“And had the water reached them?”
“Oh, yes sir, the water was everywhere.”
It took Bauer two weeks, until April 30, to implement a workable plan. The backup steam engines had not been badly damaged, and there was sufficient coal to run them for a few months. After repairs and adjustments, they could operate the elevators and skips, which were the trays that carried the salt from the bottom of the mine to the surface. By modifying the skips and welding an enormous bucket to the bottom of the elevator platform, water could be lifted out of the mine. It wouldn’t stop the seepage, but it would keep the water level down while the pumps and electrical plant were repaired. Given the circumstances, it was an elegant solution. In the dead city of Heilbronn, there would be one beast alive and lumbering: the iron hands of the salt mine, hauling away water to protect the art.
By the time the plan was implemented, James Rorimer was gone. Seventh Army was nearing Munich, and he had no time to lose.
CHAPTER 41
Last Birthday
Berlin, Germany
April 20, 1945
On April 20, 1945, the Führer’s fifty-sixth and last birthday, the Nazi elite gathered briefly in the Reichschancellery for a hastily arranged birthday celebration and series of “goodbyes.” Most of the party hierarchy wished they were anywhere but Berlin. It may have been the Führer’s birthday, but it was far from a festive occasion. That day, Western Allied troops had taken Nuremberg, the earliest base of operation for the Nazi Party, and raised the American flag over the stadium where the Nazis had once hosted the spectacles of annual rallies. The home of legendary fifteenth-century German artist Albrecht Dürer had been severely damaged; the top floors of the building that had sheltered one of Hitler’s most cherished objects, the Veit Stoss altarpiece, which he had stolen from Poland at the start of the war, were demolished. Fortunately, the altarpiece was stored safely underground.
This salvation might have been a consolation to the world, but the men gathered in the Führerbunker couldn’t have cared less. Their world was getting smaller by the day, and their time was short. There was no greater reminder of their impending doom than this impromptu party. In years past they had feasted, and the highest-placed among them had feted their leader with gifts, often looted artwork, his favorite thing to receive. Now the Red Army was pounding Berlin, and the explosions of their artillery could be heard even deep underground. Those not stationed in Berlin were eager to leave the city; those staying with Hitler were desperate for reprieve. For days, the mood in the bunker had been erratic. Wild hope would collapse into despair. Rumors of success would degenerate into squalid stories of defection and surrender. Hitler was rarely seen. The main topic of conversation was suicide—should it be cyanide or a bullet? The main activity was drinking.
The sight of Adolf Hitler, late for his own celebration, did nothing to cheer his followers. Suddenly, he seemed an old man, ashen and gray. He dragged his left foot, and his left arm hung weakly at his side. His posture was so slumped that his head seemed to have sunk into his shoulders. He could still be aggressive with his subordinates, especially his generals, but instead of his former fire he now exhibited an icy rage. 1 He believed he had been betrayed. He saw weakness everywhere. But at this party he could not even summon contempt. He was so depressed his doctors had to medicate him before he would appear before his most loyal associates, the men and women who had followed him onstage for the final act. His eyes, once so charismatic that they drove a nation to madness, were empty.
After shaking Hitler’s hand and explaining that he needed to join his staff, Hermann Göring left the building, knowing he would never return. Albert Speer observed that “[I] felt I was experiencing a historic moment. The leadership of the Reich was parting company.” 2 The next day, April 21, Göring arrived in Berchtesgaden, the Nazi retreat in the center of the Alpine Redoubt. Waiting for him there was Walter Andreas Hofer, his personal curator. His art collection had left his estate at Veldenstein in early April and, after numerous delays in the faltering German rail system, arrived in Berchtesgaden on April 16. After a few days, the eight railcars containing the artwork were sent northwest to Unterstein. When Göring arrived, the only railcars remaining at Berchtesgaden were the two or three that contained his furniture, his records, and his library. Hofer was living in one of the cars.
The situation, Göring knew, was grim. The Führer was clearly ill; anyone with a shred of common sense knew the Führerbunker was soon to become his tomb. The war was lost; the personal bounty of all those years dispersed; the Nazi movement splintered. The Reichsmarschall, momentarily safe in the German Alps, believed himself the only man capable of pulling together the last of the Reich and successfully suing for peace. And, after all, he was Hitler’s designated successor.
On April 23, Göring sent a radiogram to Hitler. Aware that Berlin was surrounded and the situation hopeless, the Reichsmarschall was prepared to step in and lead the Nazi Party. If he did not hear back by 10:00 p.m. that evening, he would assume the Führer was incapacitated and take command. Hitler did not respond until April 25, 1945, but his reaction was furious and determined: He ordered the SS to arrest his second in command. The Third Reich was disintegrating.
Meanwhile, at Altaussee, the art restorer Karl Sieber ran his hands along the grain of his greatest work. Here’s where the panel split, he thought, running his fingers along the wood. And here the paint bubbled. Before the war, Sieber had been a modest but highly respected art restorer in Berlin, a man so quiet, patient, and in love with his work that opinions of him ranged from the last honest craftsman in Germany to a complete simpleton. He had joined the Nazi Party for business reasons on the advice of a Jewish friend, and as a consequence his practice had flourished. Artwork had been pouring into Berlin from the conquered territories, and even if it was stolen or acquired through shady means, it still needed to be cared for and restored. Maybe even more so, in fact, since the Nazi officials were less art lovers than greedy hoarders, and they often treated their possessions roughly. Sieber had worked on more world-class pieces in the last four years than most restorers see in a lifetime. But never had he imagined working on a piece of this magnitude, one of the wonders of Western civilization: the Ghent Altarpiece. And he never imagined working like this: a mile within a mountain, in a remote Austrian salt mine.
He circled the panel so that he could look into the face of Saint John. What humanity in those old eyes! What skill at invoking the most exacting details! Every hair was painted with a single brushstroke from a single bristle. He could almost feel the folds of the cloak, the vellum of the Bible, the sadness and awe in the old saint’s eyes. The only thing he couldn’t see anymore was the split in the wood panel that had occurred while the piece was in transit, the repair he had worked so many months to make utterly and completely invisible to even the most trained eye.
It was a shame Sieber had to leave it in this unsafe chamber. But the wooden panel was taller than he was, and far too heavy for him to carry. He needed help to move it to the chambers deeper in the mountain where he and a few others had been transporting the best pieces since yesterday. So he turned to The Astronomer, painted by Jan Vermeer in 1668, almost two hundred and fifty years after the Ghent Altarpiece, but still showing the same delicacy of brushwork and attention to the most precise detail.
But that’s where the similarities ended. The Ghent Altarpiece was an acknowledged, adored masterpiece from the moment of its creation, the centerpiece of the Dutch Renaissance. Vermeer was a provincial painter from Delft who died deeply in debt and completely unknown to the larger world. He had been rediscovered in the late 1800s, two hundred years after his death. Now he was considered a leader of the golden age of Dutch painting, the great master of light, the unsurpassed chronicler of domestic life. His Girl with a Pearl Earring was known as the “Dutch Mona Lisa,” 3 but this painting, The Astronomer, was every bit as powerful and unknowable. It showed a scholar in his chamber, an observation book open bef
ore him, studying intently the object of his obsession: a globe of the universe. What tinkerer, what scientist or art restorer, hadn’t experienced such a moment, when the rest of the world disappeared and only the facts at your fingertips stood before you? Who hadn’t fallen in love with discovery or felt that thirst for knowledge?
But then who could ever say what a man in such a moment was thinking? The astronomer’s touch was delicate, almost shy. A natural light from the open window brushed the globe and the astronomer’s outstetched hand. Was he simply measuring another in an endless series of distances, or had he found what he had been looking for? Here was a man wrapped completely in his work, a moment universal and idiosyncratic, momentous and inconsequential.
And it was untrue. There was no untouched astronomer, no detached craftsman. The lead art restorer at Altaussee knew that better than anyone. Bury a man a mile within a mountain, hundreds of miles from civilization, give him the work of a lifetime and all the resources needed to do it, and he was still subject to the whims of the world.
With one last look at the scholar—looking now, he thought, almost fearful of his discoveries—Karl Sieber picked up Hitler’s favorite painting. Then, looking once over his shoulder, he disappeared into the dark passageway. He was headed back, farther into the mountain, to the Schoerckmayerwerk, one of the few mine chambers he believed—he hoped—would survive even the most cataclysmic bomb blast.
CHAPTER 42
Plans
Central Germany, Southern Germany, and Altaussee, Austria
April 27–28, 1945
On April 27, 1945, a young ordnance captain walked into the office of the chief of staff in the forward section of U.S. First Army. With a smile, he placed a small metal rod and ball on the desk. The commanding officer stared at them for a moment, then picked up the rod and looked at it from one end to the other. The intricately wrought, jewel-encrusted piece looked like a scepter made for a king. In fact, that’s exactly what it was. The soldier had brought him the coronation scepter and coronation orb of the eighteenth-century Prussian king known as Frederick the Great.
“Where did you find it, soldier?”
“In a munitions dump, sir.”
“Where?”
“In a hole in the forests in the middle of nowhere, sir.”
“Is there anything else?”
“Sir, you are not going to believe what is down there.”
A little more than a day later, on the morning of April 29, 1945, George Stout received a call from First Army Monuments Man Walker Hancock. Stout had just finished sending an urgent request to SHAEF headquarters in France, begging for supplies: trucks, jeeps, packing materials, at least 250 men to guard repositories. He had received no guarantees.
“I’m outside Bernterode, a small town in the northern Thuringian forest,” Hancock told him, almost tripping over his words. “There’s a mine here, George, with 400,000 tons of explosives in it. 1 I can’t tell you what else is down there, not over the phone, but it’s important, George. Maybe even more important than Siegen.”
While Hancock was exploring the mine at Bernterode, Emmerich Pöchmüller, the director general of Altaussee, was sitting in his office at the salt mine. In his hand was an order he had just typed; at the bottom was his signature. Seeing his own name there, in his own hand, made him feel sick.
He didn’t want to send the order, but he could see no other option. After weeks of effort, he had been granted authority over the fate of the salt mine, but that authorization had not come from Eigruber. It had come from a minor museum official acting on thirdhand information purportedly from Martin Bormann’s assistant Helmut von Hummel in Berchtesgaden. It was hearsay at best, and probably an outright fabrication. If Pöchmüller’s order fell into Eigruber’s hands, the gauleiter would see it as insubordination, and it would mean his arrest—if not his immediate execution. But with the madman Eigruber in power, and no word from an ever more isolated Berlin, Altaussee was doomed. Something had to be done. As Pöchmüller walked toward the office of Otto Högler, the mine’s chief engineer, he couldn’t help but feel he was carrying his own death warrant.
“New orders,” Pöchmüller said, handing Högler a sheet of paper. “I’m off to Bad Ischl. Don’t wait for my return.” 2
28 April 1945
Mr.
Mining Engineer Högler
Saltmine Altaussee
Regarding: Depository
You are hereby being instructed to remove all 8 crates of marble recently stored within the mines in agreement with Bergungsbeauftragter Dr. Seiberl and to deposit these in a shed which to you appears suitable as a temporary storage depot.
You are further being instructed to prepare the agreed palsy as soon as possible. The point in time when the palsy is supposed to take place will only be presented to you by myself personally.
The General Director,
Emmerich Pöchmüller
The same day—April 28, 1945—Stars and Stripes reported that U.S. Seventh Army had reached Kempten, a town close to the castle at Neuschwanstein. It was the news James Rorimer had been waiting for since leaving Paris. He immediately phoned ahead for confirmation, only to be told by the major in charge that Stars and Stripes was incorrect. “But if there’s any truth to it at all,” Rorimer insisted, “our troops ought to be at Neuschwanstein pretty soon. That castle contains invaluable caches of looted works of art from France. I’ve been on the trail for months. I must get there at the earliest possible time. You must get there as soon as you can.” 3
“We’re doing what we can, sir.”
If there was a hint of desperation in his appeal, it was because in the week since leaving the mine at Heilbronn, Rorimer had received a crash course in the realities of Monuments work. On one hand, he had discovered the great Riemenschneider Altarpiece undamaged in a damp basement in Rothenburg, the most famous medieval walled city in Germany. He had even convinced the Military Government officer to move the altarpiece from the damp cellar where it had been stored. With great satisfaction, he had assured the press the damage to the town had been greatly exaggerated.
A few days later, he received misinformation of a more dangerous kind when, on a mission to an ERR repository, he discovered the bridge over the Kocher River had been blown up. The area was partially in German control, but that didn’t stop Rorimer from trying to find another way across. Unfortunately, his driver soon became hopelessly lost in the thick German forests. As night approached, the men realized they couldn’t even find their way back to the main road. Twice they drove through the same smoldering village, the embers the only light in a pitch-black night. Around dawn, they spotted two Allied soldiers walking alongside the road.
“Jesus,” the soldiers said, after directing the two men to their encampment. “Have you been driving all night? There are Germans all through these woods.”
In the late morning, after a brief nap, Rorimer and his driver forded a shallow point in the Kocher River in the company of an Allied truck. Later in the day, they finally reached their destination: a local castle. It was, as promised by Rose Valland, another Jeu de Paume way station full of priceless art.
But it wasn’t the near misses that frightened Rorimer, or even the successes that inspired him. It was the big prize that had gotten away. While still headquartered at Darmstadt, Rorimer had received word that Baron Kurt von Behr, the scourge of the Jeu de Paume, was in residence at his castle in Lichtenfels, an area that had just fallen under American control. Too busy to make the long trip to Lichtenfels himself, Rorimer dispatched a telegram to Supreme Headquarters requesting that someone be sent immediately to apprehend the Nazi who knew more than anyone else about ERR looting operations in France. Days later, he discovered the telegram was being held in Heidelberg, pending his instruction on whether it should be marked “Priority” or “Routine.” By the time American troops reached the castle at Lichtenfels, Colonel von Behr was gone. Aristocrats to the end, he and his wife had killed themselves in their library by
drinking glasses of poisoned champagne.
CHAPTER 43
The Noose
Berlin, Germany, and Southern Germany
April 30, 1945
On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker underneath the Reichschancellery in the city of Berlin. He had suffered a nervous breakdown during a military situation conference on April 22, admitting in a hysterical attack on his commanders that Germany was doomed. His Nazi Party was broken. His new Berlin was being blasted apart by bombs and artillery. His friends and generals had betrayed him, or so he in his paranoia believed. He was capable of terrific fits of temper, when he would become livid at those who had abandoned him, insist victory was achievable, and vow to fight on, but he had also become increasingly brooding and consumed with hatred and a will to destroy: to kill as many Jews as possible; to throw his armies, including old men and young boys, into the enemy lines as cannon fodder; to smash every brick and gut every element of infrastructure in Germany until the country that had betrayed him, that in its cowardice had proven the weaker race, not the master race, was sent back to the Stone Age. Their failure stripped everything from him until, in those final days, in his bunker deep beneath the Reichschancellery in Berlin, with the sound of Soviet artillery shells exploding overhead, one of the few things that remained in his twisted heart—perhaps the one thing that made him human and therefore truly terrifying—was his love of art.
During the preceding months he spent hours alone or with his loyal aides—Gauleiter August Eigruber had been a regular visitor—contemplating his scale model of Linz in the cellar of the New Chancellery: its great arcades and byways, its towering cathedral of art. Sometimes he would gesture energetically, pointing out a brilliant design element or an essential truth. Sometimes he would lean slowly forward in his chair, involuntarily clutching the glove in his left hand tighter and tighter, his eyes popping under the brim of his military cap as he silently stared, perhaps for the last time, at the symbol of everything that ever was or might have been.
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