With events as well-chronicled as World War II, it is inevitable that historians will tire of covering the big battles and turn their inquisitive powers upon a phenomenon's more eccentric incidents. All spectacular events have them, bizarre chapters in which the insanity of war produces some truly strange episodes. Most of these chapters are lost to the vicissitudes of time, but not this war, not this conflict which redefined a world... Mr. Kirkpatrick's encapsulation of one of the strangest incidents in World War II, the German fixation with the trappings of ancient power, is a study in how the examination of a single thread inside the greater tapestry can lead to a better understanding of the big picture.
Throughout the war, it was clear to the Allies, and the world, that the Nazis were looting works of art from conquered territories and relocating them to German museums. Hitler, Mr. Kirkpatrick argues, instigated this systematic theft not just to legitimize his supremacy, he believed that, as the leader of the Aryans on Earth, he and his people owned supposedly Aryan art. The plan was to transform Nuremberg into a capital of art and a monument to the power of the Aryan race, creating a historical link, through time, from the killing of Christ down to Hitler himself. Of the many looted works, Charlemagne's crown jewels had the greatest significance. Even they might have had to take a back seat to the Lance of Destiny, otherwise known as the spear a Roman soldier used to skewer Christ, had it been authenticated. It is likely a fake.
Hitler's Holy Relics follows the efforts of Lieutenant Walter Horn, a German-born, naturalized US citizen who, in 1945, headed up a special unit tasked with recovering the looted works of art so that they could be returned to their proper owners. Horn, who went on to be a medieval scholar and an art historian at UC Berkeley, is one of those heroes, an ordinary, honest soul thrust into extraordinary events. His doggedness and his courage in the face of both German denials and Allied obfuscation, is a study in tenacity and honesty as he attempted to right a horrific wrong. It is a story that needed to be told, not just to give the rightful glory to an everyday hero, but to shed light on the madness of men like Hitler, men who believe so strongly in their vision of the world that there is no crime too heinous, no wrong too horrific, to keep them from reshaping it to fit their own beliefs.
This is a wonderful story told wonderfully well. (4/5 Stars)
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