The Monument Men

Saw this one yesterday. Really enjoyed it. Little told story of a group gathered to try to keep major artwork safe from the Nazis. George Clooney was excellent as were all the actors in his "group" . When George appears in the last scene as an old man he is played by Nick Clooney, George's father.

That looks interesting, might see it. I have thought that a movie about Operation Lusty would be interesting but would be harder to make, but it did produce more things  of importance to the U.S. all things considered, as did Operation Paperclip which is better known...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Lusty


This was one of their biggest "hauls" and is the only one in existence. It was beautifully restored and can now be seen at the Smithsonian's aircraft collection near Dulles airport.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arado_Ar_234

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

I liked this story because it reminded me of something my dad told me of his WW11 adventures. He said the war had ended but everybody couldn't come home all at once so he was hanging around in Austria with nothing much to do. A lot of leave was given, all soldiers in the area were provided with a motorcycle and a trumpet. When out of the blue he was ordered to go and guard a little church. When he and his fellow battle-hardened soldiers arrived they took over from a bunch of soldiers that looked like they were out of an operetta like "The Student Prince" (he said they had purple coats and lots of gold braid? ) . So nothing happened. They guarded with orders to be on high alert. Then they were relieved and went on their way. My Dad never really knew what they were doing there. He surmised that they were guarding something important and many years later he learned of something called the crown of St. Stephen being returned by us to the Hungarian government. He thought it might have been something like that. He would have been so interested in this movie.  

Here's a bit of the crown's history from wikipedia:

At the end of the Second World War the crown jewels were recovered in Mattsee, Austria, on 4 May 1945 by the U.S. 86th Infantry Division.[9] The crown jewels were transported to Western Europe and eventually given to the United States Army by the Hungarian Crown Guard for safekeeping from the Soviet Union.[10] For much of the Cold War the crown was held at the United States Bullion Depository (Fort Knox, Kentucky) alongside the bulk of America's gold reserves and other priceless historical items. After undergoing extensive historical research to verify the crown as genuine, it was returned to the people of Hungary by order of U.S. President Jimmy Carter on 6 January 1978. Most current academic knowledge about Hungarian royal garments originates from this modern research. Following substantial U.S. political debate, the agreement to return the jewels contained many conditions to ensure the people of Hungary, rather than its Communist government, took possession of the jewels.[11]

That's an interesting story but ......"all soldiers in the area were provided with a motorcycle and a trumpet."  ....where could they find enough motorcycles and trumpets and what exactly were they supposed to do with the trumpets ?.....

it was just in their area. Supposed to keep them out of trouble I suppose. My Dad said he used the motorcycle more than the trumpets. Don't think they were supposed to have much to do with civilians in Austria.

One of the other stories after the war had ended was they gave my Dad leave. He went to London. He overstayed his leave by quite a bit and when he finally got back, expecting he would be in trouble, they said to him "Are you back already??"