Hitler's Last Hostages

Looted Art and the Soul of the Third Reich

By: Mary M. Lane

Narrated by: Mary M. Lane

Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

Adolf Hitler's obsession with art not only fueled his vision of a purified Nazi state - it was the core of his fascist ideology. Its aftermath lives on to this day.

Nazism ascended by brute force and by cultural tyranny. Weimar Germany was a society in turmoil, and Hitler's rise was achieved not only by harnessing the military but also by restricting artistic expression. Hitler, an artist himself, promised the dejected citizens of postwar Germany a purified Reich, purged of "degenerate" influences.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, he removed so-called "degenerate" art from German society and promoted artists whom he considered the embodiment of the "Aryan ideal." Artists who had produced challenging and provocative work fled the country. Curators and art dealers organized their stock. Thousands of great artworks disappeared--and only a fraction of them were rediscovered after World War II.

In 2013, the German government confiscated roughly 1,300 works by Henri Matisse, George Grosz, Claude Monet, and other masters from the apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, the reclusive son of one of Hitler's primary art dealers. For two years, the government kept the discovery a secret. In Hitler's Last Hostages, Mary M. Lane reveals the fate of those works and tells the definitive story of art in the Third Reich and Germany's ongoing struggle to right the wrongs of the past.

©2019 Mary M. Lane (P)2019 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"The revelatory saga of a monumental Nazi art theft and all the perpetrators, from Hitler to the modern museum directors who ignored the glaring signs of looted art. This riveting unraveling of one of the most outrageous and monumental chapters in stolen art is a must-read art crime chronicle." (Anne-Marie O'Connor, author of The Lady in Gold)

"Mary M. Lane skillfully chronicles the saga of a huge trove of art that had seemingly disappeared during World War II and the Holocaust. It's a gripping tale punctuated by plunder, profiteering, and self-serving rationalizations. Most chillingly, the outright deceptions continued long after the collapse of Hitler's Third Reich." (Andrew Nagorski, author of 1941: The Year Germany Lost the War and Hitlerland)

"Lane engagingly recounts how dealers who formerly represented avant-garde artists quickly adapted and dumped their 'degenerate' modernist clientele, except for purchases at knock-down prices for their private collection[s].... A gripping, original contribution to a still-unresolved Nazi crime." (Kirkus Reviews, starred)

Suggest reading instead of listening to this excellent book.

The book is clearly well written and highly informative. I absolutely recommend it. However, the narrator, sadly the author, reads every sentence with great exaggeration. It sounds like an elementary school teacher reading to a class, over emphasizing multiple parts in the same sentence. This also lends an odd tone to such a serious subject matter. I wish they would’ve gotten a professional reader, for the book really is excellent! Mary M. Lane is an incredible researcher and writer, able to make a complex era intelligible.

Great Book, Great Narration, Must Read.

This is a book every lover of history and art should read. It tells the tales of art lost to war and the struggle to get it home. Read by the author, which I appreciate. I think Mary did a great job and it is clear she put in an extreme amount of research.

Narration is everything

While the book presented some interesting facts, it did tend to stall in places. The author’s German and French left something to be desired...to the point where I had to replay certain sections to ascertain what she was trying to pronounce.

RIDICULOUS/awful narration by author!

Author certainly knows her own book, but her pronunciation of English, German, & French is unprofessional to the point of distraction! The listener is often "caught" on the strange way she pronounces any number of words, in her own language or others, so much so that part of a sentence is missed and the listener is forced to decide whether to go back or just "skip it". I'd love a nickel for each time I wondered where she was from, or what ethnicity contributed to the ways she learned English; there were just soooo many odd ways she pronounced words that we do not hear from professionals. The inferior narration unnecessarily diminished the otherwise interesting story - get the book in print and READ it if you can, seriously!

Good book but unbearable narrator.

The author does a good job of explaining how Hitler's childhood and artistic aspirations contributed to to his character, personality, and the crimes he eventually committed against his country and humanity. Unfortunately, the author is a much better writer than narrator. It was tough to finish the book due to her annoying, unnecessarily dramatic inflection throughout the entire book.