By Robert M. Edsell with Brett Witter, Center Street, Nashville, 473 pages, $26.95.
Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi regime maintained a policy of confiscating fine art from its victims for removal to Germany. Adolf Hitler’s plan was to display the finest of the plundered works at a “Fuhrermuseum” he intended to build in his hometown of Linz, Austria. By the end of World War II, millions of works had been stolen from private collectors, dealers, museums, governments and houses of worship. So vast was the plundering that, 64 years after the end of World War II, litigation still persists over the ownership of many works.
