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 

The Art Dealer

Göring returned to his sybaritic lifestyle at Carinhall. Occasion-
ally he undertook fresh forays into the newly occupied territo-
ries, returning each time with art treasures loaded aboard his
train. Postwar interrogators would criticize his taste, referring to
his collection of florid nudes and vulgar altarpieces, to his ava-
rice and vanity. But this negative judgment did less than justice
to his real shrewdness as a collector. By the end of World War 
he would have built up, often by only marginally legal means, a
collection worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and it was not
merely Germanic art. As art expert Denys Sutton commented in
one November  report: “Is it surprising that a taste for fe-
male nudes and a desire for unlimited acquisition predominate
in Göring’s character? Are these characteristics not shared by
other large-scale figures?” He recalled that banker J. P. Morgan
and newspaperman William Randolph Hearst had a similar ap-
petite for works of art, while the monarchs Rudolf  and Henry