August 20th marks the 70th anniversary of the official establishment of The American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas, known as the Roberts Commission. Under the chairmanship of Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts, the Roberts Commission was an assemblage of art historians, museum officials, artists and professors charged with protecting art, artifacts and monuments in war-torn Europe from destruction and looting.
Monuments Men supervising the recovery of art and artifacts from Neuschwanstein Castle in Schwangau, Germany. Image courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.
At the outbreak of the war in Europe, museum curators and scholars on both sides of the Atlantic began to take steps to safeguard their most prized collections. In addition to potential danger from air raids and ground combat, these structures and artworks were also threatened by Hitler’s aggressive looting policy. Hitler coveted many of Europe’s greatest masterpieces for his Führermuseum, envisioned as the largest and most magnificent art museum in the world, located in his hometown of Linz, Austria. Through the duration of the war, Rembrandts, Raphaels, Vermeers, DaVincis and millions of other valuable pieces were plundered and hidden. Their final destination: to Germany or Austria for the Führermuseum collection.
Responding to this impeding crisis, the American Council of Learned Societies members drew up lists and prepared maps displaying the most culturally significant and important monuments and artifacts across Europe. These pieces were priorities to be protected from destruction, if military necessity allowed, and safeguarded from looters.
The Council, along with a group of Harvard professors and faculty, began to devise protection plans as the United States military planned an invasion of Europe. They took these plans to Supreme Court Justice Harlan Stone, board member of the National Gallery of Art. The proposal was brought to President Roosevelt, approved in June of ‘43, and the Roberts Commission was officially established in August.
The commission was charged to work as closely as possible with the US military, and special Monuments Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) officers began training to be sent to the front lines.
As the Monuments Men arrived in Italy and eventually France, understaffed and with a minimal budget, they began to survey the damage to monuments and historic buildings. They coordinated initial repairs to ensure no further damage would occur to these culturally significant structures. MFAA officers also embarked on an extraordinary treasure hunt to recover the countless works of art stolen by the Nazis. These pieces were discovered in remote depositories across the continent: castles, countryside villas and salt mines.
Under the supervision of the MFAA officers, many of these works were returned to the rightful museums and still-living private collectors. Damaged buildings, including Monte Cassino, the Campo Santo and the Aachen Cathedral were rebuilt. However, thousands of artifacts were never claimed or could not be traced back to their original owner. Many pieces with unclear provenance from this time are in museum collections across the world. Museums are taking steps to investigate provenance and provide an open access database to the public.
Read the book that pays tribute to these remarkable and often forgotten group of monuments men and women, diligently told by Museum Trustee Robert Edsel: The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. Watch Robert Edsel’s Lagniappe Lecture about the Monuments Men from September 2009. Be sure to check out the movie based on the book, being released December 2013!
Post by Chrissy Gregg, Virtual Classroom Coordinator
The 16 August 1943 issue of LIFE Magazine featured a large spread on Andrew Jackson Higgins, founder and operator of Higgins Industries of New Orleans. The story featured Higgins accomplishments in production, but also drew heavily on his colorful character.
Higgins has the characteristic bluntness of the old-time American frontiersman. His profanity, which when called into play flows as naturally as water from a spring, is famous for its opulence and volume. He has a gift for coming to the point at once, for reducing every proposition to its lowest common denominator. He also has a gift for expressing himself in extravagant, often unprintable, figures of speech. He takes a drink, preferably ripe bourbon, whenever he wants one. “I only drink when I’m working,” he has said. Since he works most of the time, he keeps several bottles of Old Taylor at his desk.
The article chronciles Higgins professional development beginning with the story of Omaha boy of twelve, who built a boat in his house that was so large that part of the house had to be torn down to get the boat out. Our article finds him an industrialist with “an annual volume of more than $120,000,000″ and “close to being the “world’s most important motor-boat manufacturer.”
By the war’s end, Higgins operated eight production sites in the New Orleans area and employed close to 25,000 workers.
Seventy years ago today, on 14 August 1943, Rome was declared an Open City. In making such a declaration, the fascist government and King Victor Emmanuel II were openly announcing that they were abandoning all efforts to defend the Italian capital – thus declaring the city “open” – in the hopes of minimizing further civilian casualties and preserving the Eternal City’s many ancient landmarks and monuments.
However, despite the declaration, it was to be a long hard year before the Americans would finally capture and liberate the Open City, as German soldiers would quickly move in and begin a brutal 270 day occupation. Roberto Rossellini’s classic 1945 Italian neo-realistic film, Rome, Open City, accurately depicts this traumatic chapter in Rome’s history.
Watch the Critic’s Picks review of the film from The New York Times below.
Execution of Bl. Jakob Gapp (1897 – 1943) Jakob Gapp was born in Wattens, Austria in 1897. He was a soldier in World War I. He joined the Marianist order in 1921 and was ordained a priest in 1930. He was the director of religious education in the Marianist schools. As the Nazi party came to power, Fr. Gapp saw a conflict between Nazi ideology and Christianity and spoke out loudly against the party. In 1933 the Gestapo ordered him to cease teaching religion. Gapp, however, continued to speak out against the Nazi party. Under increasing pressure, he fled to Spain. The Gestapo arrested him on a visit into France in 1942. On August 13, 1943 he was guillotined. He was beatified in 1996 by Pope John Paul II.
Propaganda poster lists the seven “keys” to keep prices down. Image courtesy of The National WWII Museum.
Seventy years ago today, a story in the Reading Chronicle of Reading, Massachusetts described the local Ration and Price Control Board’s search for two women to investigate retail adherence to price ceilings. In order to control rising costs as demand grew for items in short supply, the Office of Price Administration (OPA) set maximum prices for household goods. Local boards informed retailers of the price ceilings and in some cases, sent shoppers to consult with the merchants. It sounds like the board members had difficulty recruiting women to volunteer for the job, what we might call a secret shopper today, they called a snoop!
Today marks the 70th anniversary of Operation Tidal Wave. The 1 August 1943 bombing raid on the oil fields at Ploesti, Romania was one of the costliest air missions in the European Theater. On what would become known as “Black Sunday,” 660 airmen lost their lives. Five Medals of Honor were awarded as a result of actions that day.
One participant in the raid was Thomas Laskowski. He was the radio operator on the B-24 Flak Alley. Read more on Flak Alley from the 44th Bomb Group Veterans Association.
Just a year prior, Laskowski’s previous crew on the B-17 “My Gal Sal” survived an emergency landing on an icecap in Greenland. By sawing off propellor tips which had been stuck in the ice, the crew managed to restart My Gal Sal’s engines and radio. Laskowski transmitted an SOS, which led to their rescue after 10 days. The plane remained on the ice for more than fifty years before being recovered and restored. My Gal Sal hangs here at the Museum in the US Freedom Pavilion: Boeing Center.
Post by Curators Kimberly Guise and Larry Decuers.
Seventy years ago today, the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), the women’s division of the US Navy, celebrated a first birthday. Formed on 30 July 1942, the WAVES numbered 27,000 by the end of year one.
1943 cartoon in celebration of the first year of the WAVES
Visit last year’s post on the formation of the WAVES.
The first flight into the eye of a hurricane was made 70 years ago today, on 27 June 1943, by flight instructor Joe Duckworth from Bryan Air Field in south central Texas (near the current site of Texas A & M) . Colonel Duckworth was in the process of helping to standardize the instruction of instument flying in the Air Corps. Egged on by British pilots training at Bryan Field, Duckworth flew a single-engine AT-6 trainer into the small hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico near Galveston, Texas.
Without weather radar or satellites to rely on, the hurricane was first detected only a day prior to Duckworth’s flight. Ship and weather reports were subject to censorship, delaying crucial public warnings. The storm, dubbed the 1943 Surprise Hurricane, was responsible for nineteen deaths. It also destroyed two important oil refineries in Texas.
Weather prediction, charts and climate studies are critical intelligence components when planning strategic military movements. Duckworth’s flight in 1943 showed that hurricane reconnaisance flights were feasible. In 1944, the 3rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron was activated, tracking weather in the North Atlantic between North America and Europe. The squadron was redesignated the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron in 1945, and the term “Hurricane Hunters” first used in 1946. The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron is still active; based at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi, they train and organize aerial weather reconnaissance activities and according to the Hurricane Hunters Association, they are “the only Department of Defense organization still flying into tropical storms and hurricanes.”
The Museum’s collection includes papers of legendary New Orleans meteorolgist Nash Roberts, Jr., who served in 1945 as navigator and meteorologist aboard Admiral Chester Nimitz’s aircraft carrier, from which he would become the first meteorologist to fly into the eye of a typhoon and chart its course.
Using a mule to haul supplies to the front in Sicily. NARA.
By May 1943, the United States Army had acquired hard-won experience and tasted success in North Africa as Axis forces composed of more than 250,000 German and Italian troops surrendered at Tunisia. Through intense debates in the previous months, it had become apparent to the Allied leadership that the next step taken by the Allies would not be a cross-channel attack into northern France, as preparations for such an expedition would be inadequate and premature. Instead, the next major initiative against the enemy would come in a Mediterranean crossing which would seek the first defeat of one of the three Axis powers – Fascist Italy.
Sicily was a natural route to mainland Italy and the European continent going back in history to the Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome. The Allies could count on air cover from Malta for a Sicilian invasion. In an elaborate espionage operation known as Mincemeat, designed to divert German defenses, British intelligence dressed a suicide victim as a Royal Marine, planted false papers on the corpse and deposited the package off the coast of Spain for the Germans to find and interpret. The ruse proved successful, and German resources were shifted to the islands of Sardinia and Corsica.
In a preview of issues that the Allies would later famously encounter in launching the D-Day invasion into France, weather played a key role in the timing of the amphibious assault into Sicily. A storm interfered with the ability of the Allies to land paratroopers behind enemy lines and nearly delayed the launch, but the weather conditions also convinced the Axis powers that an offensive operation against them would not occur, providing the Allies with an element of surprise. On July 10, 1943, the Allies launched Operation Husky before sunrise, a massive amphibious assault on the southern shores of the island. For the next three days it involved more than 3,000 ships landing over 150,000 ground troops, covered by more than 4,000 aircraft. They were opposed on the island by only two German divisions, as Nazi leadership continued to believe the main assault would come at Sardinia and Corsica.
Problems of military coordination and logistics, although diminishing, continued to plague the Allied forces. Competitive egos also emerged in the Allied leadership. Lt. General George S. Patton landed with the US Seventh Army at Gela, while the British, under General Bernard Montgomery, led the Eighth Army to the east. Montgomery’s forces were charged with advancing up the eastern shore directly toward Messina. Meanwhile, Patton’s forces were charged with protecting Montgomery’s flank and moving to the northwest toward Palermo. They would then be positioned to advance east across Sicily’s northern shore to Messina.
GIs of 16th Inf Regt walking through Troina, Sicily. NARA.
In the immediate aftermath of the Allied landings, the German General Albert Kesselring judged that the Italian fighting forces were so weak that the Germans were virtually on their own in the fight. Indeed, the Allies had believed that the Italian government was politically unstable, and they were not disappointed in that assessment. On July 24, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was deposed and arrested under a new Italian government headed by Pietro Badoglio, who immediately began to seek peace terms with the Allied governments and withdrew Italian troops the next day.
Adolf Hitler was not as easily swayed, and ordered the German troops to continue strong resistance. Nonetheless, the die was cast for a German withdrawal from Sicily. When the Allies closed in on the port of Messina on August 17, 1943, they discovered the Germans had withdrawn more than 100,000 troops across the straits, reinforcing the Wehrmacht to continue the fight in mainland Italy. The northern campaign up the peninsula to free Italy and ultimately Western Europe would prove an arduous task.
In 38 days the Allies had taken the first major step along that continental road with the liberation of Sicily. The effort cost approximately 24,850 American, British and Canadian casualties. Although there would be further twists and turns in the liberation of the Italian nation, through Sicily the Allies had successfully delivered a devastating blow against the first Fascist government in world history when they toppled Mussolini’s regime.
This article was written by Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Director of Research and History Keith Huxen.
The film Stage Door Canteen premiered seventy years ago on 24 June 1943. The film profiles the establishment opened in a Broadway theater in March 1942 for the entertainment of servicemen. The film wasn’t actually shot at the Stage Door Canteen, but was recreated in the studio, because the real venue was in full swing serving its purpose. The film features dozens of celebrities and performers who had actually served as the volunteer staff at the canteen. The film follows a canteen hostess as she breaks house rules when she romances a soldier she met while on duty at the canteen.
See my favorite scene from the film.
See previous posts on the Stage Door Canteen here.
