Adolf Hitler

In World War II, the Nazis had conquered most of Europe. They pillaged all the best of Europe treasuries, particularly each nation’s valuable art. As Germany most influenced leaders, Adolph Hitler and Hermann Goering had an interest in collecting art. Among all the art at their disposal to them some art detained a special interest. Vermeer was a desired and prestigious prize to both them. What made Vermeer Special? What made it different among the others? Why Hitler and Goering coveted Vermeer’s paintings? Adolph Hitler and Hermann Goering were dominant, pitiless leaders that were obsessed with art. As Edward Dolnick quoted Goering “I love art for art’s sake”. Hitler aspired to be painter, and applied to an art school in Vienna, but was rejected as mentioned in “rape of Europa”. According to rape of Europa, this perturbed Hitler because abstract modernists were accepted over him and generally Hitler hated what was going on in modern art. The fact that he has been dismissed from Vienna art school in favor of abstract and modern styles grew his hatred more for modern paintings as talked in Barron and rape of Europa. He hated modern art because of its abstract figures, shapes of the figures and its undefined lines. Hitler wants art that represented the Aryan nation that is from Europe descent. In the “forgers spell”, Dolnick adds that Hitler fantasized to build an art museum in his hometown of Linz, Austria (51). Baron says Hitler wanted to prove to the world that he was powerful. He demonstrated this by filling up his museum with the most valuable paintings in Europe.
Rape of Europa raised the issue about the Nazi pillaging of art in Europe. The film tells us that the Nazis formulated the equivalent shopping lists before they occupied a nation. That means they were not just collecting the nation’s paintings but they were informed of what art existed in that territory and had a particular intent to collect them. Hermann Goering was second in command after Hitler.