the The Nazis carried out systematic and systematic looting of works of art on a massive scale – It is estimated that it could be 600,000-, It was stolen mainly from Jews who fled or were deported and killed in the campsbut also stolen from the churches, museums and private collections of all the European countries he conquered, Including the Louvre.
Hitler, who had never been more than a humble postcard painter who was rejected at the Academy of Fine Arts, as a young man, planned to build a huge museum in the Austrian city of Linz that would collect what would be the Führer’s collection, with those valuable works, including Many works by Picasso, Monet, Cezanne, Matisse, Rodin, Botticelli or Chagall.
A large number were appropriated by such Nazi leaders as Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler. At the end of the war, a group of Allied experts, the “Monuments Men”, whose works mirrored the cinema, tried to save it and prevent its expected destruction by the Nazis in the face of imminent defeat. Today it is estimated that between 10,000 and 110,000 have not yet been returned to their rightful owners, many already dead, or to their heirs.
A famous case was that valuable collection of more than 1,200 works discovered in 2012 in the old man’s home. Cornelius GurlittAccording to him, he inherited from his father a merchant authorized by the Nazis to sell confiscated goods.
