Alford Kenneth D. Allied Looting in World War II: Thefts of Art, Manuscripts, Stamps and Jewelry in Europe
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Foreword
by Sidney D. Kirkpatrick
If the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, were to issue private
detective badges to writers chronicling the chaotic and explosive final days of
World War II, Kenneth D. Alford would be wearing the gold medal. Alford
doesn’t rewrite the work of others; he advances, through careful and painstak-
ing scholarship, the pool of information that rank-and-file researchers use as
their road map. He is a first-class detective, operating with his own global
positioning system, uncovering lost documents and ferreting out the truth in
the National Archives, as he does in archival repositories worldwide. Over the
last three decades, his work has been used to inform government policy, hunt
down criminals, and track the rat-line movement of plundered gold, silver,
diamonds, artwork, and rare manuscripts. He has shared his provocative and
always valuable research with heads of state, international police agencies,
museum officials, and the many others who follow in his footsteps.
The results speak for themselves: file cabinets of his original research can
be found in such disparate locations as the Hungarian Ministry of Culture,
the Clinton Presidential Library in Arkansas, and in Hitler’s Holy Relics, my
own latest book. Allied Looting in World War II, his new book, is like a Pan-
dora’s box. There are those who will be offended by what he has discovered
and those who will champion the conclusions he has drawn, but no one can
question that he knows what he is writing about: vanished treasure and the
greed, fraud, deceit, and treachery that did not end on the battlefields of war-
torn Europe.
Sidney D. Kirkpatrick is a prizewinning filmmaker and international best-selling author.
His documentary film My Father the President, about Theodore Roosevelt, was a winner at
the American Film Festival. Kirkpatrick’s work has been featured on HBO, the History
Channel, the Discovery Channel, and A&E. He has been profiled in the New York Times,
Time, The New Yorker, and Playboy.
1
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Introduction
“After all, society is divided into two classes—the fleecers and the
fleeced—and assuredly it is better to belong to the fleecers.”
—Ursula Countess von Eppinghoven, 1893
Every conscripted army reflects the society from which it is drawn, and
the American army at the end of World War II was no exception. It had fought
bravely and furiously in the most destructive war in history, and by the time
American soldiers drove into the heartland of Germany, they were in no mood
to “go easy” on the defeated enemy, especially in light of German atrocities
during the Battle of the Bulge and the unimaginable horrors of the extermi-
nation camps.
Most American military men and women, however, still followed Amer-
ican military protocol and American rules and regulations. Some 295,000
had fallen in combat, and 200,000 more had died as a result of accidents,
friendly fire, and illness. They are our heroes. There were those, however,
who reflected the less admirable elements in the broad spectrum of American
society by exhibiting a larcenous bent and even, in some cases, raping, mur-
dering, and plundering the great treasures that the Nazis before them had
seized in their rush to dominate Europe and North Africa. The glitter of so
much treasure was just too tempting for some, and in this time of enormous
disorder, widespread ordinary looting—justified in most minds by a universal
hatred of German brutality—was, in practical terms, not considered stealing.
What makes this book, Allied Looting in World War II, unique is that it focuses
not on the soldier who stuffed the occasional Nazi flag or S.S. Luger into his
pack but on those others who “appropriated” priceless hoards of paintings,
sculptures, rare books, gold, platinum, and silver, and other items of great
value.
The following is but a taste of the escapades of the main characters in
this volume, those who took the biggest bites out of the fruits of victory fol-
lowing the conquest of the “thousand-year Reich.”
3
Lt. Donovan Senter was “awarded” paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder
by a German industrialist’s wife with whom he had carried on a torrid love
affair; it ended only when he began romancing the wife’s teenage daughter.
He organized black market activities in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg
while cheating his collaborators. Eventually, however, he came to an igno-
minious end in a Volkswagen camper in a Reno parking lot.
Maj. Charles A. Owens was a medical corps officer who, along with his
fellow officers, seized Germany’s largest private stamp collection, a huge coin
collection, valuable paintings, and other treasures, all from the same family.
Owens sold the stamps to a Chicago dealer and eventually became an award-
winning physician at the Mayo Clinic.
Lt. Bud Berman stole two ancient books, one of which contained the
oldest known writing in German—the priceless Hildebrandslied, a two-page
poem. The stolen items’ journey to a respected New York rare book dealer
and then to the Doheny Museum in Los Angeles is a tale of greed, intrigue,
and shady dealings until the U.S. government stepped in.
In 1945, Churchill Brazelton coerced the director of the Weimar Museum
into handing over a treasure trove of art; he then opened a lucrative antique
and art dealership on Madison Avenue in New York City.
This book also describes the journey of the sacred Hungarian crown
treasure and how it was moved from a muddy oil drum to Fort Knox and
eventually back to its rightful owners, the Hungarian nation, over the objec-
tions of Senator Bob Dole. Players in this drama included two cardinals and
a pope.
Allied Looting in World War II also contains hitherto unpublished infor-
mation about such items as the still missing Portrait of a Young Man by
Raphael, stolen manuscripts written by Frederick the Great, the Golden Book
of Saarbrucken, the Mainz Psalter, the earliest dated printed work of the Guten-
berg press, the Giuseppi Ferlini Egyptian Ring, and a host of other treasures.
In all, this book portrays what happened when some liberators were
driven by dreams of great wealth to “liberate” treasures that they were, by
military law and American morality, not supposed to touch.
4 Introduction
Part I
Stealing a Trove of Stamps
“Whenever requisitioning was done legally or with a show of legality
in the proceedings, the population accepted it submissively and with-
out serious complaint. On the whole, requisitioning, legal or other-
wise, was accepted as the lot of the conquered.”
History of the Fifteenth United States Army (1945)
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Chapter 1
The 273rd Infantry Regiment
On the morning of April 16, 1945, the 2nd Battalion, 723rd Infantry
Regiment, acting as the advance guard of the 9th Armored Division, spear-
headed the First Army’s drive to the Elbe River, receiving heavy direct fire as
it rolled into Trebsen, Germany. Because of the fast and furious Allied advance
at the unheard of pace of 60 miles per day, the retreating German Army did
not have time to blow up the long bridge covering a marsh and the Mulde
River. Martin Conner and his buddy Fran Dionne were ordered to look under
the bridge for explosives but not to cross the bridge, as anyone on the other
side would be German. As Conner was looking for explosives, some of the
men in the 273rd began to run over the bridge; Conner yelled at them to
stop. The advancing soldiers told Conner that army intelligence had changed
the order and they had to cross and hold the bridge before the Germans
returned to defend it. Conner and Dionne then started running across the
bridge. As they reached the part over the Mulde River, they heard lots of
noise and, turning around, saw a plane firing at them and flying so low that
they thought it would crash into the bridge. The plane made repeated passes
firing at the soldiers. On the third pass, Conner was hit in the shoulder and
Dionne was hit in the leg. The plane was a U.S. Army Air Corps P-47. Tanks
of the 9th Armored Division made radio contact with the P-47 and called it
off. When Connor and Dionne made it to the end of the bridge, the P-47
flew over and, in a repentant manner, dipped its wing to the soldiers. This
sig nal did not help the two men, who were not happy campers, but the pilot’s
action did get them out of the war.
1
Anton Wiede, a German civilian, together with a group of foreign work-
ers stood in the street and watched the battle as American tanks entered Treb-
sen. Wiede was co-owner of the firm Wiede & Söhne, which owned textile
and paper manufacturing plants, as well as coal-producing facilities, including
the development of synthetic diamonds using laser technology, quite an
advanced scientific development at that time. The Wiede enterprises included
a large paper mill in Trebsen, the second largest paper factory in Germany.
7
Anton J. Wiede, a well-educated engineer, inherited this industrial complex
from his father, who had died in 1937. Born on May 3, 1911, the 34-year-old
Wiede was indeed a very rich young man, married but in the process of a
divorce. An American officer asked Wiede about the town and paper mill,
and he gave them the required information regarding German troop activity
in Trebsen. As was customary, the American troops took over the homes of
the Germans and used them for housing and headquarters. They had learned
early to take only occupied homes, as the empty homes were often booby
trapped. One of Wiede’s workers told him that the Americans were occupying
his house. Wiede then went to his house, at 6 Ostmark Strasse, and found at
the entrance a guard who asked him what he wanted. Wiede responded that
this was his house and that his personal property was still inside. The guards
asked how much time it would take to get his property out, and Wiede replied,
“Approximately two hours.”
2
The guard pointed to his watch and said that
Wiede had 20 minutes to remove his property.
Wiede was quite nervous as he removed his clothing, linen, food, and
some suitcases from the basement. In his haste, he forgot to remove a suitcase
containing a box of jewelry—rings with sapphires and diamonds—valued at
$2,500 (in 1945 dollars). He noticed that in the main room of his house the
drawers had already been emptied and that his watches, camera, and other
valuables were missing. He asked about these items, and the American soldier
in the room merely laughed. With the help of a foreign laborer, Wiede relo-
cated as much as he could to a nearby labor camp. He returned three days
8 Part I : Stealing a Trove of Stamps
The German village of Trebsen, captured by the 273rd Infantry Regiment. The three
chimneys are attached to the paper factory of Wiede & Sons. A safe in this factory
contained some of the stamps acquired by U.S. Army medical officer Charles Owen
(courtesy Stephan Wiede).
later and noticed that the suitcase with the jewelry was gone and a steel safe
in the basement had been blown open; the 80,000 Reichsmarks it had con-
tained were missing.
The following day the 273rd Infantry Regiment, with the support of
attached armored and tank destroyer units, received the order to move back
from Trebsen to an assembly area in the town of Lieberwolkevitz for an attack
into Leipzig. That afternoon the task force moved directly into the city, riding
on the armored vehicles; despite strong opposition, they reached the city hall
by early evening. At the same time, the First and Second Battalions were
advancing in their designated sectors. The First Battalion met stiff resistance
while approaching Holzhausen; the Second Battalion advanced into Leipzig
and was engaged in fighting near the Sports Palace against an entrenched
enemy.
By 8 o’clock that night the Second Battalion was fighting against heavy
opposition around the monument of the Battle of Nations. This encounter
was the most difficult confrontation during the battle for Leipzig. At this
highly symbolic monument, the Germans, with a force estimated at several
hun dred storm troopers, made their final stand. When the initial assault of
the regiment’s Second Battalion was made, resistance was so fierce that the
1. The 273rd Infantry Regiment 9
The Wiede family's house in Trebsen, scene of the looting of the valuable paintings
and a large coin collection (courtesy Stephan Wiede).