Nazi Loot

D.C. Watts and others in the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment hadentered Berchtesgaden with the first occupation troops in May 1945.The initial looting had already ended, but Watts soon learned of anetwork of tunnels leading to Hitler's country house, the Berghof.There he found the storage rooms where Hitler's belongings wereprotected from Allied bombing. American soldiers carried out theirwar booty by the trunkful. Watts snared hundreds of pieces ofsilverware, thousands of documents and more than 30 original Hitlerpaintings. This is one of them.

Church at Dawn. Adolf Hitler. Vienna period (1907-1912).

(21.0 cm by 10.0 cm) Aquarelle frame filler initialed "AH". Thispainting depicts a snow-covered church at dawn in a landscapeorientation. The figures in the foreground are indistinct andrendered with his typical casual disregard for figures. Rendered onpasteboard stock. Hitler usually painted in a traditional style: "Histypical landscapes, city scenes and still lifes all clearly indicatehow completely he was captivated by conventional forms ofexpression." And "His intense fascination with architecture wasreflected in his numerous drawings of houses, churches, publicbuildings and city scenes."

Hitler was 18 when he applied to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts,planning to make his life as an artist. He flunked the drawing testand was rejected. He later wrote in Mein Kampf, "That gentleman[the rector] assured me that the drawings I had submittedincontrovertibly showed my unfitness for painting." Hitler's abilitylay instead in architecture, the rector told the young man. By 1910the 20-year-old Hitler was working in Vienna as a draftsman andpainter of watercolors. William Shirer wrote in The Rise and Fall ofthe Third Reich that Hitler "sold hundreds of these pitiful pieces"to "petty traders to ornament a wall, to dealers who used them tofill empty picture frames on display and to furniture makers whosometimes tacked them to the backs of cheap sofas and chairs after afashion in Vienna in those days."