Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were not only the most systematic mass murderers in history, they were also history’s greatest thieves. Beginning with the duress sales of Jewish property starting in 1933 and escalating to expropriation as part of emigration in Austria to outright seizure in conquered nations during World War II, the Nazis carried out a plundering program that extended to millions of cultural objects. The Allied response began during the war: after concerned academics (such as the Harvard Defense Group) alerted military and civilian leaders to the dangers to Europe’s cultural patrimony, the United States created the Roberts Commission to study the issue, which in turn led to the creation of Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section, where officers accompanied the invading armies and tried to mitigate the damage from combat, as well as track the looted works. The Monuments officers undertook a massive, international restitution effort, but could not complete the task: there is still much “unfinished business” from this era. The literature on Nazi plundering and Allied restitution is rich and varied: from the vivid accounts of the Monuments officers to the technical and occasionally arcane scholarly interventions (e.g., how to interpret labels on the backs of paintings). The opening of archives and the continued discovery of Nazi-looted works in museums and private collections has served as an impetus for continued research, and an international effort promises to yield further discoveries. This article is divided into twenty-two sections, with the entries in chronological order. It bears mentioning that there are four sections where the historiography is particularly rich: (1) plunder and restitution in France, (2) the literature on “degenerate art,” (3) Nazi-looted art and the law, and (4) anthologies. The first is likely due to the cultural riches of France, as well as the accessibility of archives. The scholarship on “degenerate art” took off in the late 1980s, with the observance of the fifty-year anniversary of the Aktion in 1987, and the public revelation of the Gurlitt cache in 2013 contributed to this impetus (Hildebrand Gurlitt had been one of the four official dealers of the purged art). Due to the emergence of myriad restitution cases starting in the early 2000s, the legal aspects of looting and recovery have attracted intense scholarly interest. And the international nature of the research, which has involved scholars from both North America and Europe, has led to many conferences, which in turn yielded a rich array of anthologies.
‘But you’re white’: An autoethnography of whiteness and white privilege in East Asian universities
