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Nazi Art Theft
- The History of Germany’s Confiscation and Destruction of European Artworks During World War II
- Narrated by: Daniel Houle
- Length: 1 hr and 36 mins
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Publisher's summary
Looting and the acquisition of plunder have long been crucial features of war. Removing an enemy’s portable wealth is a way of ensuring they lack the resources to create a new army while making it possible for members of the victorious army to be suitably rewarded. In the past, that plunder tended to be in the form of coinage, precious stones, gold, and silver. The removal of artwork for its own sake (rather than for the intrinsic value of the materials from which they were made) was relatively rare.
This began to change in the early 19th century when Napoleon began acquiring artwork from conquered territories. Following the French Revolution, the practice of displaying artwork in public became a notable feature, and large museums, such as the Louvre in Paris, put vast numbers of paintings and sculptures on display in an effort to educate and enlighten the general public. Even after Napoleon established himself as the virtual dictator of France, he retained the revolutionary notion of the public display of art; and when French armies began campaigns of conquest that saw them take control of many European countries, Napoleon ordered his forces to seize notable artworks for display in France.
Wars would continue to rage well after Napoleon was deposed, but World War II would dwarf everything that came before it. The Nazi regime that came to power in Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler in 1933 made it clear from the beginning that they intended to refight World War I, and this time they fully intended to win. At a time when most other countries were focused on the maintenance of peace and the reduction of armed forces, Germany underwent a period of rearmament that saw its military, the Wehrmacht, become the most modern and powerful fighting force in the world.
In the long history of Europe, no country established such complete domination of the continent as the Nazis had by the summer of 1941. Before the war, Germany used the threat of the army rather than direct conflict to achieve territorial gains in Austria and Czechoslovakia. In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, triggering the war, and by June 1940, German forces had occupied Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, and large parts of France. By the spring of 1941, Greece, Serbia, and Yugoslavia were also occupied by Nazi forces. Italy, Hungary, Romania, Spain, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Finland, and Croatia were all either in alliance with Germany or subject to German control. Furthermore, by the winter of 1941, German forces were close to Leningrad and Moscow.
With that, Germany directly controlled virtually all of Europe, from Norway in the north to Greece in the south, from the Atlantic coast of France in the west to the outskirts of Moscow in the east. Even Napoleon's campaigns had not conquered such vast tracts of territory so quickly or completely, and only Britain and Russia stood against Germany. Britain was in no position to mount an invasion of the continent, and most people assumed the defeat of Russia was simply a matter of time as Nazi forces rolled ever further east.
At the end of 1941, it seemed to many people, especially in Germany, that the war was virtually over, and some began to consider what a postwar Europe would look like after a Nazi victory. A few thought about culture and how the new Berlin Hitler was planning should also become a new world center for art. With nothing to stop them, the Nazis became the most rapacious looters of art the world had ever seen, to the extent that it has been estimated that the Nazis may have acquired up to 20 percent of all art in Western Europe. Some works were returned after the war, many disappeared, and still others have become the subject of intense speculation.
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Story
At midnight, December 31, 1925, citizens of the newly proclaimed Turkish Republic celebrated the New Year. For the first time ever, they had agreed to use a nationally unified calendar and clock. Yet in Istanbul - an ancient crossroads and Turkey's largest city - people were looking toward an uncertain future. Never purely Turkish, Istanbul was home to generations of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, as well as Muslims.
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INTERESTING SUBJECT - CONFUSED WRITING
- By The Louligan on 01-18-15
By: Charles King
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Saving Italy
- By: Robert Edsel
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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When Hitler’s armies occupied Italy in 1943, they also seized control of mankind’s greatest cultural treasures. As they had done throughout Europe, the Nazis could now plunder the masterpieces of the Renaissance, the treasures of the Vatican, and the antiquities of the Roman Empire. On the eve of the Allied invasion, General Dwight Eisenhower empowered a new kind of soldier to protect these historic riches. In May 1944 two unlikely American heroes—artist Deane Keller and scholar Fred Hartt—embarked from Naples on the treasure hunt of a lifetime, tracking billions of dollars of missing art, including works by Michelangelo, Donatello, Titian, Caravaggio, and Botticelli.
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More Personalities than Art Chasing
- By Craig on 01-17-15
By: Robert Edsel
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The Book Thieves
- The Nazi Looting of Europe's Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance
- By: Anders Rydell, Henning Koch - Translator
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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While the Nazi party was being condemned by much of the world for burning books, they were already hard at work perpetrating an even greater literary crime. Through extensive new research that included records saved by the Monuments Men themselves, Anders Rydell tells the untold story of Nazi book theft, as he himself joins the effort to return the stolen books. When the Nazi soldiers ransacked Europe's libraries and bookshops, large and small, the books they stole were not burned. Instead, the Nazis began to compile a library of their own.
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An interesting topic but an incredibly dull story.
- By Paul on 02-12-17
By: Anders Rydell, and others
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Picasso's War
- How Modern Art Came to America
- By: Hugh Eakin
- Narrated by: Mack Sanderson
- Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In January 1939, Pablo Picasso was renowned in Europe but disdained by many in the United States. One year later, Americans across the country were clamoring to see his art. How did the controversial leader of the Paris avant-garde break through to the heart of American culture? The answer begins a generation earlier, when a renegade Irish American lawyer named John Quinn set out to build the greatest collection of Picassos in existence. His dream of a museum to house them died with him, until it was rediscovered by Alfred H. Barr, Jr.
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Better Books on Picasso Available
- By john burke on 08-17-22
By: Hugh Eakin
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Paris, City of Dreams
- Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann, and the Creation of Paris
- By: Mary McAuliffe
- Narrated by: Tim H. Dixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed historian Mary McAuliffe vividly recaptures the Paris of Napoleon III, Claude Monet, and Victor Hugo as Georges Haussmann tore down and rebuilt Paris into the beautiful City of Light we know today. Paris, City of Dreams traces the transformation of the City of Light during Napoleon III’s Second Empire into the beloved city of today.
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Superb
- By Cheri Stocking on 02-17-23
By: Mary McAuliffe
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Nazi Billionaires
- The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties
- By: David de Jong
- Narrated by: Michael David Axtell
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A groundbreaking investigation of how the Nazis helped German tycoons make billions off the horrors of the Third Reich and World War II—and how America allowed them to get away with it.
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Good but flawed
- By I. M. Rightwriter on 07-11-23
By: David de Jong
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Great State
- China and the World
- By: Timothy Brook
- Narrated by: Timothy Brook
- Length: 18 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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The world-renowned scholar and author of Vermeer’s Hat does for China what Mary Beard did for Rome in SPQR: Timothy Brook analyzes the last eight centuries of China’s relationship with the world in this magnificent history that brings together accounts from civil servants, horse traders, spiritual leaders, explorers, pirates, emperors, migrant workers, invaders, visionaries, and traitors - creating a multifaceted portrait of this highly misunderstood nation.
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No Cohesiveness
- By Mark on 05-21-20
By: Timothy Brook
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Lisbon
- War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939–1945
- By: Neill Lochery
- Narrated by: Robin Sachs
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout the Second World War, Lisbon was at the very center of the world’s attention and was the only European city in which both the Allies and the Axis powers openly operated. Portugal was frantically trying to hold on to its self-proclaimed wartime neutrality but in reality was increasingly caught in the middle of the economic, and naval, wars between the Allies and the Nazis. The story is not, however, a conventional tale of World War II in that barely a shot was fired or a bomb dropped. Instead, it is a gripping tale of intrigue, betrayal, opportunism, and double-dealing....
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Expostiion of Little Known Story
- By Lynn on 06-16-12
By: Neill Lochery
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The Library
- A Fragile History
- By: Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
- Length: 15 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes, or filled with bean bags and children’s drawings - the history of the library is rich, varied, and stuffed full of incident.
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Stays on point
- By Alex on 04-29-23
By: Andrew Pettegree, and others
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Paris Reborn
- Napoléon III, Baron Haussmann, and the Quest to Build a Modern City
- By: Stephane Kirkland
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Traditionally known as a dirty, congested, and dangerous city, 19th Century Paris was transformed in an extraordinary period from 1848 to 1870, when the government launched a huge campaign to build streets, squares, parks, churches, and public buildings. The Louvre Palace was expanded, Notre-Dame Cathedral was restored and the French masterpiece of the Second Empire, the Opra Garnier, was built.
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Why Paris looks the way it does today
- By Neil Chisholm on 11-28-13
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Venice
- A New History
- By: Professor Thomas F. Madden
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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An extraordinary chronicle of Venice, its people, and its grandeur Thomas Madden’s majestic, sprawling history of Venice is the first full portrait of the city in English in almost thirty years. Using long-buried archival material and a wealth of newly translated documents, Madden weaves a spellbinding story of a place and its people, tracing an arc from the city’s humble origins as a lagoon refuge to its apex as a vast maritime empire and Renaissance epicenter to its rebirth as a modern tourist hub.
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Omits slave trade
- By Rocky Stonebreaker on 08-21-16
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The Secret World
- A History of Intelligence
- By: Christopher Andrew
- Narrated by: Clive Chafer
- Length: 37 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The history of espionage is far older than any of today's intelligence agencies, yet the long history of intelligence operations has been largely forgotten. In this audiobook, distinguished historian Christopher Andrew recovers much of the lost intelligence history of the past three millennia - and shows its relevance today.
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Very interesting history but biased
- By Thor Olson on 10-09-18
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Marshal Josip Broz Tito: The Life and Legacy of Yugoslavia's First President
- By: Charles River Editors
- Narrated by: Colin Fluxman
- Length: 1 hr and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The World War II era produced many leaders of titanic determination, men whose strengths and weaknesses left an extraordinary imprint on historical affairs. Josip Broz Tito, better known to history as Marshal Tito, was undoubtedly one of these figures. Originally a machinist, Tito leveraged his success in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) and a number of extraordinary strokes of luck into dictatorial rule over Yugoslavia for a span of 35 years. World War II proved the watershed that enabled him to secure control of the country.
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Very short but says a lot
- By NebSoilDoc on 03-28-18