The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War,   ISBN:9780679756866

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This book shows that it has been around, with the normal wear and tear one would expect from a paperback. The content was completely readable, so no problem. This is a well researched book by a knowledgeable author, who apparently knows her way around the intricate art world. While I had some knowledge of the Nazi program of acquiring works of art from conquered countries, I had no idea of the extent of it or the vastly complex problem of restitution, that continues in our time, long after most of the principals are dead. The complexity of the book doesn't allow for a quick and easy readm but putting a little effort into was entirely worthwhile.

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I read this book when it came out over a decade ago.

The topic is pretty fascinating.

But the story moves slowly in many parts.

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While the topic of this book is definitely intriguing, it contains a LOT of information. There are so many names, committees, museums and locations, I often felt bogged down by the details when I would have enjoyed a much broader perspective instead of all of the minutiae. Overall, it is a great resource cataloguing the movement of art during WWII, the various conservation efforts taken, the unscrupulous acquisitions by the Nazis, and the tedious tracking of missing works after the war. The photographs were a great enhancement. Though I found it tedious at times, it is in important aspect of history that is still relevant to this day.

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Painstaking research behind the fascinating documentary, Rape of Europa. Lynn Nichols compelling book of the same title explores broad efforts to safeguard European masterpieces from Nazi greed and plunder. She shifts her focus from capital to countryside, from the one border to the next. While she records art historians' views on looting and valued artifacts retained by conquering nations, she also turns her lens onto the less-publicized cases of Allied looting, the cases of victorious soldiers purloined objets d'art as souvenirs. In the final chapter, Nichols describes the fate of the heirs to American military plunder finding that the stolen items, while valuable, are unsalable, Some are returning stolen items anonymously discovering that there is still a penalty attached to war-time loot; others are forced to surrender objects identified by German investigators tracking historical collections spirited beyond its borders. The German government lost paintings taken back to the Soviet Union in train loads where they are still held as compensation for monstrous ravage and destruction;, the art world as a group monitors the markets for individual pieces going for auction and ponders in general the moral dilemma posed by war loot and restitution.
The compelling moral directive still remains as one of massive concerted Allied effort from the top down to discover, identify and return thousands of pieces of stolen art to their rightful owners--if they still be among the living, a story that continues through this day.

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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 motives were entirely pure or entirely corrupt depending on the nature of the individuals involved. There were some German army officials who actually tried to safeguard and protect art though their efforts were usually overcome by rapacious National Socialist ideologists and greedy Party officials. "Collaborationist" French officials did all in their bureaucratic power to delay and obstruct the systematic looting. On the other side, not all Allied military personnel behaved correctly with personal instances of indifference and corruption against which the "Monument Men" struggled untiringly. The author is particularly clear about the role of European art dealers who, if they were in business from 1939 to 1945, did some business with the Nazis who ruled Europe. Their ethical challanges are described as is the way they met those challanges with various levels of compromise. The only flaw in the book is that there are not many illustrations of the works involved in theis huge transfer of ownership and location. Of course, such illustrations would practically describe a history of Western art, so instead we have many contemporary photos of the activities being described in the text, which are quite interesting.