Göring’s Man in Paris: The Story of a Nazi Art Plunderer and His World

Petropoulos (Artists Under Hitler), a professor of European History at Claremont McKenna College, delivers a nuanced and comprehensive biography of Nazi art plunderer Bruno Lohse (1911–2007). As deputy director of the Paris branch of the Nazi task force created to appropriate European cultural objects for Germany, Lohse helped Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring “commandeer” more than 700 artworks. Petropoulos draws on interviews with Lohse and eyewitness testimony to document how the Nazis stole an estimated one-third of the privately owned art in France. After the war, Lohse escaped justice and even continued to sell pieces “with complicated wartime pasts,” according to Petropoulos. While acknowledging that Lohse lied to him repeatedly and worked hard to shroud his professional life in secrecy, Petropoulos unearths intriguing details about Lohse’s family life (his musician father was an anti-Nazi), university education, relationship with Göring, and rumored involvement in the murders of Jews during the war. What emerges is a well-rounded portrait of a complex figure: “the art historian who had no confidence in his own eye; the brutal Nazi operative who could also laugh and who had a warm manner about him.” Readers of art history and WWII biographies will appreciate this engrossing deep dive into one of the world’s most prolific art looters. (Jan.)