Another lie about American purity bit the dust with Marc Roland's article covering America's massive thefts of art and culture from Europe at the end of World War 2. Writing in The Barnes Review, he dismantles the myth of American integrity in dealing with Europe after the war.
The CIA controlled media - that would be practically all of it - has spent a fortune fostering the myth of the American immaculate conception and its perpetual virginity in world affairs, elevating itself to the realm of exceptionalism which is a vacuum of the truth.
The truth is that among its many war crimes, American military and medical personnel stole enormous amounts of art treasures from a prostrate Europe. While we have covered the American death camps, we focus here on the cultural rape of Europe at the hands of the Americans.
So wanton and prodigious were the thefts that Roland quotes the US Army Post Office which raised a sign saying, “The best loot in the world passes through these doors.”
While it would be naïve to suppose that Americans would not loot the vanquished - after all it is the traditional aftermath of battle - it is also true that it was stoked by the hatred of the Jew Theodore Newman Kauffman whose book Germany Must Perish! provided ample impetus to a base desire. More specifically Kauffman and the Jews called for the extinction of Germany as a nation 4 years prior to the outbreak of war.
With the fanning of such hatred of the Hun, it is quite easy to see why American soldiers, following the examples of their commanders, found a bounty of booty all throughout Europe.
Roland recounts how Americans trashed homes, commandeered them for use, destroyed them, then moved on to repeat the cycle again. Fabulous art and historical treasures were either stolen for personal use, or utterly destroyed.
By Roland's account, billions of dollars of exceptional arts and antiques were stolen or vandalized following the cessation of hostilities. Given the exuberance of the modern collectibles market, we believe that Roland understated the actual take.
Citing Kenneth D Alford and others, Roland enumerates examples of theft to include diamonds, the Salzburg Museum gold and silver coin collection, Persian rugs by the thousands, Albrecht Durer's Big Horse, minks, silverware, illuminated manuscripts, gold by the train car load, and so much more as to make a Christie's auction look like a charity bazaar.
The irony is that Americans believed that it was the German's who engaged in this type of mass theft. The truth is quite the opposite. The paintings and other art works which the murderer Dwight Eisenhower found it salt mines and other hiding places were put there by the Germans for protection, rather than for confiscation as the murderer implied. When the allies found them, they kept them for themselves.
This is not say that no art was returned to its owners, or that all soldiers engaged in this wholesale looting, but as a matter of practice it was condoned regardless of any effete regulations to the contrary.
When you think of Americans as the great liberators of Europe, it would be more accurate to think of them as the great liberators of art and cultural treasures into their own homes and accounts.
Marc Roland, The Real Story of World War II's 'Monuments Men', The Barnes Review, November/December 2014, accessed www.barnesreview.org 1/30/2015
Copyright 2015 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.
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