The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War

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The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War

Editorial Review

The cast of characters includes Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering, Gertrude Stein and Marc Chagall--not to mention works by artists from da Vinci to Picasso. And the story told in this superbly researched and at times suspenseful book is that of the Third Reich's war on European culture and the Allies' desperate effort to preserve it. 90 illustrations and photos. 3 maps.

Every few months you'll read a newspaper story of the discovery of some long-lost art treasure hidden away in a German basement or a Russian attic: a Cranach, a Holbein, even, not long ago, a da Vinci. Such treasures ended up far from the museums and churches in which they once hung, taken as war loot by Allied and Axis soldiers alike. Thousands of important pieces have never been recovered. Lynn Nicholas offers an astonishingly good account of the wholesale ravaging of European art during World War II, of how teams of international experts have worked to recover lost masterpieces in the war's aftermath and of how governments "are still negotiating the restitution of objects held by their respective nations."

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
• the rest of the story
  This a both a work of considerable scholarship and also a work written with considerable understanding of human nature. Essentially it is written in two parts. The first covers the Nazi expropriation or destruction of works of art all over Europe from 1939 through 1942. The second part covers the Allied attempts to recover and safeguard the stolen/confiscated/extorted works of art. The strength of this work is that the author makes clear that this simple narrative is complicated by the fact that not all... more info
• See the movie, first
  The book is excellent as a resource after seeing the movie. For nonartistists such as myself, this is a great resource to further my understanding of the film. The film is 5 stars and really shows what happened.
• I am truely ambivalent in this review
  On the one hand, it is a very scholarly account of the systematic theft of Europe's art by the Nazis. I was interested in this book after reading a review of the movie, which came through Sacramento all too briefly (never to return, it seems).
  There was also an article on this in, I believe, Smithsonian Magazine.
  So my interest was seeded.
  It is the story of how about 200 American (and a few British) servicemen were sent out with Patton's 3rd Army (among others) to find and catalog paintings... more info
• great book on art looting
  The Rape of Europa is an eye-opening book. Nicholas has done a tremendous amount of research that reveals the almost unimaginable extent of Nazi art looting during World War II. But the book never gets bogged down in details. The chilling story moves along quickly. I recommend this book highly for anyone interested in World War II, or for readers who are curious about the political uses of art.

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