ing counter for future peace negotiations. Göring merely
wanted them, and he could come up with hard currency faster
than any other source.
On November , tiring already of the Battle of Britain, he
arrived in Paris again. Groveling French officials received him at
the famed Louvre Museum, where Professor Marcel Aubert
thanked him on behalf of all his French colleagues for having
ordered his bombers to spare their historic monuments during
Yellow. Touring the galleries afterward, Göring took a fancy to
three hunting sculptures, including the Diane de Fontainebleau.
He ordered Rudier’s, the Auguste Rodin foundry, to cast copies
in bronze for him.
That afternoon he visited the beautiful Jeu de Paume gal-
lery at the entrance to the Louvre. Here, Rosenberg’s first treas-
ure haul items culled from the collection of the fugitive
Lazare Wildenstein was on display to a privileged few. Göring
selected four of them and indicated in lordly fashion that he
would take them to Germany. When Rosenberg’s officials chafed
at this, the Reichsmarschall that same day issued a directive
defining their job as being merely to catalog and crate the objects
selected for his art collection (and Hitler’s) and ship them off to
Germany immediately “with Luftwaffe assistance.” The remain-
der were to be auctioned off to dealers and museums. “The
monetary proceeds,” Göring stipulated in this document, ap-
peasing his own pricking conscience, “shall be assigned to the
French State in benefit of the French dependents of war vic-
tims.”
Through this Nazi treasure-house installed in the Jeu de
Paume would be sluiced over the coming four years the
confiscated art fortunes of the Hamburger brothers, Isaac, Jean,
and Hermann; of Sarah Rosenstein, Madame P. Heilbronn, Dr.
Wassermann, and many others. By and large the Nazis left the