British art experts who saved priceless Italian manuscripts during World War Two held a snooty view of their ‘uncultured’ US colleagues, newly unearthed letters show.
The achievements of the 345 men and women of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) in rescuing cultural treasures damaged or looted by the Nazis was brought to life in George Clooney’s 2014 film The Monuments Men.
Now research by Juliette Desplat of the National Archives has highlighted the work of four colleagues at Britain’s Public Records Office (PRO), Hilary Jenkinson, Humphrey Brooke, Roger Ellis and Harry Bell, and the ‘Herculean’ task they set upon.
Though the exploits of the MFAA, set up in 1943 at the instigation of US curators, are well known, the work of the four British archivists has largely gone under the radar.
Jenkinson, Brooke, Ellis and Bell regularly risked their lives, as their work required them to operate near the front – making them vulnerable to shelling.
They often moved with the advancing Allied forces so they could ‘pick up what [they knocked] down’, and entered the city of Bologna on the first day it was liberated.
Dr Desplat has now uncovered their unsung work, and their sniffy opinion of their American peers, who they believed were ‘without a trace of cultural background’.
The achievements of the 345 men and women of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) in rescuing cultural treasures damaged or looted by the Nazis was brought to life in George Clooney’s 2014 film The Monuments Men (pictured, Clooney with Matt Damon)
Research by Juliette Desplat of the National Archives has highlighted the work of four colleagues at Britain’s Public Records Office (PRO), Hilary Jenkinson (pictured), Humphrey Brooke, Roger Ellis and Harry Bell, and the ‘Herculean’ task they set upon
American soldiers examine some of the art collection looted by the Nazis and Hermann Goering, near Berchtesgaden, Germany, 1945
In a blog post, she described their impression of William McCain, the first American archivist to arrive in Italy, with Brooke, 30, lamenting: ‘He was a trifle dismaying at first… He is not quite what one is used to in our profession.
‘It appears that the American Archivist can flourish like some lone palm in the desert — without a trace of cultural background.
He was, the Oxford graduate continued, ‘as remote from the European tradition as a native of the Solomon Islands’ but ‘a very decent chap’.
Ellis, a 34-year-old former Classics student at Cambridge, was also unimpressed, commenting snootily: ‘Latin and French he once studies a bit at College’.
Clooney pictured with Bill Murray, Sam Epstein and Bob Balaban in The Monuments Men
Archivists holding a tray of looted art treasures hidden by the Nazis during World War Two
Jenkinson arrived in Italy at the start of 1944, and visited some 70 archives across the country, Dr Desplat – head of modern collections at the National Archives – wrote.
He found many records to be in a poor state, writing after one visit: ‘A building had been damaged and nothing had been done (…); the Archivist had disappeared and no one had taken his place; some thousands of volumes had become wet and no steps had been taken to dry them; and so forth’.
Jenkinson went on to draw up a comprehensive list of Italian archives, with the aim of protecting them from Allied bombing, theft by occupying troops and ‘the indiscreet use of Modern Archives by Intelligence Officers and others’.
Archives, he warned, ‘are not necessarily old or beautiful, though they often may be’. ‘Whether they date from (…) early periods or from the present day… all are in some sense unique and therefore irreplaceable’.
Archivists carrying three paintings and walking through Neuschwanstein Castle at Fussen
PFC Tony Baea of the U.S. First Army, holding a Rubens painting looted by the Nazis and one of many valuable works found in an underground cave in Siegen, Germany
Jenkinson returned Britain in the summer of 1944, leaving the protection of the Italian archives in the hands of trusted colleagues: Brooke, Ellis and Bell.
He received many letters from the trio describing their experiences.
Ellis described how, during one visit, he found ‘an immense heap of white dust with no documents visible at all’.
The task was long and difficult, Ellis wrote, but ‘this is the greatest fun and I have had many adventures already’.
Concluding her blog, Dr Desplat wrote: ‘The role Jenkinson, Brooke, Ellis, and Bell played in the preservation of the European cultural heritage, and in the understanding of contemporary events, was absolutely vital.
‘These men were archival heroes.’