If you’re a fan of Matt Damon, art, or WWII history, you’ve probably seen the movie Monuments Men – a mildly fictionalized story about a group of heroic men and a token woman who banded together to save art stolen by Nazis.

At its core, the preservation and protection of important works of art in a war zone is a beautiful show of international friendship, but when you look beyond the surface things get murky.

As US News states in their article about the movie and the history behind it, the art “repositories held objects evacuated from museums in the Third Reich and stolen from German-occupied territories across Europe, such as Belgium’s Ghent Altarpiece and the Bruges “Madonna” by Michelangelo. Most tragically, the Nazis had plundered much of the loot from Jewish art collectors, while agents working for party leaders had bought thousands of pieces relinquished by Jews under duress.” It does make for a compelling story, but where have we heard something like this before?

The removal of art from those “who can’t protect it or don’t understand it” is a classic colonialist argument for the removal of art from its homeland. (Think about all of those meticulously organized photos the British took when they looted Benin) Though the idea was “pure” in conception, let’s consider what happened after the war.

After the war, majority of the items recovered stayed in American museums (most are still there today).

Though they promised to try their best to restore works to their former owners, most were not found or no effort was made to find them.

Families who successfully petitioned for their works are few and far between – the most notable being Maria Altmann’s lawsuit for ownership of a Klimt portrait of her aunt. (made into the movie “The Woman in Gold”)

Many museums simply didn’t put in the effort because these famous works had come into their possession and they didn’t want to lose a cash cow.