The Rape of Europa

Actual Films. <i>117 minutes</i>.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


In 1907, an 18-year-old watercolorist named Adolf Hitler applied to and was rejected by Vienna’s prestigious Academy of Fine Arts. The rebuff only fueled his obsession with art and may help explain why, years later, the Third Reich would systematically steal one-fifth of Europe’s artistic treasures.

The Rape of Europa, based on Lynn H. Nicholas’ 1995 book of the same name, is a powerful exposé of the greatest art theft in history. The Nazis lifted 650,000 pieces from Europe’s museums and private collections. Some were slated for Hitler’s Louvre-sized museum of Aryan artwork, while others were stashed in underground warehouses. But Hitler wasn’t just collecting masterpieces; thousands of works by “degenerate” artists, among them van Gogh and Matisse, were rounded up and sold or burned. Arbitrary designations—Kraków was “Slavic,” Warsaw was “Germanic”—dictated what was looted, left behind, or destroyed.

While private citizens, particularly Jews, could do little to save their collections, some museums went to elaborate lengths to protect their treasures. By the time the Germans reached Paris, the halls of the Louvre were lined with empty frames. Nearly everything, including the massive Winged Victory of Samothrace, had been shipped to country estates; the Mona Lisa escaped in a humidity-controlled ambulance, swathed in red satin. As the Nazis’ defeat became inevitable, vitriol outweighed aesthetic sensibility. Retreating German armies dynamited medieval bridges and decapitated statuary before American “Monuments Men” could rescue them.

Even today, hundreds of stolen pieces “donated” to museums remain hotly contested. A few have been returned to their original estates, such as a Klimt portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer that recently sold for $135 million. But thousands of artworks have never reappeared and are now remembered only by their grainy photographs in Nazi catalogs.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate