Design and model

In Autumn 1940, Hitler commissioned architect Hermann Giesler, a devout Nazi,^[18] to be in overall charge of the rebuilding of Linz,^[19][20] one of the five designated Führerstädte ("Führer cities"), along with Berlin, Hamburg, Nuremberg and Munich, which were to be redeveloped drastically.^[21] Linz was to become a major cultural center, an art capital of Europe, a hub of trade and commerce, and the most beautiful city on the Danube, surpassing Budapest.^[1][2] It would have a new City Hall, new Nazi Party headquarters, a "Gau forum" featuring a massive auditorium, and a new railway station, a stadium, a community hall, a technical university, an institute of metallurgy, a planetarium, a suspension bridge, and two new towers, one of them with a carillon and a mausoleum for Hitler's parents. The city would also have Hitler's own retirement residence, designed by Giesler. In addition to all this, the Vienna facilities of the Hermann-Göring-Werks steel plant were to be moved to Linz as well, over the objections of officials of the city, the architects, and Fritz Todt, who thought the industrial facilities were incompatible with a city of art, architecture and culture. Hitler, though, wanted to provide the city with an ongoing means of income after he was dead and could no longer subsidize it.^[22][23]

The cultural center at the heart of the redevelopment, the buildings for which were based on Hitler's ideas and rough designs, came to be referred to as the "European Culture Center". It included a monumental theatre, a concert hall, a library with over 250,000 volumes, an opera house as well as an operetta house, a cinema, a collection of armor and an Adolf Hitler Hotel, all surrounded by huge boulevards and a parade ground.^[14][24][25] Located south of the historic section of Linz, the main buildings, including the Führermuseum, were to be aligned along one main avenue, In den Lauben,^[22] which after the war was called "a typical National Socialist axis street."^[3] It would be anchored at the other end by the new railway station.^[22]

Linz's original central station building where the Führermuseum was intended to be located; the station would be moved 6.4 kilometres (4 mi) south.

The design of the many buildings of the cultural center were assigned to various architects Hitler favored.^[26] The museum itself was designed by Roderich Fick^[27] based closely on Hitler's sketches and specifications, modeled somewhat after Paul Ludwig Troost's Haus der Deutschen Kunst ("House of German Art") in Munich – itself strongly influenced by Hitler's participation in the design process^[28] – and would feature a colonnaded facade about 500 feet (150 meters) long. It would stand on the site of the Linz railroad station, which was to be moved four kilometers to the south.^[14][29] Should the volume of German art bought, confiscated and plundered for the museum be such that expansion was needed, an additional building could easily be integrated into the planned district.^[14]

By January 1945, Hitler became obsessed with seeing a model of the planned cultural complex; he had his adjutants and Martin Bormann, his personal secretary and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, call Giesler's office repeatedly, to ask when the Führer could view the model. Giesler's office worked around the clock to finish it. On the night of 7–8 February, Giesler brought the model to Berlin by truck and had it set up in the cellar of the New Chancellery building, where it was ready for viewing on 9 February by Hitler, Robert Ley, the Leader of the German Labor Front, and SS-Oberguppenfūhrer Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Chief of the Security Police, along with Hitler's personal photographer Walter Frentz and his valet, Heinz Linge. Frentz took some pictures of the event, one of which shows Hitler seated in deep contemplation of the model.^[30][19] Hitler was apparently entranced by what he saw:

Bent over the model, he viewed it from all angles, and in different kinds of lighting. He asked for a seat. He checked the proportions of the different buildings. He asked about the details of the bridges. He studied the model for a long time, apparently lost in thought. While Geisler stayed in Berlin, Hitler accompanied him twice daily to view the model, in the afternoon and again during the night. Others in his entourage were taken down to have his building plans explained to them as they pored over the model. Looking down on the model of a city which, he knew, would never be built, Hitler could fall in reverie, revisiting the fantasies of his youth, when he would dream with his friend Kubizek about rebuilding Linz.^[19]

Hitler visited the model frequently during his time living in the bunker under the Reich Chancellery, spending many hours sitting silently in front of it.^[30] The closer Germany came to military defeat, the more viewing the model became Hitler's only relief; being invited to view it with him was an indication of the Führer's esteem.^[1]

Near the end of the war, when American forces overran Hitler's private library, which was hidden deep in Austria, it contained "scores" of plans and renderings for the museum and the complex. They also found The Future Economic Status of the City of Linz a 78-page bound volume prepared for Hitler by the Economic and Research Section of the Oberdonau Department of the Interior, which outlined in detail how the revitalization of Linz would take place. The entire Linz project was treated as a state secret on Hitler's order.^[14]

Hitler's birthday

In Nazi Germany, Hitler's birthday was celebrated nationally on 20 April beginning in 1933, the year Hitler became Chancellor, through 1944.^[33] For his 50th birthday in 1939, the day was declared a National Holiday. As part of these celebrations Hitler would receive numerous presents, among which were paintings and other art objects. These were set aside for use in the planned Führermuseum in Linz.^[12]

Hitler's 56th birthday in 1945 was a private celebration held in the bunker under the Reich Chancellery in Berlin as the Soviet Red Army battled to take the city; even under those circumstances, Hitler would frequently spend hours in the basement of the Chancellery looking at the scale model of the proposed rebuilding of Linz, which centered on the cultural district around the Fŭhrermuseum.^[34] Nine days after his birthday, Hitler married Eva Braun, and they committed suicide together the following day.^[35]

Führer-Reserve

In the first weeks after the Anschluss in March 1938, which brought Austria into the German Reich, both the Gestapo and the Nazi Party confiscated numerous artworks for themselves. In response, on 18 June 1938, Hitler issued a decree placing all artwork that had been seized in Austria under the personal prerogative of the Führer:

As part of the seizure of assets hostile to the state– especially Jewish assets – in Austria, paintings and other artwork of great value, among other things, have been confiscated. The Führer requests that this artwork, for the most part from Jewish hands, be neither used as furnishings of administration offices or senior bureaucrats' official residences nor purchased by leading state and party leaders. The Führer plans to personally decide on the use of the property after its seizure. He is considering putting artwork first and foremost at the disposal of small Austrian towns for their collections.^[36]

The intent of the order was to guarantee that Hitler would have first choice of the plundered art for his planned Führermuseum and for other museums in the Reich.^[3][37] This later became a standard procedure for all purloined or confiscated art, and was known as the "Führer-Reserve."^[38]

Sonderauftrag Linz

On 21 June 1939, Hitler set up the Sonderauftrag Linz ("Special Commission Linz") in Dresden and – at the recommendation of art dealer and Nazi Party member Karl Haberstock^[39] – appointed Hans Posse, director of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister ("Dresden Painting Gallery"), as a special envoy. A few days later, on 26 June, Hitler signed a letter intended to give Posse the authority he would need to do this job. He wrote:

I commission Dr. Hans Posse, Director of Dresden Gallery, to build up the new art museum for Linz Donau. All Party and State services are ordered to assist Dr. Posse in fulfillment of his mission.^[40]

Hans Posse in 1938

Posse had a checkered relationship with the Nazis. His wife had joined the Nazi Party in 1932, but when Posse himself tried to join in 1933, his application was rejected a year later. He was later accused of having promoted so-called "Degenerate art", and of having Jewish ancestry. In 1938 he was asked to resign as director – a position he had held since 1910 from the age of 31 – but refused, taking a leave of absence instead. He was nevertheless fired, only to be restored to the position on Hitler's orders, possibly through the influence of Haberstock.^[41]

Although Hitler had favored German and Austrian paintings from the 19th century, Posse's focus was on early German, Dutch, French, and Italian paintings.^[42] Posse wrote in his diary that Hitler intended the museum to hold "only the best of all periods from the prehistoric beginnings of art...to the nineteenth century and recent times." Hitler told Posse that he was only to answer to him.^[4]

The Sonderauftrag not only collected art for the Führermuseum, but also for other museums in the German Reich, especially in the eastern territories. The artworks would have been distributed to these museums after the war. The Sonderauftrag was located in Dresden had approximately 20 specialists attached to it: "curators of paintings, prints, coins, and armor, a librarian, an architect, an administrator, photographers, and restorers."^[14] The staff included Robert Oertel and Gottfried Reimer of the Dresden Gallery, Friedrich Wolffhardt, an SS officer, as curator of books and autographs; Leopold Rupprecht of the Kunsthistorisches Museum as curator for armour, and Fritz Dworschak, also of that museum, as curator for coins.^[43]

Results

By December 1944, Posse and Voss had collectively spent 70 million Reichsmarks (equivalent to 282 million 2021 euros) on accumulating the collection intended for the Fuhrermuseum; although artworks bought in Vichy France were paid for with francs which were set by the Nazis at an artificially low exchange rate with the Reichsmark. In 1945, the count of art items in the collection was over 8,000.^[45]

Martin Bormann in 1939

Photograph albums

Birgit Schwarz published in 2004 19 photograph albums as documents of the intended gallery holdings. These "Führer albums", which were created between autumn 1940 and autumn 1944, were presented to Hitler every Christmas and on his birthday, 20 April.^[58] Originally thirty-one volumes existed, but only nineteen have been preserved in Germany, and 11 are considered to be lost.^[42] The albums are documents of the intended gallery holdings and are the most important historical and visual sources relating to the gallery of the Führermuseum.^[59][60] Notably, the collection included three Rembrandts, La Danse by Watteau, the Memling portrait by Corsini, the Rubens Ganymede, and Vermeer's The Artist in His Studio, a forced sale at a knock-down price.^[14]

Alfred Rosenberg

Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR)

In the "authoritarian anarchy"^[61] and "administrative chaos"^[62] that was typical of the way the Third Reich operated, the Sonderauftrag Linz was not the only Nazi agency collecting artworks. In France, as in many other countries in Europe, the office of Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (Special Purposes Reich Leader Rosenberg) was the primary agency.^[14] On 5 November 1940, a directive from Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring to Alfred Rosenberg, the head of the ERR, and to the Chief of Military Administration in Paris outlines the several categories of "ownerless" art confiscated from Jews for "safeguarding". One of the categories were "Those art objects for the further disposition of which the Führer has reserved for himself the right of decision," while other categories were those works desired by Göring himself, those destined for German museums other than the Führermuseum. Although the directive was intended to be effective immediately, Göring indicates that he had yet to clear it with Hitler, but intended to do so.^[63]

Hitler then issued on 18 November his own directive, a Führerbefehl similar to the ones he had issued for Poland and Austria, announcing his prerogative over all confiscated art in the occupied Western territories. Rosenberg thus became a formal procurement agent for the Führermuseum, except when Göring intervened. This apparently brought about some internecine squabbling, as Dr. Posse had been given the authority to act on Hitler's behalf, and the German commanders of occupied countries were required to keep him regularly informed about their confiscations of artwork. Probably because of Göring's interference, Posse formally requested that the Reich Chancellery reiterate his power to act for the Führer. The result was a "general high-level directive" confirming Hitler's primacy through Posse, and a direction to Posse to review the ERR's inventory in regard to the needs of the planned museum in Linz.^[14]

On 20 March 1941, Rosenberg reported that his unit had proceeded to follow the directive, having "collected" over 4000 items; those personally selected by Göring had already been shipped by train to the air-raid shelters of the Führer Building in Munich.^[64] Several years later, on 16 April 1943, Rosenberg sent Hitler photographs of some of the more valuable paintings confiscated from the Western Occupied Territories, to add to the 53 photographs he had sent earlier. Rosenberg asked for permission to see Hitler personally, to present a catalog of works seized, as well as 20 additional folders of photographs.^[65]

By one conservative estimate, about 21,903 objects were confiscated from France.^[66] Of these, about 700 went to Göring. 53 were earmarked for the Führermuseum in Linz.^[14] Rosenberg kept the rest under his own control until 1945.^[67] In 2008, the German Historic Museum of Berlin published a database^[68] with paintings collected for the Führermuseum and for other museums in the German Reich.

Wolff-Metternich, Jaujard and Valland

The German occupation of Paris began on 14 June 1940, and on 30 June Hitler ordered that artworks in the French national collection be "safeguarded", and in particular "ownerless" art and historical documents – meaning works which were the property of Jews and could therefore be confiscated from them – be "protected" as well. Three days later, the German ambassador in France, Otto Abetz, ordered the confiscation of the collections of the 15 most important art dealers in the city, most of whom were Jewish. These pieces were then brought to the German Embassy. Through the actions of Count Franz von Wolff-Metternich, the head of the Kunstschutz (Art Protection) – an agency which dated from World War I and which had a mission which was superficially similar to that of the Allied Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program (MFAA) – Nazi military authorities intervened and stopped Abetz from making any more confiscations. Most of the artwork in the Embassy was then transferred for storage to the Louvre, at the suggestion of Jacques Jaujard, the Director of French National Museums.^[69]

Wolff-Metternich continued in his efforts to protect the artworks, which what he saw as the proper role of his agency. In particular, he was able to fend off Joseph Goebbels' demand that almost a thousand pieces of "Germanic" art held in the collection of confiscated pieces be shipped immediately to Germany. Wolff-Metternich did not disagree that the artworks properly belonged in the Reich, but did not think that sending them at the time was the correct course of action, and held off Goebbels with bureaucratic maneuvers and a strict interpretation of Hitler's directive, which specified that artwork in France should not be moved until a peace treaty between France and German had been signed, which had not as yet occurred.^[69]

The collection of artwork in the Louvre was destined to survive the war, and was not subjected to predation from the various Nazi entities confiscating and collecting artwork for shipment back to Germany, including those doing so for Hitler's planned museum in Linz. Wolff-Metternich was eventually removed from his office, as he was not pliable enough to provide the veneer of legality that was wanted by the Nazi authorities. Jaujard was fired as well after his vehement protest over the German theft of the Ghent Altarpiece in 1942, but when the staffs of every French museum resigned in protest over his dismissal, the Nazis were forced to restore him to his office, where he was able to continue to safeguard the French national collection, and provide assistance to the Resistance.^[69]

Jaujard, however, could do very little to protect the private art collections of Paris and France from the predations of the ERR. These collections – those of the French Rothschilds; Paul Rosenberg, the art dealer; Georges and Daniel Wildenstein; the investment banker Pierre David-Weill; Germain Seligman, the art historian and dealer; Alphonse Kann; and the other great collectors of the time^[70] – were systematically subjected to confiscations under various bureaucratically outlined pretenses of "protection", and were then brought to the Jeu de Paume museum, where they were cataloged and divided up for Hitler's collection – Posse took 53 paintings,^[45] for Göring's, for the use of Alfred Rosenberg's "scholarly" institutions which were attempting to prove the inferiority of Jews, as well as for other purposes. Fortunately, Rose Valland – at the time an unpaid museum employee, later the museum's attaché and Assistante,^[71] – was a member of the French resistance, and had remained working at the museum on Jaujard's orders. Valland kept lists of all the works which came in, the secret storehouses where they were stockpiled when they left the museum, and the numbers of the train cars when the last of the paintings were shipped to Germany just before the Allied recapturing of Paris. Using Valland's information, the Resistance was able to delay the train sufficiently so that it never reached Germany.^[72]

Hermann Göring in 1942

Dealers and agents

A number of art dealers and private individuals profited greatly from Hitler's campaign to stock his planned museum. Primary among them was Karl Haberstock, who operated a wide network of German agents in Paris, the south of France, the Netherlands and Switzerland, but also at least 75 French collaborators. Haberstock declined to take a commission on the major purchases for the museum, but took his regular fee otherwise, amassing a fortune.^[14] Thanks to his relationships with Hans Posse and with Hitler, he sold over 100 paintings designated for the Linz collection.^[80] When Posse went to France under Hitler's orders, he took the unscrupulous Haberstock with him, and the dealer, working through 82 local agents, purchased 62 pieces for the Linz collection, including works by Rembrandt, Brueghel, Watteau and Rubens.^[81]

Karl Haberstock in 1914

Maria Almas Dietrich was another art dealer who did well by the Nazi obsession with obtaining art. An acquaintance of Hitler through his official photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, Dietrich sold 80 paintings to the Linz museum collection, and a further 270 for Hitler's personal collection, as well as over 300 for other German museums and Nazi Party functionaries. Prolific rather than knowledgeable, Dietrich still managed to make a considerable amount of money from the Linz program.^[14] She also managed to avoid being sent to a concentration camp, despite having a Jewish father, bearing a child with her Jewish lover, and marrying a Jew from Turkey, although she renounced Judaism after divorcing him. Hitler, despite his rabid anti-Semitism, was frequently, but not consistently, an unconventional Nazi when it came to Jews involved in the arts.^[82] It may also have helped that Hitler's mistress Eva Braun was a friend of Dietrich's daughter.^[83]

Unlike Dietrich, SA-Gruppenführer Prince Philipp of Hessen was a connoisseur of the arts and architecture and acted as Posse's principal agent in Italy, where he lived with his wife, a daughter of King Victor Emmanuel. A grandson of the German Emperor Frederick III, and a great-grandson of Queen Victoria, Philipp provided "a veneer of aristocratic elegance which facilitated important purchases from the Italian nobility."^[14] Philipp assisted Posse in purchasing 90 paintings from Italy, and bought several more for the Linz collection on his own account.^[84]

Another dealer used by Hans Posse was Hildebrand Gurlitt, through whom he made expensive purchases of tapestries, paintings and drawings.^[81]

Other Nazi agents in the Linz program included Kajetan Mühlmann, a high SS official whose territories were Poland and the Netherlands; Baron Kurt von Behr, the head of the ERR in France; and Hitler's photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, an early art adviser who fell from Hitler's favor after 1941, due to Martin Bormann's dislike of him, but who had acted as an intermediary between some German art dealers and the Linz program, and possibly did the same in the Netherlands as well.^[14]

Confiscated or bought?

There is some debate about whether art for the Führermuseum was primarily stolen or purchased. Hanns Christian Löhr argues in Das Braune Haus der Kunst: Hitler und der "Sonderauftrag Linz" ("The Brown House of Art and the 'Sonderauftrag Linz'") that only a small portion of the collection – possibly 12 percent – came from seizures or expropriation. Moreover, another 2.5% was derived from forced sales.^[85] However, Jonathan Petropoulos, a historian at Loyola College in Baltimore and an expert in wartime looting, argues that most of the purchases were not "arm's length" in nature.^[86] Gerard Aalders, a Dutch historian, said those sales amounted to "technical looting," since the Netherlands and other occupied countries were forced to accept German Reichsmarks that ultimately proved worthless. Aalders argues that "If Hitler's or Goering's art agent stood on your doorstep and offered $10,000 for the painting instead of the $100,000 it was really worth, it was pretty hard to refuse." He adds that Nazis who encountered reluctant sellers threatened to confiscate the art or arrest the owner.^[86] Birgit Schwarz, an expert on the Führermuseum, in her review of Löhr's book, pointed out that the author focused on the purchases which were held in the Führerbau in Munich and ignored the deposits of looted art in Upper Austria in Thürntal, Kremsmünster and Hohenfurt/Vyssi Brod.^[87]

On the subject of purchases versus confiscations, Dr. Cris Whetton, the author of Hitler's Fortune^[88] commented:

I had expected to find that [Hitler] was directly responsible for looting and stealing of paintings that he wanted for himself, and I couldn't find any evidence of it, I found evidence that he paid for them; sometimes at knock-down prices, but not direct theft in any way. I was quite surprised by this, and I have to say in all honesty that's what I found.^[89]

The Dutch Advisory Committee on the Assessment of Restitution Applications for Items of Cultural Value and the Second World War assesses sales by Dutch Jews to the Sonderauftrag Linz. At least two restitution claims were rejected because the Committee argued that there were not enough indications showing coercion as the cause of the sale. For example, in 2009 the Restitution Committee rejected the application for the restitution of 12 works sold by the Jewish art dealer Kurt Walter Bachstitz to the Sonderauftrag Linz between 1940 and 1941. The Committee argued that Bachstitz had been "undisturbed" in the first years of the occupation and said it had not found signs of coercion.^[90] In 2012 the Commission rejected a claim of the heirs of Benjamin and Nathan Katz, former Jewish art dealers in the Netherlands. The claim related inter alia to 64 works that the art dealership Katz sold to the Sonderauftrag Linz. The Commission came to the conclusion that there were not enough indications demonstrating that the sales were made under duress.^[91]

Works which Hans Posse purchased in Vienna for the Linz collection included Vermeer's The Artist in his Studio,^{[notes 1]} Titian's The Toilet of Venus, Antonio Canova's Polyhymnia, and several works by Rembrandt. Among the many paintings Karl Haberstock sold to the collection were two Rembrandts, one of which, Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels is now thought to be from the Rembrandt workshop and not a work of the master. Oddly, Hitler purchased these for an inflated price, despite the fact that seller was a partly Jewish woman and the paintings could have been confiscated. Posse also purchased over 200 pieces which Jewish owners had managed to get into Switzerland, where they were safe from expropriation. On the other hand, Posse did not shy away from confiscation either, particular in the former Czechoslovakia and Poland, where all property was subject to it, but also in the Netherlands.^[92]

Hitler on 20 April 1945 in his last filmed public appearance, in the garden of the Reich Chancellery, one month before he and his newly married wife, Eva Braun, died by suicide

Size of the collection and Hitler's will

It is not possible to determine with any accuracy the size of the collection which had been amassed for Hitler's planned museum in Linz, but Frederick Spotts suggests that something around 7,000 pieces had been confiscated, bought or purloined specifically for the Führermuseum, and that others from the many other art repositories scattered around Germany would most probably have been added had Hitler won the war and he and his art experts had the opportunity to sort through the artworks and assign them to various museums. According to Spotts the figure of 7,000 accords well with the data released by the Art Looting Investigation Unit.^[93] Other experts quote higher figures of up to 8,500 for the ultimate size of the collection.^[94]

Despite its size, and the unprecedented access Hitler' agents had to artworks throughout Occupied Europe, the Linz collection had noticeable flaws. According to Spotts, its "gaps" included English art, Spanish art and art of the Northern Renaissance; major artists were missing from the Italian part of the collection as well.^[17]

Whatever its size and quality, near the end of the war Hitler wanted it understood that he meant the collection to be for the public – even though there were hundreds of artworks that were specifically marked for use in the Berghof, his mountain retreat, and for a castle in Posen which Hitler intended as another residence.^[95] Still, in his "Private Testament" – dictated in the underground Fuhrerbunker in the garden of the ruined Reich Chancellery building in Berlin, shortly before he committed suicide – he specified that the collection should go to the museum when it was built, writing that "The paintings in my private collection bought by me during the course of the years were never assembled for private purposes, but solely for the establishment of a picture gallery in my home town of Linz on the Danube."^{[96][97][98][99]}

Repositories

The artworks collected for the Führermuseum were originally stored in a number of places. The purchases were mostly kept in the air raid shelters of the Führerbau in Munich – one of a number of large buildings Hitler had built in the birthplace of the Nazi Party – where they were under the control of the Nazi Party Chancellery; Hitler would often come to visit them and indulge in long discussions on art as one of the first tasks when coming to Munich, even during the war.^[11] Confiscated artworks were stored in deposits in the area of Upper Austria, located in the middle of forests or in the mountains. The ERR alone requisitioned six estates for storage, including Neuschwanstein Castle in the Bavarian Alps, in which items from France were stored; the Benedictine monastery on the island of Frauenchiemsee in the Chiemsee lake, halfway between Munich and Salzburg; an estate in the Salzkammergut hills, which had been a summer residence for the Austrian royal family; and the Grand Duke of Luxembourg's hunting lodge.^[14][42]

Rose Valland eventually shared the trove of information she had gathered at the Jeu de Paume museum, while the Nazis were using it as a way-station for confiscated art, with 1st Lt. James Rorimer, one of the "Monuments Men" of the MFAA, who would be attached to the U.S. Seventh Army. It would overrun the places in southern Germany – Heilbronn, Baxheim, Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein Castle – which Valland was certain were the locations of the repositories of much of the ERR-looted art which had been shipped back to Germany.^[100] Captain Walker Hancock, the Monuments officer for the U.S. First Army, learned the locations of 109 art repositories in Germany east of the Rhine from the former assistant of Count Wolff-Metternich of the Kunstschutz, thereby doubling the number of repositories known at that time.^[101] Additional information came to Monuments Men Captain Robert Posey and Private Lincoln Kirstein, who were attached to the U.S. Third Army, from Hermann Bunjes, a corrupted art scholar and former SS Captain who had been deeply involved in the ERR's Jeu de Paume operation on behalf of Hermann Göring. From Bunjes came the information that Göring had moved his collection out of Carinhall, and, most importantly, the revelation of the existence of a massive repository in the Altaussee salt mines, which included much of Hitler's collection intended for the Fuhrermuseum in Linz.^[102]

A tunnel in the Altaussee salt mine

Altaussee salt mines

Despite the fact that the original storage locations, which had no military purpose and were culturally important in any case, would have been extremely unlikely to have been the subject of an Allied air attack, in 1943 Hitler ordered that these collections be moved. Beginning in February 1944, the artworks were relocated to the 14th-century Steinberg salt mines above the village of Altaussee, code-named "Dora",^[14][29][46] in which the holdings of various Viennese museums had earlier been transferred.^[103] The transfer of Hitler's Linz collection from the repositories to the salt mine took 13 months to complete, and utilized both tanks and oxen when the trucks could not navigate the steep, narrow and winding roads because of the winter weather. The final convoy of purloined art arrived at the mine in April 1945, just weeks before V-E Day.^[14]

The labyrinthine salt mine has a single entrance, and a small gasoline-powered narrow-gauge engine pulling a flat car was utilized to navigate to the various caverns created by centuries of salt mining. Into these spaces, workmen built storage rooms which boasted wooden floors, racks specifically designed to hold the paintings and other artworks, up-to-date lighting, and dehumidification equipment.^[14] Despite the fact that the salt was mined using pipes and sluices through which flowed gravity-fed water from the mountain, which carried dissolved salt 17 miles away to Bad Ischl, where the water was evaporated, leaving behind the salt,^[103] the mine was not naturally humid, as the salt in the mine's walls absorbed excess moisture, keeping the chambers at a constant 65% humidity, while the temperature only varied from a low of 4 degrees Celsius (40 degrees Fahrenheit) in the winter to 8 degrees Celsius (47 degrees in the summer). Mining operations continued as the artwork was loaded into the mines, with the miners occasionally dragooned into helping to unload.^[103]

According to James S. Plaut, who from November 1944 to April 1946 was Director of the Art Looting Investigation Unit of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the salt mines held:

6755 old master paintings, of which 5350 were destined for Linz, 230 drawings, 1039 prints, 95 tapestries, 68 sculptures, 43 cases of objects d'art, and innumerable pieces of furniture; in addition, 119 cases of books from Hitler's library in Berlin, and 237 cases of books for the Linz library.^{[14][notes 2]}

Michelangelo's Madonna of Bruges being removed from the mine

The noted Ghent Altarpiece – the stealing of which had caused Jacques Jaujard to protest vehemently and temporarily lose his job – arrived in the salt mine from Neuschwanstein in the autumn of 1944, and Michelangelo's Bruges Madonna in October of that year.^[103] Detailed records were kept at Dresden and moved to Schloss Weißenstein at the end of the war, where they were confiscated by the Russians, but these were primarily of the paintings stored in Munich in the Fuhrerbau.^[42]

Also in the Altausee repository was The Plague in Florence by Hans Makart, a favorite of Hitler's It had been given to him by Mussolini after Hitler had asked for it numerous times.^[11]

In April 1945, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower gave up Berlin as a "prestige objective" that would not be worth the troops killed in order to take it – the death toll was estimated at 100,000 – and ordered the Third and Seventh Armies to turn south, towards what the Allies feared might be an "Alpine Redoubt" from which Hitler or fanatical Nazis could operate a harassing guerilla campaign.^[104] The area was known to have hidden caches of arms and supplies, and intelligence reports had told of SS units moving from Berlin into that area. This new strategy meant that Neuschwanstein and Altausee would be overrun, and the "Monuments Men" would be able to verify and recover the important art repositories that their information said were located in those places.^[103]

Attempted destruction of the Altaussee repository

As the Allied troops approached the salt mines, August Eigruber, the Gauleiter of Upper Austria, gave orders to blow it up and destroy the artwork using the eight crates of 500-kilogram bombs he had stored in the mine on 10 and 13 April 1945.^[103] Hitler, through Martin Bormann, countermanded this order, and Albert Speer, the Minister of Armaments and War Production, had "clarified" Hitler's scorched earth "Nero Decree", but Eigruber felt he knew what Hitler's actual intent was. He ignored the pleas from the managers of the mine that it be saved as a vital resource – in Heilbronn another salt mine which was used to store art had been ordered to be blown up, but the miners refused to do so, as the mine was vital to their lives and livelihoods.^[105] After the Führer's suicide, Eigruber ignored the conflicting and confusing orders coming from Berlin and again ordered the destruction of the mine and all the artwork in it.^[106] The managers of the mine attempted to remove the crates of bombs, but were headed off by Eigruber's adjutant, who placed armed guards loyal to the Gauleiter at the entrance.^[107] The bombs were then wired for detonation by a demolition team.^[108]

Eigruber fled with an elite SS bodyguard, fully expecting his order of destruction to be carried out. Nevertheless, this did not happen. Instead, between 1 and 7 May 1945, before the arrival of U.S. Army troops on 8 May, the eight 500-kilogram bombs were removed from the mine, and the tunnels near the mine entrance were blown up, blocking the mine and protecting it from intrusion without doing damage to the irreplaceable and priceless art collection inside.^[14][109]

Who, exactly, was responsible for saving the artwork took many years to determine, and was finally unravelled in the 1980s by Austrian historian Ernst Kubin. The plan was devised by Dr. Emmerich Pöchmüller, the general director of the mine, Eberhard Mayerhoffer, the technical director, and Otto Högler, the mine's foreman. It was sanctioned by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, an SS officer of high rank in the Gestapo who had grown up in the area, and was later convicted of mass-murder and hanged. The plan was carried out by the miners,^[110] with the tacit approval of Eigruber's guards, several of whom had been persuaded by Karl Sieber, an art restorer who had worked on paintings stored in the mine, that destroying the artwork and the mine was not a good idea. The entire operation took three weeks to implement. On 5 May the signal was given, and six tons of explosives with 386 detonators and 502 timing switches were activated, causing 66 blasts which closed off 137 tunnels.^[111] The blockages took about a month to clear away totally, although a hole big enough for a man to sidle through was completed by the miners overnight after the Americans arrived.^[112]

Due to geo-political considerations, U.S. forces were ordered to pull back from the territory which included Altaussee, as it had been determined that it would be part of the Russian zone of occupation. Because of this, the paintings and artworks in the mine were removed and transferred elsewhere in about two weeks, rather than the year which had originally been planned.^[113]

Most of the approximately 12,000 pieces of art in the mine were recovered.^[98] The Altaussee trove included both works meant specifically for the Führermuseum and other looted artwork as well. Other caches of art not intended for Linz were recovered in places throughout the Reich; there were over 1000 repositories in southern Germany alone,.^[114] although some of the artworks in them came from the collections of German museums – these were eventually returned. Much of Göring's collection from his estate at Carinhall was discovered in a cave at Berchtesgaden, where he had a summer home near Hitler's Berghof retreat,^[14] part of it was also left in his private train, which was found in Unterstein, and had been looted by the local residents.^[115]

Looting of the Munich repository

Part of the collection designated for the Linz museum was stored in the air raid shelters of the Führer Building in Munich, part of the Nazi complex there. The building was broken into by a mob before American troops arrived in the city, and most of the 723 paintings still there were looted, while others were taken by American soldiers. Only 148 paintings were eventually recovered.^[116]

Recent developments

In 1998, the Federal Republic of Germany and 43 other countries agreed to the "Washington Principles", which required them to closely inspect their art inventories to establish the provenance of works which had changed ownership between 1933 and 1945. In particular, German, France, Austria and the Netherlands and other countries publicly disclosed what artworks from the Sonderauftrag Linz collection remained in their inventories. The work began in Germany in 2000, and artworks which are "shown by renewed research to involve a persecution-related deprivation of property during the National Socialist period are to be returned."^[42] In his book Das Braune Haus der Kunst: Hitler und der "Sonderauftrag Linz" ("The Brown House of Art and the 'Sonderauftrag Linz'"), published in Germany in 2005, Hans Christian Löhr argued that 191 artworks were missing at that time, and that they may be hanging in museums or private collections.^[47] This is discussed in the film documentary The Rape of Europa and in Noah Charney's book The Ghent Altarpiece, Stealing the Mystic Lamb.

As of 2010, a photo album that an American soldier took from the Berghof, Hitler's vacation home, which catalogued artwork Hitler desired for the museum, was to be returned to Germany. Of the photo albums created for Hitler, 39 of them were discovered by American armed forces at Neuschwanstein, where they had been deposited for safekeeping in April 1945. These were used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials, and are now at the United States National Archives, with two others donated by Robert Edsel in 2007 and c.2013. Edsel is the author of the book The Monuments Men about the activities of the Allied Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program (MFAA), on which the film of the same name was loosely based, and also the founder of the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art. He got the two albums from the heirs of an American soldier. Nineteen other albums recovered from Berchtesgaden were in Germany on permanent loan from the German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) to the German Historical Museum as of 2010, and 11 albums are considered to be lost.^{[42][122][123]}