"'American Soldiers Saved Great Art. They Also Stole Some'"

2014. The film Monuments Men, writes David Malakoff ('American Soldiers Saved Great Art. They Also Stole Some', The Slate 7th February) tells a great story, but it's only part of the story.

American GIs did plenty of looting too as they rolled into Germany in the winter and spring of 1945. They raided chicken coops, ransacked parlors, and blew up bank vaults. A few even managed to “liberate” their own priceless paintings, ancient manuscripts, and crown jewels. “We are devastation,” a U.S. Army Sergeant named Raymond Gantter wrote home as the occupation advanced. “Where we have passed, little remains—no cameras, no pistols, no watches, very little jewelry, and damn few virgins. We leave behind us a spoor of broken dishes, emptied fruit jars, and plundered, dirty houses.” 

Malakoff quotes a recent study of GI looting by historian Seth A. Givens, a doctoral student at Ohio University in Athens, which appears in the current issue of the journal War In History.

International law allowed soldiers to take battlefield souvenirs, he notes, but clearly forbade them from seizing civilian possessions. Still, many GIs “saw looting in Germany as morally and legally justifiable,”  [...]  in a few cases, U.S. soldiers did rip off very valuable artwork from castles or vaults (much of it was ultimately returned to Germany, often decades later). The loot included paintings by Albrecht Durer, Raphael, the oldest known manuscript in German, a massive stamp collection, and a handwritten manuscript by Frederick the Great. In perhaps the most spectacular heist, several officers discovered a trove of jewels belonging to one of Europe’s royal families in a castle basement. The theft was eventually discovered, and the looters prosecuted.