Essays

Looting: the Truth

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by Michael Walsh

NOTHING BETTER illustrates the deviousness of media than their stories of art allegedly looted by the ‘Nazis’. The camera doesn’t lie; to television viewers and the media’s trusting readership photographic evidence of German wickedness appears undeniable.

The media’s poison-pen scribes should first have heeded the words of Mark Twain, a far better journalist than they could ever be:

A lie will travel the world while the truth is still pulling its boots on.

Corrupted mainstream media were unprepared for the onset of the Internet’s power to expose victors’ propaganda. Recent research across international archives opens up a Pandora’s Box of real history.

Ralph Keeling of the Institute of American Economics says:

“The sacking of Germany after her unconditional surrender will go down in history as one of the most monstrous acts of modern times. Its excess beggars description and its magnitude defies condemnation.”

Systematic pillaging and looting by the Allies, particularly the Soviet Union, is still a cause of heated disputes between Germany, Russia, and the United States. Most of the stolen artworks have never been returned to Germany.

Images of discovered German artworks shown in tabloids and on television are genuine. However, the captions and stories behind the photographs are since proven to be half-lies or simply untrue.

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Pictures of US General Dwight D. Eisenhower and American troops ‘recovering looted Nazi art’ are nothing of the kind. These are pictures of the self-styled democracies’ art experts and allied troops not retrieving — but stealing — Germany’s legitimately acquired artworks.

U.S General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, accompanied by General Omar N. Bradley and Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., inspects art treasures secured from Allied air attacks by their being hidden in a salt mine in Germany. These artworks were looted and shipped to the United States where many are still illegally stored.
U.S General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, accompanied by General Omar N. Bradley and Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., inspects art treasures secured from Allied air attacks by their being hidden in a salt mine in Germany. These artworks were looted and shipped to the United States where many are still illegally stored.

Thousands of pieces of artwork, artifacts, jewelry, and historical pieces were stored by the Germans in underground caverns. This was done primarily to save these treasures from the total destruction wreaked day and night by more than 1,000 Allied bombing raids.

During the allies war on the Reich the Berlin Bode Museum’s master artworks were evacuated to mines and into two bunkers to avoid their being damaged by the day and night 1,000 allied carpet bombing infernos.
During the Allies’ war on the Reich the Berlin Bode Museum’s master artworks were evacuated to mines and into two bunkers to avoid their being damaged by the incessant bombings.

Artworks that the media now claim to have been ‘stolen by the Nazis’ were legitimate German property. These were national treasures held by German museums and art galleries, and had been discovered or legally acquired by them. What readers and television viewers are in fact seeing is the wholesale looting, the plundering, of German artworks, treasures, artifacts and works of our European heritage.

The German artworks and cultural treasures secured against Allied bombing and then looted after Germany’s defeat included 200,000 works of art that were buried along three kilometres of salt mines, also containing archival material and some three million books. The artworks were not hidden, as hiding such from the invaders was impossible.

This engraving by the 15th century German artist Albrecht Dürer was among thousands of items stolen from the defeated Reich.
This engraving by the 15th century German artist Albrecht Dürer was among thousands of items stolen from the defeated Reich.

Berlin’s State Museum alone lost around 400 artworks after World War 2. The German state of Saxony-Anhalt maintains a register entitled Beutekunst (looted art). This inventory catalogues more than 1,000 missing paintings and books believed confiscated by the US or the Soviet Union.

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British troops and the Naval War Trophies Committee also looted German artworks. These included several pictures by German marine artist Claus Bergen, Wreath in the North Sea in Memory of the Battle of Jutland, The Commander U-boat, Admiral Hipper’s Battle Cruiser at Jutland and The German Pocket Battleship Admiral Von Scheer Bombarding the Spanish Coast. Carl Saltzmann’s German Fleet Manoeuvres on the High Seas and Ehrhard’s Before the Hurricane at Apia Samoa and During the Hurricane at Apia.

These artworks were ransacked from the Naval Academy situated at Flensburg-Mürwik. The works of art are documented by a 1965-1966 Ministry of Defence file available in Britain’s national archives. These stolen trophies (“prizes of war”) were sent to various British museums. Five of the looted German works of art remain in the National Maritime Museum in London (NMM).

The work Before the Hurricane at Apia was lent to the Royal Navy’s HMS Calliope in 1959. This painting was ‘lost’ and formally written off in 1979. The National Maritime Museum admitted in January 2007 that “the documentation at the NMM and the National Archives is not complete”. According to spoliation guidelines, the pictures should be regarded as having been “wrongly taken”.

A collection of paintings in the San Francisco de Young Art Museum was part of the loot plundered following the discovery of Germany’s secured art treasures. The de Young museum contains 95 paintings of the 202 looted artworks that are documented as having been shipped to the United States after the war’s end.

A December 1948 show at San Francisco’s De Young Museum of some of the art plundered from the ransacked salt mines discovered in Bavaria by the occupying United States Army in 1945
A December 1948 show at San Francisco’s De Young Museum of some of the art plundered from the ransacked salt mines discovered in Bavaria by the occupying United States Army in 1945.

Almost all these paintings had come from the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin that in 1956 was renamed the Bode Museum. Rembrandt, Hals, Botticelli and Vermeer were among the artists in this stolen collection. The 95 paintings were valued at $50,000,000 in 1948.

This looted Botticelli painting requires two armed guards at this San Francisco’s De Young Museum 1948 exhibition.
This looted Botticelli painting requires two armed guards at this San Francisco’s De Young Museum 1948 exhibition.
A U.S Military Policeman makes certain that this American looted painting by German artist Franz Hals was not going to be stolen.
A U.S Military Policeman makes certain that this American looted painting by German artist Franz Hals was not going to be stolen.
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This photo provided by the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art of Dallas, shows Monuments Man George Stout, third from left with an N on his shirt, moving the central panel of the plundered Ghent Altarpiece discovered in Altaussee, Austria in July of 1945.
Liberated from the clutches of the high interest Western banking elites Hitler’s Third Reich soon became wealthier than the United States of America. When discovered by the invaders the Reich’s gold and silver reserves were shipped to American banks. Here we see troops from General Patton's Third Army stand among gold reserves hidden in a salt mine.
Liberated from the clutches of the high interest Western banking elites, Hitler’s Third Reich soon became more prosperous than the United States of America. When discovered by the invaders, the Reich’s gold and silver reserves were shipped to American banks. Here we see troops from General Patton’s Third Army standing among gold reserves hidden in a salt mine.

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Source: Michael Walsh, author of Witness to History, vol. 4 and History Without the Spin

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PTFogg
PTFogg
24 November, 2016 9:47 pm

This is new… but not surprising. I did not know about the Allied theft of German art work and treasures after the war. I WAS aware of the theft of whole factories that were boxed up and shipped off to Russia, the theft of large German territories and the forced expulsion of the German populations from their ancestral lands, an ethnic cleansing that was fatal for many thousands of German civilians. I was aware of the betrayal of Germany by the Allies who forced millions of German prisoners of war into the slave and death camps of Stalin’s Judeo-Communist Soviet Union. I was aware of the Demonic intentions of the Jews to exterminate the entire German race, intentions that were eventually partially implemented by the Morgenthau Plan. “Kaufman’s fervent proposal… Read more »

PTFogg
PTFogg
25 November, 2016 8:43 am

Just FYI, and in case anyone is interested: I should have been more precise about the origin of the “Marx” quotation. The title of the poem from which the “Marx” quotation was taken was hard to find. I got the verse I quoted from the book “Marx and Satan” by Richard Wurmbrand. The title of the poem I gave you was probably wrong, but the author of “Marx and Satan” didn’t say what the title of the poem was.. From the version of the book I have: Marx and Satan – Richard Wurmbrand Sixth printing, 1990 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 85-72921 ISBN 0-89107-379-5 Richard Wurmbrand. Marx And Satan – 1 (Kindle Locations 11-13). And my version of the book is one… Read more »

PTFogg
PTFogg
25 November, 2016 3:15 pm

HA ! Correction. Found it !… sort of…”Human Pride” by Karl Marx.
(Actually Wurmbrand DOES give the reference, but at another point in his book, duh…)
The provenance of the various versions of the quote is very interesting and important though. Later…

Walt Hampton
Walt Hampton
28 November, 2016 8:07 pm

The “Greatest Generation” at work! Ha!
Almost all of the remaining few are not
even worth the cost of a bullet to kill them
with! Better yet, let them live long enough
to see their granddaughters mate with
Negroes and subhumans so they can die
with the knowledge of what they fought for.

Truthweed
Truthweed
23 July, 2019 7:51 pm

The only way to properly express the looting is to unroll a roll of toilet paper and write ‘Stuff stolen by the Germans’ at the lower end. Then write ‘Stuff stolen from the Germans’ at the top of the roll. Germany was the world’s most plundered country after WW1 and then after WW2. The Soviets alone stole 450,000 railway wagons full of German stuff. The German minister for the arts, Goering, was responsible for protecting cultural artifacts during warfare according to treaties made in the Hague after WW1. He protected the artworks properly. If they had not been stored underground they would not now exist. At his trial, Goering demonstrated that he had bought his private art collection through an art agent and had paid the usual proper prices for… Read more »

Truthweed
Truthweed
Reply to  Truthweed
6 February, 2021 12:36 am

See: http://www.revisionist.net/plunder-germany.html for a reality check about German plundering.