U.S. officers studying what was left of the Reichstag Building in Berlin.

Despite the experience of the Italian campaign, there was little improvement in the program when the Allies invaded the rest of Europe. Although the Office of War Information continued to play up the commission's efforts in an attempt to counteract German propaganda, which portrayed the Allies as ruthless barbarians intent on destroying European culture, most of the problems of the commission remained unsolved.38 Cooperation from the military continued to be elusive, and the gap between military rhetoric and reality widened.

Eleven days before the invasion of Normandy, General Eisenhower issued a letter to his field commanders that began, "Shortly we will be fighting our way across the Continent.... Inevitably, in the path of our advance will be found historical monuments and cultural centers which symbolize to the world all that we are fighting to preserve. It is the responsibility of every commander to protect and respect these symbols whenever possible."39 In spite of this directive, however,

38 For a brief review of the Office of War Information's effort in this area, see Report of the American Commission, p. 38, and folder 751/1/3, MFAA Files, RG 239, NA.

39 Eisenhower, letter to field commanders, May 26, 1944,

the work of the commission and the MFAA continued to receive very low priority, and the military continued to resist commission programs. 40

Attempting to expand the number of MFAA officers as the Allied field of operations increased, the commission compiled lists of eligible officers and enlisted men to fill the MFAA to the size originally proposed. This attempt failed. The armed services bitterly opposed the reassigning of any of their personnel, and the War Department did not take kindly to having art experts in the combat zone deciding what could or could not be hit. The army's stock reply to commission requests for more men was that it simply could not spare them.41 Since final authority remained within the War Department, the commission had no further

recourse.

The War Department's refusal to enlarge the MFAA Section or even to staff it to the proposed size led to a serious shortage of MFAA officers in the field and compounded the problem of saving objects of art in combat areas. Although almost three million men were under arms in the European theater, there were only ten MFAA officers until nearly the end of the war. This averaged about three hundred fortyone officially listed monuments per officer, not including the several thousand other structures that eventually came under the MFAA's purview. The MFAA officers were simply overwhelmed. It became a practical impossibility to inspect and report even on officially listed monuments. Nevertheless, MFAA officers averaged one hundred twenty-five sites, sixty towns, and nearly four thousand miles of travel per month.42 Captain Newton reported that between D-Day and March 1, 1945, he had personally inspected more than one thousand five hundred monuments. By April 25, 1945, the area controlled by the 12th Army Group in Germany covered approxi

file G-5, SHAEF records, RG 165, NA. See also SHAEF, directive, May 26, 1944, file AGO14.1-GE-AGM, ibid. 40 Folder 751/1/3, MFAA Files, RG 239, NA.

41 Folder 751/Personnel, ibid.; Report of the American Commission, p. 18.

42 Newton, field report, report B, folder/1st Army, and Newton, memo, folder 751, MFAA Files, RG 239, NA; Coles and Weinberg, Civil Affairs, p. 848; Report of the American Commission, p. 106.

mately forty-seven square miles. Yet, only one MFAA officer was assigned to that entire area. As in Italy, MFAA officers worked without official transportation or secretarial assistance. Although thirty clerks and several jeeps were requested, none was ever provided. MFAA officers were left to forage for means of travel as best they could.43

Once the Allies invaded the continent the billeting of troops again became an irritant to the MFAA. Few troops had any appreciation of the value of some of their surroundings and were insensitive to pleas to protect them. For example, upon examining the Chateau de Fremigny at Bouray, built in 1803 for the Count of Montholm, one of Napoleon's generals, the monuments officer found:

The shutters, doors, woodwork, and even the shelves in the library had been ripped out and burned for firewood. A bar had been installed in the main salon as the Chateau had become a trucking company

43 Newton, memo, Dec. 20, 1944, folder 751; Capt. Walker Hancock, field reports, folder/1st Army; Rorimer, field reports, report 6a, folder/Command Z, MFAA Files, RG 239, NA.

headquarters. Antique furniture was being used for laundry racks, nails were driven into the rare oakpaneled walls to hold the latest pin-up, and the inevitable Kilroy graffiti was everywhere etched into the fine paneled walls. A G.I. kitchen had been installed under the library and manuscripts in the library were being used as toilet paper. Art objects of the Chateau such as statues, pieces of inlaid marble, crystal, emblems, various silver and glassware had a way of disappearing overnight despite my watchful eye as the men are constantly favoring the local women of the town with objects from the Chateau.44 The French official in charge complained that the American troops billeted in the chateau had done more damage in the two months they were in residence than the Germans billeted there had done in four years. 45

According to one MFAA officer, exquisite chateaus were "the local honey on the Protected List, where the blasted colonels will certainly billet their troops unless a wandering Monuments officer gets there first with an

44 Rorimer, field reports, report 6b; Posey, field reports, folder/1st Army, ibid.

45 Rorimer, field reports, folder/Command Z, ibid. See also Flames, "Annals of Crime," p. 39.

'Off Limits' sign and his neck stuck out." 46 In their work of overseeing billeting, the monuments officers were like frantic tavernkeepers, trying to assign thousands of men to the right rooms and move them out of others, and, above all, trying to prevent them from pocketing everything in the house. "Off Limits" signs, tried and found to be ineffective, were replaced by "Protected Monuments" notices to discourage souvenir hunters. These signs were of little help. Finally, MFAA officers resorted to marking important buildings with white tape to indicate the presence of unexploded mines.47

The liberation of Paris at the end of August 1944, with the consequent establishment of several large headquarters and numerous supporting units within the city, led to even bigger headaches for MFAA officers. Before a monuments officer could get the order re

46 Rorimer, field reports, folder/Command Z, MFAA Files, RG 239, NA. See also Rorimer, Survival, pp. 105-106. 47 Rorimer, field reports, folder/Command Z, MFAA Files, RG 239, NA; Flames, "Annals of Crime," p. 39.

scinded, antiaircraft-gun implacements were installed on the grounds of the Louvre. When Versailles became the major Allied Headquarters, over-eager aides made the Tuileries Gardens into a bivouac area for service troops, dug slit-trench latrines in the lawn, and made the palace gardens into a parking lot for halfton trucks.48 One of Eisenhower's aides went so far as to take furnishings from the museum of the palace at Versailles to decorate the general's office. Only by a direct protest to the general was the MFAA officer able to have the materials returned.49

The situation became even worse when the Allies drove into Germany. Whatever inhibitions there had been regarding the use of property and the destruction of artistic works in Allied territory, they no longer applied. The military bore little or no respect for German works of art. Monuments were smashed,

48 Rorimer, field reports, folder/Command Z, MFAA Files, RG 239, NA; Hancock, field reports, folder/Hancock, ibid. 49 Hancock, ibid.

houses looted, buildings bulldozed, and paintings and statues destroyed.50 MFAA officers who followed the Allies into Germany became obituary writers:

Cologne, nearly 80 percent destroyed including the famous Romanesque landmark St. Maria ... Kleve, gutted including St. Victor's cathedral, rated the most beautiful Gothic complex of buildings in the Rhineland, Münster, remarkable for its 14-18th century architecture gone for good, Frankfurt . . ., Nuermbourg..., Berlin.51

The nature of the monuments program itself also changed in Germany. MFAA officers were charged not only with the responsibility of protecting and preserving historical monuments and archives but also with matters of restitution and reparation. Intelligence information regarding German looting and the problems of restitution came to overshadow the work of protection and preservation.52 The shift in emphasis was never very popular with MFAA officers, and their continued efforts at preservation often brought them into conflict with the army's G-2 staff. Whereas the MFAA believed it necessary for long-term historical interests to keep German records, files, and archives as much intact as possible, document teams from G-2, which were set up for exploitation, often took what they needed without keeping records and without consideration for other officials or future historians. Fortunately, through the constant efforts of the MFAA Section, much of the irre

50 Deane Keller, field report, June 22, 1945, folder 23, CAD, American Military Government Files, RG 165, NA; Report of the American Commission, pp. 12-14.

51 Cologne: Keller, field report, June 22, 1945, RG 165, NA. For other cities, see various field reports, various dates, MFAA Files, RG 239, NA.

52 Hammond, field report, Mar. 3, 1945, folder/Hammond, ibid. In general, Allied propaganda to the contrary, the Germans were found to have respected public art collections, depositories, and monuments as well as the Allies had. Although they did not hesitate to blow up buildings if they thought the advancing Allies would use them, and some private collections were pillaged, the Kunstschutz (German Commission for the Protection of Works of Art in the Occupied Countries) was comprised of reputable scholars and took its responsibilities seriously. It was not engaged in

placeable German documentary material was maintained intact.53

While the overall policy regarding the preservation of the treasures of Europe was both feasible and worthy of application, the actual achievements of the commission and the MFAA officers were minimal.54 With little real authority, hampered by military attitudes, priorities, lack of planning and cooperation, and beset by a host of field problems, the program was enfeebled from the start, designed more for propaganda value than as an effective preservation program.

The mass of material gathered by the MFAA and the Roberts Commission vividly documents the cultural loss suffered by western man in the Second World War. 55 But no photographs, however veracious, and no descriptions, however detailed, can-even in their totality-portray more than a small part of the devastating effect the war had on Europe's cultural heritage. Necessarily, the armed forces of the United States and its allies damaged priceless heirlooms of civilization. Thus, while a war fought for the betterment of mankind and the preservation of civilization might have called for more insistent care of its monuments and artworks, the dilemma of having to imperil civilization in order to “save” it remains.

looting to any large extent. Unfortunately, the Kunstschutz, like its American counterpart, was continually hampered in its efforts by the needs of the military. See Hammond, letter to the American commission, Jan. 4, 1946, ibid.

53 See Oliver W. Holmes, "The National Archives and the Protection of Records in War Areas," American Archivist 9 (Apr. 1946): 110-127; and Ernst Posner, "Public Records Under Military Occupation," American Historical Review 49 (Jan. 1944): 213-227.

54 Not even this meager effort was made in the Far East. With few American experts available and disinterest on the part of the military, efforts to preserve cultural treasures of the Far East were ineffectual, indeed. See Hammond, memo, Mar. 2, 1945, folder/Hammond, MFAA Files, RG 239, NA; and Holmes, "The National Archives," p. 116.

55 Concerning overall results in Europe, see William Galtman, memo, "Measures for the Protection of Works of Art and Ancient Monuments," DS 840.403/9, RG 59, NA; Report of the American Commission, pp. 136-137; and CAD, General Report 36, RG 165, NA.

FRANK G. BURKE

On December 22, 1974, President Ford signed Public Law 93-536, which renamed the fortyyear-old National Historical Publications Commission the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. More important, the act increased the commission's authorized funds to $4 million annually and its membership from thirteen to seventeenadding two representatives from the Society of American Archivists and two from the American Association for State and Local History. The commission has had authority to promote the collection, arrangement, description, and preservation of manuscripts in the United States since enactment of the Federal Records Act of 1950. While the commission's mandate has not changed, its financial support has been doubled as a result of the new act, and the commission can now move into areas it had not been able to enter earlier.

Since 1964 it has supported letterpress and microfilm publication of papers of notable persons, corporations, and organizations by means of grants to sponsoring institutions. Evaluation of projects was based upon many

Beginning with the Fall issue, Prologue will carry a regular section devoted to the activities of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

considerations but especially on the potential research value of the papers to be published. With the additional funding authorized by the new law, however, the earlier procedure is no longer adequate. Requests for grants will now be received from a greater variety of archival and historical institutions throughout the country. Projects for which funds may be sought range from the basic preservation of documents in danger of deteriorating because of poor storage facilities to the production of sophisticated finding aids. Funding requests are expected from large state historical societies as well as from communities with small museums having only a few hundred original documents. On-site inspection, analysis, and technical judgment will be used in many cases to determine the type of program needed.

In anticipation of increased grant applications of broadly diverse character, the commission has taken steps to improve its ability to evaluate and analyze them. It will enlist the aid of archivists and manuscript curators throughout the country in a system that uses state board members as reviewers and information sources. In each state, a person appointed by the governor and assisted by a board of professionals and concerned nonprofessionals will cooperate with the commission in administering the grant program.