The Monuments Men (44 page)

In the end, he got five minutes. Eigruber did not offer him a seat. The gauleiter was an ironworker by training and a fierce party loyalist, having been a founding member of the Upper Austrian Hitler Youth. By age twenty-nine, he was the district leader. His loyalty lay with the Führer, or at least with the man he knew the Führer to be: a force for annihilation, without pity or remorse. Eigruber was suspicious of “unpure” orders from Speer or others who would soften the Führer’s Nero Decree. And it was inconceivable to him, a man who had pounded iron in the factories of rural Austria, that the Führer would have made exceptions, especially for the preservation of art. If orders from Berlin were confusing or contradictory, then it was August Eigruber’s right—no, his duty—to interpret them. And he knew the Führer’s mind. Hadn’t the great man preached his whole life about destruction: of the Jews, the Slavs, the gypsies, the sick, and the infirm? Hadn’t he courageously ordered their extermination, an order obeyed with enthusiasm by Eigruber at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp and by thousands of others at camps scattered across Eastern Europe? Hadn’t he condemned the corrupting, degenerate nature of modern art? Hadn’t he burned artwork in a great pyre in the center of Berlin? Hadn’t he destroyed Warsaw and Rotterdam instead of letting them fall to the enemy? Hadn’t he scarred the face of art-rich Florence? But for that weak fool General von Choltitz, Paris would be a disease-ravaged ruin. Eigruber was determined that, in his domain at least, weakness would not prevail. Absolutely nothing of value, he swore, would fall into the hands of the enemy. He never doubted that his Führer would approve.

“Do what you think is absolutely necessary,” Eigruber said, as Pöchmüller prattled on about the blast area of bombs. “The main point is total destruction. We will stay bullheaded on this.”
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CHAPTER 40

The Battered Mine

Heilbronn, Germany

April 16, 1945

J
ames Rorimer finally arrived at the southern German town of Heilbronn, his first objective as Monuments officer for U.S. Seventh Army, on April 16, 1945. The journey had been, to put it mildly, a complete disaster. Seventh Army had hopped the Rhine River and was moving so rapidly that no one was sure where their headquarters was currently located. The Railroad Transportation Office routed him first to Lunéville, then an officer recommended he go to Sarrebourg, which was the end of the line. A sympathetic GI overheard his story and gave him a ride to Worms on his two-and-a-half-ton truck. From there he hitched a ride to Military Government headquarters, which informed him that Seventh Army was now south of Darmstadt, across the Rhine. “I’ve been expecting you for months,” Lieutenant Colonel Canby snapped when Rorimer reported for duty at Seventh Army headquarters. “I concurred with the order to assign you to this headquarters in January.”

“There’s no need for monuments work over here,” Canby told Rorimer bluntly, once he had settled in. “The Army Air Forces have completely destroyed every major city in southern Germany, and our ground troops are taking care of the rest. Your job, as far as I’m concerned, is to locate art looted from Western Allied countries. Third Army has come in for more than its share of publicity”—referring to Merkers, which was still making worldwide headlines—“and it’s time that Seventh Army had a salt mine or two of its own.”
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Rorimer realized what Canby meant by complete destruction when he reached the outskirts of Heilbronn. Elements of VI Corps, Seventh Army, had arrived at the city on April 2, the day George Stout and Walker Hancock entered the mine at Siegen. They had been barreling through the industrial centers of south-central Germany on their way to Stuttgart, and they expected little resistance from this typical midsized town. Heilbronn was just another broken city, they figured, shattered by British air raids; a devastating raid in December 1944, in particular, had destroyed 62 percent of the infrastructure and killed seven thousand civilians, including a thousand children under the age of ten.

But looks could be deceiving, especially in the void of southern Germany. When Seventh Army tried to cross the Neckar River on the morning of April 3, the broken city exploded with life. The Neckar was a hundred meters wide and the Wehrmacht, hidden in the hills east of town, had perfect sightlines down on the plodding assault boats. Time and again the boats were sunk or driven back. When army engineers tried to launch a pontoon bridge, the Jerries took it out with mortar fire, sinking two tanks. Those who made it to the far bank were pinned down by enemy fire. The German mortars fired every three minutes, more frequently when targets showed themselves on the river or bank. When the soldiers crept into the streets, they discovered the angry citizens had formed the rubble of their homes and businesses into barricades, and crack German troops had taken up defensive positions along every line. For nine days the city was the site of one of the most brutal battles of the war, as Seventh Army fought block to block, then house to house, then room to room through the collapsing town.

James Rorimer, stuck in Paris for most of his time in Europe, hadn’t seen anything like what remained since his inspection of Saint-Lô in Normandy. “What you read in the newspapers is not exaggerated,” he would write his wife. “The ghost towns are fantastic. They are particularly bad just after they have surrendered.”
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One route had been cleared; every other street looked impassable. Other than the Allied bulldozers working to clear the rubble, the city was deserted. Of the Germans, it seemed only the dead remained. The stench was overpowering.

According to captured German intelligence, the artwork could be found in the town’s salt mine, whose superstructure—a grid of metal that supported the lift mechanisms—was visible from a mile away. Rorimer scrambled down Salt Street, then Salt Works Square and finally Salt Ground Street, where he was able for the first time to glimpse the brick and concrete building that housed the mineshaft. The fighting had been savage; several buildings were still smoldering. But there were people on the street, huddled and beaten but still alive. Rorimer pulled up beside two men and asked about the mine.

They shook their heads. “
Russo
,” they said. They were Russian slave laborers.

“
Deutsch
?” he asked. Did they know anyone who spoke German?

They shrugged. Who knew anything these days?

Rorimer finally located two terrified German women in an employee housing complex. The Nazis had wanted the mine destroyed, the women told him, but the miners refused. “We can live without the Nazis,” they said, “but we cannot live without salt.” There were twenty square miles of minable salt under Heilbronn, enough to provide work for generations. This was not something the miners were willing to destroy; the Nazis, fortunately, were too busy with other concerns. In the end, the fierceness of the battle saved the mine.

But there was still the water.

The mine, excavated to an average depth of six hundred feet, consisted of dozens of large chambers in two levels, one on top of the other. Much of the extensive tunnel system was beneath the Neckar River. Water seeped continuously down through cracks in the rocks. This seepage had to be pumped out eight hours a day to keep the mine from flooding, but because the power had been out, the pumps were not working. The lack of power had also knocked out the only elevator. No one had entered the mine, but the women assumed the lower level was full of water by now.

Rorimer had anticipated a quick stop. There were numerous repositories on the road to Neuschwanstein, and he couldn’t afford to spend time at each one. But Heilbronn, he realized, was a disaster in the making, and it was worth the investment of time. So he went immediately to Military Government headquarters with the mayor of Heilbronn to secure an engineering team. All the army would do was post a guard, so the next day he returned to headquarters in Darmstadt, where the colonel told him bluntly, “Nobody can be spared. The mine is your responsibility. Fix it yourself.” Seventh Army wanted the glory of a major repository, but they didn’t want to spare more than a single man—James Rorimer—to secure it.

Rorimer returned to Heilbronn, where he appealed directly to the mayor. The mayor sent runners to find the mine’s chief engineer and its vice director, Dr. Hans Bauer, who had fled the city. Bauer confirmed the mine had been used as an art storage depot, but no inventory had been left with the mine directors. Bauer remembered a famous Rembrandt,
St. Paul in Prison
, and the stained-glass windows from the cathedral in Strasbourg, France, among other things. And although water leakage was a serious problem—the Neckar leaked 100,000 gallons of water into the mine every day—he assured Rorimer those objects might still be saved. They were on the upper level, which would probably not be flooded for days, maybe even weeks.

“Are you sure?”

“No, but there is a way to find out.”

Bauer led Rorimer to a hole in the floor of the mine building. “Our emergency exit,” he said. On the side of the hole was a thin, rickety ladder. Not more than ten feet into the hole, the ladder disappeared into darkness.

“How far down does it go?”

“Six hundred feet.”

Rorimer stared into the darkness, wondering if a tour of the mine was absolutely necessary. “Did you hear something?” he said.

The men peered down into the hole, then stepped back as two wet, dirty men emerged from the darkness. “PFC Robert Steare, Company B, 2826 Engineers, sir,” one of them said, snapping to attention.

He was just a kid. “What were you doing down there, son?”

“Exploring the mine, sir. With one of the miners.”

“On whose orders?”

“No one’s, sir.”

Rorimer stared at his exhausted and dirty face, wondering why a kid would take it upon himself to descend six hundred feet into a flooded mine. The foolishness and bravery of youth, he supposed.

“What did you see?”

“There’s nothing working down there, sir. Pitch-black. Everything’s covered with three feet of water, including the pumps. There are locked storage rooms at the far end of the corridor. We didn’t try to open them.”

“Any indication of what was inside?”

“One of them said ‘Strasbourg’ in chalked letters. Others said ‘Mannheim,’ ‘Stuttgart,’ and ‘Heilbronn.’ But that’s all I saw.”

“And had the water reached them?”

“Oh, yes sir, the water was everywhere.”

It took Bauer two weeks, until April 30, to implement a workable plan. The backup steam engines had not been badly damaged, and there was sufficient coal to run them for a few months. After repairs and adjustments, they could operate the elevators and skips, which were the trays that carried the salt from the bottom of the mine to the surface. By modifying the skips and welding an enormous bucket to the bottom of the elevator platform, water could be lifted out of the mine. It wouldn’t stop the seepage, but it would keep the water level down while the pumps and electrical plant were repaired. Given the circumstances, it was an elegant solution. In the dead city of Heilbronn, there would be one beast alive and lumbering: the iron hands of the salt mine, hauling away water to protect the art.

By the time the plan was implemented, James Rorimer was gone. Seventh Army was nearing Munich, and he had no time to lose.

CHAPTER 41

Last Birthday

Berlin, Germany

April 20, 1945

O
n April 20, 1945, the Führer’s fifty-sixth and last birthday, the Nazi elite gathered briefly in the Reichschancellery for a hastily arranged birthday celebration and series of “goodbyes.” Most of the party hierarchy wished they were anywhere but Berlin. It may have been the Führer’s birthday, but it was far from a festive occasion. That day, Western Allied troops had taken Nuremberg, the earliest base of operation for the Nazi Party, and raised the American flag over the stadium where the Nazis had once hosted the spectacles of annual rallies. The home of legendary fifteenth-century German artist Albrecht Dürer had been severely damaged; the top floors of the building that had sheltered one of Hitler’s most cherished objects, the Veit Stoss altarpiece, which he had stolen from Poland at the start of the war, were demolished. Fortunately, the altarpiece was stored safely underground.

This salvation might have been a consolation to the world, but the men gathered in the Führerbunker couldn’t have cared less. Their world was getting smaller by the day, and their time was short. There was no greater reminder of their impending doom than this impromptu party. In years past they had feasted, and the highest-placed among them had feted their leader with gifts, often looted artwork, his favorite thing to receive. Now the Red Army was pounding Berlin, and the explosions of their artillery could be heard even deep underground. Those not stationed in Berlin were eager to leave the city; those staying with Hitler were desperate for reprieve. For days, the mood in the bunker had been erratic. Wild hope would collapse into despair. Rumors of success would degenerate into squalid stories of defection and surrender. Hitler was rarely seen. The main topic of conversation was suicide—should it be cyanide or a bullet? The main activity was drinking.

The sight of Adolf Hitler, late for his own celebration, did nothing to cheer his followers. Suddenly, he seemed an old man, ashen and gray. He dragged his left foot, and his left arm hung weakly at his side. His posture was so slumped that his head seemed to have sunk into his shoulders. He could still be aggressive with his subordinates, especially his generals, but instead of his former fire he now exhibited an icy rage.
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He believed he had been betrayed. He saw weakness everywhere. But at this party he could not even summon contempt. He was so depressed his doctors had to medicate him before he would appear before his most loyal associates, the men and women who had followed him onstage for the final act. His eyes, once so charismatic that they drove a nation to madness, were empty.