the commander of Third Infantry Division, Major General John “Iron Mike” O’Daniel, visited Colonel John A. Heintges, the commander of Seventh Infantry Regiment. “Do you think we can make it to Berchtesgaden?” he asked.

“Yes sir,” Heintges replied. “I’ve got a plan already prepared.” Heintges had ordered his engineers to work all night to strengthen a local bridge in case the division received the order to advance.

Within an hour, the First and Third battalions were moving in a pincer formation toward Berchtesgaden. While First Battalion crawled apprehensively through the mountain passes, Third Battalion swung wide and rolled down the autobahn untouched. First Battalion entered Berchtesgaden at 3:58 p.m. on May 3, 1945, followed two minutes later by the Third Battalion. The two forces found the streets lined with German officers standing at attention in their gray longcoats. One of them stepped forward, took off his pistol and dagger, and presented them to Colonel Heintges. He was Fritz Göring, the Reichsmarschall’s nephew. Heintges accepted the surrender, then invited the young man to a local
Gasthaus
for a bottle of wine. The Reichsmarschall had recently left; Fritz had been left behind to turn over to the Allies the Luftwaffe archives.

While Heintges chatted, other “Cottonbalers” ascended the hill to Hitler’s Berghof on Kehlstein Mountain. The house had been bombed by the British RAF, then set afire by the SS, but the pantries were still stuffed with food and the walls were lined with shelves of liquor. Isadore Valentini, a medic and former coal miner, sat in Hitler’s great room and drank the Führer’s wine with his friends. The Nazi flag flying over the Berghof was torn down, chopped into pieces, and distributed to the officers of the Third Infantry Division. In a nearby house, a soldier took the German Luger from the hand of Lieutenant General Gustav Kastner-Kirkdorf, who had committed suicide with it. Soon, the men of the Seventh Infantry Regiment were rolling giant wheels of cheese down the streets and helping themselves to Göring’s personal collection of liquor from his nearby house, which numbered 16,000 bottles. There was, clearly, no Alpine Redoubt, as Eisenhower and his advisors had feared. The last bastion of Nazi resistance had withered with barely a shot.

Neuschwanstein lay at the end of a long, treacherous hairpin drive through the dense mountains of the German-Austrian border, a perfect reflection, James Rorimer thought, of the course his search had taken since meeting Rose Valland in Paris. He had gone to the City of Light hoping to save its great monuments and buildings; now he was driving a Red Cross truck through the German countryside, hoping to find stuffed into a remote castle one of the largest collections of masterpieces ever assembled. Had it been moved or, worse, destroyed? Were the ERR documents, which would be essential to unraveling what had been stolen and from whom, still there? Was he even heading to the right place?

“Yes, there is art at Neuschwanstein,” Martha Klein, the restorer he had met at Buxheim, told him. “But the salt mine at Altaussee, that is the richest of the caches by far.”

He had hesitated upon hearing that, but only for a moment. The Allies had not yet taken the region near Altaussee, a rural valley high in the mountains and far from any military objective, so there was really no choice. And he had been dreaming of Neuschwanstein for months. There was no way he could turn away now; not when he was so close, and not after the promises he had made to Rose Valland. With a little luck, there might be time to reach the salt mine, too.

Any lingering doubts were wiped clear by the sight of the castle. “The fairy-like castle at Neuschwanstein near Füssen,” Rorimer wrote, “had been built in a fantastic pseudo-Gothic style by the Mad Ludwig of Bavaria. As we approached it from the north through an open valley, it looked in its mountain setting like a prototype of all story-book castles. It was a castle in the air come to life for egocentric and mad thirsters after power; a picturesque, romantic and remote setting for a gangster crowd to carry on its art looting activities.”
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The great iron doors were guarded by two cannons mounted on armored cars. Otherwise, the Germans had fled, leaving it completely defenseless. The American unit that had taken the castle reported no resistance, and the total arms confiscated from the Germans in residence amounted to a couple of shotguns. Thanks to Rose Valland’s information and Rorimer’s efforts, the unit had known the importance of the castle, and it had been sealed and placed off-limits immediately upon its capture. No one, of any rank, had entered the treasure rooms.

With the castle’s long-serving custodian as his guide—the Nazis had retained the castle’s prewar staff, trusting these servants more than their own men—James Rorimer, his new assistant, Monuments Man John Skilton, and a small complement of guards entered the castle. The interior was a labyrinth of stairs, designed not by an architect but by a theatrical stage designer Mad Ludwig had admired. The stairs were steep and precarious, each topped by a door unlocked by a German watchman with a comically large set of keys, then locked again behind them. Behind most of the doors were claustrophobic rooms, with foot-thick walls and tiny aperture windows. Others led to magnificent hallways, sometimes a balcony overlooking a mountain vista, followed by another set of precarious stairwells, this one on the outside of the building. The castle went up and up at seemingly impossible angles, room after bizarre room, and in each one Rorimer saw boxes and crates, racks and platforms, all containing the patrimony of France which had been shipped directly from Paris. Whole rooms housed nothing but gold decorations; others had paintings crammed tightly onto shelves or piles of crates with the ERR initials stenciled over the symbols of Parisian collectors. Rorimer could see that many of the crates had never been opened.

Other sections of the castle were stuffed with furniture. Some contained tapestries; others table services, goblets, candelabras, and various household goods. There were several rooms of books, with rare engravings and prints shoved haphazardly between them or dropped behind the shelves. Behind one steel door, locked with two keys, was the world-famous Rothschild jewelry collection and more than a thousand pieces of silver belonging to Pierre David-Weill. “I passed through the rooms as in a trance,” Rorimer wrote, “hoping that the Germans had lived up to their reputation for being methodical and had photographs, catalogues and records of all these things. Without them it would take twenty years to identify the agglomeration of loot.”
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