When Hitler's armies occupied Italy in 1943, they also seized control of
mankind's greatest cultural treasures. As they had done throughout
Europe, the Nazis could now plunder the masterpieces of the Renaissance,
the treasures of the Vatican, and the antiquities of the Roman Empire.
On the eve of the Allied invasion, General Dwight Eisenhower empowered a
new kind of soldier to protect these historic riches. In May 1944 two
unlikely American heroes--artist Deane Keller and scholar Fred
Hartt--embarked from Naples on the treasure hunt of a lifetime, tracking
billions of dollars of missing art, including works by Michelangelo,
Donatello, Titian, Caravaggio, and Botticelli. With the German army
retreating up the Italian peninsula, orders came from the highest levels
of the Nazi government to transport truckloads of art north across the
border into the Reich. Standing in the way was General Karl Wolff, a
top-level Nazi officer. As German forces blew up the magnificent bridges
of Florence, General Wolff commandeered the great collections of the
Uffizi Gallery and Pitti Palace, later risking his life to negotiate a
secret Nazi surrender with American spymaster Allen Dulles.
Brilliantly researched and vividly written, the New York Times
bestselling Saving Italy brings readers from Milan and the near
destruction of The Last Supper to the inner sanctum of the Vatican and
behind closed doors with the preeminent Allied and Axis leaders:
Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Churchill; Hitler, Göring, and Himmler.
An unforgettable story of epic thievery and political intrigue, Saving
Italy is a testament to heroism on behalf of art, culture, and history.
