Book/Movie Review: "The Rape of Europa"

The Nazis were real assholes.

We knew this, of course, but here's a level of assholery I didn't consider before reading this book and watching this documentary: The MFers damn near destroyed all of Europe's art along with its people.

"The Rape of Europa" basically chronicles (as best it can) how the Nazis purged their own country of all art considered unfavorable, or degenerate, and then plowed through the rest of Europe and did the same to Austria, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and part of Russia. (The only exceptions being the pieces they wanted to own for themselves, of course.)

There's way too much information for me to break it all down, but I will try in a few sentences:

1. Hitler & Co. were a bunch of douchebags who stole art and bombed whatever they felt like bombing.

2. The Allies, trying to win the war, ruined some stuff, too, which really sucks.

3. A bunch of stuff was recovered, and most of it was returned to its rightful owners from before the war (but since a bunch of the recovered stuff belonged to exterminated Jews, quite a lot of it did not.)

4. There are still thousands -- THOUSANDS -- of pieces missing, and resoration projects on some of the ruined things continue to this day.

Basically, the Nazis treated art the way they treated people. If they had any "redeeming" value, they were spared. If they were by Jewish artists or of Jewish people, they were put on display as "degenerate art" or destroyed. (Not unlike Jewish ID badges and concentration camps.)

And the most baffling thing of all is that Hitler was an art student! He didn't get accepted to the art school he applied to, which good and pissed him off. What is difficult to reconcile, though, is that a man who can so easily set about exterminating entire cultural groups can also appreciate the beauty of art.

I hope lost art is recovered someday. I hope the Russians stop being childish and realize that two wrongs don't make a right (side note: three rights make a left... chew on that.) I hope that the world never forgets the atrocities of World War II and that history never repeats itself. And I hope Hitler is burning in hell where he belongs.