Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis (16 page)

The following morning, wearing a suit and tie that belonged to his much shorter assistant, Wolff arrived for the audience with the pope. Dollmann accompanied him. The interlocutor, Father Pankratius Pfeiffer, explained that although the Holy Father wouldn’t himself ask, he did hope for the release of a leftist youth leader, son of a well-known lawyer and a personal friend to the pope, who had been arrested and sentenced to death. As head of the German police in Italy, Wolff surely would be prepared to demonstrate his good faith by interceding. (Indeed, Wolff made the arrangements; almost four weeks later, the man was released to the custody of Father Pfeiffer.)

When Wolff entered the papal antechamber, Father Pfeiffer made the formal introduction and then withdrew; the audience commenced. During the course of their conversation, Wolff and the pope discussed the idea of a negotiated peace between the Germans and the Allies. Wolff “expressed my firm belief to see in him—the Pope—the indicated person to begin a relationship with the Western powers with the objective of anticipating the end of this war, which had now become pointless.” Wolff knew this was dangerous. He noted that, “for the objective just expressed . . . I would be ready to put my own life and that of my relatives at stake.”

It had long been the ambition of the Holy Father to act as a magnanimous peace negotiator to the warring parties. During their January 1943 conference in Casablanca, however, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill had announced that the only basis for ending the war would be “unconditional surrender.” This stance left no room for potential intermediaries. Roosevelt later explained the importance of this policy during a radio address drawing attention to “the Axis propagandist[s] [who] are trying all of their old tricks in order to divide the United Nations. . . . In our uncompromising policy we mean no harm to the common people of the Axis nations. But we do mean to impose punishment and retribution in full upon their guilty, barbaric leaders.”

Both Wolff and the Holy Father agreed that “unconditional surrender” was a mistake, albeit for differing reasons. Pope Pius XII called the policy “an obstacle on the path to peace.” From Wolff’s perspective, the whole notion of “punishment and retribution” offered nothing but a lengthy prison sentence—or a hangman’s noose—for senior SS officials like himself.

This extraordinary meeting lasted about an hour. At its conclusion, Wolff faced the pope and, as he later recalled, “instinctively raised my arm” in a Nazi salute. “For years I had lost the habit of wearing civilian clothes, and that happened so spontaneously, as a gesture of respect. At that point, Father Pfeiffer took my arm and said that the Pope would have understood it in the right way.”

*
The original list had 330 names. However, the Germans miscounted, and five extra men were also executed.

12

LIFE ON THE ROAD

LATE MAY–JUNE 1944

T
he entrenched conflict at Monte Cassino and Anzio tethered the Monuments Men to their desks in Naples. The group—including Deane Keller, Fred Hartt, Ernest DeWald, and Perry Cott—grew increasingly anxious despite the transformation of Naples into a rest and recreation center. For soldiers on leave, and those stationed there, Naples had become “a fairyland of silver and gold and great happiness. . . . You could buy things in the shops; you could get drunk; you could have a woman; you could hear music.” In a city where those lucky enough to find work often earned just 60 lire a day (about 60 cents), many women resorted to selling themselves, charging up to 2,000 lire a night ($20). And quite successful they were: at one point, more than ten percent of Allied soldiers in Italy had a venereal disease, which some treated with black-market penicillin.

Keller spent most nights in Naples alone. While he knew a lot about art history, he preferred the process of creating art rather than endlessly analyzing and discussing it. But many of his fellow Monuments officers enjoyed such conversation. “My patience has been sorely tried today,” he wrote his parents. “Often I have to think of Michelangelo and how bad he strove to keep on an even keel. Why God made me a painter I don’t know.” His letter to Kathy added the missing detail: “Two of my British Capt. companions discussed some God Damn draperies like a couple of fairies in my office today.” “If I have to pass the days with a couple of jonquils
*
I’ll be glad to go anywhere—just to get away from them.”

On May 18, Allied Forces finally captured the Abbey of Monte Cassino and its remaining defenders, sixteen severely wounded German troops and two orderlies left behind by their fellow soldiers. When the cost of “victory” was calculated, the numbers did resemble the ghastly battles of World War I: fifty-five thousand Allied casualties, and some twenty thousand dead and wounded Germans.

Monuments officer Norman Newton reached the heavily mined and booby-trapped abbey, still under fire from German mortars, just hours after the remaining Germans had been driven out. While the west end of the abbey had suffered some damage, the sides facing the town of Cassino had been “mostly leveled to ground floor. . . . Statue of St. Benedict is headless but otherwise intact.” The basilica was almost gone, but he noted: “Reconstruction of entire Abbey is possible although much is now only heap of pulverized rubble and dust.”

While Monuments officers read Newton’s report with dismay, most had agreed with the decision to bomb the abbey. Deputy Director John Bryan Ward-Perkins, who originally fought to save the building, felt differently upon arriving at the battlefield, observing that “the situation of the Allied troops in the ruins of Cassino was a brutal one. . . . For morale alone I believe the Abby had to go.”
^†
If the battles for Rome, Siena, Florence, and Pisa proved even a fraction as destructive as the fight for Monte Cassino, the Monuments officers faced a harrowing and tragic mission ahead.

Successes at Monte Cassino and Anzio enabled Allied forces to begin their drive toward Rome. Plans called for most Monuments officers to be transferred to the newly liberated regions of Italy as each came under Allied control. Several received new assignments. Keller’s exceeded all expectation: he would be the lone Monuments officer attached to U.S. Fifth Army Allied Military Government.

Fifth Army included soldiers from more than a dozen nations, including Brazil, France, India, New Zealand, North Africa, and Poland. Only one-third were American. British troops accounted for another third. After frontline troops advanced from conquered territory, Fifth Army Civil Affairs officers established Military Government operations in newly occupied areas to stabilize day-to-day life and assist locals in rebuilding their towns. Keller would be Fifth Army’s first responder, evaluating and reporting on the conditions of the monuments of every conquered town on the way to Rome and beyond. Norman Newton received the same assignment, representing the British Eighth Army.

On May 19, the night before departing Naples to join Fifth Army, Keller held up the sleeve of his uniform to the small light near his bunk. In one of his March letters he had written: “I haven’t worn my ribbon or shoulder patch yet. Don’t know when I will. I feel the boys at [the] front are the ones to wear the stuff. Maybe some day I’ll feel I earned it.” Now, two months later, on the eve of his march toward Rome, Keller thought it was time.

As he pulled the needle through, Keller couldn’t help but be impressed with his sewing skill. The shoulder patch had a large white
A
standing like stilts over a white
5
on a field of blue, overlaid on a red patch. The field of blue was actually a silhouette of a mosque—a reminder that Fifth Army had been activated in the French Moroccan town of Oujda. The shoulder patch wasn’t regulation issue—he had bought it on the streets of Naples—but it would do.

This drawing by Deane Keller shows him sewing a Fifth Army patch on his uniform. This, and dozens of others he drew for his son, Dino, created a lasting bond between father and son. [Deane Keller Papers, Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University]

NINE DAYS INTO
his new assignment, Keller drew an army jeep on a piece of V-Mail stationery alongside a message to his three-year-old son.
*
“Kiss Mommie for me. You are a good boy and Daddy loves you—good bye now—love from Daddy.”

Since his deployment, he had continuously tried to parent Dino from afar. In April, he began sending him personalized cartoons. The boy could not write yet, but drawing became their way of communicating, a jointly understood language. This shared love of drawing would come to define their relationship.

Keller slept in a different place almost every night. That’s how it was with Fifth Army, and, as he explained to Kathy, it suited him just fine. “I have been as happy in my work in this outfit as I can be on this side. . . . I feel that my job is a great honor.” Keller rarely used the word
happy
in his letters. Sense of purpose alone seemed to buoy his spirits. On the long rides, he prepared for each new assignment: inspect all monuments in a given region, make an initial assessment of damage, take necessary measures to protect monuments and cultural treasures from further harm, and then move on to the next town. Usually he would arrive within hours of its liberation.

While most outfits proved helpful, a few officers and GIs sometimes referred to the Monuments Men as “mousy Venus Fixers.” Even General John Hilldring, who as Chief of Civil Affairs would later become a strong supporter of the mission of the Monuments Men, once referred to them as the “ ‘scholarly mouse’ type . . . rambling noiselessly around the Mediterranean Theater. . . . they didn’t do a damn bit of good, because the word didn’t get down to the troops what General Eisenhower wanted.” Keller knew that only consistent, hard work would debunk the notion that Monuments officers were in Italy for something more than some kind of surreal art tour.

Keller had departed Naples for his new assignment on May 20 and was driven thirty-five miles north to Fifth Army AMG Headquarters, in Sparanise, “a tent city in olive groves.” When he arrived, the army issued him the most critical part of his gear: a “general purpose” vehicle, whose first two initials—GP—had evolved into the nickname “jeep,” or so some said. One person commented that
jeep
“sounded more like a noise than a name” for a vehicle. “Good Lord, I don’t think we could continue the war without the jeep,” wrote Ernie Pyle, America’s most popular war correspondent. “It does everything. It goes everywhere. It’s as faithful as a dog, strong as a mule, and as agile as a goat. It constantly carries twice what it was designed for, and keeps on going.”

Keller received in a day what Mason Hammond had sought for seven months: reliable transportation. There would be no jury-rigged civilian vehicles—no “Hammond’s Peril.” Eleven feet long, five feet wide, and three feet high, the jeep, with its sixty-horsepower manual transmission, was anything but a vehicle of luxury. But to Deane Keller it was empowering.

Eighth Army’s liberation of Cassino had freed up most of Fifth Army to advance northwest into the high country. The mountainous region, with its sharply curved roads and steep valleys, encouraged the same ambush-and-retreat strategy so effectively employed by German forces south of Cassino. As a student at the American Academy in Rome some eighteen years earlier, Keller had traveled these roads. He knew that the 130-odd-mile stretch to Rome linked dozens of small towns, each with its own rich history, monuments, and cultural treasures. If the shattered remains he had already passed were any indication, his path to Rome—the first Italian city to captivate him—was going to be a dissonant mixture of “beauty and desolation.”

Keller’s first official assignment with Fifth Army began the following day at the seaside town of Gaeta, thirty-four miles from camp.

The road was bumpy and dusty. . . . The roads were hardly cleared of rubble—just enough to let a 6 x 6 by. All other vehicles except 10 ton wreckers with carriers (tanks) could make it. Wires were down; mine sweeping squads were working over the ditches on either side of the road. “Mines swept + 4 feet” signs, black on yellow, were spaced at intervals. MPs and all sorts of military were parked on the route. The jeep was open and at the Light Line the windshield had to go down as the glare would make it a fair target.

After passing a bend in the coastline road, Keller observed a distressing scene. Many of the buildings in Gaeta had been damaged by shelling and bombing, rendering numerous streets impassable. Beaches resembled a maze of barbed wire. The town’s main water supply had been destroyed. Allied troops had turned inland, and in their wake, several hundred Italian civilians had stumbled out into the streets, filthy and starving. Deane Keller, portrait painter, was trained in the art of expression, but he had never witnessed anything like Gaeta. These people were lost.

At the side of the main road, a Civil Affairs officer was waiting with salt for the local baker, but there was no vehicle to deliver it. Keller and his driver, an officer of the Carabinieri, Giuseppe de Gregorio, arrived on the scene. Keller understood that bread in Italy wasn’t just peasant food: it was a symbol, a sacrament. “A middle-class Italian told me he could not bear to see a child drop a piece on the floor and spoil it for eating. To throw away bread is worse than swearing.” Keller didn’t hesitate; they loaded the jeep and drove the baking supplies into town.

He lugged pipe so the town’s engineers could repair the main water works, then he delivered the freshly baked bread to a distribution point in the town square. Keller watched the Italians eat. These were defeated people, stunned and fearful. Many were refugees from the south, cut off for weeks from their families and friends. Some were children. Some were badly wounded. “When I see a little boy Deane’s age with one leg, the other blown off by a bomb. . . . It makes me feel terrible. I got sick to my stomach and sick at heart.” Quite a few, he would learn, had been living in caves, scavenging insects and berries from the hills. The farms had been so thickly mined by the Germans that the fields were unworkable. There was nothing else to eat.

The instructions from Brigadier General Edgar Hume, commander of Allied Military Government in Italy, had been clear: provide direction, but make the local population do the work. In Gaeta, Keller realized the wisdom of that advice. The Italians needed something to do, some way to participate not only in rebuilding their lives but also in rebuilding their pride. Seeing the broken faces, among the crowd quietly eating their bread, reinforced the wisdom of Hume’s advice.

Finding someone who knew what had happened to the town was essential. While Keller listened to the local priest, Giuseppe carefully maneuvered through the town’s rutted and mine-strewn streets. Local knowledge not only proved essential to Keller’s preservation mission, it also kept him alive.

Keller heard a story that would become all too familiar in his inspections of other small towns. It began in September 1943 with the German occupation. In early May 1944, shortly before Allied forces had captured Cassino, German troops began to dig trenches. After chopping down trees to create roadblocks, they positioned artillery and heavy guns. Looting of shops, churches, museums, and homes often followed. Civilians scattered to the hills, or huddled in cramped basements, knowing the battle neared. A tense silence followed until the first of the Allied bombs, then artillery, and finally the German retreat, fighting backward from building to building, cutting electrical lines and blowing up bridges as they fled.

Shelling from the big guns of the Allies crumbled the buildings. The fighting intensified, with bodies from both sides lying facedown along the road, or hanging lifeless out of windows. Small arms and machine-gun fire would crackle through the narrow streets. And then it would be over. It might take a couple of days or only a couple of hours, but the battle would rise from nothing and disappear just as completely, leaving behind wounded and dead soldiers, blistered buildings, and terrified civilians. The people would crawl out of their churches or their caves, wherever they had been hiding, and wander aimlessly among the ruins, dazed and silent.