Nazi storage sites for art during World War II

The German Nazi Party stored art, gold and other objects that had been either plundered or moved for safekeeping during World War II at various storage sites.

[4] The contents of the repository included Belgian-owned treasures such as Michelangelo's Madonna of Bruges stolen from the Church of Our Lady in Bruges and Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece stolen from Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, Vermeer’s The Astronomer and The Art of Painting, which were to be focal points of Hitler’s Führermuseum in Linz, and paintings from the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, Italy that had been stolen by the Hermann Göring Tank Division (Fallschirm-Panzer Division 1 Hermann Göring) at Monte Cassino in Italy.

In April 1945, as the Allied troops approached the salt mine, Gauleiter August Eigruber gave orders to blow it up.

The artworks were brought to the Central Art Collecting Point in Munich in the following years, where the difficult process of restitution began, which is still going on today.

The Kaiseroda salt mine complex near Merkers stored over 400 million Reichsmarks worth of Nazi gold (equivalent to 2 billion 2021 €),[5] thousands of crates of artworks that had been transferred from the Berlin State Museums for safekeeping,[6] and many stolen works of art.

Inside, US officials found 30 miles of galleries, and bags containing almost half a billion Reichsmarks at the main entrance.

By April 16 the US began moving the gold and currency to a Reichsbank building in Frankfurt, with a convoy of 30 overloaded ten-ton trucks under heavy protection, including air support.

While reports by Monuments Men noted that the contents of the mine had been "entirely reduced to ashes", part of the collection was recovered after the war.