There were many heroines of World War II who have been overlooked and forgotten in America. One was Rose Valland, the only “monuments woman” among a phalanx of men tasked to save Europe’s art from Hitler. She performed harrowing deeds which put her in imminent danger many times over.
Briefly, Valland was a French art historian appointed as overseer of a museum in German-occupied France in 1941. By 1944 she had witnessed hundreds of paintings and sculptures looted by German officers and discreetly documented where they were going. The Germans looted from museums and private art collections. She documented 20,000 pieces from one museum alone. In August of 1944 a single train was overloaded with 148 crates containing 967 paintings placed in 53 railroad cars. French railroad workers bravely went on strike and train broke down from too much weight. By the time they fixed the problem the French Resistance arrived and stopped the transport.
After the war, Valland was temporarily put under arrest as a collaborator, but soon released. In the following years she helped recover 1,400 crates of artwork. In the end, she helped the Allies recover a total of 60,000 works.– Upon returning home, Valland was showered with numerous citations, awards and accolades from France, England, Germany, and the US. In 1953, she was appointed as conservator of the Musees Nationaux. She died in 1980 and was entombed in her French family vault along with her lesbian partner. – Interestingly, John Frankenheimer’s famous 1964 film, The Train, was loosely based on Valland’s story, as was the 2014 film, The Monuments Men where Cate Blanchett’s character was inspired by Valland.
Lynn H. Nicholas, author of The Rape of Europa, said that “In this mad and secret scene, Rose Valland managed somehow to survive. Her dowdy looks certainly did not invite advances from the Germans, and she was regarded by all as an insignificant administrative functionary. Her presence… was an anomaly.” In other words, she was good at appearing unremarkable and out of sight.
The Germans did not want French citizens to know what they were doing, fearing it would lead to espionage. But “this was exactly what Mlle Valland was doing” said Nicholas. “Four times the Germans threw Rose Valland out” when trouble began. But then “she would come back,” hiding behind concerns about heating and maintenance problems. “At night she took home the negatives of the archival photographs being taken by the Nazis, and had them printed by a friend. In the morning they would be back in place. Every time there was a theft or damage she would be questioned… but she managed to stay on. Loyal French guards filled her in on details of events in those parts of the Louvre which were off limits to her. Packers and drivers told her what they were doing.” 1
The Valland story is now our story. She was the modern archetype of those of us challenging authority and speaking truth to power in a climate of intolerance and newly emerging waves of fascism (white supremacy, censored books in schools, racial intolerance, xenophobia, restricted voters’ rights, controlling women’s (abortion) rights, religion into schools, gay-bashing). Indeed, a fascist shift can hardly be denied. Neither can asking the “wrong” questions, saying the “wrong” things at the “wrong” time in the “wrong” company, which leads to violent retaliation. Those interdictions and taboos are expanding daily.
Which means the spaces in between them are shrinking. Valland worked inside the German infrastructure, wore a government uniform, spoke native German, and worked at a job that supported the Third Reich. At the same time, she was one of the most effective Resistance workers on “the inside.” She put to work the Sun Tzu rule of war: The way to defeat an enemy is to live with them and learn their ways.
The Valland-Nazi dynamic drew an even more obvious distinction. Valland was faute de mieux a democratic socialist, as opposed to a national socialist. Valland fought for social and economic freedom as well as “regulated” capitalism when it monopolized and ended individual freedom, equality, and personal autonomy. Reversely, Hitler was a laissez-faire capitalist and gave free reign to private industry prior to and during the war. His position was not leftist (socialist) but extreme right (fascist). Some of his biggest heroes were American industrialists like J.P. Morgan and Henry Ford (who did not hire Jews). – “Hitler” is what happens when citizens confuse left with right and blindly follow the rantings of demagogues (promising quick answers to difficult problems).
Anyone considered “leftist” today is a latter-day Valland who now lives in a world more engulfed than ever in a fascist zeitgeist. Valland could see the front-lines, literally, could see the enemy’s uniform, and knew exactly where the physical boundaries were beyond which led to freedom. All those are gone now. Today, we Vallanders are so deeply swallowed by “the system” that we’re in it even when thinking we’re outside of it. The very tools and methods we use to extricate ourselves are themselves part of the system. It’s mindful of Einstein’s statement that you can’t solve a problem using the tools creating it.
In other words, the system (or if you prefer, the “deep state”) has every base covered. We’re “in it,” even contribute to it, even while fighting it (shadows of Orwell flood in). Howard Zinn once said that the most horrible things (war, genocide, slavery) happen, not because of disobedience, but because of “obedience.” Imagine a situation where even when you disobey, you’re obeying. — How can one respond to that? How does one speak from the outside when he’s inextricably inside? The problem is one of psychology – for both ourselves and the system.
Think about it. Even open discussions (like this one) change nothing. And the psychology goes even deeper. It allows leftist-Vallanders to use their own thinking against themselves. In other words, we wonder if the whole problem is just in our minds, that we’re fabricating a monster where one doesn’t exist. It’s all a product of paranoia – “a piece of undigested beef,” said Scrooge. And that’s the end of it. This is extreme power.
But what it doesn’t account for is the reverse of that. If we can be so manipulated, remain so inert and irrelevant, at the same time the system cannot be rid of us. It needs us. We are necessary to its existence in order to function. Every light requires a surrounding shadow. The system attempts to contain even that axiom, but it cannot. There are universal laws which contain even it.
Therefore, it’s reverse psychology which becomes the weapon of the left; that is, if we try to understand it better than the monster itself. Valland was the virus inside the Reich. Leftist thinking today can still become a virus. It can attack the host by getting various pieces to mistrust each other and agitate. The system then throws you out (a la Valland) while knowing it cannot, since we are its own invention. It’s another way of describing the subversive imagination born inside the system by its own devices. It generates its own virus. At first it requires no vaccine. In time that changes.
The idea of rescuing art (as Valland did) becomes a metaphor. It showed how the Reich’s thinking began to self-destruct. First, it was Europe’s “finest art.” Second, it was tagged “degenerate” by decree. Third, it became the most sought after art among the highest ranking Nazi officials (while being condemned at the same time). This irrational and chaotic juggling generated cracks in the German armor. Even Goering and Hitler could not reconcile the contradiction. It became a nightmare for which an over-burdened train (breaking down) was symbolic. The official Nazi response? Denial! But when asked “Who did the art?,” the responses were never honest or straightforward. They could never say “Jews.” Only sociopathic minds skilled in self-denial could maintain such a monumental secret (and lie).
Valland was caught in the middle of this schizophrenia, witnessing incredible frustration, fights, official cover-ups, fraud, and allegations of disloyalty to the Reich. She stood silent and watched the system begin to unravel.
The latter-day Valland finds herself working inside the system and calling out fraud and hypocrisy where it lies, even knowing there is no front-line to escape beyond. The “underground” eighty years ago was the Radio Free Europe, heard on ham-radio sets in cellars throughout Western Europe. Today the system’s underground is itself talking to itself, like an echo. Today’s fascism is subtle, discreet, and subliminal (less so in our political parties). It just watches, catalogs, monitors, files, censors, and leads us on. But “the echo” rings louder everyday by way of “information” – the most powerful and effective propaganda tool ever. – The stronger the system’s own voice, the more it hears what isn’t being said, what it fears most about itself.
The war ended in 1945. The good guys held the bad guys accountable. Today, the war is “undeclared,” undefined, and self-perpetuating. The state never worries, even as it allows subversive news and “independent” news outlets to sound off. The system permits them because it soothes the “radical” fringes, knowing they will change nothing. The singers are allowed to sing to their own choirs, everyone feels vented, and everything stays the same. The system plays with its own shadows – for now.
The echo/shadows have to work according to the system’s rules. Valland was tossed out many times, but always came back because the system needed her (as scapegoat, shadow of self-doubt). In the same way we always come back, just as echoes always return. As a system veers to “the right” more and more (politically, ideologically), its shadow grows, especially as its members slowly find themselves without any rights at all. Every entity walking in the light has a shadow pursuing it. The Nazis created Valland. The system creates us.
We’re now at that critical point – again – where the political spectrum has drifted so far to the right that “they” actually dignify hate groups, white supremacy, voter suppression, citizen spying, surveillance operations, and so on. A recent poll actually showed that a large percentage of Americans are “tired of democracy” and favor an autocracy again (a king, or monarch). Even George W. Bush said “the Constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper.” In other words, a democracy is simply too messy for what it wants. They’re tired of having to wait on votes and majoritarian views. They want quick solutions to overwhelming problems.
In her book Spying on Democracy, Heidi Boghosian essentially wrote about the huge gap between democracy and fascism. When unchecked, the system “categorizes and monitors people based on their activities, their associations, the movements, their purchases, and their perceived political beliefs.” In the book’s Forward, Lewis Lapham wrote,
Suspicious of all forms of unlicensed expression, the custodians of the nation’s conscience find the practice of democracy to be both uncivil and unsafe. Entirely too many people … don’t do what they’re told, don’t swallow their prescribed daily dosages of the think-tank swill slopped into their bowls by the wardens of the corporate security state. Such people present the risk of having thoughts of their own, and therefore they must be carefully and constantly watched. 2
But Boghosian also wrote about a movement in New York called Critical Mass. It was the story of the NYPD’s hostile reaction to a monthly bicycling event which aims to call attention to sustainable transportation, safety, urban space, and pollution. Critical mass by definition is “the minimum size or amount of something required to start or maintain a movement.” This is where real socialism (justice) refuses to roll over and die. It’s part of the deep state which on one level stays tragically contained and ineffective, but on another trusts in forces outside the system itself, forces which restore a higher equilibrium. There is always a critical mass brewing for the fundamental need to exist freely and outside systems.
All systems are contained; otherwise they wouldn’t be systems. That means it must, by definition, exclude other forces Those other forces happen to include what it rejects; in this case, the instinct to call out injustice, fraud, and thievery. They create Rose Vallands and plants them squarely in the middle of whatever sets out to subjugate and rule. And the system becomes its own virus. The serpent eats its tail.
© 2023 Richard Hiatt
1Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa (New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), pp. 135-36.
2In Heidi Boghosian’s Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance (San Francisco: City Light Books, 2013) p. 13.
The Subversive Imagination: Dispatches from the American Frontier 