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00:00Germany, November 2013.
00:04The world is stunned as more than 1,500 lost artworks seized by the Nazis are found safe
00:10in a small rundown apartment in Munich.
00:13Valued at over a billion and including works by Matisse, Picasso and Chagall, it had been
00:19assumed they were all destroyed in the carnage of the Second World War, a conflict that threatened
00:26to obliterate many of mankind's greatest artistic achievements.
00:32The remarkable discovery of these lost paintings is the latest chapter in the story of the Monuments
00:38Men, a group of art experts who in the last years of the war set out to solve the greatest
00:45art theft in history.
00:49Now, a major Hollywood film directed and produced by George Clooney and featuring an
00:56all-star cast is telling their extraordinary story.
01:01As the Allies fight to liberate Europe, the Monuments Men battle to save its soul.
01:18Omaha Beach, July 1944.
01:23It's a month since the first shot of D-Day.
01:29And while the Allied battlefront pushes inland towards the German borders, behind the frontline
01:36is former art conservator at the Fogg Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, now Lieutenant George
01:43Leslie Stout.
01:46George Stout was very keen on the idea of doing everything he could to make sure that
01:51there was something left when this war was over.
01:54The 47-year-old has been handed a unique opportunity.
01:59He's an officer in a newly formed unit with very special orders.
02:04The Monuments Fine Arts and Archives section, or as it was referred to oftentimes M-F-A-N-A,
02:09was a group of museum directors, curators, art historians, artists themselves who volunteered
02:14for service during World War II to be a new kind of soldier, one charged with saving rather
02:18than destroying.
02:21These are people who are curators of museums and art historians, people who are well past
02:27their prime, not exactly the people you would pick for soldiering.
02:30The common bond is their expertise or their love of art in all its forms.
02:38And their understanding for the need of spiritual nourishment that comes through art.
02:45Stout and other Monuments Men are charged with the responsibility of saving Europe's culture,
02:51a mission enshrined in an historic order from Allied Supreme Commander General Eisenhower.
02:57Shortly, we will be fighting our way across the continent of Europe in battle designed to
03:05preserve our civilization.
03:06Inevitably, in the path of our advance, will be found historical monuments and cultural
03:13centers which symbolize to the world all that we are fighting to preserve.
03:19It is the responsibility of every commander to protect and respect these symbols whenever
03:25possible.
03:27General Eisenhower's order says quite clearly that cultural treasures, national icons, the
03:34treasures of Western civilization, that they must be protected and preserved if at all possible.
03:41This isn't merely a war for the winning of battles.
03:45This is a war for the very survival of humanity.
03:51The size of the task facing Stout and his Monuments Men is unprecedented.
03:55For the last five years, Hitler has been waging war not just on the people of Europe, but on
04:03their art and cultural heritage too.
04:07In Hitler's quest to build a thousand year right, it was important to eliminate completely
04:15the cultures of inferior lesser races.
04:20It isn't just a question of defeating and occupying, but it's a war of annihilation, a war of elimination.
04:27Art, national treasures, culture, heritage, all pray victim to support the much larger objective
04:40of Hitler's view of the world.
04:43Treasures would be taken, monuments would be dismantled, whole cities would be destroyed.
04:50Hitler's assault on Europe's cultural treasures begins
04:57as soon as he rises to power in the 1930s.
05:02He uses art as a political tool to promote and protect Nazi ideals.
05:08Part of Hitler's vision for the Thousand Year Reich was that Germany would dominate the world
05:16culturally.
05:17One way they were going to do this was through the construction of a vast cultural complex
05:22in Hitler's hometown of Linz, Austria.
05:26Hitler's vision, reproduced in a scale model, will turn the industrial Danube riverfront into
05:32a purpose-built city dedicated to the glory of Aryan supremacy.
05:38At its heart would be an enormous museum that would house every important work of art in
05:42the world.
05:44Hitler's Führer Museum is to showcase the very best of Germanic art and celebrate the Aryan
05:49ideals of the Nazis.
05:52Its 30 miles of galleries will house all of Europe's greatest masterpieces.
05:58Works by artists approved of by the Nazis.
06:02But Hitler condemns modernist, abstract and cubist art as degenerate, along with all works
06:08by Jewish and Slavic artists.
06:11He orders them to be sold or destroyed.
06:15They burnt Picassos, they burnt Salvador Dali's, they burnt Clee's.
06:20In the yard, they just pulled them out and burned them.
06:22By publicly burning works of art, you can see a very disturbing parallel with the way they
06:28approached people.
06:30The Nazis were burning paintings in the same way that they would later be burning bodies
06:36of people they wanted to eliminate from society.
06:47With the success of D-Day, the war enters its final year, and the preservation of art becomes
06:53one of the focal points of the Allied plans to defeat Hitler.
07:00Art is the soul of a society.
07:02It represents the very best things that we have achieved.
07:08And to go after that art and try to rescue it and try to save it and protect it and preserve
07:14it is this incredibly noble endeavor.
07:18And one being made against all the odds.
07:23As a million Allied soldiers risk their lives to liberate Europe, the Allies fight through
07:28territories containing some of the most treasured cultural symbols in the world.
07:37Those treasures are now the responsibility of the Monuments Men.
07:45One of the great misunderstandings about the Monuments Men is that there was a unit or a section,
07:49that there was this team of soldiers moving about.
07:53In fact, there were just a handful of them.
07:57Joining George Stout on the front line of the Western Allies in 1944 are four other middle-aged
08:04art experts.
08:07James Rorimer, a museum curator from Cleveland, Ohio, is attached to the communication zone.
08:13Walker Hancock, a sculptor from St. Louis, Missouri, accompanies the U.S. First.
08:23Architect Robert Posey joins Patton's U.S. Third.
08:28And British scholar Ronald Balfour is assigned to the Canadian First.
08:34Coordinating these men spread out across Europe is de facto leader George Stout.
08:40Stout's very conservative, he's extremely methodical.
08:44He's an unexcitable character, very steady, and this proves to be of great importance to
08:48the Monuments officers as they get in the field and find themselves in combat.
08:53Almost immediately, the Monuments Men's mission on the ground is challenged.
08:58They believe in their mission.
09:00They believe it's a great idea.
09:02But there's a great deal of skepticism that Army commanders are ever going to listen to
09:05a bunch of art historians, artists, professors, in uniform telling them what to do.
09:10Colonel, if you would, just read the orders.
09:12I'll tell you what these orders say.
09:14Don't knock out old builders.
09:15Do not interrupt me, Lieutenant.
09:18Superior officers, half their age, are in a position of trying to understand why in the
09:23world is this elderly guy in front of me telling me I can't aim at this church or aim at some
09:28structure when I know that there's German snipers or the enemy inside of it.
09:35At the historic city of Saint-Lô, Normandy, the Monuments Men witnessed firsthand the shocking
09:41destruction of war.
09:43To force a breakthrough, the Allies reduced the city to rubble.
09:50To try to preserve or protect a building, a piece of art, when the stakes are so high,
10:01it highlights all the more the challenge that the Monuments Men faced.
10:06It's a conundrum.
10:07I mean, it seems an almost unworkable problem that they're going in to save important historic
10:15items, these treasures of Europe, at the same time, were destroying the very city in which
10:22they're placed.
10:24Few records of those who witnessed the destruction of Saint-Lô survive today, but amongst them
10:30are the papers of Monuments Man James Rorimer.
10:36There was havoc and destruction everywhere.
10:39The recording of damage amid the many gaping craters and fire-swept buildings was a thankless
10:45task.
10:46At times, it was like scooping up wine from the streets after the keg had burst.
10:53If war is reducing whole cities to rubble, what hope do the Monuments Men have of saving
10:59Europe's fragile masterpieces?
11:03September 1944.
11:06As the Monuments Men spread out across Europe, they realized that their mission, to protect
11:12historic buildings and art treasures, is close to impossible.
11:20300 miles northeast of Saint-Lô, the Normandy town destroyed in fighting, 40-year-old British
11:27scholar Major Ronald Balfour, the Monuments Man with the Canadian First Army, arrives in the
11:34Belgian city of Bruges.
11:39Here he discovers that the Nazis have been systematically stealing art, as well as destroying it.
11:45It was certainly the biggest art heist ever.
11:48There's no question about it.
11:50There's never been anything like it.
11:52You know, millions and millions of pieces of art.
11:55To realize Hitler's vision of a super museum in Linz, the Nazis seize Europe's finest masterpieces.
12:03The artwork is stolen to order.
12:06For the Nazis, the plunder was actually a way for them to reacquire works that they believed
12:13had been wrongly taken from Germany.
12:17Hitler had curators that compiled for him a catalogue of works of art that had been created
12:23by German artists or artisans or had been taken from Germany.
12:30Hitler would flip through these catalogues, like mail order catalogues, selecting works of
12:35art.
12:36Top of Hitler's wish list are two priceless works of art in Belgium, the area assigned to
12:42Monuments Man Balfour.
12:44The first is The Ghent Altar, a 15th century Renaissance masterpiece by the brothers van Eyck.
12:52The Ghent Altar piece is one of the premier pieces of art ever stolen.
12:57And it was Hitler's intent to have it.
12:59He wanted that piece.
13:02And the second is The Madonna and Child, a marble sculpture by Michelangelo.
13:08Hitler could hardly not want a magnificent sculpture by Michelangelo, the Bruges Madonna.
13:13The Ghent Altar piece, perhaps the most famous altarpiece in the world, was not going to escape
13:18attention either.
13:19Hitler argues that the Ghent Altar piece is rightfully his.
13:24Panels from the masterpiece had originally belonged to Germany.
13:28But under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was forced to hand them to Belgium as
13:34reparations for the First World War.
13:36So this is a work that's targeted by Hitler almost from the get go.
13:42It's perceived to be Germanic in origin.
13:45All works that are considered Germanic are subject to be not stolen, but in Hitler's view, repatriated
13:50back to Germany.
13:52In 1940, the Belgians tried to ship the altarpiece to safety, but it was eventually seized by
13:58the Nazis.
14:01So by recapturing it, Hitler felt that he was reversing a perceived wrong on the part of
14:06the German people inflicted by the Treaty of Versailles.
14:10As the scale of Nazi art theft becomes clear, the Monuments Men's mission takes on a new,
14:17urgent dimension.
14:19The Nazis are on the run, but they're taking everything with them.
14:22So we have to get as close to the front as we can.
14:25Now it's not just a matter of trying to mitigate allied damage to structures or affect temporary
14:31repairs regardless of who caused the damage.
14:33I think they're realizing at that stage they're becoming de facto art detectives trying to hunt
14:39down these works of art and what ends up becoming the greatest theft in history.
14:46August 1944, and the Americans reach Paris.
14:53The Monuments Man overseeing operations in the French capital is James Rorimer.
15:00Rorimer loves all things French.
15:01He speaks French fluently.
15:03Part of his family owns an apartment in Paris.
15:06He's traveled extensively throughout France and knows the country very, very well.
15:11He's kind of a bulldog of a figure, very ambitious, extremely self-confident.
15:17On his way to the French capital, Rorimer wonders.
15:22What was the fate of the many historic buildings?
15:25Of the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa, and the myriad of art objects which had made Paris the
15:31most famous art center in the world.
15:35On the surface, Rorimer's mission to safeguard France's cultural treasures seems relatively
15:41simple.
15:43Paris surrendered early on in the war.
15:45It was virtually unscathed from the lightning German victory in 1940.
15:52As a result, its many treasures, its many historic buildings, its wonderful museums were largely
15:59untouched by the damage of the Second World War.
16:03But in August, after the Monuments Man arrives in the city, James Rorimer discovers that France's
16:10artworks have not been so lucky.
16:13When Monuments Man arrives in Paris in August 1944, he discovers that France's national collection
16:25has been spirited away, not by the Nazis, but by the French themselves.
16:35In 1939, fearing Nazi occupation, the director of the Louvre orders the evacuation of the famous
16:42gallery.
16:47Its masterpieces, including the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo, are all packed away and
16:53shipped to safety.
16:56They're stored in chateaus across an unoccupied free zone, under the control of a temporary Vichy
17:02French government working with the Nazis.
17:05It was a highly organized operation.
17:09One curator later remarked that if the French army had been as prepared as the Fine Arts
17:13administration, they might have won the Battle of 1940.
17:17Paris's national collections are safe, but the belongings of its wealthy citizens have
17:23been seized by the Nazis.
17:26In June 1940, Hitler orders the seizure of all cultural artefacts belonging to Jews and other
17:46enemies of the Third Reich.
17:50A special task force, known as the Einsatzstabreichsleiter Rosenberg, or ERR, ransacked all of the Jewish-owned
17:59art collections in Paris.
18:01The Nazi plunder of French-Jewish collections is mind-boggling.
18:08They plundered the most famous collections in France, from the Rothschild family, the Kahn,
18:14Seligman, Bernheim.
18:15These were the most famous collectors in France and some of the most famous collectors in the
18:20world.
18:22So many works are stolen that the Nazis set up a processing station near the Louvre at
18:27the Jeux-de-Paul Museum.
18:29Here, tens of thousands of France's most valued artworks are catalogued, photographed and sorted.
18:38But before the art is shipped to Germany, the Nazi elite are invited to pilfer at their leisure.
18:45Chief among them, Hermann Göring.
18:48Göring basically used the Jeux-de-Paul as a shopping mall, and so they set it up like
18:53an exhibition space with all of the work that was pilfered.
18:57Göring visited the Jeux-de-Paul 20 times.
18:59The ERR officials working in the museum would prepare this museum for him.
19:07They would lay out the plundered tapestries for him.
19:10They would have champagne waiting.
19:11It was a very elegant affair in which Göring would walk around this small museum and hand
19:17pick works for his own collection.
19:19Champagne.
19:20Very nice.
19:21Would you like a glass?
19:22Very nice.
19:23We need another champagne glass.
19:24We miss you.
19:41Watching everything that happens inside the Jeux-de-Paul is Rose Vallon.
19:48A volunteer at the museum before the war, she stays on to secretly gather information
19:54on the looting operation for the French resistance.
19:57Rose Vallon, in the middle of all this activity, is making lists of the works that are coming
20:05in.
20:06They thought she was simply monitoring things around the museum like heat and electricity
20:11and making their jobs easier.
20:13actually, she was noting all of their activities and keeping track of where all that plundered
20:19art was going.
20:22In August 1944, as the Allied advance accelerates towards Paris, the Nazi art operation at the
20:30Jeux-de-Paul moves into overdrive.
20:34In the space of a few weeks, more than 20,000 pieces of art seized from Jews by the Nazis are
20:41shipped out of the museum and deep into Germany.
20:50Recovering France's looted collections now becomes the number one priority for Monuments
20:56and the businessman James Rorimer.
21:00To succeed, he must first persuade Rose Vallon to give up her secrets.
21:07How can I help you steal our stolen art?
21:09That's not why I'm here.
21:10I'm here to help you get it back.
21:11Just to fill your museum.
21:15And the French spy isn't going to make it easy.
21:24In October 1944, Monuments men attached to the Western Allies reach Germany's Western border.
21:33The city of Aachen stands as the first major German city to be vulnerable to capture by the
21:41Allies.
21:43For the Monuments men, Aachen, the historic capital of Charlemagne, the German Emperor of
21:48the First Reich, is a city that must be protected.
21:53Hitler recognized the importance of this.
21:55This was a city rich in symbolism.
21:59This is why Hitler declares Aachen as a fortress city.
22:07It must be defended for the last man, the last woman, the last child.
22:12The battle for Aachen confirms the Monuments men's worst fears.
22:19Protecting Europe's cultural heritage from the ravages of war is beyond them.
22:26During a month of fighting, much of the thousand-year-old city is destroyed.
22:35In the middle of all the destruction is 43-year-old Walker Hancock attached with the US First Army.
22:42Walker Hancock was dramatically affected by the destruction he sees in Aachen when he arrives.
22:48For two weeks we had watched Aachen burning below the horizon.
22:54An unsteady glow in the sky at night.
22:57Behind these roofless brick fronts was only emptiness.
23:00The city was utterly abandoned.
23:03I realized at once what I later so often found to be true, that a skeleton city is more terrible
23:10than one that the bombs have completely flattened.
23:13Aachen was a skeleton.
23:20My father spent time as a young person in Germany.
23:25He was steeped in European culture.
23:30He was extremely open to doing anything he could to preserve whatever little piece of civilization
23:37he could.
23:38Amidst the ruins of Aachen, Walker Hancock discovers a clue to the whereabouts of the city's treasures.
23:48In the basement of a museum, he finds a catalogue.
23:54It lists all of the city's most important pieces of art.
23:59And alongside each of the entries, a place name.
24:04So many times when the monument's men would get a clue, that's all it was.
24:08It was a name.
24:09It was a place.
24:10But they'd be looking at each other wondering, you know, is that a name or is it a place?
24:14What is it that we've found?
24:15Walker Hancock has uncovered his first major lead.
24:20Aachen's looted treasures have been taken deep inside Nazi Germany to a place called Siegen.
24:27But getting there is going to be tough.
24:30In December 1944, the Allied advance into Germany and the progress of its monument's men is halted when Hitler launches a massive counterattack in the West.
24:46As Allied reinforcements flood to the Battle of the Bulge, new recruits join the ranks of the monument's men.
24:52I found myself on my 19th birthday on a truck to go up front to fight in the Battle of the Bulge and I got pulled out.
25:07Harry Ettlinger, a German Jew, had fled Germany in 1938.
25:13Somebody came to me and said, I understand you knew how to speak and write German.
25:19And that was my entry into the monument's men.
25:25Another new recruit is Lincoln Kirstein, a man the army has difficulty accepting.
25:32Lincoln Kirstein was a Jewish, bisexual, New York intellectual who was very much out of his depths in Nazi-vanquished Europe.
25:41The monument's officers that are already overseas are clamoring to have Kirstein because Kirstein, in their view, is basically a human Google.
25:50He knows something about everything.
25:52George Stout recognizes talent when he sees it and pairs his newest recruit with an old hand.
26:00Looks like we're going to be together, buddy.
26:04Robert Posey was someone who was very likable.
26:08He was a member of the armed forces, unlike most of the monument's men.
26:13I think they made a good pair because they played off of each other well.
26:17Kirstein would not have known what to do in the field surrounded by soldiers the way Posey did.
26:22But Posey, on the other hand, had an appreciation for the arts, but not a deep intellectual understanding of them.
26:28And they complemented each other to create the perfect combination.
26:33Posey and Kirstein, assigned to the US Third Army,
26:36take up the challenge of tracking down the artwork from Belgium stolen by the Nazis.
26:43Top of their list is the famous Ghent Altarpiece and Bruges Madonna.
26:49Lincoln Kirstein felt that the best way he could get revenge on the Nazis and on Hitler was by recapturing the single greatest object that the Nazis wanted in terms of stolen art, and that was the Ghent Altarpiece.
27:02It became for him a symbol of all of the stolen art that they could try to save.
27:07If he could save this one work and bring it back to the Belgian people, then he would right the great wrong that Hitler did across Europe.
27:15Finding these priceless artworks is now their greatest challenge.
27:19In the last months of the war, the location of the hidden Nazi art depots containing Europe's treasures is still a mystery.
27:31In March 1945, Robert Posey, Lincoln Kirstein, and Ronald Balfour are the monument's men trying to track down two stolen masterpieces.
27:42On the 10th, while evacuating a sculpture from a damaged church in Cleves, a mortar explodes in the street where Ronald Balfour is overseeing the operation.
28:00He's killed outright, and becomes the first monument's man to die in action.
28:09The death of Ron Balfour has all sorts of reverberations for the monument's men.
28:13I think it reminded everybody of the mortality of what they were faced with, but it also gave poignant attention to this question, is art worth a life?
28:23It's a very difficult question.
28:32Is art, is culture, is something material worth human life?
28:39In the individual case, I would almost say without hesitation, no.
28:45But when the struggle is for civilization itself, for the high-minded ideals, it is worth fighting for.
28:53In an extract taken from Ronald Balfour's own papers, he reveals the values for which he gives his life.
29:03Every civilization is formed not merely by its own achievements, but by what it has inherited from the past.
29:10If these things are destroyed, we have lost a part of our past, and we shall be the poorer for it.
29:17With news of Balfour's death, the monument's men redouble their efforts to preserve Europe's culture.
29:27We'll see you too until this time, I guess.
29:29We will.
29:34I believe the monument's men really become personally involved in their respective hunts for particular works of art.
29:43Something as iconic as Michelangelo's Bruges Madonna.
29:46These are works of art that these monument's officers knew about, and they were determined to find them.
29:51In Paris, monument's man James Rorimer is endeavoring to recover the tens of thousands of artworks looted from France's wealthy Jews.
30:08Months into his investigations, Rose Vallon, the French spy working for the resistance inside the Jeu de Pomme, is yet to tell him everything she knows.
30:18She didn't trust anybody, because she knows that the Americans are going to march into these areas and win, and she didn't want to help them find it, because she thought they wouldn't give it back.
30:33But Vallon's fears are about to be overtaken by wider events.
30:37In March 1945, with the war clearly lost, Hitler issues his Nerobefell, his Nero Decree.
30:49Hitler's Nero Decree specified that nothing of value would be left to fall into Allied hands.
30:57When the Allies were on German territory, anything and everything that could be of use to them, or to the civilian population that remained behind, would be destroyed.
31:09Hitler said, burn it. Hitler said, burn it all. If I'm dead, destroy it.
31:14The issuance of the Nero Decree, in essence, creates a race against time.
31:21At this stage now, Allied forces are on the move into Germany, trying to find where these works of art are.
31:29The great concern being that they may be destroyed.
31:32Look at the Nero Decree. It is written by Hitler, signed by Hitler. It says, if he dies, or if Germany falls, they're to destroy everything.
31:48Everything.
31:50Where did they take the art?
31:53Germany.
31:55You understand I'm here to help you.
31:57I understand you are, but you are not in Germany.
32:00My men are.
32:01I don't know your men.
32:04Rose Vallon wanted to ensure that James Rorimer himself would be going to those repositories where the French art treasures were stored.
32:13She needed to know that he would be there, so that he could ensure personally that the art treasures of France would be saved.
32:22In March 1945, Rorimer is promoted.
32:26He'll join the U.S. Seventh Army deep inside Germany.
32:32On hearing the news, Vallon invites him to her apartment.
32:36So while Rorimer is at Vallon's apartment, she goes into her bedroom and comes back with a stack of papers and some photographs.
32:46She shows him the list of works of art that she had been creating throughout the occupation.
32:54I have kept train manifest receipts, letters for every single piece, who it belonged to, who took it, where they took it.
33:05And she showed him pictures of the repositories where he would find the great treasures of France.
33:12There's a castle in the Bavarian house, Neuschwanstein.
33:16The fairytale Neuschwanstein castle in southwest Bavaria is today famous as the model for Disney's castle.
33:25But in 1944, it's the central repository for France's stolen art.
33:31But the fate of these works now hangs in the balance.
33:35The Soviet army is advancing on Berlin, deploying squads of soldiers to plunder what they can from Germany.
33:47Towards the end of the war, members of the Red Army, so-called trophy squads, were looking to re-steal the stolen art and bring it back to Soviet Russia.
33:56So there was something of a race between the Monuments Men and the Russian trophy squads in trying to reach the art first,
34:05the Monuments Men to return it to the victims, the Russians to steal it.
34:11With war's end in sight, Monuments Men scattered across Germany are the first to discover major caches of plundered art.
34:20April, May 1945 serve as hallmark months, not just in the lives of the Monuments officers,
34:28but to people all over the world today who go to museums and churches and enjoy the magnificence of mankind's greatest creative achievements.
34:37In April, Walker Hancock and George Stout reach a copper mine at Segan,
34:42the location marked on the ledger Hancock discovered in Aachen five months earlier.
34:47What they find inside would shock even the most seasoned of art detectives.
34:59Ten months after the start of their mission,
35:02Monuments Men Walker Hancock and George Stout make their first major discovery,
35:08a cache of looted art inside a German mine.
35:17These mines were huge chambers, 60 feet wide, 40 feet high and a mile long, 700 feet below the surface
35:33in which they kept the boxes for the museum, the libraries and the personal belongings.
35:39This discovery at Segan is quickly followed by another.
35:47At Merkis, 125 miles to the east, Monuments Men Robert Posey and Lincoln Kirstein
35:53discover a repository containing art from more than a dozen German state museums.
35:59Also inside is the contents of the Third Reich's treasury.
36:11Over 8,000 bars of gold bullion, thousands of bags of gold and silver coins
36:18and crates of currency worth 37 billion dollars today.
36:23The discovery of stolen art and treasure at the Merkis mine was really eye-opening.
36:29It was the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the Nazis had stolen,
36:33but the scale of it was absolutely tremendous.
36:36By the start of May 1945, Hitler is dead.
36:43His suicide and the fall of Berlin means the war is over.
36:47In the south, James Rorimer, attached to the U.S. 7th Army, arrives at Neuschwanstein Castle.
37:03Inside, just as Rose Vallon had insisted he would,
37:11Rorimer discovers 20,000 pieces of art, furniture and jewellery stolen from France's Jewish families.
37:20There was all kinds of art and furniture and high, high quality things like that.
37:28Every room was filled with boxes and crates, some of which were never touched.
37:36Racks and platforms held boxes of paintings.
37:39Others were simply jammed onto shelves.
37:42Some rooms held nothing but gold.
37:46Throughout the spring of 1945, the monument's men recover major collections across Germany.
37:52Tens of thousands of masterpieces are saved, but countless others are still missing.
38:03The Bruges Madonna, along with the Ghent Altarpiece,
38:06became the bifocal of the Allied investigation of looted art.
38:11These were the number one and number two objects that they sought to try to recapture,
38:15because they were the two most famous objects that the Nazis had stolen.
38:18Not for the first time in the work of the monument's men,
38:23luck plays a big part in the discovery of stolen treasures.
38:28The salvation of Europe's greatest artworks is all down really to a fortuitous toothache.
38:35Robert Posey has an impacted tooth,
38:38and to treat it, he visits a dentist in the German town of Trier.
38:42The dentist was chatting with Kirstein while he was working on Posey,
38:46and he asked, well, what do you do with the Allied army?
38:48And they said, well, we're trying to protect works of art.
38:51And he said, ah, you should meet my son-in-law.
38:53He's also an art historian.
38:54He lives a few months from here.
38:56He may be able to help you.
38:57Is he a soldier?
38:59He was a soldier, like you.
39:01Robert Posey and Lincoln Kirstein have by chance found themselves in the hideout
39:10of SS officer Hermann Bunjes.
39:14The former art advisor to Hermann Göring.
39:21Here was this SS soldier.
39:23He was a trained killer, but he was in hiding,
39:26not from the Allies, but from the German people,
39:28because the SS were so feared by the Germans
39:30that he was in greater danger of their vigilante justice
39:33than he was of being arrested by the Allied soldiers.
39:38Hoping that the monument's men might offer him protection for information,
39:43Bunjes pours out all he knows
39:45about the Nazi art looting operation at the Jeux de Pomme in Paris.
39:51And the most important thing that he mentioned and pointed to on a map
39:55was a salt mine that had been converted to a secret stolen art depot
39:59in the mountains of Austria at a place called Altaussee.
40:03On May the 12th, 1945,
40:06an American infantry unit approaches the site
40:09of the reported art depot at Altaussee.
40:15Inside the mountain,
40:17monument's men Kirstein and Posey
40:19discover crate after crate of stolen art.
40:25We came into a very large and high rock-vaulted cavern.
40:31Here, lying on its side,
40:34cushioned on an old brown and white striped mattress
40:37and covered with pieces of asphalt paper,
40:40was the Michelangelo from Bruges.
40:44And in another chamber,
40:46finally,
40:47the Ghent altarpiece.
40:49It's 500-year-old panels propped up against the wall.
40:57Inside this one repository,
41:00the monument's men recover 6,755 paintings,
41:04137 pieces of sculpture,
41:07historical artifacts,
41:08and much, much more.
41:10The monument's officers then are faced with an epic problem.
41:17What do you do when you find salt mines
41:19filled with sculpture by Michelangelo,
41:21paintings by Leonardo da Vinci and Jan van Eyck,
41:24Rembrandt and others,
41:26by the thousands?
41:28With the war over,
41:30the monument's men lead a massive peacetime operation
41:33to repatriate Europe's rescued art.
41:38In central collection points,
41:40recovered artworks
41:41from over a thousand Nazi repositories
41:43are catalogued.
41:46We had the concept
41:48and the ability
41:50and the workforce
41:51to give it back
41:54whenever possible.
41:55We believed in what we were doing
41:58was the right thing to do.
42:03In total,
42:04nearly 350 monument's men and women
42:06from 13 nations
42:08worked tirelessly
42:10to return Europe's stolen art
42:12to its rightful owners.
42:17By 1951,
42:19when the last collecting point closed,
42:22this tiny organization
42:23had facilitated the return
42:25of 5 million objects
42:27stolen and at risk of destruction
42:29by the Nazis.
42:33The victory of the Allies
42:37in World War II
42:38was a remarkable achievement
42:39of arms and of industry.
42:42But without the monument's men,
42:44without the deliberate preservation
42:46of these priceless treasures,
42:49these all-important symbols
42:52of the best of Western civilization,
42:56I think that victory
42:57would have been less
42:58than it actually was.
42:59they preserved
43:03the absolute best
43:05of what the West
43:06was fighting for.
43:09Of the handful
43:10of monument's men
43:11who began work in Europe
43:13in July 1944,
43:16two were killed in action.
43:20For his work
43:21as a monument man,
43:23James Rorimer
43:24was awarded
43:25the Bronze Star
43:26and the French Legion of Honor.
43:30Rose Vallon
43:31also received
43:32a Legion of Honor.
43:34She is one of France's
43:35most decorated women.
43:38Despite the heroic efforts
43:39of the monument's men and women,
43:42not all of the works of art
43:43stolen by the Nazis
43:45were recovered.
43:45Today,
43:48the Art Loss Register,
43:50the central database
43:51of stolen art,
43:53believes that as many
43:54as 200,000 masterpieces
43:56remain missing
43:57and continues its search
44:00to recover them.
44:01of the