Spring 1945 brought warm weather to the allied armies providing surer traction in the foot race to the last redoubt of the Nazi Reich. The rabid wolf of the Nazis was about to get put down, the question was, by who? To the east lay the massive Soviet Army coiled north and east of Berlin getting ready to exact deep revenge for earlier atrocities committed by the German Army on mother Russia a short time before. To the west were the smaller faster armies of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France and Poland. A dying President Roosevelt had agreed at Yalta to halt at the Elbe, in the upper echelons of leadership, most notably General George Patton, knew no such restraint.

Patton dreamed of hitting Berlin and single handedly winning the war. In between the two allied armies lay a dying Reich, some two million worn out Nazi soldiers, men and boys under arms, who in the late stages of the war fought the communists ferociously so some could escape west. That was the way it ended in the history books, most notably that of Max Hastings in his book Armageddon, 1945. Hastings told a good story, but the Brits in 1945 were a tired and worn out power, a great untold story yet involves a "stray" American armoured column that risked it all, and but for a wrong turn might have altered history, and who might have wound up with a certain art collection in Thuringia, the long lost art that legally belonged to Otto Krebs.

"K" for Krebs shows Thuringia in the section conquered by Third Army

In April 1945 Patton sent a probe towards Berlin consisting of armour and 20,000 men, one of whom was the great uncle of a family member, known to all as "Uncle Eddie." It was at a holiday gathering decades ago that this writer asked Eddie, "World War Two must have been exciting, how was it?"

The question was asked of a frail elderly man in 1995, and in answering the question, the years fell off his face and what stared back was that of a frightened young man.

Per Patton's orders they drove towards Berlin, but in the chaos and confusion, the Americans ran off the map and wound up in Poland, which in 1945 had a border some one hundred miles east of the current line. Eddie reported they were in Poland to his Sargent, who snarled, how the f-ck would you know that? Eddie’s answer, “Sarge, I’m Polish, so I got to tell you, I can read the road signs, they aren't in German, they are Polish.” Holy sh-t they were playing blind man's bluff and liable to walk right into a Soviet artillery offensive. The Reds always started off with a giant barrage.

Out of position, the Americans pulled back to points west, Patton yet again in deep trouble for trying to take out Hitler's nest all by himself. Aside from these souvenirs seen below and donated to the West Point Museum, this story gets lost, subsumed by the eventual Iron Curtain across the Elbe and the assumption the Americans never got that far east.

Wartime Souvenirs of Patton's lunge towards Berlin - West Point Museum, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY

In 2010 the oral story was confirmed by the discovery of correspondence written by a friends grandfather, Captain J.Spencer Janney, a Ranger trained sniper whose letters home to his family told of a now familiar harrowing trip east to end the war in a single shot, before first a wrong turn towards Poland forced them to call back for directions. When the brass found out they ordered them back. What could 20,000 Americans have done if they hit the back side of Berlin while two million Nazis sat by the front door and a final battle with some four million Soviet soldiers bent upon steep revenge? Answer, probably not much, however, when General Eisenhower found out about the rogue run to Berlin he ordered everybody back to the other side of the Elbe. That meant Thuringia, which included Weimar and most importantly Holzdorf Villa, home to the Otto Krebs art collection.

– Thuringia - Home of the Otto Krebs Collection

The west most points of what became East Germany were to be administered by the tender mercies of the Soviet Army. The War ended on May 8, 1945 and by the end of June the last American units pulled out of Weimar. What happened to the art of Thuringia? A German countryside spared a brutal Soviet attack by the lightning fast Americans, would not be found out for fifty years.

We were in touch with Ulrike Oberländer about Otto Krebs, his estate, and his legendary Art Collection.

Dr. Krebs himself lived in Mannheim, later in Heidelberg (Western Germany) and he came only for summer vacation or short visits while being on his way to his business dates in Berlin or other cities in the East (from Heidelberg to Holzdorf it is about 350 km). Dr. Krebs engaged an administrator in Holzdorf who had full authority to sign contracts etc. That was absolutely necessary to let the work go on. Since the 1920s Dr. Krebs investigated a lot of money to enlarge and improve the different buildings of Holzdorf. His manor house was enlarged and got a quite different look: stucco at the ceilings, leather and gobelins on the walls, wooden interior accessories etc. We must imagine that there had been marbles, carpets etc. And of course his art collection. What we can see today is the wooden floor, the walls and ceilings with their decor. All moveable items are gone.

You should be aware: all his paintings or antiquities were usually in the safe rooms. Only in the few days or weeks while Dr. Krebs was staying in Holzdorf, some pieces of his art collection were taken out of the safe rooms to decorate the inhabited rooms. Most of the time the manor house wasn´t resided at all. After Dr. Krebs died in 1941 (in Heidelberg) the life in Holzdorf didn´t change at all. All the agricultural workers did their work as usual, the administrator looked after "his" people - in times of war it was very important to keep the agricultural production going on. The death of Dr. Krebs was not so important for the business in Holzdorf because Dr. Krebs himself had not so much to do with it. His widow (living in Heidelberg as well) came to Holzdorf a few times (last time in April 1945). She used it temporarily as her place of retreat, invited her piano students or private guests - the situation in Holzdorf at the countryside was much better than in Western Germany where the bombings were part of daily life.

In 1945 when the Americans left Thuringia, they asked the chief of the Weimar Museum if they should take the art collection of Dr. Krebs with them to bring it into the West. I don´t know why they asked him - it was known that the art collection was private property, and the Museum of Weimar had nothing to do with Dr. Krebs at all... But maybe the Americans didn´t know whom they could ask. The chief of the Weimar Museum denied to transport the art out of Holzdorf.

When the Soviets adopted Thuringia the Holzdorf manor house was used as a residence for high military people. But the agricultural business never stopped. I think that is very important to know: there was no time without "normal" and regulated life in Holzdorf. No time when Holzdorf was empty and the possibility to plunder would have been given. The administrator of Dr. Krebs neglected to go with the Americans because he felt responsible for all the working people there. The transports of the mobile property of Dr. Krebs couldn´t happen without being seen by the German working people of the farm. And there was one witness who told the chief of the Weimar Museum that it was one week in Summer 1949 when the Soviets came with lorries to bring all the stuff.

IN CONCLUSION

The plundering of a private collection belonging to an art collector with no known Nazi affiliation, took place well outside the circumstances of combat. The Soviets never had to fight for Thuringia, therefore, they lose the traditional right of the ‘bloody conqueror’ to take from the inhabitants that resist. The Americans moved out, and the Soviets waltzed in. No blood was shed by the Reds for Thuringia.

Three years of peace pass by, occupation induced recovery slowly occurs, famine and hardship the norm. In 1948 the United States proposed the Marshall Plan as a way of extending recovery efforts to the shattered Europe.

The Soviet Union forbade its satellite government puppet states to avail themselves of this capital. Publicly, the Soviets under the command of General Vasily Chuikov in Germany, made statements that they were not there to punish the locals any more, even though rape and plunder remained commonplace throughout the Eastern Zone, if not officially condoned. According to the book by Norman M. Naimark (published September 1997), there are estimates that all women in East Germany between the ages of 8 and 80, were raped by occupying Russian soldiers.

In 1954 the Hague Convention was established, a for-runner of what became UNESCO, and yes, even the Soviet Union, and later Russia, signed that treaty forbidding the plunder of art and cultural artifacts.

We asked prominent former assistant United States Attorney Mark Gaffney about this subject, was the Soviet Union or Russia a party to the ? His answer was simple; “they signed it.”

Seen below are a sample of the paintings belonging to Otto Krebs, which the Soviets stole in 1949 and that the Russians to date, simply refuse to hand back.

Alex Boyle & Elliot Lee

Alexander Archipenko (), Nude Female Figure Shown from the Back, Pencil/charcoal/chalk/cardboard, 50 by 32 cm

Paul Cezanne (), Jas de Bouffan, the Pool, Oil on canvas, 46.1 by 56.3 cm

Paul Cezanne(), Bathers , Circa 1890/1891, Oil on canvas, 54.2 by 66.5 cm

Paul Cezanne (), Self-Portrait, Oil on canvas pasted on panel, 55.5 by 45.5 cm

Edgar Degas (), Dancer, Circa 1874, Oil on canvas, 40.5 by 32.7 cm

Edgar Degas (), Seated Dancer, Circa 1879/1880, Charcoal/pastel on paper/cardboard, 63.5 by 48.7 cm

Henri Fantin-Latour (), Flowers, 1860, Oil on canvas, 40.5 by 32 cm

Henri Fantin-Latour (), Peonies in a Vase, Circa 1864, Oil on canvas, 46.6 by 33.5 cm

Henri Fantin-Latour (), Petunias, 1881, Oil on canvas, 29.6 by 42.4 cm

Paul Gauguin (), At the Window, 1882, Oil on canvas, 54 by 65.3 cm

Paul Gauguin (), Bouquet, 1884, Oil on canvas, 65.3 by 54.5 cm

Paul Gauguin (), Piti Tiena, 1892, Oil on canvas, 90.5 by 67.5 cm

Paul Gauguin (), Taperaa Mahana, 1892, Oil on canvas, 72.3 by 97.5 cm

Edouard Manet (), Portrait of Mademoiselle Isabelle Lemonnier, Circa 1879, Oil on canvas, 101.8 by 81.5 cm

Claude Monet (), Seine at Rouen, 1872, Oil on canvas, 54 by 65.5 cm

Claude Monet (), Grand Quai at Havre, 1872, Oil on canvas, 61 by 81 cm

Claude Monet (), Garden in Bordighera, Impression of Morning, 1884, Oil on canvas, 65.5 by 81.5 cm

Emil Nolde (), Portrait of a Young Woman and a Child, 1910-1930s, wc/p, 45.8 by 35 cm

Pablo Picasso (), Absinthe, 1901, pastel, 65.2 by 49.6 cm

 Camille Pissarro (), Still Life with a Coffeepot, 1900, Oil on canvas, 54.5 by 65.3 cm

 Camille Pissarro (), Tuileries Gardens, 1900, Oil on canvas, 54 by 65.3 cm

 Camille Pissarro (), Fair in Dieppe, Sunny Morning, 1901, Oil on canvas, 65.3 by 81.5 cm

 Camille Pissarro (), Quai Malaquais, Sunny Afternoon, 1903, Oil on canvas, 65.3 by 81.5 cm

 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (), Landscape at Beaulieu, 1899, Oil on canvas, 65.3 by 81.5 cm

 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (), Low Tide at Yport, 1883, Oil on canvas, 54.5 by 65.3 cm

 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (), Portrait of a Woman, 1877, pastel 65 by 48.8 cm

 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (), Party in the Country at Berneval, 1898, Oil on canvas, 60.3 by 73 cm

 Georges Rouault (), Nude with Raised Arm, 1906, wcp/board, 70.4 by 53.2 cm

 Paul Signac (), Bank of the Seine Near the Pont des Arts with a View of the Louvre, wc/p, 21.2 by 26 cm

 Paul Signac (), Large Pine, Saint-Tropez, Circa 1892/1893, oil/panel, 19 by 27 cm

 Paul Signac (), Square of the Hotel de Ville in Aix-en-Provence, wc/p, 27.2 by 41.9 cm

 Paul Signac (), Suspension Bridge in Les Andelys, wc/p, 20.4 by 28.3 cm

 Vincent van Gogh (), Landscape with House and Ploughman, October, 1889, Oil on canvas, 33 by 41.4 cm

 Vincent van Gogh (), After Millet, Morning: Going out to Work, January, 1890, Oil on canvas, 73 by92 cm

 Vincent van Gogh (), Portrait of Madame Trabuc (wife of the head warden of St. Paul Asylum) September, 1889, Oil on canvas and panel, 63.7 by 48 cm

 Vincent van Gogh (), White House at Night, Auvers-sur-Oise, France, June, 1890, Oil on canvas, 59 by 72.5 cm

 Edouard Vuillard (), Old Woman in an Interior, Circa 1893, Oil on cardboard, 27.5 by 22.8 cm

* Die Otto-Krebs-Sammlung: Kriegsbeute oder Friedensplünderung?

 First published