Big Screen, Big Crucibles VIII: The Monuments Men

Warwick Fairfax:
Jeffries here, he absolutely buys into the vision that Stokes and the Monuments Men are carrying out. He is prepared to give his life for this vision of preserving artworks and civilization. I mean, he went there to try and save and protect the statue, that Madonna and Child. He must have known the chance of success is probably high, or certainly in the balance of just one man against however many Nazi troops there are there.

Gary Schneeberger:
In this final episode of our summer series Big Screen, Big Crucibles, we discuss the film The Monuments Men. That’s the name given during World War II to the ragtag team of art historians and curators who form a unit to recover stolen art before Hitler destroys it. The mission becomes urgent and their crucibles more difficult when they learn of Hitler’s order to destroy the artwork if the Third Reich falls, and the Russians start looking to grab some of the spoils for themselves.
Well, welcome friends to this final episode of this year’s summer series of Beyond the Crucible, which we have called Big Screen, Big Crucibles. Why? Because they’re about movies, big screen, and because as you’ll discover in this episode, the final episode, the eighth episode, as all of them, but this one in particular has some big crucibles in it that people go through and some big lessons we all can learn from what those characters go through.
We have been doing this now, as I said, this is the eighth week and we’re taking a look at films because they have a wide variety of crucibles is what we’ve been doing. The films that we’ve covered, including this one, has a wide degree of crucibles in it, and insightful lessons of how you can navigate your own, bounce back from your crucibles, and cast a vision for moving beyond your crucibles. It helps you get through your crucibles, and it helps you get past your crucibles, that’s what we’re hoping comes out of the movies that we’re covering.
And this week, our final movie, film number eight, is The Monuments Men. The movie came out in 2014, and here’s the synopsis. Inside baseball term for you guys, I worked in Hollywood for three years, this is called a log line. It’s the most succinct summary of a film possible, and here it is for The Monuments Men. During World War II, a ragtag team of art historians and curators form a unit to recover stolen art before Hitler destroys it. The mission becomes urgent when they learn of Hitler’s order to destroy the artwork if the Third Reich falls.
That is what we’re going to be talking about here, that’s some pretty weighty stuff. We saved, dare I say, the best for last. We saved some really, really good crucibles, good examples of crucibles that will help you navigate your way through yours. And Warwick, before we delve into the crucibles, the characters in the film phase, but before I go to the question I’ve asked you for every episode before this, I just want to share a couple of bits of trivia I put together off of the films and see if you can guess close to where we are. So we covered, this is the eighth film. We’ve covered eight films in this series. How long do you think those movies stacked end to end are?

Warwick Fairfax:
Well, I think each movie was probably a couple hours, so it would have to be at least 16 hours. I don’t know, 17, 18 hours?

Gary Schneeberger:
Look at you. 17 hours and 31 minutes, and that’s mostly because one of the films was Les Miserables, which was two and a half or more hours long. But here’s another interesting fact about these movies, and it’s funny because we have not talked about the actors who play the characters in these films. We’ve only talked about the characters that are being played. But it’s interesting to know, folks, that the quality of these films that we’re talking about, these films have in them, these eight films that we’re covering in this series have in them eight Academy Award-winning actors or actresses. So in front of the camera, that doesn’t even count the Oscar winners behind the camera. These are just in front of the camera, the folks who are doing the acting. That pretty much is a good sign of the quality of the kind of films we’ve been talking about, isn’t it?

Warwick Fairfax:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, these are incredible movies with incredible actors. We’ll hear more about this particular movie and George Clooney and what incredible performance he puts in this movie. But every movie we’ve discussed with great actors and actresses, and yeah, these are fabulous movies to discuss.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and Mr. Clooney is in fact one of those Oscar winners from in front of the camera as a best supporting actor Oscar winner several years back. All right, now to the question that always begins these episodes of our summer series, before we get into the crucibles that the characters in the film face, let’s talk one last time here in the eighth episode about why we have come back again to films. This is the third time we’ve done a summer series that’s focused on films a little bit different each time, but why again are we in the movie theater? Why again, are we looking at films as an example of what crucibles look like when we experience them and how you can get past them?

Warwick Fairfax:
Gary, we both love movies, but it’s more than the fact that we love movies, which we do, it’s in this particular series as well as the last several series. We have looked at movies through a Beyond the Crucible lens, and that’s something that you’ve certainly mentioned as you mentioned a lot of these or some of these movies you’ve worked on in Hollywood.

Gary Schneeberger:
Including this one.

Warwick Fairfax:
Which is fabulous. And so movies typically portray a protagonist that is facing significant challenges that are seeking to overcome. So last few seasons, if you will, last few years we’ve covered movie superheroes, sports heroes, historical heroes, and indeed last year, we covered movies from the American Film Institute’s Top 100 movies.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
This year we thought we’d look at some of the very best movies where we had people overcoming significant crucibles to lead lives of significance, lives on purpose dedicated as serving others, and these are all great movies with enormous challenges, and we can learn so much from how they overcame these challenges, how they managed to turn their worst day into a life of significance from trial to triumph, so to speak.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and one of the things, folks, now that we’re finishing the series, one of the things that I think makes it evident that the characters in these films do indeed go through crucibles just like me and you, is that of the eight movies, including this one, seven of them are based on a true story. The first words you see on the screen when it comes up, right, when they fade in based on a true story. Seven of the eight films including this one, the one that wasn’t was based on true events and that it was a French Revolution, but it was Les Miserables. So these movies, one of the reasons they reveal so much about crucibles and how we get past them is that they’re all based on people who have done that very thing. That’s where the lessons get extracted from.
This eighth film that we’re taking a look at, The Monuments Men, is set in 1943. That’s when it begins. Anyway, World War II is still going on, and the Nazis are still planning on establishing what they’re calling the Thousand-Year Reich. But the Allies continue to make advances in Italy and the war is beginning to turn, this is not Hitler at his strongest, the Nazis at their strongest, the war is starting to turn a bit. Paris though is still under Nazi control and it’s pretty strong Nazi control. We see Hermann Göring, one of Adolf Hitler’s right-hand men, arriving at an art gallery that has been under Nazi control, it seems for some time.
Göring visits Nazi officer Viktor Stahl, who is apparently in charge of the art gallery that has been taken over and he shows him paintings, Stahl does, shows Göring paintings, painting after painting that the Nazis have seized as their spoils of war. We don’t yet know why the Nazis are so obsessed with history’s greatest art, but we will find out why. Warwick, as Göring goes through all the art in the building, which Stahl has arranged for him, we also meet Claire Simone, a Parisian woman who’s clearly working against her will for Stahl. While we don’t know everything that’s going on yet, we do learn that Claire is a very unwilling participant in it. Talk about what we see in this scene as it sets up what we’re going to see in The Monuments Men.

Warwick Fairfax:
There is a moment of just small resistance. Sometimes in life you can’t resist as much as you’d like to, but there is small acts that says, “I’m not good with this. I’m going to do something small that nobody will ever notice, but at least I’m doing something.” So what does she do? Stahl asks for champagne. Okay, here he is with Reichsmarschall Göring, some very esteemed person. Like anybody in this situation, he wants to put on a good show, so he asked for champagne. So off Claire goes to get some champagne and she spits in the champagne glass for Stahl. I don’t know if she spits in Göring, but she certainly does for Stahl. This clearly shows that she’s not a collaborator because there were some French people that were collaborators but not her.
And so we learn in the scene that, clearly, the Nazis are obsessed with artworks. I mean, if they weren’t, why would they appoint some Nazi officer to look over the museum? I mean, what would be the point? But he is looking over it and Göring is there visiting this art museum. He’s wondering, “Okay, I want to take a painting for Hitler,” and I’m sure he’ll take some for himself at some point I would imagine. Maybe others, we don’t know, but it does indicate what the Nazis are thinking. So it really shows that the Nazis are obsessed with artworks that they’ve captured throughout Europe and the Claire, in her own small way, at least at the moment, it feels like it’s small, we’ll learn it’s not as small as we think

Gary Schneeberger:
Right, good foreshadowing.

Warwick Fairfax:
She’s doing what she can to resist. Exactly.

Gary Schneeberger:
The scene then shifts and we find out even more. The scene shifts to Washington, DC where Frank Stokes is speaking from a podium to President Roosevelt in the audience and other VIPs who are with the President. He’s not there to advise the president on how to win the war, but how not to lose the culture. He’s not talking about here’s how you win the war. He’s talking about a subject more important to him, or as important to him I should say, which is how do you not lose the culture, the history, right? He wants to sure that the world, not just America, the world doesn’t lose the history that could be sacrificed in what will be required to win the war. Warwick, this is a scene in which Stokes lays out a mission for something he deems as important as freeing civilization from Nazi rule. His mission is to save his words, the very foundations of modern society. What does he mean by that?

Warwick Fairfax:
Frank Stokes, as we see in this early scene, has a very tough task to persuade Roosevelt that amid all the challenges of World War II, that saving artworks is important. And he tells Roosevelt, “We’re at a point in this war where we are at the most dangerous point for artworks,” and he gives an illustration with the Ghent Altarpiece in Belgium that is a defining work at the Catholic Church which the Nazis have stolen. Stokes says, “We will win this war, but a high process will be paid if the foundations of Western society are destroyed.” So the Allies are converging from the east with Russia from the west with the rest of the Allies, and Stokes wonders, “Who will make sure the Statue of David is still standing, or that Mona Lisa is still smiling?” I mean, he is presenting a convincing case very well, and he says, “Who would be their protector, the Mona Lisa and the statue of David?”
So Stokes has won over Roosevelt and Roosevelt says, “This is a compelling argument,” and asks what he would suggest, what’s next? Stokes says he wants to pull together scholars to identify the great works, including young art scholars and obviously to protect them. Just think about the mission that Frank Stokes is trying to sell to Roosevelt and indeed to the people he’ll encounter on the battlefield as we find, which won’t be easy.
It’s one thing to be Abraham Lincoln and say to the north, “We need to remain United States of America, a union. We need to stop slavery expanding in territories and future states and ultimately to abolish slavery.” That’s something that everybody in the north can get behind. This is a mission worth dying for, to save the union and abolish slavery. People get that.
But to say, okay, maybe people will need to die to save artworks. It’s like, okay, artworks? That’s a tougher sell. And so just to sell Roosevelt was amazing, but as we’ll find this mission will be very tough because there’ll be a lot of people that will be like, “I don’t get it. Saving artworks, there are more important things than artworks.” So Frank Stokes has signed up for an incredibly difficult mission that is not going to be an easy one and won’t be easy to get people to convince it’s important. This is a tough one.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right, and one of the reasons it’s not going to be easy, he says, as you pointed out, he wants art scholars, but young art scholars, well, guess what? Most of the young art scholars and everybody and all the other young people are fighting the war.

Warwick Fairfax:
Right.

Gary Schneeberger:
So that’s going to be a tough task for him as he goes forward. But yet Stokes is officially given that mission, that very mission by Roosevelt. He’s tasked with building a unit, not to fight the Nazis, but to rescue precious art from the fight against the Nazis. And he puts together, even though they’re not young art scholars perhaps, he puts together a multitalented, multinational team, doesn’t he? What makes these men who come to be known as the Monuments Men, what makes them unlikely heroes?

Warwick Fairfax:
We see it’s March 1944, and Stokes’s first stop is to enlist James Granger. He is in New York. He’s one of the curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so that’s the first person he gets. Then he gets on board Donald Jeffries, who’s English. We learn that he has a drinking problem and he almost went to jail and he’s had a tough life, maybe made some wrong choices, but is grateful for an opportunity from Stokes. And then we see them enlisting Stokes and Granger, Richard Campbell, who’s an architect in New York. They then get hold of Walter Garfield, who’s a sculptor.
Next, they sign up Sam Epstein, who is Jewish. He was born in Germany, lives in New Jersey, will later find out that he actually grew up until being a teenager in Germany, fluent in German, and comes to the US in 1938 so he’ll prove to be very valuable. Then we have Jean-Claude Clermont who studied at the School of Fine Arts and is French. And then finally, we see them enlist Preston Savitz, who’s a theater director. So from architect, theater director, art curator, I mean sculptor, this is a diverse group of people and they may be experts at their field, but they’re different personalities, different ages as we’ll find different levels of fitness as they go through basic training.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
So it’s quite a diverse group of people.

Gary Schneeberger:
And they do go through basic training, and there’s some funny scenes in there. One of them involves, I believe it’s not Campbell, it’s Walter Garfield. And he’s going through some drill where he is got to crawl like he’s crawling through right under those ropes. And Stokes comes up and says, “Hey, how are you doing?”
He says, “I’m doing fine, except I’m crawling through the mud and they’re shooting blanks over my head.”
And they go, “Are you sure they’re blanks?”
And one of the guys who knows better says, “Oh no, those aren’t blanks,” they’re shooting live rounds over their heads as they’re going through it.
These guys are not guys who are accustomed to these sorts of things, this kind of environment, the wartime environment, but yet they’re doing it because they believe this mission to be very, very important. So the men discover at a briefing that Hitler’s passion for the great works of art stems, at least in part from his own failed attempts at painting, right? They’re getting briefed on what’s inside Hitler’s lust for these artworks, and they find out that he had a failed attempt at painting. The team has an epiphany. The Nazis are stealing the art and they’re hiding it somewhere, where this revelation expands the mission of the team, now known as the Monuments Men. Their first goal was to keep war from destroying great buildings and great art, and now it’s added to their mission, the idea of needing to save it from being stolen, these artworks. How does that make the stakes even higher? And they were already pretty high. How does that make the stakes even higher as they get deployed on their mission?

Warwick Fairfax:
It turns out that Adolf Hitler was actually a failed art student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Hitler, who’s actually from Austria, is planning on building the Führer Museum in his hometown of Linz in Austria. And we’ll see at one point that Hitler looks over this vast model of this museum and other buildings, and it’s a whole landscaped, massive edifice to his glory basically. And it would be one of the biggest museums in the world. It would include stealing art from all over: Amsterdam, Warsaw, Paris, all over Europe. And so this shows that Hitler has this grand plan to steal the most priceless and valuable artworks in Europe to pull together in this museum.
I mean, this, as you say, does show how high the stakes are for the Monuments Men. It’s not just about stopping these artworks being destroyed. It’s clear that Hitler wants to steal them and take them and hide them, and will they ever be found again? So the stakes are certainly high. And now we move on to an early scene that shows just how challenging this mission is, and support on the ground is not easy. There might’ve been a director from on the high from President Roosevelt, but the average commander in the field is not with the program, and this is understandable.
It’s July 1944, after D-Day, we see some of the Monuments Men are landing in Normandy, France, and first stop is to talk to the local American forces commander about their mission. And this commander is irate. He says basically, “I have no interest in preserving buildings, artworks, and church towers. I mean, I’m trying to save my troops. I’m trying to capture territory, free Europe from the tyranny of the Nazis.” I mean, that’s implicit in what he’s saying.
So this is a challenging task because it’s tough enough to figure out where the Nazis have taken the artworks, but then they’re really not going to get much help of any from most of the local commanders that they talk to, so how are they meant to accomplish this? It’s really, as the movie goes on, it just feels like the challenge gets more important and tougher.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
That’s the arc of this movie. The mission gets tougher, and it gets tougher to accomplish. And so that’s what we learn here.

Gary Schneeberger:
And that’s something, folks, if you’re listening and watching this right now, you may have felt that in your own life, in your own situation, not in these circumstances, but we say all the time at Beyond the Crucible, while the circumstances of your crucible may differ from place to place, the emotions of it are the same. And what Warwick just described about running into a brick wall every time you try to move forward with your mission as the Monuments Men do, is probably that those, certainly something that Warwick and I have experienced going through our crucibles. So this is again, why we do movies is because what comes out of the movies are things that happen in real life to us, different circumstances, same emotions.
And as Warwick said, it can feel like a dead end, but newsflash, not a dead end yet for the Monuments Men. Claire discovers that Stahl is taking her gallery’s contents to Germany as the allies approach Paris. She runs to the rail yard to confront him, but can only watch as he departs aboard the train carrying the cargo, all of the artwork that she had in her museum. Now it’s on a train going somewhere, and she knows it’s not somewhere good. This is a crushing moment for Claire, isn’t it, Warwick? She has had to bide her time “working” for the Nazis in the hope of being able to retrieve what they’ve taken, but now they’re gone. Talk about this scene because it’s a moving one.

Warwick Fairfax:
It sure is. Claire has done her best to passively resist the Nazis and what they try to do with the artworks in her museum. You mentioned earlier about small acts of defiance like spitting in that champagne glass at Stahl and feeling like she has to stay in that museum to keep track of what’s happening. And so now, her worst nightmare is coming about. It’s a devastating moment for Claire, her beloved artworks from her museum. They’ve been taken away without much of any hope that she’ll ever see them again. Her life’s mission was to protect the artworks in her museum and parish from the Nazis, and it would seem that her life mission has failed, and she may never see them again. They’ll either be burnt, stolen, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We have to assume that she feels the situation is hopeless, and that she feels completely helpless as she sees Stahl get on that train and the train leave Paris for who knows where.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and there aren’t, right? She doesn’t have any fellow travelers, any people, especially in Nazi-occupied Paris who are going to side with her. In fact, as you said, many believe that she’s helping the Nazis out, not because of being forced to. So very difficult situation for her to be in. And the guys who have been selected for the Monuments Men, now that they’ve gotten through basic training, we don’t know how well they’ve gotten through it, but they’ve gotten through it.
They all have military titles now, but there’s a really important scene, Warwick, where Stokes tells his men, “The Nazis are on the run, but they are taking everything with them.” So he decides that they should split up, and each team should get as close to the front lines as they can to intercept any art they can as it’s being moved. But before they all head out to their individual missions, Stokes speaks to them actually over a radio that they’ve rigged up about how important those missions are. And this is the why of the Monuments Men, this is the why of why these guys are doing what they’re doing. Let’s take a look and a listen to the speech that Stokes gives.

Video:
Monuments Men Radio is about to go live.
I hope we play music.
Calling London, calling London, and all the ships at sea.
We read you loud and clear.
How far will this thing reach?
We’ll find out tomorrow.
Roger that.
Are all the fellas there?
They are.
All right, listen up fellas, because I think you should know the truth as I see it. This mission is never designed to succeed. If they were honest, they would tell us that. They’d tell that with this, many people die, and who cares about art? They’re wrong because it’s exactly what we’re fighting for, for our culture and for our way of life. You can wipe out a generation of people, you can burn their homes to the ground and somehow they’ll still come back. But if you destroy their achievements and their history, then it’s like they never existed. It’s just ash floating. That’s what Hitler wants, and it’s the one thing we simply can’t allow.

Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick, that was a heartfelt speech that lays out the life of significance that the Monuments Men are pursuing, isn’t it?

Warwick Fairfax:
What’s powerful here is that Stokes is really inspiring his team and inspiring a team for any leader is absolutely critical. And when you inspire your team, don’t sugarcoat it, tell them the unvarnished truth.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
This is very challenging. But also tell them, and obviously you want to make sure it’s true or maybe you need to find another mission, but assuming it’s a worthwhile mission, you’ve got to tell your team, “This is critical. It’s important. We need to do whatever we can to accomplish it.” In essence, he’s really saying, Stokes is, that if you destroy people’s achievements, history and culture, you destroy the very fabric of who they are. So he just lays it on the line so well in this clip.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and I’d like to think, right, these are only the Monuments Men who are hearing this on the radio, but I’d like to think if it gets out to more people, if more people hear it, just the way that it’s articulated, it’s so true. It’s a civilizational moment, not just because is the world going to be free or is it going to be under the oppression of the Nazis, but it’s also a civilizational moment because at stake are exactly what Stokes is talking about at stake. What’s hangs in the balance is all of the creations, all of the ingenuity of generations of folks across countries of our civilization. I mean, he makes very clear that’s an important thing to fight for, and I’d like to think that people who would hear that if they were listening in would agree.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it’s such a great point. It occurs to me there’s a modern illustration of how people think that artworks and buildings are a symbol of their civilization, and worth doing anything to preserve them. A few years ago, the great cathedral in Paris, Notre Dame burned.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right, yeah.

Warwick Fairfax:
It was pretty much burnt to the ground. There was hardly anything left. And the president of France, President Macron and all of the French people said, “This is the symbol of what it is to be French. This is the symbol of France. We will do whatever we can to rebuild it.” They had some of the finest artisans in the country and probably elsewhere, all gathered together, united in a mission that might take a while, but we will recreate Notre Dame to what it was before. That’s no easy mission to recreate the splendor of Notre Dame.
If this wasn’t important, people would say, “Macron, why are you spending all this money and energy and time on a building? Aren’t there more important things than art than buildings?” But the people of France, they got it. This is what it is to be French. This is the cathedral of Notre Dame. So even today, people realize when important symbols of culture are destroyed, you have to do whatever you can to preserve it, so yeah.

Gary Schneeberger:
And that is what the Monuments Men are doing here in World War II. As we move on, Granger stays in Paris and meets Claire. He discovers that the French private art collections have all been confiscated by the Nazis. He asks Claire to help him find the missing art, but she doesn’t trust him at this point. She’s worried that the Americans want the art for themselves. Meanwhile, Richard Campbell and Preston Savitz learn that van Eyck’s Ghent art piece has been removed by the priests of Ghent Cathedral for safekeeping, but their truck was stopped, and the panels that compose the art piece are taken. The men are confronted by a German soldier who holds them at gunpoint, but they escape to freedom by giving this guy this gunman, this soldier cigarettes. That’s the universal language of war, cigarettes. That’s how they get away from that.
And Walter Garfield and Jean-Claude Clermont find themselves coming under fire. The two men with no military experience, despite basic training, negotiate with each other over who will fire back and who will draw fire so that the other one can fire back. Who’s going to be a distraction? Who’s going to play offense? Who’s going to play defense? They negotiate over that, and the shooter who is firing at them ends up being, well, not who they expect. Warwick, unpack this scene a little bit for folks, these scenes a little bit for folks so they can understand what’s going on as the Monuments Men move forward.

Warwick Fairfax:
So yeah, I mean, these people that fall in the Monuments Men, they’re art experts, curators, sculptors, architects, theater directors, they’re not soldiers. This isn’t Delta Force. This isn’t SEAL Team Six.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
I mean, far from it, but they’re in war zones. And when you’re in a war zone, you might find the enemy, and they of course encounter conflict with the enemy. In the first of these two scenes, we see Campbell and Savitz, and they’re outside and it’s dark, and they find that there’s this soldier, German soldier, and they have to use quite deft moves to defuse the situation. Now, this is a young German soldier. Nobody wants to be there. Even here, it’s towards the end of the war. And what’s amusing is neither of them smoke, Savitz or Campbell, but they offered this cigarette to this young German kid, really young German soldier, as they have guns pointing at each other.
And then Campbell says, “Well, let’s all sit down.” Somehow sitting down smoking a cigarette feels like less tense.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
Somehow, this defuses the situation and this young soldier goes on his way and they’re happy to just, they’re not going to be pursuing him. They just got to let him go. They’re not military experts here.
In the second scene, we see Garfield and Clermont talking to a priest outside of the church, and suddenly there’s gunfire and they run for cover. Someone is firing at them from across the street in a second story window. So again, these aren’t military people. They’ve got to figure out, well, what do we do? They pinned down, how do we get out of this? Garfield then sets down covering fire while Clermont runs to the building and runs upstairs to the second floor. And what he finds is this German soldier, he’s just a boy. He’s not even a teenager. I don’t know if he’s much above 10 years old. I mean, it is just horrifying. The boy is scared, and obviously he takes him away. And it’s so sad, towards the end of the war, the Germans do indeed use youth, and it was seen maybe even younger than youth. They press them into service, and they don’t always have a whole lot of choice, so it’s just terrific this scene.
These two scenes showed that the Monuments Men, they need to find ways to deal with war, using skills that they may not have, like how to set cover and deal with the threat from this German soldier in the second story window, or using skills that they do have in the case of Campbell and Savitz, using pretty sly and cunning skills with the cigarette to defuse the situation. They’re going to find all sorts of challenges, the Monuments Men, and they’re going to have to find different ways to deal with them.

Gary Schneeberger:
One of the most moving scenes featuring this juxtaposition of men unfamiliar with war thrust into the thick of it comes next when Jeffries heads to Bruges to search for da Vinci’s Madonna and Child, the only work of da Vinci’s to leave Italy during his lifetime. He’s turned away by the Allied officers when he tries to gain entrance to the cathedral, but he later sneaks in. And this scene, Warwick, which I’m going to have you talk about in a second, it really makes very stark the fact that these men who have dedicated their lives to beauty now find themselves in the thick of ugliness. So walk us through this moving and tragic scene.

Warwick Fairfax:
When Jeffries talks to the Allied commanders about saving artworks in Bruges, in particular, the statue of the Madonna and Child, the local commander, he has no interest in helping him. Jeffries is trying to convince them. Look, the Nazis sometimes blow up towns and monuments and buildings that have been around for hundreds of years, and there’s this Madonna and Child statue and the church we’ve got to save. It’s like he wants to save his troops, this local commander, not artworks, but Jeffries is so committed to the vision that he doesn’t really take no for an answer.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
Even though he’s got no help, he is a band of one, and he just sneaks into Bruges and the church where the statue is, and he finds some priests in that church, and together they try to barricade the doors against the Germans, which they know, well, certainly Jeffries believes will certainly come. Jeffries is beside the statue trying to guard it. He has his gun out, his pistol. A German officer comes with his men and they exchange fire. The German officer ends up mortally wounding Jeffries. And as Jeffries lies dying, he writes a letter to his father really talking about from his perspective what a great disappointment has been. He referred to his drinking problem and the effect it’s had in his life.
And he says in this letter, in this just heartbreaking letter to his father, that he longed, “for the chance to be back on the pedestal you so proudly placed me. Perhaps here I can make you proud again here at the foot of our Madonna.”
So Jeffries here, he absolutely buys into the vision that Stokes and the Monuments Men are carrying out. He is prepared to give his life for this vision of preserving artworks and civilization. I mean, he went there to try and save and protect the statue of Madonna and Child. He must have known the chances of success is probably high, or certainly in the balance of just one man against however many Nazi troops there are there, I mean, you had to believe this is not going to be a mission that’s going to be easy. Or you might even have thought, I don’t know whether I’m going to survive this, whether he thought through all this, he must have known that this is not going to be an easy mission. And so in the short term, we can say that he didn’t succeed. We find out that the Madonna and Child statue taken away, that he gave his life for what he believed in.

Gary Schneeberger:
Jeffries.

Warwick Fairfax:
Realized that he’d made mistakes in life, but he longed for a cause that could redeem his legacy. He says early on to Stokes, “Thank you for this opportunity.” He wants redemption. He wants to turn his life in a different direction.
In fact, there’s one scene in which early on Stokes asked him, “How long have you been sober?”
And he says, “Since yesterday, when you told me I’d be on this mission.” It gives him a reason to be sober. What’s the point? I’m here to try and save civilization. Okay, that’s probably a pretty good reason to consider going sober.
So he’s really tried to turn his life around, and his dying words to his father really clearly shows that his life has turned. And we would imagine that his father would’ve been very proud of him when I think we learned that his father hasn’t really had that image of him before, so it’s a touching and moving scene, it’s sad, but it just shows that Jefferies is willing to give his life for this cause, and he wants his legacy to be different than just somebody that made poor choices in life. He does not want to be defined, as we say often here, by his worst day or his worst choices.

Gary Schneeberger:
And we also say often here that redemption is possible, and I think that that’s what Jefferies is hoping for here. He wants redemption from the life that he believes in some ways he wasted that he talks about, and we don’t know how his dad reacted, but I think we know enough about human nature to know that his dad probably did indeed offer that redemption after he found out how his son died.
The movie moves on, Granger and Claire meet again, and she seems to be softening a little bit to him. She takes him to one of the gallery’s warehouses, and he sees stack after stack of discarded artwork. He asks her what it all is. She replies very simply and very sadly, “People’s lives.” Granger, not yet able to reunite classic art with its owners, does a touching, symbolic thing after this scene as this scene continues, doesn’t he?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, he really does. Claire tries to help Granger see the personal tragedy behind these stolen artworks. These aren’t just stolen artworks, they’re people’s stories, people’s legacies, people’s history. And in this warehouse of stolen artworks, when Granger asks, “What is all this?”
As you mentioned, she says, “People’s lives.”
And then Granger asks, “For what people?”
And she says, “Jews, Jewish people.”
This hits Granger hard. In a symbolic gesture, Granger finds one piece of art, finds the place where the owner of that artwork lived. It’s an apartment building. So Granger goes to that apartment and he hangs that painting back on the wall. In some ways, it’s really a fruitless gesture.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
We see tragically a Star of David painted on the wall, which the Nazis did to Jewish people to their homes. This family have undoubtedly been taken to a concentration camp and may well not be alive. So you could say, “Well, what’s Granger doing? He’s putting this painting up in the apartment of people who are probably dead.” But in a sense, that’s not the point. He wants just show… He wants to do something. This gesture graphically depicts Granger’s heart. He wants to unite artworks with their rightful owners. Maybe he won’t be successful with this particular piece of art, but he’s going to do his level best to try. It shows his heart also to Claire.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and after this scene, the movie takes a bit of a narrative detour from the plot of finding art to shining a light on finding hope and humanity amid the devastation of war. It’s the Battle of the Bulge, and Campbell and Savitz are resting and going through care packages from home that they’ve received from home. There’s food and letters, and Campbell’s wife has even sent a record. And as he’s taking a shower, he hears a voice over the speakers in the camp. Savitz has found a record player on which to play it. Warwick, this scene is a good reminder that amid the devastation of any crucible that we’re going through, but especially in the devastation, the crucible of war, there can be compassion and humanity. Talk a little bit about that.

Warwick Fairfax:
As Campbell is taking a shower, we hear his wife who has his family around her, and she starts singing that classic Christmas tune, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and she says Merry Christmas to her husband. So this act of compassion, it greatly moves Campbell, and I’m sure provided a lot of Christmas cheer and encouragement at the whole camp. I mean, everybody knows that classic Christmas tune, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
Hear a voice from home, even if it wasn’t their wives, you still a voice from home. So this scene really shows that amidst devastating and challenging times, the importance of compassion. Yes, the mission is important, but just as active compassion to his buddy, to his fellow traveler, to his fellow Monuments Men, Campbell. It’s just a remarkable thing to do and just shows Savitz’s heart and character.

Gary Schneeberger:
After this, the Allied forces learned that the Russians, who are technically on the side of the Allies in World War II, have created what they call a trophy brigade. And that trophy brigade is to capture and keep some of the art the Nazis have stolen and hang onto it for themselves as “reparations” for what they’ve lost in the war. Granger finds it hard to be upset as Stokes is upset, right? Stokes is very upset by this. Granger finds that a little hard telling Stokes, “Well, Frank, they lost 20 million people in the war.”
With the Russians now looking for the same artworks the Monuments Men are looking for, Stokes tells Granger that they need to know what Claire knows to help them on their quest. Granger tells him, “I’m getting close,” but he’s not there yet. And then Hitler accelerates the pace even further by initiating what’s called a Nero Decree, an order that if he dies, the artworks they have captured should be destroyed.
It’s after all this that Campbell ends up at a German dentist. He chipped his tooth on food that was sent from home, so it’s a funny scene. It starts out a little funny because he chipped his tooth and there’s this not very good it seems, German dentist who’s working on him. The Americans talk about their mission to the dentist, and the dentist says perhaps his nephew can help them about this art business that they’re doing. The nephew turns out to be Stahl, right? Him from the first scenes of the movie, turns out to be Stahl, and the Americans recover a few pieces have already kept for himself from what the Nazis have stolen. I’ve raced through how all those things end, Warwick, take a slower walk through these scenes because they are integral to what happens here in The Monuments Men.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, absolutely. When the Allies learned this Nero Decree, which is really named after Emperor Nero back in the time of Rome, in which you have that famous phrase, “While Nero fiddled, Rome burned,” so the Nero decree is basically people get the idea. It’s like this is not good. If he dies, all the artworks are going to be destroyed, which is really Stokes and the Monuments Men, their worst nightmare. So if this wasn’t bad enough, so they’re worried about they’re racing against time to get these artworks, which if Hitler dies and the world’s coming to an end, then they might all be destroyed. They’re stolen, but maybe it’ll be worth, they’ll be destroyed.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
If that wasn’t bad enough, here we have the Russians coming from the East with their trophy brigade who are going to collect and keep all these stolen artworks. The mission of the Monuments Men is to restore artwork to their rightful owners, the museum and individuals. Clearly, the Russians have a very different agenda. They want it for themselves. Maybe they feel like with having lost 20 million people in the war, which is hard to imagine. I mean, that’s such a massive number, that kind of tragedy, but that’s their mission. So if the mission was tough before, it’s now become exponentially more difficult.
That’s why sometimes in life it feels like, can my crucible get worse? Oh, it does. It gets so much worse here. The artwork could either be burnt or stolen by the Russians. So it’s a huge challenge. And then in the scene afterwards, it’s sort of comical in some ways. Amidst challenging circumstances, the strangest opportunities can come from that. So somehow, we have Garfield chipping a tooth on a care package. And so he finds this German dentist, as you point out, not too good.
And this German dentist is not too smart, not too observant, frankly. I don’t know that he really knows what’s going on. So he says, “Hey, my nephew knows all about art,” and I don’t know if he realized what his nephew did in the war, helped supervise his art museum in Paris and is a dedicated Nazi. So here he invites, not only talks about his nephew, he invites Garfield and Savitz to his home and on the walls of this home, maybe Stahl wasn’t that smart to do that. I mean, maybe somebody will come to their house that knows about art, you never know. He has all these famous artworks and he claims they’re copies. Well, these are art experts. They know that’s the real thing-

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, that’s not going to fly for too long.

Warwick Fairfax:
And they look on the back of one and go, “Huh? These are famous artworks.”
Savitz is very smart and savvy, a lot of smart and savvy people on this team, so he says, out of nowhere, “Heil Hitler,” in this loud voice.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
Now, Stahl’s young boys instantly leap up. I mean, they’re just small kids and go, “Heil Hitler,” like a Pavlovian response. They’re taught when you say that, you instantly jump up.
And so they’re kids, they’re not thinking, “Oh, let me be careful because I don’t know who these people are,” they’re kids. So the jig is up.
So it just shows out of nowhere. They find some valuable artworks that Stahl has stolen just because Garfield chips a tooth, and this German dentist is foolish enough to say, “Oh, my nephew knows about art. Let me take you home.” I mean, it’s really funny, this particular scene.

Gary Schneeberger:
And Garfield does indeed because of that, right? Have himself a merry little Christmas because that’s what his wife sang on the record, so.

Warwick Fairfax:
Indeed.

Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick, while the Monuments Men are not seeking to get into the middle of the battle, sometimes it’s tough to avoid in the theater of war. Talk about that scene and how it shows that to be true.

Warwick Fairfax:
So here we have Garfield and Clermont. They get lost somewhere in the countryside. There are woods all over the place, and unfortunately they stumble into almost a hornet’s nest. There are Allied troops on one side and German troops on the other, and they’re about to fire at each other, and they don’t know what’s going on because both sides are hidden in the woods and there’s farm line in between them. We see Garfield and Clermont that stopped their vehicle. Garfield gets out, and right in front of him, it feels like a foot or two away, sees a whole bunch of German troops hidden, and they’re not quite ready to fire yet because they don’t want the Allied troops to know what’s happening. And it’s obviously a deer in the headlights moment for Garfield. He tries to signal to Clermont to get back in the vehicle and leave.
And really before they can leave, both sets of troops start firing each other, and so they race back to the vehicle just to really get out of the line of fire. Sadly, Clermont is wounded and he is fatally wounded, so the Monuments Men have now lost their second member. They lost Jeffries before trying to protect that statue, the Madonna and Child at that church in Belgium, and now Clermont has been lost also. This really shows that this mission is an important mission, and their team is literally dying for the cause.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
And they’re willing to die for what they believe in. This is dying for art, which is really incredible when you think about it, but they believe that they’re trying to save Western civilization, at least the symbol of it in the artworks that they’re trying to defend and preserve.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and after this death, after losing another of his men, Stokes begins to muse about whether his team can really call themselves soldiers. This is a moving and meaningful scene, isn’t it, Warwick?

Warwick Fairfax:
It certainly is. Stokes says to his team, the Monuments Men, that there were questions when the group was forming about whether they were really soldiers, whether they were risking their lives the way the other soldiers were. And Stokes says, “We’re no longer observers. We’re active participants who subject to the same heartache that the rest of the soldiers are. He says, when we lost Donald Jefferies, we earned the right to wear the uniform. Now we’ve lost our second man.” In other words, Clermont. “From the beginning I told you that no piece of art was worth a man’s life, but these last months have proved me wrong. This is our history, and it’s not to be stolen or destroyed, it’s to be held up and admired, as with these brave men, and now we owe it to them to finish the job.”
So Stokes is not just reinforcing the vision, but this mission is growing in importance even to him. He now believes that saving art and history is worth dying for, even if their own men have to die for this mission, the Monuments Men. And what’s interesting is that all the Monuments Men, they agree that this mission is worth dying for.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
So much so that when Stokes says to Garfield, who saw Clermont die in his arms, and that’s a pretty horrific thing to have gone through, he says, in a moment of grace, Stokes says to Garfield, “Look, why don’t you go back to the US, get some R&R just to recover.”
And Garfield says, “I’m not going. I want to stay and finish this.” It’s a clear message that Stokes’s men, the Monuments Men are completely with him, and they believe that this mission is literally worth dying for.

Gary Schneeberger:
The Monuments Men then, Warwick, discover how the Nazis have been hiding the art, a major breakthrough in their mission. They have been using mines to store it, salt mines, copper mines, et cetera. They first go to the copper mine in Siegen. They find a brick wall in front of the salt mine, and once they get through it, they find vast amounts of artworks. They actually find 6,000 pieces of artwork. Warwick, that’s a huge breakthrough for the Monuments Men, and a really important scene, unpack that a little bit for us.

Warwick Fairfax:
We learned that Stokes gets a map off an SS officer that is, as you say, a major break in the case. This map shows that the Nazis have hidden the artworks in salt mines at key locations throughout Germany. Before, they knew that the Nazis are stealing artworks, but they don’t know where, where in the world are they going to find this? Where in the world are they going to find these artworks? So now they know where, this map shows that there are key salt mines throughout Germany where they’re hiding these artworks, but they’re in a race against time before the artworks are destroyed by the Nazis, because remember, with this Nero Directive, this is getting towards the end of the war.
If Hitler dies, then they may well be destroyed before they can get to these salt mines. And if they can’t get to the salt mines first, assuming the Nazis don’t destroy them, then the Russians might get there first, capture them and bring it back to Russia. So I mean, the mission keeps getting harder. So it’s a huge challenge. But as we’ll learn with Stokes and the Monuments Men, they’re up to the challenge.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Very few challenges that they can’t meet.

Warwick Fairfax:
Indeed.

Gary Schneeberger:
For sure. Next, what happens is that Granger is called from Paris to Germany. They need him now in Germany now that they know where the artworks are being stored. He meets with Claire before he leaves, and she tells him all that she knows. This is an enormous break in the case, as it were, for what the Monuments Men are doing. All this information that she gives him, Warwick, it really changes the trajectory of their whole mission. Talk about that and just what the value of what she tells Granger.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, absolutely. Claire asked Granger to come for dinner at her apartment, and she tells him to dress formally. Well, I guess he left his tuxedo at home. I guess that’s not in his kit bag, I suppose, and never know when you’ll need it on the battlefield. But yeah, it just, obviously doesn’t have it. So he wears the nicest thing he has, a nice shirt and a nice pair of pants, and she says, “Well, this is not formal enough,” she happens to have a jacket and a tie, which he gives him. And so now he’s appropriately attired and he tells her that he has to look for the artworks at a mine in Merkers.
She’s read in the paper about what the Monuments Men have done at the mine in Siegen. She also reads in the paper that they’ve returned the artwork to their rightful owners, which is exactly what Claire would hope would happen. Her goal, her mission is to preserve the artworks and see that the rightful owners have them back in their possession, so now she clearly believes in Granger and in the mission of the Monuments Men. So Claire, then in this remarkable act of trust, she hands him her most treasured possession, a notebook, which he says is all she has, and she says that this is her life. A notebook is her life.
In this notebook, it lists every piece of art that came through her museum in Paris. It has train manifests and receipts, who each artwork belonged to, and who took it and where they took it. I mean, Granger is so grateful and he is awestruck with what he’s received. He knows why this is so important. He’s an art curator, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Claire then tells him that there is this castle in Germany, Neuschwanstein where most of the artwork should be. So this act of trust by Claire in Granger, in the Monuments Men is remarkable.
And this notebook that she gives Granger is just graphic evidence of how much she trusts Granger. And as we’ll see, Stokes and the Monuments Men, they know about the salt mines. At this point, they did not know about the fact that Neuschwanstein, this magnificent castle in Bavaria in southern Germany is where a whole bunch of other artworks would be. But they learn the fact that there are artworks at Neuschwanstein directly because of, she’s a remarkable part of the story. And it’s Claire, who was skeptical for so long, is finally convinced the Monuments Men and Granger are for real. It’s not about bringing artworks back to America or Britain or wherever, it’s about bringing those artworks back to their rightful owners. It’s a remarkable scene.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and something about Claire just crossed my mind as you were talking about her giving Granger a jacket and a tie. When we first meet Claire, she’s in the art gallery and she’s under the thumb of the Nazis who are making her do stuff in it, that she has a jacket and tie lying around, that Paris had been under Nazi control for so long. Makes me wonder, maybe she had a husband and maybe they killed him because why else would she have a jacket and a tie just laying, just lying around to give there. And I think whether it’s not said in the film, but it does maybe inform a little bit of just how both sad she is, how defiant she is in the face of the Germans who have stolen her life from her, and how she wants to get back at them. I mean, that’s, any perspective on that?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it’s so true. One of the things we learn is I believe she has a brother, Peter I think, in which she learns from Stahl, who actually is, I guess before the Nazis pull out, is uninvited, come to her apartment and tells her that he knows that her brother is with the resistance. Clearly, he suspects that she is with the resistance, but she’s so valuable in terms of knowledge of art at the museum that she’s too valuable to do away with, send to a concentration camp, understands what he would do with her. But she knows at that point that her brother is, she knows what happened to her brother, whether he was going to be killed, captured, what’s going to happen. So yeah, she has to deal with a lot of tragedy in her life, but that doesn’t really dissuade her for pursuing her mission to save the artworks in the museum and save the artworks for their rightful owners.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Well, next the men find out that they find more than a hundred tons of gold bullion in a salt mine in Merkers. It’s now April 1945. Who do you think gets credit for finding all of that stuff? Well, the next scene, right? The next part of that scene as it plays out, tells us, we see the top leaders of the US military in Europe Generals Patton, Bradley, and Eisenhower giving a news conference or something like a news conference sitting for newsreels doing something. They’re talking to press about finding this a hundred tons of gold bullion. Monuments Men don’t seem to get credit for that.
After this, we see German officers and soldiers go to the Heilbronn mine. There are vast amounts of paintings there. There are soldiers with flamethrowers who are burning enormous amounts of priceless paintings just holding the flamethrowers. You’ve seen it folks in movies before. They’re just torching all of this priceless stuff. The Monuments Men are now in this mine looking at the burnt remains, one of which is the frame of a Picasso painting. Then while in this mine, the men find a large stash of gold fillings from teeth, which the men realize came from Jews who were either murdered or sent to concentration camps. Warwick, these are terrible scenes, moving scenes. Talk about them and about what in the arc of this story, why these scenes are so meaningful.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, I mean this shows they’re having some success. They’re finding artworks, and in this case, gold bullion in Merkers. Predictably, the top US military brass are there taking credit as any military brass would for finding a hundred tons of gold bullion. And they say to themselves, “Well, the brass are going to turn up for gold bullion, not for artworks. They care about gold. What about the art?”

Gary Schneeberger:
Exactly right.

Warwick Fairfax:
And there’s some sort of cynical grumbling about it and it’s understandable what they’re saying. And then we move on from the Merkers mine to the scene in the Heilbronn mine, and it is tragic for two very different reasons because this is the mine where the Monuments Men find that their worst fears are realized. The Nazis have burnt vast amounts of priceless artworks. This is something that can’t be recovered. As everything Stokes said, “Once artworks are destroyed, you cannot get that part of civilization back.” It’s irrecoverable, and so part of their worst fears are realized, and if that wasn’t bad enough, then they find this small room which was sort of a hidden room, it’s not very obvious what was in there.
And they find this large container of small pieces of gold. At first, not all of them know what it is, just bits of gold. But then one of them says, “These are actually gold teeth filings.”
I mean, it hit them that this mine shows really evidence of the Holocaust, that and how evil the Nazis are. They don’t just destroy priceless artworks. They kill millions of Jewish people, and they save their gold tooth fillings. I mean, this is a vast container. It’s massive, with enormous numbers of gold teeth fillings in it. So it’s sobering to say the least on the Monuments Men, and I’m sure it makes them feel like what we’re doing to oppose the Nazis at any way we can and our bit of this whole mission of this war is to try to save these priceless artworks and bring them back to their rightful owners, in a number of cases, these owners, the Jewish people. Maybe those individual Jewish people might not live, but there might be relative somewhere, whether it’s America or England or somewhere that we can hand these artworks to. I’m sure they’re thinking we’ve got to do whatever we can to get these artworks back, including to the Jewish owners, do whatever we can to help.

Gary Schneeberger:
The team then heads to Neuschwanstein, which is where Claire told them that the artworks from her museum have been sent. The team finds priceless pieces there, matching what is in her notebook. There are large numbers of statues there, including a bronze statue by Rodin. Warwick, unpack that scene a little bit.

Warwick Fairfax:
This is really the realization of Claire’s dream. Her part in this was to try to preserve the artworks that were in her museum in Paris. She has this notebook, she gives it to Granger, and here’s Granger and the team. Here they are in Neuschwanstein and there are this, enormous numbers of statues. There’s actually a Rodin bronze statue, and when they look at that notebook, it shows exactly where all the pieces are and they’re there in Neuschwanstein. It’s an amazing scene.

Gary Schneeberger:
While there, they find in the ledgers that the Ghent Altarpiece is in a mine in Altaussee. The crew then races to that mine to get the Ghent artwork. Warwick, again, I love this part of the show because I get to talk just not as much and you get to talk about the really meaningful stuff here. So talk about this scene.

Warwick Fairfax:
The climax of the movie, it really happens at the mine in Altaussee. This is the first time we actually see or at least hear of Germans helping the Monuments Men, hasn’t happened in the movie yet, but some of the local miners have exploded the entrances to this mine to prevent the Nazis from destroying the artworks. And so there’s just a bunch of rocks and rubble in blocking the entrances to the mine so the Nazis haven’t been able to get at it, it would seem.
Now, on their way over as they head towards Altaussee, they find a soldier in his Jeep and the soldier in this Jeep says, “The war’s over, and the Germans have surrendered,” but the soldier also tells them that the Russians are going to be there at the mine the next day, and of course, could it possibly get worse? And it does.
The soldier then says the territory, this part of Germany where Altaussee is, that’s the part of Germany that’s going to be Russian territory. Now, as folks may know, when the war’s over and the Cold War begins, Germany is divided into East Germany and West Germany. I would imagine Altaussee is going to be part of what will become East Germany, so the Russians are obviously, they don’t give up territory once they get it. This is very sobering for the Monuments Men, it truly is a race against time. They need to get the artworks out of the Altaussee mine before the Russians get there, and they have almost no time, it’s the next day.
They race to the Altaussee mine, and obviously they’ve first got to find a way to get past the rubble, which they do, and they’re trying to get the artworks out as feverishly as they can. And so they’ve hoped that the Ghent Altarpiece is in that mine. That’s what the ledgers at Neuschwanstein say that it should be there. And they don’t know where the Madonna and Child statue is, but they’re hoping they can find it at some point. And so this is where the perseverance of the Monuments Men pays off. Sometimes you feel like, where am am I going? Am I getting anywhere? Well, sometimes perseverance pays off, and it surely does here with the Monuments Men.
Not only do they get all the artworks out, they find the Ghent Altarpiece, one of the humorous episodes of this movie. This movie has both a lot of tragedy but some humorous moments, so one of the humorous moments we find Garfield and Savitz looking at a map of the mind trying to figure out where in the heck is this last panel of the altarpiece again. And one of them I think drops something, I think it might be Garfield. And he is trying to find it underneath this makeshift table. This makeshift table turns out to be one of the panels. He says, “Hey buddy, can you help me with this?” Because it’s heavy. And lo and behold, they find the missing panel.
So when you least expect it, look what happens. That’s great. They find the Ghent Altarpiece, and everyone is leaving, but Stokes is still there and it’s like, “We need to leave. The Russians are coming.” I mean literally, the Russians are coming. They’re almost there, but Stokes is not willing to give up.
Finally, miraculously, he finds the Madonna and Child statue. It’s in a mine car covered by some tarpaulin, and he is awestruck. It takes him a beat to get his wits about him and he yells to the team, “I found it. Let’s get this thing out of here.” It needs a whole bunch of people to push this heavy mine car.
They get the Madonna and Child statue, the artwork, the Ghent Altarpiece, they get them all out. We see that Stokes and the rest of the Monuments Men, they’re leaving in a convoy of trucks towing behind the Madonna and Child and the Ghent Altarpiece. The mission of the Monuments Men have been accomplished and they’ve got the artworks, the Ghent Altarpiece, the Madonna and Child and comically, they leave a US flag over the mine entrance.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
The Russian officer who’s been, we see him now and again throughout the movies, he tries to find artworks, see this Russian officer looking up at the US flag, and there’s a slight smirk on his face. You know when you lose, it’s like well played. He appreciates may have lost to the opposition, which is what it’s becoming between the Allies and the Russians. But yeah, well played if you will with the smirk on his face.

Gary Schneeberger:
The movie ends where it began, with Stokes addressing the US President. Only Franklin Delano Roosevelt had passed away before the war was over, and he was succeeded by his Vice President Harry Truman, who is now the president. That’s who Stokes is talking to as he’s debriefing the president of the US about the mission of the Monuments Men. Warwick, this scene reveals just how successful this mission was. Difficult, sure, but successful, this mission was in more ways than one, doesn’t it?

Warwick Fairfax:
It really does. So here we have Stokes, the war’s over, and he’s meeting with Truman and some of Truman’s key team, and he’s outlining everything they’ve accomplished. Stokes tells him everything from paintings to sculptures to tapestries, even jewelry is being returned. He says it’s the greatest collection of private art in the history of the world. We have found 5,000 church bells, 300 trolley cars, 3 million books, and thousands of Torahs, which is a Jewish religious book that you use in synagogue. He says that there were over 5 million pieces of art recovered. He tells Truman that there are more great artworks that are missing, and with Truman’s permission, he would like to keep looking for them.
When Truman learns that Stokes has lost men, Clermont and Jefferies, he asked Stokes if it was worth it for a piece of art. And then he asked Stokes if he thinks Jefferies, one of the two men that were lost were killed, he asked Stokes if Jefferies would think it was worth it if he could speak, and Stokes says he thinks Jefferies would think it was worth it. So then Truman asked Stokes whether he thinks 30 years from now anyone is going to remember that these men died for a piece of art. It’s an interesting question.
And the movie flashes forward 30 years. So now we see Stokes as an old man. He’s 1977, and he is in a church in Bruges, Belgium, and he’s looking at the Madonna and Child, and Stokes as an old man, answers Truman’s question. The question is anybody going to remember what you did for art, that men died for art 30 years from now? And Stokes, an older man, says yes. In other words, people will remember that these men died for a piece of art and that they sacrifice was worth it. It’s a great way to end the movie. It makes it clear that this mission will be remembered in history and it’s worth it.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, two things I’ll say. Here’s the third of the eight movies we’ve done that I worked on when I was a publicist in Hollywood. First thing is the actor, the individual playing the elder Stokes is in fact the elder Clooney. It’s George Clooney’s dad, Nick Clooney, who was a television host for several years, a couple decades ago, so that’s why he looks so much like George Clooney, folks. It’s George Clooney’s dad, and we made a little bit out of that in our promotion of the film.
The other thing, in our promotion of the film, I’m going to hold this up. We make graphics that folks could use in social media about the work of the Monuments Men, and it does indeed say here that they did recover 5 million pieces of art. But it’s interesting about the real life Monuments Men, and I’m going to have to fold this and get really close to read it because it’s small type, but it says this, “The real life Monuments Men were a group of nearly 350 men and women from 13 nations who worked to protect monuments and other cultural treasures from the destruction of World War II.”
So these individuals in the movie represent those, that larger group of 350 men and women who worked on this from 13 different countries, just really a true global effort to save civilization, both while the military was saving civilization from Nazi rule, the Monuments Men were saving civilization from losing its great and gorgeous history.
Warwick, I’m going to end this the way we’ve ended every one of these episodes in this eight part series. It’s kind of sad. I’m a little bummed. It’s sad to be honest with you that this is the end of the line. The last time I’m going to ask you a question about Big Screen, Big Crucibles. But here’s the question: how does The Monuments Men offer hope and inspiration to move beyond our own crucibles, and how our pursuit of a life of significance can keep us going even when trials and setbacks come? What would you say is the greatest bit of inspiration The Monuments Men offers?

Warwick Fairfax:
Sometimes we have a mission or a cause that we think is critically important, but others may not see it that way. Frank Stokes and the Monuments Men believe that saving priceless artworks from being taken or destroyed by the Nazis, or being taken by the Russians was a cause worth dying for. Stokes believed that saving artworks was a part of saving our heritage, our civilization. When we believe so much in our cause, our life of significance, we’re not always going to find that others believe that that’s important.
They might say, “Well, okay, good for you, whatever.”
And we might feel like we’re a voice in the wilderness crying out, saying, “But this is important. I’m going to give my life to this cause.”
Maybe we’ll find very few fellow travelers, maybe we’ll find none. And so it’s not easy. But whether we have one fellow traveler or none, whether we find that nobody really believes in our mission or cause if we believe it’s important enough, then we’ve got to find a way to move on, dig deep and fight for what we believe in, even if others, they may not just think, it doesn’t matter, they may not agree, they might completely disagree in our and what we’re doing, but you’ve got to really stand up and fight for what you believe in even if others either ignore it or even think it’s wrong, stand up for what you believe in. And that’s what this movie shows.
Frank Stokes and the Monuments Men, they fought to save artworks from being destroyed and stolen. They fought to make sure these artworks were brought back to their original owners as best they could, or at least I’m sure their family members. That’s a noble mission, and clearly as we saw in the movie, there were countless Allied commanders that were like, “We don’t think this mission is worth dying for, and so we’re not going to help you,” time and time again. And sometimes life is like that, sometimes we will not just be ignored, we will not be supported at all by those that we know in a mission that we feel like that we’re off the charts passionate about is our life of significance. But we need to find a way to persevere and move on, even if others may not agree and may not support us.

Gary Schneeberger:
Cut and print. That is a wrap on Big Screen, Big Crucibles. If you enjoyed this, these episodes, we ask you to share them on social media, share them with your friends, let people know about it. We would ask you to like us both on the podcast app you listen to, and on YouTube where you watch, our YouTube channel, subscribe to those places so that you can get every episode of this podcast, Beyond the Crucible, that we do.
Now, I usually say at the end of an episode, “We’ll see you next week.” We won’t see you next week because next week there’s been a lot of work. Folks, we’re going to take a week off. Next week, Warwick and I are going to take a week off, but we will be back with all new episodes on September 9th. So mark that on your calendar, just a couple of weeks. We’ll be back on September 9th. Thank you for spending this time with us. And remember, your crucible experiences are not the end of your story. Not at all. Your worst day doesn’t define you. You can indeed, like all of these individuals we’ve spoken about in our summer series, you can overcome those crucibles and lead a life of significance.
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