Adolf Hitler presents Hermann Goering with The Falconer (1880), a painting by the 19th-century Austrian academic painter Hans Makart.
In a journey through seven countries, the film takes the audience into the violent whirlwind of fanaticism, greed and warfare that threatened to wipe out the artistic heritage of Europe. For 12 long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in history, but heroic young art historians and curators from America and across Europe fought back with an extraordinary campaign to rescue and return the millions of lost, hidden and stolen treasures.
At Schloss Neuschwanstein in southern Bavaria, Captain James Rorimer, who later became the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, supervises the safeguarding of art stolen from French Jews and stored during the war at the castle (April-May, 1945).
Today, more than 60 years later, the legacy of this tragic history continues to play out as families of looted collectors recover mstoleajor works of art, conservators repair battle damage and nations fight over the fate of ill-gotten spoils of war.
According to U.S. estimates, the Nazis stole one-fifth of all the known art works in Europe. While the Allies returned most of the displaced art in the decade following the war, much is still missing. Many masterpieces were destroyed or lost forever. Other works survived, but remain unidentified, traceable only with costly and difficult investigation.
See previews and find out more at pbs.org.
Watch it Monday, November 24th at 9:00 p.m. on PBS-HD
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