The Incredible True Story of How the Mona Lisa and the French Crown Jewels Escaped the Nazis

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13-05-2025

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At 8 A.M. on August 25, 1939, two months after Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels roused the people of Danzig to 'come home to the Reich,' the German warship Schleswig-Holstein entered the port of the city with over 200 naval shock troop soldiers. Hitler was starting to make good on his threats.
At 5 p.m., the French museums received a message they knew would come: start packing.
To Rose Valland, a forty-five-year-old French art curator at the Jeu de Paume museum, the previous year felt in hindsight like 'one long and continuous slide to the inevitable.' She was used to operating solo but there was a new sense of gravity. Packing materials overflowed from the Jeu de Paume's basement and storage rooms onto the exhibition floors. It would also be a long time before her boss, André Dezarrois—attached to the French Air Force—might return, if at all. The responsibility of the Jeu de Paume—the art collection, the building, and the staff—rested entirely on her shoulders.
As Rose reflected later, 'Whatever the threats weighing on its inhabitants, France had above all to save the spiritual values that it held as an integral part of its soul and its culture. Sheltering its works of art, its archives, its libraries was indeed one of the first reflexes of defense of our country.'
Rose was incredibly efficient, as usual. By evening on August 25, only hours after the green light, the packaging of the most precious paintings was done. Unlike the Louvre, the Jeu de Paume did not get extra packing volunteers from Parisian department stores like the Samaritaine, the Grands Magasins du Louvre, or the Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville. But under Rose's direction, the handful of guards at the museum did the job, most of whom were tough, independent-minded Corsicans.They knew Rose well and trusted her, as she trusted them.
They packed a total of 119 paintings from the Jeu de Paume into 18 crates, ready to be trucked to Chambord Castle. The crates could fit between two and 26 paintings, depending on the artwork size. Among the boxes were works of art by Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky, Chagall, Modigliani, Juan Gris, John Singer Sargent, and Mary Cassatt. All the smaller paintings would have been wrapped in fiber quilt batting for cushioning and a special oiled moisture-wicking paper to protect them from humidity, then placed flat into wood packing cases.
As per the instructions, each crate was stenciled with 'JP' for Jeu de Paume and the words 'MUSEES NATIONAUX,' 'FRAGILE,' and 'MN.' Each crate also had a unique number.
At the Louvre, the largest evacuation ever attempted was underway. Immediately after the museum was closed, the workers and volunteers took the 50 most notable paintings off the walls, gingerly detached them from their frames, and brought them down to the Louvre basement on trolleys to be prepped for departure. They even unhooked the largest history paintings in the Grande Galerie, including Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, Théodore Géricault's Raft of the Medusa, Jacques-Louis David's The Coronation of Napoleon, and Paolo Veronese's The Wedding Feast at Cana, which measured 33 feet wide and 22 feet tall.
The workers wrote the names of the paintings in chalk on the walls to aid their future return, and placed the empty frames on the ground or left them in place. Where the face of the Mona Lisa once peered inscrutably at visitors, a worker scribbled her French name: La Joconde. He smudged out his first try and rewrote it more neatly just above, perhaps in deference to her iconic status. There was little chatter, just the rustling sounds of paraffin paper and the sound of hammering as the masterpieces were shut in their temporary wooden tombs.
The Venus de Milo was also slated for removal, taken off her pedestal and put onto a hand truck. Four men moved her carefully onto a wood platform and tied her waist with rope for additional stability. A custom crate would soon be built around her.
The French Beaux-Arts ministry was working furiously to protect Paris's monuments, too. Specialist workers led by Georges Huisman, the director general of the Beaux-Arts last seen in charge of the World's Fair in New York, unsealed and removed the ancient and priceless stained-glass windows in the cathedrals of Notre-Dame, Saint-Chapelle, and Chartres, piece by piece. Each piece was numbered and placed into wooden crates, then trucked away to storage locations, which included the vaults of the Bank of France and the basement of Saint-Chapelle. At Chartres, it would take just four days for 100 artisans to remove the 5,803 pieces of glass—a task that took over five months at the onset of World War I.
Overnight, the famous lights of Paris were darkened as a practice run for air raids. Workers climbed up long, precariously perched ladders to put safety caps atop the city's Belle Époque lanterns. New blue lights popped up indicating the location of air-raid shelters. The packers at the Louvre, who worked nearly all through the night, could only use the small lamps provided to them for emergency lighting.
Over the next few days, Rose and the staff packed up the next batch of important paintings in the Jeu de Paume, 165 in total. The greatest challenge lay ahead—securing the art to be sheltered on-site. Approximately two-thirds of the entire collection still needed to be safeguarded, but the Jeu de Paume's basement was too small, consisting only of a few rooms immediately surrounding the central staircase. Of those, only one room was intended for storage; the rest were functional: a boiler room, a former coal storage area, a break room for the museum guards and caretakers, and bathrooms. Furthermore, the basement storage room was not large enough to accommodate everything that remained, so Rose had the boiler room converted into an additional storeroom.
Between the two rooms, they fit 524 paintings, nearly 100 sculptures, and the museum's archives. The doors were then padlocked closed.
The museum guards moved 20 sculptures, too large to be lowered into the basement, into the walled garden and piled sandbags to their highest features. The electric torches and lighting apparatuses in the museum were stored and secured.
The Louvre staff sent the first artworks, including the Mona Lisa—gingerly ensconced in a red velvet-lined custom crate—to Chambord at 6 a.m. on August 28. Jacques Jaujard, director of the Musées Nationaux, calmly directed the whole evacuation from ground zero in the Cour Carrée, the enclosed open-air courtyard of the Louvre. It was a 100-mile journey on a carefully plotted route. Armored guards rode in each truck, and Musées Nationaux staff bookended the convoys in private cars. The energetic arts administrator Albert Henraux, who valiantly guided the 1938 art evacuation at top speed in his Hotchkiss car, led the first convoy of eight trucks.
The French crown jewels and 225 other crates from the Louvre were also on board the first trucks. Another convoy with six trucks left at 2 p.m. From then on, two convoys departed daily from the Louvre. The first 70 paintings from the Jeu de Paume, packed into 15 crates, left for Chambord on the morning of August 30.
Outside of the museum world, the English, French, and Americans were still having meetings with Hitler and his ministers, trying last-ditch efforts to stop a major conflict. But privately, the diplomats doubted that war could be avoided. The Western European nations continued to mobilize. The border between France and Germany was closed, and telephone and telegraph communications were shut down. Restrictions on the French populace began, with cafés and restaurants to be closed by 11 p.m. daily. The French military took control of the radio.
On August 31 and September 1, a subsequent shipment of 163 paintings from the Jeu de Paume, mostly placed uncrated in padded trucks, left for Chambord. Rose was working so rapidly, she grabbed two tickets to the opening of a Tibetan painting exhibition at the Musée Guimet as scrap paper, noted the convoy number, date of departure, and number of paintings on the back, and pinned it to her inventory lists. These paintings ended up stacked dozens deep in the chapel of Chambord castle.
With all the important artwork now at Chambord and the final preparations at the Jeu de Paume fully in process, Rose could take a small breath. But any sense of relief was short-lived. On one hand, Hitler was making assurances that he would meet directly with Poland, a sign that perhaps the conflict could be de-escalated at the 11th hour. But his follow-up demands became more and more unreasonable and contradictory. In addition to Danzig and the Polish Corridor, he suddenly added Silesia and Gdynia to his territorial wish list and stated that he no longer envisioned that Poland could stay independent. He told the British ambassador that he would only meet and negotiate with Poland if they agreed in advance to all his demands.
During the night on August 31, German SS officers disguised in Polish military uniforms, under direct orders from Gestapo director Reinhard Heydrich, attacked the Sender Gleiwitz radio station in Germany and broadcast an anti-German message in Polish to make it seem like Polish anti-German factions were behind it. Dozens of similar incidents took place the same night. Polish men, as well as prisoners from concentration camps, were executed, then dressed as Polish saboteurs and left at the sites of the attack as further 'evidence.'
In the early hours of September 1, Hitler issued a proclamation to the Wehrmacht, the German Army, that clearly showed his formal resolve to attack Poland, stating that 'the time has come to oppose force with force.' At the port of Danzig, the Schleswig-Holstein fired its cannons on a military depot. As the last cases of art from the Jeu de Paume were loaded up onto trucks, German troops crossed the Polish border at multiple entry points and began their assault. Danzig was officially declared part of the Third Reich. Nazi agents within Poland took over the railways, arrested officials, requisitioned trains, and occupied stations. In a mass attack, German planes dropped bombs on Warsaw and 150 towns all over Poland.
Hitler also made a speech at the Reichstag, laying out the basis for his actions and proclaiming the superiority of the German military. He pledged to protect women and children but swore that 'whoever departs from the rules of human warfare can only expect that we shall do the same.' He would fight 'until victory is secured' or 'not survive the outcome.' He also appointed his second in command. 'If anything should happen to me in the struggle, then my first successor is Party Comrade Göring,' his portly Generalfeldmarschall in charge of the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force.
On September 2, French president Albert Lebrun addressed the French Parliament. To loud applause, he confirmed that 'with great calmness, with cool resolve, and in perfect order, France had taken the steps required by her own safety and her faithfulness to her obligations.' 'Vive la France!' he concluded to even more thunderous clapping.
Then French prime minister Daladier followed with an even longer speech, stating, 'France rises with such impetuous impulses only when she feels in her heart that she is fighting for her life and for her independence. Gentlemen, today France is in command.' The deputies rose to their feet and applauded loudly and at length.
Both England and France demanded that Germany announce a withdrawal from Poland by the next day, September 3.
Over at the Louvre, around midday, a large group of museum workers gathered atop the grand staircase where the Winged Victory of Samothrace still stood triumphantly. The sculpture was originally intended to be sheltered in place at the museum, but a new study showed that the vaulted ceiling above her would not survive a bombing. The Louvre's Asian Arts department curator, George Salles, came to tell everyone, on behalf of Jacques Jaujard, that war was about to be declared. The sober news meant that Victory needed to be moved out urgently.
Made up of 118 fragile pieces of white Parian marble, the winged sculpture was encased in an open scaffolding and attached to a complex rope and pulley system. At 3 p.m., Victory was lifted off of her prow pedestal. Two groups of men held up the sculpture as it rolled inch by inch down a wooden ramp, shaking perilously. 'The rope is cracking!' one of the men yelled. When the sculpture made it miraculously down the grand staircase without a scratch, the elderly curator nearly collapsed from stress on the stone steps. 'I will not see her return,' he said ruefully, while wiping away a tear. at amazon.com
By nightfall, the Louvre was nearly empty. Over the prior week, 95 trucks had whisked away most of the museum's most precious objects—more than 1200 crates, thousands of paintings, and tens of thousands of sculptures.
At half past noon on September 3, Robert Coulondre, the French ambassador in Berlin, met with German foreign minister von Ribbentrop, who informed him that Germany did not agree to the ultimatum. Coulondre responded, 'I have the painful duty to notify you that as from today, September 3, at 5 p.m., the French Government will find itself obliged to fulfill the obligations that France has contracted towards Poland, and which are known to the German Government.'
'Well,' von Ribbentrop replied, 'it will be France who is the aggressor.'
'History will judge of that,' Coulondre replied.
And with that, war had come to Europe once again.
From the book THE ART SPY: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland. Copyright 2025 by Michelle Young. Reprinted by permission of HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.You Might Also Like
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