Reviewing "The Monuments Men" by Robert Edsel

The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History

With a title like that, how could one go wrong?

After all, it was made into a movie, right? Some editions even have George Clooney et al. on the cover with the “Now a Major Motion Picture” seal.

Of course, any book that was ever turned into a movie must be good.

Not necessarily. In the case of The Monuments Men, it turns out that the book has very little in common with the movie.

(Imagine that! A movie that doesn’t quite match the spirit of its inspiration.)

Not that the movie is that bad—I actually saw it before reading the book, or (as is usually the case with me) even knowing the book existed. It pointed out the unsung, somewhat unlikely heroes of a mission within World War II that was largely overlooked by its contemporaries and has virtually been forgotten by historians. Forgotten, that is, until author Robert Edsel wrote this book and a movie was inspired by it.

The mission described in this book is fascinating: To protect cultural and historical objects (art, architecture, etc.) from the ravages of war. This included trying to mark certain sites for protection against being destroyed by Allies as they liberated Axis-occupied territory. It also included recovering the art and treasures confiscated and hoarded by the Nazis.

In the past I tended to try to keep my reading/watching of World War II stories (especially fictional) to a minimum. It’s an actual trope that adding Nazis to a story is a “surefire” way to make the story more thrilling and provide an “over-the-top” (yet still completely credible) antagonist.

The horrors and evils that happened during that time exist, but not for my entertainment. However, I’ve been slowly increasing my (especially nonfiction) knowledge of this era, because I agree with George Santayana’s warning that “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Speaking of repeating, though….

This book had good intentions and a great premise. Where it faltered was its focus—or, rather, its lack of focus. Sometimes when I “read” a book by listening to an audio recording of it, I wonder whether any flaws are due to my listening to rather than seeing the words; when reading a paragraph one can always backtrack and repeat any sentences that aren’t initially clear, whereas the same is more difficult when listening to the same passage.

However, I don’t think that was the problem in this particular case.

Instead I think the author got overwhelmed with too much material. In his forward he even said that he was splitting up his research and would be writing another book as this book was too small to contain his findings. Even “pared down” as The Monuments Men allegedly was, there were too many “characters” hopping around too many locations looking for too many objects. Part of the problem was the organization of the book, which kept hopping from person to person and place to place. Just as I got used to one person’s mission and started to feel I was getting to know them, the next chapter would leave that person for another “plotline.”

                                                                                                                                 

Because the book was organized in such a confused way, the author opened himself up to one of the more common mistakes of a nonfiction writer: repetition. I wrote about this when discussing Miranda Aldhouse-Green’s Bog Bodies Uncovered, and at risk of sounding like a hypocrite I will repeat myself: some nonfiction writers write each chapter like a separate article—and perhaps they were originally published as such—so that when taken as a whole there are some details that are repeated. In a series of articles this is fine, because it reminds readers of something they may have forgotten since reading a prior article, or brings new readers up-to-speed on anything they might have previously missed. In a book that might be binge-read, it comes across absent-minded at best, and condescending at worst.

The Monuments Men was overburdened by too much material condensed into (relatively) too short a book. I think it would have been better just to split the book in to separate sections according to “character” and follow them chronologically through the war, or even to publish individual biographies of the author’s choice Monuments Men. Despite its problems, however, it was interesting enough for me to possibly read any follow-up books Edsel might put out, or similar books on the subject.