The art of war

Note: Two new books tell the story of the 'monuments men,' those who did everything in their power to protect the European cultural heritage in WWII, while a third catalogs the collection of Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering

Beyond the Dreams of Avarice By Nancy H. Yeide Laurel Publishing | 518 pages | $250.

The Monuments Men By Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter. Center Street | 473 pages | $26.99.

The Venus Fixers By Ilaria Dagnini Brey. Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 320 pages | $26.

As American troops fought the Nazis, US commanders were given an unprecedented military assignment: Defeat fascism without destroying European monuments and the continent's cultural heritage. Military needs would always trump cultural preservation, but monuments and artworks were to be protected, where possible, from war damage, ransacking and military requisition.

This was a tall order filled by an unusual assortment of painters, sculptors, architects, historians and curators who begged, borrowed or scrounged the means to protect monuments in the Allied military's path, repair those that had been damaged by war and find caches of looted property. These were the "monuments men," members of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) section, a minuscule part of the US military. Along with British counterparts, they were officers of low rank and "superior" education who were charged with the preservation of Europe's great treasures.

Although the monuments men were virtually unknown for a half-century after World War II, two new books tell the story of the mission and the men who fulfilled it. The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter, covers the wartime and immediate postwar work of the monuments...