4 Forces Driving More
Two days after German armies invaded the country, while Stalin was
still grappling with how to respond, the museum’s director launched
a daring plan to safeguard over two million paintings, sculptures,
jewelry, coins, and artifacts from the six hundred rooms of the Winter
Palace. With the help of hundreds of volunteers and the support of the
government, in six days more than a million and a half works of art were
readied for secret storage in hidden vaults, a nearby cathedral, and the
hinterlands of Russia. Seven weeks later, another 700,000 masterpieces,
enough to fill fifty-three Pullman cars, were dispatched to Sverdlovsk,
some ,500 miles away.
A few blocks from the Hermitage, barely a hundred feet away from
where Hitler had planned to make his victory speech on the balcony of
the Hotel Astoria, stood a nondescript building housing the Research
Institute of Plant Industry. Unbeknownst to St. Petersburg’s residents,
but not lost on Adolf Hitler, the institute’s walls held another treasure—
since 894 , more than 80,000 samples of seeds, roots, and fruits repre-
senting some ,500 species of food crops had been collected from around
the world.
To Nazi strategists, the institute’s contents were more valuable than
the museum’s art and artifacts. In planning the invasion, Hitler had
designated a special S.S. tactical unit—the Russland-Sammelcommando—
to seize the seed collection for the Third Reich’s future use. The con-
quest of fertile lands beyond Germany’s borders would be incomplete
without a rich reserve of plant varieties to produce more food.
Hitler and the Russian institute director, Nikolai Vavilov, may
have had little in common, but both appreciated the fact that seeds
alter human life. The institute’s collection was a repository of genetic
traits representing tens of thousands of years of natural selection and
crossbreeding. For Hitler, such a genetic record would be invaluable
in fighting crop diseases and pests, adapting to drought or cold, or
protecting soil—just a few of the collection’s many benefits. Learn-
ing from seeds had long unleashed human advancement. The seed
bank contained not only a record of the past, but a map for the future
of food.
Vavilov was a scientist with incredible vision and boundless energy.
In the course of a quarter century, he had organized 5 research expedi-
tions through sixty-four countries on five continents. Having gained