Francis Henry Taylor, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, took their concerns to Washington, D.C. Their efforts ultimately led to the establishment by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the "American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas" on June 23, 1943.

Headquartered at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Commission drew up lists of and reports on European cultural treasures and provided them to military units, in hopes that these monuments would be protected whenever possible.

The Commission helped establish the MFAA branch within the Civil Affairs and Military Government Sections of the Allied armies, led by Major L. Bancel LaFarge.

They worked in the field under the Operations Branch of SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, Europe, commanded by Eisenhower), and were actively involved in battle preparations.

In preparing to take Florence, which was used by the Nazis as a supply distribution center due to its central location in Italy, Allied troops relied on aerial photographs provided by the MFAA which were marked with monuments of cultural importance so that pilots could avoid damaging such sites during bombings.

Monuments officer Deane Keller had a prominent role in saving the Campo Santo in Pisa after a mortar round started a fire that melted the lead roof, which then bled down the iconic 14th century fresco-covered walls.

Keller led a team of Italian and American troops and restorers in recovering the remaining fragments of the frescoes and in building a temporary roof to protect the structure from further damage.

Entering liberated towns and cities ahead of ground troops, Monuments Men worked quickly to assess damage and make temporary repairs before moving on with Allied Armies as they conquered Nazi territory.

Captain Walter Huchthausen, an American scholar and architect attached to the U.S. 9th Army, fell to small arms fire in April 1945 somewhere north of Essen and east of Aachen, Germany.

[5] Major Ronald Edmond Balfour, a British scholar attached to the Canadian First Army, died from a shell-burst in March 1945 while operating beyond the Allied front line in Cleves, Germany.

In Germany alone, U.S. forces found about 1,500 repositories of art and cultural objects looted from institutions and individuals across Europe, as well as German and Austrian museum collections that had been evacuated for safekeeping.

Hundreds of the artifacts were surrendered by, or had their locations reported by, SS General Karl Wolff as part of Operation Sunrise, his secret negotiation with the Office of Strategic Services.

[9][8] Some of the repositories discovered by Monuments Men in Germany, Austria, and Italy were: In addition to preserving and cataloguing stolen and displaced treasures, MFAA efforts established pathways for restitution; initially, this took place in the form of return to a rightful owner, when identified.

In early May 1945, Lt. Col. Geoffrey Webb, British MFAA chief at Eisenhower’s headquarters, proposed that U.S. forces quickly prepare buildings in Germany so that they might receive large shipments of artworks and other cultural property found in the numerous repositories.

Secondary collecting points were also established in various German towns, including: Bad Wildungen, Bamberg, Bremen, Goslar, Heilbronn, Nuremberg, Oberammergau, Vornbach, and Würzburg.

The film, which stars George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jean Dujardin, Cate Blanchett, and John Goodman, is based on Robert M. Edsel's New York Times best-selling 2007 book Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History.