The Rape of Europa

2007 "Imagine The World Without Our Masterpieces"
7.7| 1h57m| en| More Info
Released: 17 March 2007 Released
Producted By: Actual Films
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: https://www.pbs.org/therapeofeuropa/
Synopsis

World War II was not just the most destructive conflict in humanity, it was also the greatest theft in history: lives, families, communities, property, culture and heritage were all stolen. The story of Nazi Germany's plundering of Europe's great works of art during World War II and Allied efforts to minimize the damage.

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Cast

Joan Allen

Director

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Actual Films

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Reviews

Freaktana A Major Disappointment
AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
runamokprods One of those documentaries that grows in impact as it goes along. For the first hour or so I found this study of the Nazi's plundering and stealing Europe's great works of art, along with the allies attempts to spare art during the war, intellectually interesting, but a bit dry and even repetitive. But as the film moves on to the aftermath of the war, and we get more of the human side of the story; great art treasures are returned to the lands whose cultures they represent and we see the joy that it brings, both sides of the Russian debate about keeping the art they took from Germany as a sort of reparation for the horrible human cost of the war, restorations still going on 60 years later with care and passion, a Christian German who has made it his mission to return beautiful and intricate Torah scroll caps to their rightful Jewish owners, the film blossoms into a very human examination of just how important art is to human beings and to our sense of selves. Ultimately, what starts feeling like a somewhat academic exercise ends up as a very moving and human documentary.
ivan-308 This is a good movie and it is biased. It is trying to tie the looting of art to holocaust. That is very wrong. Nazi ideology was wrong, inhumane and evil. Nazis took anything they wanted because they believed they owned Europe. Hitler was not a bad painter; he was against modern art. I have been painting for 39 years and I can assure you he is much better than many artists who are accepted into art schools at the time and today as well as some my students. His art is very much illustrative not lyric in the sense of story telling. In a few of his work that I have seen he has hold perspective and dimension well in place more than I can about a lot of paintings that are in the museums. He loved art and his vision was that he owns Europe and Germans are master race so he is going to take it all and make a very large museum. The reference of Hitler became anti-Semitic because he was rejected at art school is just childish. Hitler became anti-Semitic mainly because he believed Jews are responsible for Germany's defeat in WWI. He formed his Anti-Semitism in later years after his rejection and there is no reference of such in Mein Kampf, (one of the most $%^&ed up books I have ever read in regards to editing and scatter of subject in 4 languages including German). Holocaust was horrible; so was the loss of 23.5 million people of USSR. It also tried to portray USSR soldiers as looters by taking the art back. The efforts of people like Leonid Folinsky, the Soviet artist that discovered the Raphael's Madonna and Rembrandts, Rubens, etc. in salt mines in east Germany area and managed to pull them out of the water is not mentioned other than they were sent to loot for USSR. It ignored the fact that if Nazi's took and destroyed so much of USSR's art then if after the war USSR keeps some of the German art it is just a payment. It almost implies that Hitler's atrocities should be wiped off with the end of Nazi party and Germans should not have to pay any damage into the equation. Obviously every Jewish art dealer descendant (or Holocaust victim) should get all his or her art back. Obviously it helps the fact that as soon as they get it back they can sell it to likely end up in an American museum. . What about the descendants of the art in USSR? While I appreciate the efforts of Americans who did the saving of the artifacts I do not think they were the only ones. Many natives of France, Holland, Austria and other countries helped the underground networks with efforts to save the artifacts and their efforts were downed a little with exception of one. The use of some new footage of the WWII is refreshing. I did not see much reference to the art in Holland or Belgium. I dislike the title of the movie as "Rape of Europe" as a Nazi "thing". Napoleon did nice job of raping the Europe himself; where do you think all the Italian and Spanish art in Louvers comes from? How about rape of Egypt, Persia, Greece, ... England obviously did not rape India or any of its sub kingdoms! What about rape of Iraq as recent as 2003? 58 years after WWII! I think they were on the level about the bombing of Monte casino but the firebombing of Dresden was played down a lot, considering the loss of the art there.War is a horrible part of human history and taking booty has always been a part of it. Nazi ideology was wrong, inhumane and evil but taking art works and valuables was not their invention. The part that talks about how they had lists of artwork upfront and before hand due to their "evil" minds... That is just the naive talk of the talker. Germans are born with a list of to do's. Anybody that has spent a little time learning German and their people would know it. Everything is always calculated and documented! They even documented the holocaust themselves with very extreme precise records.
Terrell-4 How much is a life worth? How much is a great cultural work of art worth? It's impossible to assign a value to either, except to say they both are invaluable. The Rape of Europa is a fine, fascinating documentary about the German plunder of significant art during WWII, organized as meticulously as the Germans organized the murder of millions of human beings. This film illustrates and explains the wholesale looting on a vast scale of easily a fifth of Europe's significant cultural treasures. And where these treasures were considered a part of Jewish or Slavic culture, they were destroyed. While the Nazi leaders were psychopathic, racist thugs, it's important to remember that their crimes were made possible by all those German men and women, mostly not Nazis, who worked each day at making stealing and killing possible, then returned to their homes to play with their children, eat their braised rabbit, make love to their spouses and then start the next day again. One can't plead ignorance when one is filling a syringe with poison in a mental institution, or attaching explosives to a beautiful Renaissance bridge, or typing an order for more pencils while smelling the near-by crematoriums at work. This is the banality of evil that makes widespread evil possible. Hitler was fascinated by art. He considered himself an artist of the first rank. As German dictator, he was determined to bring to Germany all the great art of Europe. He had plans for a huge art museum at Linz, his childhood home. He determined what was good art and was not art (modern art was Jewish art, in his view, and should be destroyed). With German thoroughness, his minions drew up of lists of cultural treasures, raided public and private museums in occupied countries, destroyed what they disapproved up, and organized incredible amounts of transport to bring this art into Germany. All the while, taking their cue from Hitler and Goering, Nazi functionaries and German Army officer suddenly became passionate art collectors. All they had to do was take what they wanted. German bureaucrats knew what they were after even as German troops invaded a country. For Slavic countries like Poland, it was a matter more of destroying a culture than taking the art. When German soldiers were at the front in need of clothes, ammunition and supplies, when gasoline was always in short supply, thousands of boxcars were filled with looted art and sent by special trains back to Germany, continuing even as the war was almost over. When Allied bombing began in earnest and when the invasion of Italy began, it became clear that, while the Allies did not know the extent of German looting, widespread destruction of Europe's cultural heritage by the Allies should be avoided where possible. Thanks to Dwight Eisenhower, a small group of young American artists, curators and art historians were recruited to join the Army and identify and try to preserve what they could as the fighting moved forward. These men, called the monuments men, are the heroes of this story. There were fewer than four hundred of them doing a risky job with few resources and not much clout. They performed incredible feats of preservation, working to save great art and return it from where it was looted. If the first half of The Rape of Europa is shocking, even after so many years have passed, the second half is almost redeeming. For these men, several of whom are interviewed, their work was clearly intensely satisfying. They were saving an essential part of what makes us civilized. The Rape of Europa covers a great deal of ground, perhaps too much, but it all is fascinating. Probably separate documentaries could be made about the immense effort it has been taking to make museums today return works of art they possess to the descendants of those who once owned the art...or to the young German who now has undertaken to return looted Torah crowns to the Jewish descendants...or the huge work during the war of museum curators and staff to pack and hide their museums' art from the Germans...or to the middle-aged, unremarkable French woman who was able to secretly keep lists of individual works of art and their destinations that the Germans were sending out of Paris...or the behavior of the German armies in Italy who destroyed without rational reason great historical buildings and bridges as they retreated north...or all that art the Soviets looted from Germany which now sits in the thousands in the basements of Russian museums. What separates humanity from other animals is that we create art...and that we are so easily led to destroy the art we create, as well as to kill vast numbers of our brothers and sisters.
zken-1 As everyone in America retreats to their suburban mansions and the computer screens, it is a great experience to go out to the movies and see a film of real social import. If you love history and art, like I do, you certainly do not want to miss this film. The brutal effects of Nazi destruction never goes away, it keeps on coming, like a nightmare from the 20th century that we are all dreaming about. This film demonstrates the innate power of art. It shows, through a deep examination of the looting of Europe's treasures, what these works really meant to the countries who had them. And it reveals the utterly strange connection between the life of Hitler, failed art student, and the hellish destruction he unleashed on the world. In this season of filmic dreck at the mall, this strong documentary is definitely worth seeking out.