Looted Art

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Looted Art

Part Two

BBC legend Charles Wheeler follows the trail of World War II's looted art - and unwittingly begin a strange odyssey into bad politics, big lies and priceless masterpieces.

Looted Art

  • Looted Art

    • Part One
      The uncertain fate of masterpieces stolen by Germany and seized by Russia after World War II.
    • Part Two
      Politics and lies could prevent some of the world's greatest artworks from ever being seen.

With the aid of Anne Webber, from the Commission for Looted Art, he traces the theft by the Nazis of millions of paintings, book, tapestries and sculpture - and the removal of that very same treasure to Russia by Stalin's specialist trophy brigades at the end of the war.

Many of these works of art are still believed hidden inside secret repositories today - but as Charles Wheeler discovers in both Moscow and St Petersburg, a fierce and sometimes hysterical defence of the past and an anti-German rhetoric rarely heard these days, still prevents the truth from being told.

Amidst all the white heat of claim and counter claim lies some of the greatest Western art ever seen and some of this work clearly belongs to vicitms of Nazism.

But will justice ever be done? Or will these works of art remain as Europe's last prisoners of war.

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