Nazi Leaders Bought Masterpieces at Massive Discounts

18December, 08:00

Decree of the Führer, 1 March 1942

© National Archives at College Park Container ID: 55 National Archives Identifier: 7582749

Alexander Makushin, Co-Chair of the East-Patriotic Foundation, Co-Chair of the Clio community of historians, Expert at the Russian Military Historical Society (RMHS), describes how the property of “enemies of the Reich” was seized.

When the Nazi state was established, various measures were introduced to eliminate “enemies of the Reich” who were nationally, politically, or “spiritually” opposed to Hitler’s ideology. The decree was in effect not only in Germany but also in the occupied territories. Stealing the property of “enemies” funded the Nazis and lined the pockets of their top brass.

The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (German: Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg or ERR) was formed in 1940 to search, catalogue, and appropriate properties and seize cultural treasures. Several works of art from personal collections and national museums in the occupied countries were seized and taken to the new Führermuseum (European Museum of Art) in Linz. Some of the works were officially purchased by Nazi leaders (Hitler, Göring, etc.), but at massive discounts.

Interesting fact: Adolf Hitler technically had no income other than royalties for his book Mein Kampf.

The decree stipulated that the Wehrmacht had to assist the work of the Einsatzstab and Einsatzgruppen in the Occupied Eastern Territories, which assessed cultural goods and Jewish property. The Wehrmacht’s High Command was tasked with devising procedures for cooperation between the Wehrmacht units and Einsatzgruppen.

The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg admitted used the evidence to charge the Nazis with misanthropy.

By Ekaterina Chernetskaya

Lida Baarova

Czech actress, German film star, and mistress of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. In 1934, she moved to Germany at the invitation of the Ufa Film Studio, where she was introduced to Hitler and made an enormous impression on him due to her resemblance to his dead lover, AngelaRaubal. She would visit him privately in the Reich Chancellery for tea. Baarovaachieved stardomin Germany with the release of the film Barcarolle (1935). She turned down an invitation to Hollywood and a seven-year contract with MGM Studios, later coming to believe that she could have surpassed the worldwide fame of Marlene Dietrich. She gave in to her neighbor Goebbels’ persistent advances(Magda Goebbels suggested Baarova "find a compromise" and "share Joseph"), but theaffair was ended by Hitler at the request of Magda after Goebbels resigned and sought to divorce her and move abroad with Baarova. Hitler refused to let him go and forbade the minister from seeing his mistress, which drove Goebbels to attempt suicide on October 15, 1938. Baarova was banned from cinema, and none of her films were shown. In 1941, she moved to Italy, and after the American occupation, to Prague. In April 1945, she was arrested by the Americans. Instead of facing execution for working for the Nazis, she was sentenced to prison, having proven in court that she was filming in Germany before World War II. During the investigation, her younger sister committed suicide. Lida was freed by an admirer with family ties in the post-war government of Czechoslovakia who fled with her to Austria. Baarova spent the last 20 years of her life in obscurity and poverty in Salzburg. In 1995, she published her memoir, The Bitter Sweetness of My Life, in which she wrote about the elite of the Third Reich and admittedher affair with Goebbels, which she had denied all her life.

Leni Riefenstahl

German actress, director and photographer. She became famous with the release of her film The Blue Light. In 1932, impressed by Hitler's campaign speech, Riefenstahl wrote to him seeking a meeting. From the moment they met, she had his full support. She directed three iconic propaganda films, which became classic examples of ideological documentaries: The Victory of Faith (1933), Triumph of the Will (1935), and Day of Freedom: Our Wehrmacht (1935), which were followed later by the two-part film Olympia (1938), the American and British premieres of which were cancelled due to the news of the Night of the Broken Glass. After World War II, she denied knowing about the killing of “racially inferior” groups, butthere is evidence that on September 12, 1939, she and her film crew witnessed the mass murder of Jews by Wehrmacht soldiers in Konskie, Poland, and in 1940 she used the unpaid labor of 120 gypsy prisoners from concentration camps, despite knowing their ultimate fate, to film Valley. Most of them later died in Auschwitz. Riefenstahl was the most famous and successful cultural figure of the Third Reich and a member of the Nazi elite. In April 1945, she was first arrested by American soldiers. At several denazification trials, she was acquitted and found to be a “sympathizer.” Later she abandoned film for photography, where she once again pioneered new themes and approaches in world culture: at 53 she started shooting African Nubian tribes, and at the age of 71 she began taking underwater photographs. In 1987, she published her memoir, an all-time best-seller. In 2001 she received the Gold Medal of the International Olympic Committee. She died two weeks after her 101st birthday. Until the end of her life she insisted that she “knew nothing.”

Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel

World famous French fashion designer. In 1940, she remained in occupied France. After the war, rumors began to circulate about her connections with the Nazis and in 2011, information that Chanel was an agent of the German military intelligence was confirmed. She was the mistress of German Abwehr officer, Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, who became an intermediary in her relations with the occupation authorities and paid for her permanent accommodation at the Ritz in Paris. Von Dincklage recruited the 57-year-old Chanel as Agent F-7124 under the code name “Westminster” (she had an affair with the Duke of Westminster at the same time). As a result of the collaboration, Chanel freed her nephew from a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany, and tried to gain full control over the perfume business (she sold it under license to a Jewish Wertheimer family in 1924, and then applied for “Aryanization”). She publicly advanced the theory of a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy and was famous for her anti-Semitic statements. She had the nickname of a “horizontal collaborator,” because of alcove connections with high-ranking occupiers. She closely communicated with the chief of the Third Reich’s political intelligence, Walter Schellenberg.
She was not directly involved in espionage, but helped the Nazis through connections with influential people in Spain and England. As part of the Operation Model Hat, she was supposed to secure separate negotiations between the Nazis and the British government, but the operation was thwarted by the MI6. After the war, she fled to Switzerland and escaped trial on charges of collaboration, presumably thanks to the intervention of either Churchill or the British royal family. After returning to France, she bribed everyone who could testify to her connections with the Nazis, including Schellenberg, whom she helped to emigrate, and in return he did not mention her in his memoirs.

Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson

Pre-war glamor icon, trendsetter and avid party-goer King Edward VIII of England abdicated in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee. After the abdication he received the title of Duke of Windsor. It is widely known that Wallis had an affair with Foreign Minister of the Third Reich Joachim von Ribbentrop (he sent her 17 red carnations for every night she spent with him?). The FBI released the information that Mrs. Simpson was an agent of Nazi Germany with access to secret papers of the British government. The couple were openly sympathetic to the Nazis – in 1937 they met with Hitler. The photo shows Eduard throwing up his hand in a Nazi salute (he later claimed that he was just waving his hand). In 1940, they were in close contact with German diplomats in Portugal, when the former king said in an interview that Great Britain was about to surrender to the Reich. In 1945, US troops discovered shocking German archival documents dubbed the Marburg Files. The papers also included the Windsor File with information about the Operation Willi of 1940: as part of it, the Duke of Windsor was persuaded that his brother, King George VI, and Prime Minister Churchill, had joined in a conspiracy to assassinate him. Because of this, the duke was compelled to collude with the Nazis. He was also supposed to be kidnapped in order to blackmail the royal family and force Great Britain to surrender. There were plans to return Edward to the throne and recognize his wife as queen in exchange for the free movement of German forces in Europe. There is correspondence in the Marburg Files proving that the duke supported the bombing of England in order to force the government to negotiate a peace treaty. However, the family did not disown Edward; he and his wife lived in France until his death in 1972.

Hugo Boss

In 1997, Hugo Boss publicly acknowledged that the company had collaborated with the Nazis and sponsored research into this fact in order to save the brand's image. It turned out that the founder of the company, Hugo Boss, made military uniforms for the Wehrmacht at a huge profit. His factory employed 140 Polish and 40 French prisoners. Contrary to rumors, the designer of the black SS uniform was not Boss himself, but German officer and artist Karl Diebitsch. When it was found out that in summer black absorbs sunlight and causes profuse sweating, it was replaced by gray. Black was used only for the dress uniform of senior SS officers – and it was produced by the Boss factory. In 2007, Hugo’s son Siegfried publicly admitted that his father had collaborated with the Nazis for personal reasons and voluntarily joined the NSDAP. Therefore, his factory was registered as a military enterprise of special importance and received large orders. All of the companies’ executives were staunch Hitlerites. After the war, Boss was tried and ordered to pay a fine of 100,000 marks; later he was partially rehabilitated and his status was changed from “accused” to “sympathizer.” After the research was published, the company posted an official statement on its website expressing its “profound regret to those who suffered harm or hardship at the factory run by Hugo Ferdinand Boss under National Socialist rule.” Since the 1990s, the black uniform, by that time recognized as the most beautiful uniform of all time, became an element of the new political movement Nazi chic, most of whose adherents came from neo-Nazi circles in Japan.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky and ZinaidaGippius

Spouses and writersDmitry Merezhkovsky and ZinaidaGippius emigrated from Russia in late 1919. By the start of World War II they lived in France and occupied leading positions in the émigré cultural circles. They perceived fascism and Nazism as the only force capable of destroying the hated communism. Since the end of the 1930s Merezhkovsky had become infatuated with fascist ideas. He met with Mussolini and considered him a savior of Europe in opposing communism. Gippius did not share his views. She detested any tyranny but thought Hitler was a leader capable of crushing the Bolsheviks.
After Germany’s attack on the USSR in the summer of 1941, friends brought Merezhkovsky to a German radio station without telling Gippius. He made a speech comparing Hitler to Joan of Arc who saved the world from the devil. He spoke about the moral values brought by German chevaliers on their bayonets. Having heard about this, Gippius was infuriated but continued defending her husband. Indicatively, she herself sympathized with the Russian collaborationists who sided with Germany. Gippius wrote about “Russian boys who are conducting a new sacred struggle for Russia in the 1940s of our horrible century, side by side with their new allies (these allies will not leave them!).” A Russian Nazi newspaper immediately reprinted Merezhkovsky’s article. After this, the spouses had to face boycott.
Merezhkovsky died on December 7, 1941. Before his death he became disillusioned with fascist ideas, having seen their implementation in practice – the media regularly covered German atrocities in the USSR. But it was too late. Only a few people came to his funeral. It was no longer possible to clear his name of the stigma of a Nazi supporter.

Mikhail Prishvin

The posthumous publication of diaries by Russian and Soviet writer and order bearer Mikhail Prishvin dealt a blow at many of his fans. In these diaries, he openly wrote about his support for the Hitler regime and his hatred of communists and Jews. He noted that he did not believe that the goal of the Nazis was to destroy Slavs and wanted Germans to conquer the USSR. This is what he wrote after the occupation of France in 1941: “The Germans have approached the Seine. I feel pleased for some reason but Razumnik does not (the writer’s friend Ivanov-Razumnik, who sided with the Germans after their attack on the USSR and fought against the Russians – ed. note). Razumnik stands for the French (it seems to me) because now they are against us. During the last war, he sided with the Germans because they were against us (we are the worst of all). Lyalya (Prishvin’s second wife Valeria Liorko – ed. note) also switched to his side. She is against the Germans now because they are victors and she feels sorry for the French. In the meantime, like a bitted horse, I supported Hitler.” “I prefer the cause of Hitler to that of the allies because they are ready to buy everything whereas he is ready to take everything.” Spring of 1941: “I stand for the victory of Germany because Germany is a nation and a state in its purest form…” 1940-1941: “My support for Hitler is my rejection of our sectarian intelligentsia but probably it is also a result of my faith since the God is not entirely indifferent to human blood and sympathizes with healthy blood.”
“Nowadays people think we will not avoid the Germans: if we help them, they will turn us into a colony; if we oppose them, they will crush us and conquer us. The Jews and all of their associates hate Hitler to death. Their hatred has filled half the world from Rothschild to a Russian intellectual pauper married to a Jewish woman. On the other hand, the other half of the world has opposed the Jews.” “Deep-seated nationwide sympathy for the Germans is a peculiar manifestation of Russian patriotism (dating back to the invitation of Rurik).”
In 1943, in time for his 70th birthday, Prishvin was awarded with the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. On February 15, 1945, he wrote: “After the defeat of Germany was announced in Crimea, a critical question was raised: What are the Germans dying for? What is the point of their heroism?”
His diaries were first published in 1982. They came as a shock to the publishers but were issued without abridgements.

Edith Piaf

The great French singer seemed to accept the Germans without protest. She toured Germany, performed there for French POWs, was photographed with German officers and earned huge fees for night concerts for Germans on the top floor of a brothel. All the while, Jews were being hidden on other floors, with Piaf’s concerts serving as cover. She aided the escape of a number of Jewish musicians who later joined the French Resistance, and she passed out her autograph to French POWs in German camps on forged documents they could use if they escaped.

Charles Aznavour

The French-Armenian singer performed frequently during the occupation in Paris and was very popular among the Germans, while he and his family sheltered Jews in their apartment and helped MissakManouchian, a member of the French Resistance. In 2017 Charles Aznavour and his sister Aida received the Raoul Wallenberg Award for their wartime activities.

Olga Chekhova

Actress Olga Chekhova, niece of Olga Knipper (Anton Chekhov's wife), emigrated from Russia to Germany in 1920 and became a film star by the early 1930s. In 1936 she received the title State Actress. She acted in many films until the collapse of the Third Reich. She was a member of Hitler’s immediate circle. In April 1945 Olga was arrested by Soviet occupation authorities and taken to Moscow, but in two months she returned to Germany. Later, it was revealed that Chekhova was, by all appearances, a Soviet intelligence agent. PavelSudoplatov, Chief of the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) 4th Directorate, who supervised its intelligence and subversion operations, confirmed that she was to take part in an attempt on Hitler’s life. However, no documentary evidence of Chekhova’s work as a Soviet agent has ever been discovered.

Marlene Dietrich

A movie star of the 1920s ̵1940s, with anti-Nazi views, Marlene Dietrich was an international star by the early 1930s. In 1936, she rejected Goebbels’ proposal to pay her 200,000 Reichmarks for every film made in Germany with her participation plus the right to freely choose the film’s theme, producer and director. In 1937, she left the Reich and applied for American citizenship. Dietrich had romantic relations with anti-Nazi writer Erich Maria Remarque and anti-Nazi actor Jean Gabin. She publicly repudiated her older sister on learning that she received jailers from the local Bergen-Belsen death camp in her cinema and canteen. In 1943, Dietrich interrupted her career and took part in concerts entertaining the allied troops for three years. One of the songs she performed,Lili Marlene, was popular both with Americans and Wehrmacht troops. Its lyrics were changed for the latter to make it sound pacifist.
Immediately after the war in 1945, Dietrich made a short trip to Germany. There is a supposition that she attended the Nuremberg Trials. In 1974, she received the highest award of the US Department of Defense for civilians – the Medal of Freedom. In 1950, she became a Knight of the Legion of Honour and later a Commander of this order.
During guest performances in West Germany in 1960, Dietrich was bullied due to her anti-German position during wartime – people threw eggs and spat in her face.
In 1961, she performed in Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg about one of the smaller tribunals of 1948. The first run of the film coincided with the verdict passed on Adolf Eichmann’s case in Jerusalem. Her character (the widow of the executed Nazi general, a prototype of Wilhelm Keitel) pronounced a monologue about the Germans’ ignorance of Nazi crimes. Dietrich couldn’t bring herself to pronounce this remark and simply played her mother who was deliberately blind to the Third Reich.

Erich Maria Remarque

A great German writer, Erich Maria Remarque fought on the Western Front during World War I. He was wounded and awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class but rejected the order and a badge of honor. He described what he saw and experienced during the war in his novel “All Quiet on the Western Front,” that became a world sensation immediately after its publication. National Socialists tried hard to prevent the first run of the movie based on the novel in Germany. In 1931, the Union of German Officers protested against the award of the Nobel Prize to Remarque for besmirching the German army and its soldiers. In 1933, the Nazis were already burning the novel together with other “antinational” books and yelling: “We commit them to flames for the literary betrayal of soldiers and in the name of developing a fighting spirit in the German people.” On Goebbels’ instructions, they spread rumors that Remarque didn’t fight at the front, that he was a Jew by the name of Kramer (this is how his family name reads backwards), and that he stole the manuscript from his comrade who had been killed.
Remarque emigrated from Germany immediately after Hitler’s advent to power – first to Switzerland and then to the United States. He was deprived of citizenship at home. The Nazis executed his sister Elfriede by guillotine in 1943 for anti-Hitler remarks. The judge told her in public: “Unfortunately, your brother has escaped from us, but you will not get away.” His older sister Erne Remarque received a bill for 495 marks and 80 pfennigs for Elfriede’s stay in prison, legal proceedings and execution. He learned about her lot only after the war and dedicated his novel, “The Spark of Life,” to Elfriede. Remarque devoted many of his pieces to the comprehension of the nature of Nazism. He never returned to Germany up to his death in 1970.

Marcel Marceau

Celebrated French mime artist famous for his stage persona “Bip the Clown” and founder of the French pantomime school. Born to a Jewish family in Strasbourg on the France-Germany border, he fled with his family to Limoges when the war broke out. The next year, at age 17, Marcel joined the French Resistance, and after Paris was liberated he joined the Free France Army led by General Charles de Gaulle and served as a liaison officer with General George Patton's Army. Born Mangel, he adopted the pseudonym Marceau after General Marceau-Desgraviers. In 1944 he lost most of his relatives, including his father, who died at the Auschwitz concentration camp. As a member of the Resistance, Marceau took part in the rescues of 70 Jewish children from an orphanage using his talent for acting. The orphans were taken across the Alps to Switzerland under the guise of tourists, with Marceau acting as their guide. He was not recognized by any of the guards they passed. He was also responsible for the capture of a German unit: relying solely on his skill as an actor, he persuaded the Germans that his little team was just the advance party of a French division, and the Nazis surrendered. Among Marcel’s honors is the highest French award the Order of the Legion of Honor. In 2002 he was named a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations. He died in 2007 and was buried at the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Evelyn Waugh

A major English writer of the 20th century and master of sarcasm.
Waugh was at the front from December 1939 till the end of the war. He served in the Navy, was an intelligence officer and a commando, and performed secret diplomatic missions. He proved himself an intrepid soldier: he joined the armed forces before people of his age were enlisted, and constantly attempted to get to the front and served in a commando company formed to conduct raids on occupied French territory. He took part in an operation to assist British troops’ evacuation from Crete. He was known for his courage and pride: on many occasions he was seen walking calmly under bombardment. His commanders were so irritated by his insubordination that he was reassigned to units in the rear, to keep him from the front where he wanted to be. In 1944 he carried out a mission to establish contact with Marshal Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia (Winston Churchill’s son Randolph served alongside him). Later he mystified the British by joking that Tito was a woman. He depicted Great Britain at war in his satirical novel Officers and Gentlemen and his greatest book Brideshead Revisited. He attended the Nuremberg Trials in March 1946 and sarcastically described the courtroom like a schoolroom, with Goеring as principal and Ribbentrop as the shabby master run ragged by the boys.

Jean Gabin

The great French actor served in the French Army under his real name Jean-Alexis Moncorge and was the oldest tank crew member in the 9th Company of the 2ndArmoured Division under General Philippe Leclerc, in which Gabin commanded М-10 tank destroyer. He fought in North Africa, took part in the Battle of Normandy and liberated Paris. When the war broke out he went to the United States, unwilling to remain in occupied Paris. In the United States he began his romance with Marlene Dietrich, who later saw Gabin off to the army: he decided to fight on hearing Charles de Gaulle's appeal to the French to continue the fighting. When Gabin’s tank destroyer “Souffleur II” entered Paris, Marlene (then performing in concerts for the army), who was waiting in the crowd, rushed to the tank. Although the episode was staged, it looked very natural and was hugely inspiring. Sergeant Moncorge/Gabin finished his military career in Bavaria, not far from Hitler’s headquarters in Berchtesgaden. Jean Gabin was awarded the War Cross (Croix de Guerre) and the Military Medal (MédailleMilitaire).

Rebecca West

The most popular British female writer of her time.
West was a journalist and feminist, had multi-year relationship with H.G. Wells, and by 1940 was the wealthiest woman writer in Britain. She was a staunch anti-fascist, sending money to Spanish Republicans and denouncing Western democracies for not coming to Spain’s rescue. She also publicly condemned the conservative UK government for its policy of appeasing Hitler and her leftist colleagues for their pacifism: she insisted that neither the government nor the left understood the fearsome potential of Nazism. She sympathized with the Yugoslavian resistance movements and provided her manor to Yugoslavian refugees and used its grounds as a farm for them during WWII. Along with other prominent Britons she was entered into Walter Schellenberg’s Black Book – a list of UK residents to be immediately arrested after Great Britain was occupied by the Third Reich. West attended the Nuremberg Trials. Her series of essays “Greenhouse with Cyclamens” is believed to be the best work to come out of the Nuremberg coverage. She wrote: “For all who were there, without exception, this was a place of sacrifice, of boredom, of headache, of homesickness.”

Billy Wilder

The outstanding American film director and producer, and writer of the comedy “Some Like It Hot”, was born to a Jewish family in Galicia, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Poland). He dropped out of university, abandoning the law for journalism. In the 1920s, while working as a journalist in Berlin, he started writing scripts for silent films. After the Nazis came to power he emigrated first to France and later to the United States.
Wilder’s mother, grandmother and stepfather all died at Auschwitz. He witnessed the liberation of concentration camps and by order of the US Department of Defense he shot the documentary Die Todesmühlen (Death Mills) intended for the German population. He attended the Nuremberg Trials.

Elsa Triolet and Louis Aragon

A Russian émigré and LilyaBrik’s sister, the writer Elsa Triolet married French Communist writer Louis Aragon, and the couple settled in France. WWII began several years after their wedding, and on September 2, 1939, Aragon was drafted for service in an armored division. Elsa, a Jew, was put under surveillance, but she miraculously managed to flee Paris with refugees. In June 1940 Elsa and Louis reunited in the South of France in the free unoccupied zone. A year later, leaders of the French Resistance attempted to take the Aragons across the border. They were apprehended by the Germans who did not recognize them and set them free 10 days later. The Aragons became illegal immigrants and set up a publishing house for anti-Nazi newspapers, leaflets and brochures in Lyon. The Aragons were among the few members of the Resistance to survive; the others were shot. Both described what they went through in books. Elsa Triolet was awarded the Prix Goncourt for her post-war work “Le premier accroccoûte 200 francs” (“A Fine of 200 Francs”). She was the first woman to be awarded the prize in 40 years and the first ever winner of Russian origin.