[MSN] WASHINGTON: 'Hitler Album' of stolen art unveiled at National Archives. A decades-old tattered brown leather album with photographs of 18th century paintings offers a rare glimpse into Adolf Hitler's massive looting of artwork during World War II.

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So-called 'Hitler Album' of stolen art unveiled at National Archives 

The Associated Press 
Thursday, November 1, 2007 

WASHINGTON: A decades-old tattered brown leather album with photographs of
18th century paintings offers a rare glimpse into Adolf Hitler's massive
looting of artwork during World War II.

The album, unveiled Thursday at the National Archives, is a compilation of
some of the thousands of paintings the Nazis pillaged from their victims and
rounded up for Hitler.

"This material is one of the most significant finds related to Hitler's
premeditated theft of art and other cultural treasures to be found since the
Nuremberg trials," Allen Weinstein, archivist of the United States, said at
a press conference.

The newly discovered album is one of two that were found in the attic of the
family of an American soldier who had been stationed in the Berchtesgaden
area of Germany at the end of World War II, according to Robert Edsel, who
acquired both albums.

Edsel, the president of Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of
Art, said the soldier had removed the albums from Hitler's home as a
souvenir of war.

"These albums, albums 6 and 8 of the series, contain photographs of some of
the earliest thefts of works of art from the most prominent collectors and
dealers in Paris at the beginning of the war," Edsel said.

He donated "album 8" to the archives and said he plans to donate "album 6"
at a future date.

Edsel declined to say how much he paid for the albums, nor would he identify
the family that sold them. He would say only that the family lives in the
southern United States.

The albums were among nearly 100 such volumes that were created by a Third
Reich unit called the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. The unit looted
and catalogued collections for Hitler, who would then choose treasures for
the Fuhrer's Art Museum in Linz, Austria.

The archives already has the 39 albums that were used as evidence of Nazi
looting during the Nuremberg trials. Until recently, the archives said, it
was believed that the missing albums had been destroyed during the closing
days of World War II.

Album 8, the latest acquisition, contains about 50 pages of black-and-white
photos of artwork by French artists Hubert Robert and Francois Boucher. The
paintings include portraits, landscapes, and pictures of cherub-like
children.

Edsel said he believed that most of the paintings detailed in the two albums
were returned to France and then on to their rightful owners.

Edsel's Monuments Men Foundation, based in Dallas, Texas, was founded in
honor of the "Monuments Men" of World War II - museum directors, curators
and others who worked to help protect monuments and other cultural treasures
from destruction during the war.

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On the Net:

National Archives: http://www.archives.gov