Robert M. Edsel has been interested in this story for years. During World War II, the Nazis stole – and squirreled away – literally millions of pieces of ancient European art. They ransacked museums, private homes, and just about any place that would offer up physical bits of European culture. Hitler, it turns out, had a grand scheme to open up a gigantic museum in Berlin once the Nazis had won the war. The museum was never built, and many of the artistic works (including paintings, sculptures, alterpieces, pottery, and just about everything else) were rescued by a small group of enterprising art scholars who were specially hired by the Government to go into German territory just to save the very art in question. The men in that group were nicknamed The Monuments Men.
Robert M. Edsel wrote a book all about the Monuments Men (called, fittingly enough, The Monuments Men), which has now been adapted into a feature film by George Clooney, due for release on February 7th. CraveOnline‘s Witney Seibold was able to have a brief conversation with Edsel about the Nazi’s plan, the importance of art, and this extraordinary story.
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Witney Seibold is the head film critic for Nerdist, and a contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
