Photo Gallery A Problematic Nazi Legacy
The Allies were well aware that Nazi bigwigs spent much of World War II stealing art and other valuables from across Europe. In 1945, they set up a collection point for looted art in Munich. Here, an American GI takes a look at some valuable works temporarily stored in a former Nazi air force barracks near Königssee in southern Bavaria.
Much of the art and collectibles amassed by Adolf Hitler and his henchmen fell to the state of Bavaria, where it remains. This diamond-studded watch was given by the Führer to his mistress Eva Braun on the occasion of her 27th birthday on Feb. 6, 1939.
The back of the watch Hitler gave to Eva Braun. The inscription reads: "On February 6, 1939. With all my heart. A. Hitler." Many such trinkets are kept hidden away in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.
Part of a 41-piece set of silverware engraved with Hitler's initials in the possession of Munich's Pinakothek der Moderne. Such trinkets, however, represent only a tiny portion of the Nazi legacy that fell into the lap of postwar Germany.
US soldiers carrying paintings from a priceless collection discovered in an Austrian castle, much of which was to be hung in a giant art museum the Nazis planned to build in Linz. Postwar Germany showed (and continues to show) little desire to find out who the paintings originally belonged to.
A photo from Jan. 13, 1938 showing Hermann Göring admiring a painting given to him by Adolf Hitler on the occasion of his 45th birthday. The treatment of the gigantic art collections of Hitler, Göring, Chancellery head and Hitler confidant Martin Bormann and other Nazi top brass counts as a particularly macabre chapter in Germany's efforts to come to terms with its Third Reich past.
Much of the art looted by the Nazis ended up stored in Bavaria at the end of the war. But not all. In this May 3, 1945 image, a US soldier looks at a painting that had been stashed by the Nazis in a salt mine near Heilbronn.
