The Rape of Europa Read online

  After his tours of the dealers Goering would celebrate with friends at various Amsterdam night spots. Miedl too lived high on the hog while it lasted, entertaining lavishly at his newly acquired Castle Nyenrode. Even the wife of the Nazi governor of Vienna, Baldur von Schirach, was impressed by the opulence of his dinners, which featured hard-to-get delicacies served on Goudstikker’s magnificent silver and china. Such VIP visitors were also routinely given a tour of the storage rooms containing recently confiscated objects, jewelry, and clothes. When Frau von Schirach, repelled, declined to choose anything for herself, Miedl cheered her up by giving her a little Italian primitive, plucked from the walls of Nyenrode.60

  The dour Hans Posse, unlike Goering, avoided Amsterdam’s high life and stayed at the gloomy Hotel Centrale in The Hague. He was not at all pleased by the trading free-for-all which had developed in Holland, and continually urged Bormann to have Hitler issue orders which would reserve first choice for Linz. At one point he even suggested that private purchases be limited to DFl 2,000 a throw. This Hitler declined to do, as the flourishing Dutch market’s profits were doing the economy no harm. Posse in most cases preferred to deal directly with collectors and leave negotiations with the trade to his underlings. His first instincts were to pursue top-grade collections and individual works he knew to be available, either for sale or by confiscation. The Lanz collection secured through Katz was one. But far more important was one of Europe’s major drawings collections, comprising some 2,700 works which the banker Franz Koenigs had built up in the years between the wars.

  After the crash of 1929 Koenigs was forced to negotiate loans from the Lisser-Rosencrantz Bank of Amsterdam, an institution owned by Siegfried Kramarsky, who, as we have seen, would later leave for the United States with other works which Koenigs had been obliged to sell. The drawings were offered as collateral and in 1933 deposited for safekeeping at the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam, where they were regularly exhibited.61 As war approached, the directors of the bank, thinking of escape, began to call in their loans. The director of the Boymans Museum, Dr. Hannema, was asked to either buy the collection or ship it to the United States for sale. To save the collection for Holland, he persuaded Dutch coal broker D. G. van Beuningen to buy it for the very reasonable sum of DFl 2 million.

  By June 1940 Posse had begun his campaign for the collection. Hannema resisted a sale of the whole thing, and indeed Posse was only interested in the best of the Italian and Northern works. By October he had made his choice and persuaded Hitler and Bormann to authorize DFl 1.5 million for the purchase. Using his favorite ploy, he urged them not to hesitate, as he wished to “arrive earlier than certain other people and catch them napping.”62 Despite this, the deal was not completed until December. It is clear that Hannema did not wish to give up any of the drawings, but the interests of van Beuningen were paramount: he needed cash to pay for paintings he had bought at the sale of the Cook collection just before the war began. He also needed to stay in the good graces of the Germans in order to protect his livelihood, his company being responsible for all transportation of German coal to the Netherlands. He therefore agreed to sell 525 of the drawings to Posse for the DFl 1.5 million, which still left him more than two thousand pieces. Van Beuningen quickly donated the remaining drawings to the Boymans Museum, thereby making them part of the Dutch national collections. Posse’s relationship with the Dutch coal purveyor did not end there. A few months later he bought eighteen major paintings from him, including Watteau’s L’Indiscret and a Maja by Goya.63

  Another collection embroiled in financial trouble both in Holland and in France was that of Fritz Mannheimer, a onetime director of the Amsterdam branch of the Mendelsohn Bank. This was an enormous assemblage of more than three thousand objects, from paintings to jewelry to furniture, especially strong in decorative arts of Germanic origin: Meissen, medieval German goldsmiths’ work, Gothic tapestries, silver busts once in the Cathedral of Basel, and silver table ornaments by Jamnitzer of Nuremberg, considered in the Reich to be the equal of Benvenuto Cellini. Mannheimer, a German who had of necessity become a Dutch resident in 1936, lived mainly in Amsterdam. But he was fond of France, and in 1933 had bought a large house in Vaucresson near Paris, plus a few other investment properties. All this real estate, and his collection, were financed through the Mendelsohn Bank, as were loans he made to refugees coming through Holland. By 1934 his debt was so large that his bank too insisted on some protective arrangements. Mannheimer was also made to promise that he would collect no more.64 This promise he did not keep. He died in France on August 9, 1939, a few months after having married the young woman who had taken care of him in his last year. At the same time the Mendelsohn Bank found itself in great difficulty, and closed its doors on August 12. Mannheimer’s estate was thus embroiled in the bankruptcy, and on top of all this his taxes were found to be in arrears. Inspection of his Amsterdam house revealed that many of the most important objects had vanished. What remained was to be sold off to pay the Dutch state, but this the creditors put off, due to the low state of the market, the war in Poland having in the meantime started. It was also discovered that the missing works had been put in the name of Mannheimer’s wife, and had been taken to Paris and London in a complicated operation. Even more complicated suits were brought in England and France by the Mendelsohn creditors. Soon it was discovered that Mme Mannheimer had taken twenty-seven paintings with her to the south of France, and that Mannheimer had added some DFl 2 million more in objects since his promise to stop collecting. The exact ownership of this part of the collection was unclear.

  Catalogue of the Mannheimer collection prepared by Mühlmann for Hitler

  The whole case was quite unsettled when the Germans took over the Netherlands. Seyss-Inquart was the first to help the creditors out by buying Mannheimer’s wine cellar, which he brought to his new residence in Army trucks.65 Meanwhile, the busy Alois Miedl had contacted the creditors too, and offered DFl 7.5 million for the whole collection, part of which he planned to give to Goering, while the rest would be sold for his own profit. But he had competition. Kajetan Mühlmann, who had found out about Miedl’s offer from expert Friedländer, wanted to handle this fat sale through his Dienststelle and began his own negotiations with the Mannheimer curator who declared himself, in the name of the creditors, ready to sell the collection to the Nazi agency. Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart saw no reason to spend good government money on a collection which he felt could be confiscated as German Jewish refugee property, and delayed any decision until the situation could be clarified. Mühlmann’s office was meanwhile ordered to make a complete inventory and photographs of the collection.

  As time passed, Posse, eager to add this trove to his Linz lists, kept pressure on Bormann. On October 10, 1940, he wrote to say that the “important collection of the refugee finance-Jew F. Mannheimer” should be reserved for Linz. Bormann, nervous about the ultimate outcome of the deal, cabled the Reichschancellery to find out if the Führer’s recent decree giving him absolute right to all confiscated property in Austria applied to Holland too.66 Lammers replied that the rule would apply to all occupied territories, and that “German” measures would take precedence over “local” ones. In a curious addendum he stated, “May I point out the fact that the Führer’s reservation does not contain instructions for the seizure of art objects. It refers only to instances where confiscation has already taken or is taking place.”67

  This was encouraging, but Mühlmann, fortunately for his commission, had meanwhile discovered that the creditors were not Jewish, even if the owner had been, and that the confiscation decree could not be invoked. The stubborn Seyss-Inquart still balked at having to buy, saying that DFl 7.5 million was “a gift to the creditors,” as the collection to his mind was still Jewish, much of it formerly German “public property,” and furthermore contained a number of fakes. On top of this, he complained, the catalogue compiled by his staff had already cost DFl 200,000. By February 1941 there had still been no decisi
on, and Posse again wrote Bormann to say that the collection was now in danger of falling into the hands of “speculators, who would ask exorbitant prices at auction.” Hitler had heard enough. The very next day Bormann, who knew that the pushy mayor of Breslau was also after it, replied to Posse that “the Mannheimer Collections will be bought by you on behalf of the Führer; the Reichskommissar [Seyss-Inquart] will prevent its sale to other parties, and see to it that the collection is acquired by you…. The Führer will decide later on the disposition of the objects after consultations with you. Send a list.”68

  Seyss-Inquart did manage to get the price down to DFl 5.5 million. Miedl got a DFl 400,000 payoff. The paintings which Mme Mannheimer had taken to Vichy were included in the contract. Mühlmann, who in the end had done very well on the deal, assured the creditors that they would receive final payment once these were retrieved. This was accomplished in 1944, and the terms of the contract were scrupulously observed, as befit an agreement between honorable men. But for that story we must go on to France.

  V

  LENITY AND CRUELTY

  Occupied France: Protection and Confiscation

  FLUELLEN: I think the duke hath lost never a man but one that is like to be executed for robbing a church….

  KING HENRY: We would have all such offenders so cut off: and we give express charge that in our marches through the country there be nothing compelled from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.

  —William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 3, Scene 6

  On June 17, 1940, the aged Marshal Henri Pétain, hero of Verdun and premier of the crumbling government of the Third Republic, announced on the radio that it was “necessary to stop the fighting.” He did so without consulting his allies or his own High Command, and before peace feelers by his own diplomats had even been answered. The surprised Germans immediately rebroadcast and distributed this favorable message. The following day the French declared all communities of more than twenty thousand souls “open towns,” which were not to be defended.1 Now virtually unopposed, the German advance continued inexorably toward Bordeaux, where the French government, in a panic, once more prepared to evacuate, this time to North Africa. Three days later a delegation set out from Bordeaux to negotiate with the Germans. Back they drove, through the continuing chaos on the roads, to Compiégne, where the Germans had signed their humiliating surrender in 1918. Hitler, just as obsessed by World War I thinking as the French when it came to ideology rather than tactics, had planned a little theater. It would be his first contact with the French museums. German engineers blasted a hole in the wall of the building used to exhibit the railway car in which the 1918 Armistice had been signed, and moved it back to its original location near a white marble statue of Marshal Foch and a granite memorial inscribed: “Here on the eleventh of November 1918 succumbed the criminal pride of the German Empire,” which was discreetly draped with a huge swastika flag for the present surrender ceremonies.2

  The official cease-fire was set for 1:30 a.m. on June 25. Included in the first draft of the otherwise traditional Armistice document were a few uniquely Nazi clauses: one prohibited the transfer of assets from the Occupied to the Unoccupied Zone, and another, similar to that imposed on the Netherlands, demanded the surrender of all German refugees in France who had “betrayed their own people.” The French objected strenuously to the latter provision, but in vain.3 They did not, however, in the next four days, before the Armistice went into effect, publicize this threat, which would have allowed hundreds of refugees to escape.

  The nation was divided by a jagged line drawn across it from Geneva to Tours, and from there sharply south to the Spanish border, giving the Germans control of the entire Atlantic coast, including Bordeaux. The government of what was left of France was therefore required to move to a site in the Unoccupied Zone, this being the resort town of Vichy. Here, amid all kinds of low intrigue, the Third Republic came to an end, and was replaced by the quasi dictatorship of Pétain and his manipulator Pierre Laval, who believed that Hitler would defeat Britain, and that their best advantage lay in cooperation with him. Indeed, according to U.S. ambassador William Bullitt’s rather too clever observation, “Their hope is that France may become Germany’s favorite province—a new Gau which will develop into a new Gaul.”4

  The Germans were not impressed. William Shirer, in Berlin at this juncture, noted in his diary that “Germany does not consider the Franco-German accounts as settled yet. Later they will be settled with historical realism … not only on the basis of the two decades since Versailles, but they will also take into account much earlier times.”5

  The French capital had fallen a few days before the broadcast of Pétain’s message of defeat. The Germans were at first disappointed to find fabled Paris, though beautiful and intact, shuttered and silent at their arrival. Cafés, shops, and offices were closed. At night darkness and silence reigned. The Germans came at dawn on June 14, and by midday swastika flags had replaced the French colors, most noticeably in the Arc de Triomphe and on top of the Eiffel Tower. The German general staff requisitioned the Hotel Crillon for its headquarters. Embarrassed French police could not for some time open the steel shutters barring the entrance.6 But soon these and other shutters did open, and Germans were happily sipping champagne and ensconcing themselves in the best accommodations all over town. General von Bock, commander of Army Group B, which controlled the Paris region, after viewing Napoleon’s tomb, breakfasted at the Ritz.7 It was immediately noticed that the Germans’ behavior was extremely “correct,” and even friendly. They talked freely to American embassy personnel about plans to invade England, predicting that the war would be over within a few weeks.

  On the day after the armistice was signed, Hitler secretly flew to Paris to see the sights, escorted by Albert Speer and his favorite sculptor, Arno Breker, both of whom knew Paris very well. It was Hitler’s first visit to the City of Light, and the meticulously planned itinerary emphasized architecture. The little party started before dawn with a special inside tour of the Opéra, its lights blazing specially for Hitler, who knew its plans by heart. In the pale morning gloom they went on to the Eiffel Tower, the Invalides, and Montmartre, where the Führer stared down on the sleeping city from the terraces of Sacré-Coeur. On the way back to headquarters he remarked to Speer, “It was the dream of my life to see Paris. I cannot say how happy I am to have that dream fulfilled today.” It was perhaps this dream that had saved the city from Warsaw’s fate, for Speer was horrified hours later when Hitler told him that he had often considered destroying Paris. With that, he ordered his architect to resume work on the grandiose plans for the rebuilding of Berlin; when they were finished, he said, “Paris will be only a shadow. So why should we destroy it?”8

  It would be an emptier shadow: the very next morning General Keitel ordered Admiral Lorey, director of the Berlin military museum, the Zeughaus, to begin immediate arrangements for the return of war trophies of German origin “from the time of the Wars of Independence, through 1914/18 and to the present” which the Führer had seen in the Invalides and in other public places. He wanted quick action. Included in the letter were all the necessary travel authorizations plus a generous fund, which Keitel advised Lorey to collect immediately from the Reichschancellery.9

  Incredibly, Hitler, the great conqueror, would never visit his dream city again, or even give himself a victory parade on its famed avenues. In this he differed markedly from most of his compatriots, who in the next four years would consider Paris the very best place they could possibly be stationed.

  Behind all this jolly correctness occupation governments of extraordinary efficiency were rapidly being established in Belgium and France, as earlier in the Netherlands. The millions of documents of the German occupation government preserved in the French National Archives reveal the simply staggering attention paid to the
control of every detail of life. Occupation currency had been minted as early as May 20. On the twenty-third the Germans took over the offices of absent French tax officials in the areas they had conquered to ensure that there would be no interruption of collections. Government agencies were subjected to the closest supervision. Traffic signs in Gothic script appeared on every corner.10 France and Belgium, in contrast to Holland, got a traditional military government with the Wehrmacht in charge, but, as in Poland, the map was rearranged to the Führer’s liking. For administrative purposes the northern provinces of France were linked to the French-speaking provinces of Belgium; Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine were simply annexed to Germany. By July 16 the French administration in the latter had already been thrown out, Jewish and Masonic property ordered transferred to Nazi organizations, and twenty-two thousand too overtly pro-French Alsatians expelled to the Unoccupied Zone on a half hour’s notice. To deal with relations between the military government and Vichy, a New German ambassador, Otto Abetz—a longtime promoter of Franco-German relations who had a French wife—was assigned by Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop to Paris. With less fanfare but equal immediacy the priests of the New Order began their work of control. What was and was not permissible was not yet clear even to many Germans, who were all set to enjoy the delights of Paris. After it was noted in Berlin that the elite Grossdeutschland Regiment had celebrated the victory with a Thanksgiving service in Notre-Dame, such un-Nazi religious manifestations were forbidden.11 To the French the new rules brought daily surprises. Principal among these was the establishment of a true frontier between the Occupied and Unoccupied Zones which could only be crossed by travellers holding passes approved by the Germans.