>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening with a look at the american museum of natural history ellen put ther, mike novacek and neil degrass tyson. >> the whole sector has changed because we're so aligned with the major issues of our time and you see that in exhibitions on the environment, on issues of human health and education especially. >> a lot of these are working on these mass extension events and with ask ourselves these questions: how is this these co-systems rebounded after this devastation? and what is the pace of that? and how do those changes occur? because that's informative for what's going on now. as alan mentioned this extinction event, the world is going to be a lot different at the end of the century and maybe a few century beyond in terms of

the way the biota here is changing. so those lessons from the past are important. >> the dark universe a celebration of our ignorance. think about it. usually when grow an exhibit here wiese we know. and maybe there's a little bit of here's the frontier. we can measure the existence of dark matter in the universe, it's 85% of all the gravity we see. we don't know what's causing it. we measure that the universe is accelerating against the collective wishes of gravity of all the galaxies. we don't know what's causing that. and they're both dark to us. >> rose: we conclude with robert ed sell. his book is called "the monuments men: allied heroes, nazi thieves and the greatest treasure hunt in history." it's also a major motion picture directed by george clooney and starring george clooney, matt damon, bill murray and others. >> no matter how real book does, there's nothing that can reach a worldwide global aufd audience

than a feature film. there's such an epic story about world war ii that's not in public knowledge. but it's focused on the good guys. the middle aged men who volunteer for it was so be a new kind of soldier when charged with saving rather than destroying. >> rose: the wonders of the american museum of natural history and a conversation with robert ed sell when we continue. captioning sponsored by rose communications

from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> the astronomers were startled to see that the flight distant galaxies was always stretched out to longer wavelengths signifying that there were all moving away from us. >> rose: the american museum of natural history in new york is visited annually by five million people from around the world. it contains more than 32 million

specimens and cultural artifacts. the museum's mission is to discover, interpret, and december similar nate through scientific research and education knowledge about human cultures, the world, and the universe. ellen put ther is president and has been leading that charge for 20 years. mike novacek is the museum's senior vice president and provost of science. he's also curator of the paleontology department. neil degrass tyson is the director of the hayden planetarium. he's hosted nova for five seasons. his other program "cosmos" will premier on fox. i'm pleased to have all of them at this table. what's in there. i've got the list of the wonderful things. i'll start with the planetarium. >> it holds the great hayden planetarium which is a 90 foot in diameter sphere that you go into and encounter the great space show.

then we have all those chroexs and 45 galleries, halls and lots of temporary shows, things like what right now, poison, power of poison and live things like butterflies. >> rose: i'll come back to poison but there's also the most important collection of dinosaurs, mammals and other vertebra. >> dinosaur bones. (laughter) >> an important distinction. >> excuse me, i didn't want to -- (laughter) >> rose: i should have said fossils is what i've said. 18 million examples of living and extinct arthropods which includes 100 species of termites and the largest collection of spiders with about one million specimens. the skeleton of a "waiting for godot", a species of bird that has been -- do do that has been extinct for -- this is remarkable. >> and there's all kinds of collecting. because of mike's great leadership we collect frozen tissue so we don't to kill anything anymore, you can just

scrape a little tissue? a swimming whale, let it go, bring it back, put it in these vats that keep it frozen. that kind of new collecting. and also data for astrophysics but also for genomics, incredible amounts of data. >> absolutely. >> rose: there's also the 90-foot-long life sized model of the blue while. the largest creature -- extraordinary amount of stuff. meteorites, i haven't talked about that. where did this start? >> almost from the very beginning, 1869, the museum was founded and from the very beginning we had a mission that embraced both science and education and in science it started right out with field expeditions all over the globe and i think, mike, you and your colleagues now do over a hundred expeditions a year? >> yeah, we're all over the world. >> rose: what'sen expedition that you've done recently? (laughter) >> well, mine is the best. no, not really. my colleagues are not going to like to hear that. >> rose: i threw that right down

the middle. >> thank you for the opportunity. you know, we did spend our -- if you're familiar with him, our 24th season in the gobi of mongolia. we can't leave because there's just too much great stuff out there. >> rose: what museum in the world compares to what you do? >> certainly there are several other great museums of natural history. the smithsonian in washington and, of course, the british museum. what's unique about ours, though, is the scope, because it covers all the biological sciences, earth and planetary sciences, astrophysics but also anthropology, modern anthropology was born at the museum with france boas and margaret meade and most don't have that. we have 200 research scientists on staff. mike heads up the whole research enterprise and we get to recruit wonderful people. i would say you're looking at two of the things i'm most proud of over the time i've been there recruiting kneale and bringing them to the hayden planetarium. and making mike the provost. those have to be two good ones.

>> rose: tell me what's changed in all of you? what's changed over the years if you look at digitization certainly an impact. globalization is an impact. >> i can speak directly from my own field. when you think about the museum as a place where you would assemble a collection and then perform scientific analysis on that collection to learn the detailed evolution of species on earth, the movement and the trend lines and cultures that have evolved culturally, in the universe when data started being taken digitally, all of a sunday the astrophysicist had a collection. and not a physical piece of a black hole, that would be dangerous to put that on display but our data became our counterpart to the naturalist's collection. and over the years we're now awash in data. we are so awash in data that

there's a movement in my community to find a way to share the data with the public so that the public can help us reduce the data to possibly find interest things in the universe. >> rose: how would they do that? >> it's called crowd sourcing the data. so i have 45 day a set, i have parameters and i can't look at these hundred thousand galaxies but 10,000 people can look at ten galaxies and tell me, is there an extra star in it? maybe a star blew up. what shape do the arms take? whatever your analysis is, if you shape it -- if you formulate in the a way that a person who has otherwise no experience but you have your eyes, you have your brain, that can come to play and the data reduction. so it's a whole new world going into the 21st century. >> rose: did you know that you would play the role you play in the poplarization of science? >> no, no. i was -- no. >> rose: one of the things that we thought he would excel at from the beginning, absolutely. extraordinary communicator. >> yeah, i'd heard about him

before he'd heard about us. >> rose: how did you know about him? >> well, i heard some astrophysicists "there's this guy, there's this really talented guy." >> rose: he can explain things. >> yeah, he can explain things, he's not only an outstanding scientist but he can talk to people. >> it's a gift. >> rose: but neil loves the museum, of course i was just kidding. >> i was raised here in new york so the hayden planetarium is my first encounter with the night sky because new yorkers don't get that. there's no night sky in new york. >> rose: when you want to see the most extraordinary sense outside of the night sky, where would you go? >> extraordinary -- >> rose: just in its natural element without -- are there places? is there a mown pain? is there a place in which you go? >> we got top people finding those places in the world and we put telescopes in every one of those places. >> rose: i would assume so. sglfrpl so hawaii where -- it

doesn't have to be where my research took place but we have people in my department who do research there. and it's 14,000 feet up so that even when clouds roll in there's still -- they're still below you. so you're at the top of this volcanic mountain surrounded by clouds, so it's you, nature beneath your feet and the universe above your head. >> rose: 15, 20 places like that in the world? >> not even that many. half dozen. the andes mountains where i did my ph.d. research. that's 7,000 feet. >> rose: what's the feeling? >> a communion with the heavens. >> it is a -- it's a pilgrimage to the cosmos. and you know what i lament? what's changed, you've asked me what's changed. in the old days before everything was so completely digital you actually had to go to the telescope and there would be trains, planes, and automobiles to get to the top -- not quite mule pack but you get to the top of the mountains -- >> it was an expedition. >> it was an expedition and you would live nocturnally and commune with the stars.

now it's all digital so why do you have throb when you could be at the other end of the wire or at the other end of the network. so now we schedule the observing and stay in our office. >> rose: what's interesting to me and why your museum plays such an important role, it is that if you can get people interested in all of this and if they develop a bit of knowledge it is their currency to go forward and gather -- and have a lifetime of "curiosity." but you have to get to a little bit of traction to understand a little bit so you want to know a lot. >> listen, curiosity is the gateway to learning. that's where we begin. that's the whole episode. if you think about what's changed as the museum, probably what's changed the most is our role in education. in the last number of years we've added a graduate school. we are one of two museums in the world, the only one in the western hemisphere that grants a ph.d. in comparative biology. we've gotten authority to grant a master's degree in teaching earth science. so that -- those are major changes. >> rose: without an affiliation

to the university? >> we do these on our own. we also have affiliation bus we are the only ones who do it on a free standing basis. >> rose: what's going on online? >> well, online we have a web site that gets millions of more visitors and a lot of those exhibits are free to see on that web site, charlie. you know, i would say, too, in terms of the museum in a very general way one thing that's changed is that i think museums went through a time maybe in the '70s and '60s where they began to become a little isolated from the world, the community. yeah, you went there to see the dusty dinosaurs and a few collections and some cabinets of curiosity but there wasn't enough convergence with what the world really needed. now we're in a tremendous period of convergence. issues about the environment, space exploration. all these things are really things that the museums can -- they're important institutions

of the 21st century. we're lucky to have someone on the left who had a lot of vision for that and brought us into those communities. >> rose: sitting next to you? (laughter) >> right, i don't mean politically. >> i do think mike's comment was very important because the relevance of a museum and of the whole sector is really changed. because our work is so aligned with the major issues of our time and you see that in the exhibitions on the environment, on issues of human health, in education especially. >> if you build it, people come. >> well, if you build it right. >> rose: we could talk about that a little bit, right? this is what you said? a conversation with my colleague bill moyers. you have not fully expressed your power as a voter until you have a scientific literacy in topics that matter for future political issues. >> yeah. >> yes. i mean, if you're -- in a democracy -- i think a democracy

works best when everybody kind of knows what they're voting on and knows why and knows what matters and puts into power -- you know, you vote people into power. the craziest thing to me is we -- we always complain about the people we vote into power. well, who voted them into power? you voted them into power! so a more enlightened electorate can completely transform your country as a democracy into a thriving, leading enterprise in this, the 21st century. especially where science literacy feeds innovation in science and technology. they're the engines of tomorrow's economy. >> and work force preparation. we talk about unemployment in this country. there are about three million jobs that are not filled because people aren't qualified to fill them. 80% of the fastest-growing fields like health care, i.t., computer science, are science-based and there's a new study out that about 65% of the

jobs that kids in elementary school today will do haven't been invented yet. and they're likely going to be science-based. that's why we've shifted so much of our focus to education. we're now training about 5,000 teachers in teaching science. it's one of the most challenged areas for teaching. and the data on american students, we rank dismally in international studies in science preparation and performance. down in the 20s which for a highly developed nation is an embarrassment. >> rose: that's why some people think we need to change our immigration policies now. >> that and also how we do stem-- science technology, education-- in general. >> rose: stem is science technology engineering and math. >> right. >> rose: there's also this. the president said "we need ways to measure how well our kids think. not how well they can fill in a bubble on a test." >> yeah, that's an important distinction between teaching people what to know and teaching people how to think.

and it's part of my mantra as an educator where i don't -- yeah, i can fill you up with information but what will you going to do with it? do you know how to interpret it? do you know how to think about it? do you know how to turn it into a new idea that could move culture and society forward? so, yeah, there's focus on tell me what you know. and, in fact, our very culture equates that with being smart. if you're good at ""jeopardy" that person is smart and they know all this information when, in fact, in the actual workplace what we really value is your ability to solve a problem you've never seen before. >> rose: and an interesting thing, some of the smartest people in corporate and private sector and the n.g.o. sect orono how to test to find that out. >> and science is such a good tool for this because what we do is inquiry based learning. science is a detective story. you try things out.

you test them. and actually power of making a mistake or fail injury what leads to learning. so it's a great way to think. >> rose: i have a great affection for questions. >> we noticed. (laughter) >> rose: and the power of questions to put you in the right direction. general odierno was here and he said one of the problems we had in vietnam-- he's now army chief of staff-- was that we asked the wrong questions and science is about finding the right question it was famously said if you know right question you get the right answer. >> rose: in fact, some students today are applying for a new graduate school and they asked me what do you think is the biggest challenge if you're a graduate student and i told i think big schaj the moment -- the eureka moment where you go through this met morn sis where

you have an insthaekt sheds one skin and takes on another where you move from what neil is saying from the fact finding kind of mode of mental attitude to to one that's creative, one that's curious, one that makes inquiry, one that asks the right questions. and that's a fundamental transformation that's required. >> and then i think what is working for our institution, we're a hybrid. we've got this very pure academic side, research, now these graduate programs. but we have 500,000 children coming to the museum every year in school groups, in camp groups as well as with many, many more visiting as families. >> rose: i was one of them. >> you were one of them. i was one of them. probably we all were. >> rose: is it changing much? >> it's changed in one sense. we have a huge international visitation. many more international. but when you walk in you hear every language. >> rose: you were doing this thing on the dark universe. >> oh, the space show. the new space show. "the dark universe." (laughter)

yes, yes. >> rose: i knew i shouldn't have asked that. >> it's our most audacious space show yet. >> rose: "dark matter, dark in energy." >> yes, because it's a celebration of our ignorance. think about it, usually when you go to an exhibit: here's what we note. and maybe a little bit of here's the frontier. we can measure the existence of dark matter in the universe. it's 85% of the gravity we see. we don't know what's causing it. we measure the universe is accelerating against collective wishes of gravity of all the galaxies. we don't know what's causing that. and they're both dark to us. and so it's a celebration of this profound ignorance that has befallen us in recent years but you also get to see how we arrived at the knowledge of that ignorance. so how do you visualize something about which you know heartly anything. that was the challenge of the

show and i think it succeeded beyond's everyone's expectations. >> rose: do we know what dark matter is? >> well, it shouldn't be called dark matter, between you and me. it's -- there's gravity and we don't know what's causing it so it's dark gravity. so dark matter implies it's some kind of matter. we don't know if it's matter. i've been on this campaign to rename dark matter "fred" which is something that has no -- >> rose: it doesn't have a connotation. >> doesn't make you think about anything because we don't know what it is and dark energy, same thing. call it wilma, fred and wilma. >> rose: before what was going on in switzerland at cerne, what were they looking? >> they were looking for and they found what's called the higgs boson, nobel prize was just awarded for the theorist who proposed it. this was also called the god particle. it's a -- >> rose: they don't like that, though. >> well, i don't -- people call it -- >> rose: they call it fred. (laughter)

>> this particle has a field and if you move through that field it hands you your mass. there's a mass-granting particle field and so if you had to be a particle, that's a good one to be. you sit there and hand mass to everybody and that power of the particle led to it being known as -- >> rose: are we learning new things about gravity and the pull of gravity that we didn't knee are earth-shaking. >> not yet. >> rose: but are we trying to? >> well, dark matter is a rethinking of our normal laws of gravity or is it some other substance? that's a major frontier. the particle physicists think it a particle, of course, because if you're a hammer all your problems are nails. so they think it's a particle that doesn't interact with other kinds of particles. i'll take whatever it is. (laughs) >> rose: so where -- let's talk about the thick i mentioned earlier. the power of poison. what is that? >> power of poison season an exhibit where we look at poiseen from all angles. not just the bad, but also

poison the good. >> rose: give me the best example of both. >> well, there are all kinds of poisons that are -- things at certain levels, certain conner is stations that are poison that are bat for you but in smaller amounts are used for treatment. the you tree, cures for -- the ewe treatment, the chemical produce there had is a benefit. but we also look at the non-scientific side of this and look at the poison in the literature, alice in wonder land and harry potter and there's also mysteries to solve looking at poison. what caused the death of this -- of this dog or something else and then you go through a series of clues to discover that. >> actually a laboratory. the. >> rose: and what about the exfwigs the solomon islands? biofluor rens? >> it's called explore 21.

and we were talking about the fact that the museum has done expeditions from the beginning but these are big, bold, multidisciplinary exhibitions and they are very high tech. so off they go to the solomon islands to dive deep into the sea and find these bioluminescent fish. to do it, they also have to build these special cameras that are outfitted for this work, it's quite extraordinary. we have one of our i can theologists on it as well as one of our invertebrate zoologists and it's amazing. the fish are magnificently beautiful. and you're leading. this. >> well, what happens is that by developing these technologies now it's like turning a light on in a cave that's completely black because these cameras are sensitive to certain kinds of wavelengths or you can reflect life -- light off creatures and have them there are no vos what they've discovered is this entire world of these fluorescent fish and other -- worms. they even found a glowing green

worm down in this coral reef. just a tremendous amount of things going on there that we can't see. >> rose: aren't we finding new species of life, too? >> oh, absolutely. all the time. >> rose: central park, even. >> really. in central park? >> yeah, a kind of inch worm. >> rose: in central park we're find not guilty species all the time? >> just to clarify, these aren't species that evolved in central park. these are spe shows that have never been identified. >> rose: they were there but nobody knew they were there. they didn't have a name? >> it's not like something called up out of the city streets. >> as you know, charlie, ed wilson's ideas that rooted a lot of this thought and now that's even more refined is they're about a 1.8 million species named but they're probably at least ten million species out there and maybe more, maybe 20. who knows, really?

>> not even counting the extinct species. >> not even counts the extinct species which represent probably 90% of all life that ever lived on the planet. >> rose: say that again? >> most species are extinct. we've wiped out a lot of species through time. >> rose: because of the damage we do to the ecosystem or what? >> no, i'm talking about past extinctions. >> rose: because of meteorites and all that? >> and a species really -- the best we canest smat a species lasts on average about a million years. so we have a few hundred thousand years left but -- and even then we have this mass extinction events so most life is extinct that's ever lived on this planet. >> rose: >> but mainly through those -- mostly through the first five extinction events which were natural catastrophes as to what's now called the sixth extinction which is, of course, more caused by man made action. >> rose: so what's the latest theory about the meteorites and the extinction of the dinosaurs?

>> hold that. (laughter) >> i've come around a little bit you know? we had a couple of debates where i -- >> he was upset that one of our asteroids took out his dinosaurs. he's never forgiven us for that. (laughter) >> we're more pluralistic. >> rose: anything dramatic happen? >> well, i think the evidence is -- to me, and i would still argue with other colleagues, i'm convinced with the neo-perspective that the evidence is pretty strong that that asteroid did a heck of a lot of damage on the planet and what's mysterious about -- >> rose: what year was that? >> 65 million years ago. now number just changed to 66. so 66 and about 70% -- >> but our understanding has never changed. >> you know, what's mysterious about it is why was it selective? you know. 30% of those species went through, including turtles, as one of my colleagues said.

turtles just galloped right on through the extinction of that. >> rose: they had no problem. >> they had no problem. >> another complicating factors is that earth in these other mass extinctions, there is no obvious evidence that an asteroid was responsible for those. so asteroid makes a con convenient excuse for the one 65 million years ago and the astrophysicists were ready to hand you one for each one of these but we can't do that. there's no evidence. >> rose: what's the most important question you'd like to see answer. >> i have three. sorry, i have three. i want to know what dark matter is. i want to know what dark energy is. and i want to know how you go from inanimate organic molecules to an mat life. is we can make organic molecules easily, for free. put in energy, shake and bake it here they go. at some point earth had no trouble accomplishing this because it happened relatively fast in the history of the earth. you go from molecules to life to

reproducing life. and these are two great frontiers. of course i just spoke a biology frontier but the astrophysicist is thinking if you can do that on earth tell me how you did it because it might happen on another planet. and that's this intersection of the astrophysicist and the biologist. >> rose: if i find out, i'll let you know. >> (laughs) >> rose: you? >> the most important question? i think really it's about how do we make people love this world, fall in love with nature-- which is one of mike's terms-- so they want to protect it. how do we make them curious in the way that you said so they want to learn and understand these issues that are going to define our lives, many of them with ethical questions, not pure scientific ones. so they can take better care of themselves and our country and we can be more competitive. >> rose: and make people better qualified. >> and that's about education. which is why we've put so much about that. >> ditto neil and ellen. that's a big deal for me. i would add one that's related to the notion of understanding and decision making and so

forth. a lot of us are working on these mass extinction events and we ask ourselves the question: how is it these ecosystems rebounded after this devastation? and what is the pace of that? and how do those changes occur? because that's informative for what's going on now as ellen mentioned, the sixth extinction event. the world is going to be a lot different at the end of this century and maybe a few centuries beyond in terms of the way the biota here is changing. so those kinds of lessons from the past are important. >> rose: i do think this is where the museum is particularly valuable and the whole sector plays a role. because these are places that people can come, that people trust us for the information not to be dumbed down, watered down but to be accurate where they can see real things and we have the power of reality and authenticity and then use the digital media to extend our reach all over the globe and really allow them to confront these issues about society and

science in ways that are intriguing, exciting, provoke curiosity and make them want to learn more. that's the role of our organization. >> rose: thank you ellen, thank you, mike, thank you, neil. back in a moment. stay with us. >> we have been tasked to find and protect art the nazis have stolen. >> the chaps are excited to get started. we have the architect from chicago, a sculptor, the director of design at the school of fine arts and a few other experts in various fields of art. >> rose: robert edsel is here, he wrote the book "the monuments men: allied heroes, nazi thieves cx the greatest treasure hunt in history." it's the story of the group of men and women who worked to save europe's most valuable art works from the clutches of hitler during world war ii. that book is a movie. it stars and is directed by george clooney. he's just published a follow-up book focusing on the monuments men in italy, it's called "saving italy: the race to rescue a nation's treasures from the nazis."

i'm pleased to have robert edsel back at this table. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: when i last saw you you had a book and no movie. now world has changed. how did it happen: the process of you deciding that the monuments men might become a motion picture? >> well, i heaped because no matter how well a book does, there's nothing that can reach a worldwide global audience better than feature film. this is such a visual story and it's hard to believe there's such an epic story about world war ii not in our public knowledge and here it is. there was tremendous looting but more focused on the good guys. these men and women, directors, arptd historians in middle age who volunteered for service and were charged with saving. grant he is love saw the book in the bookstore, he mentioned to george he thought it was going to be a great story. and they had me out to their office within a few weeks after the arrangements were made and i spent a week in their office all day long, no interruptions.

just answering a lot of questions not as much about the book but other interviews i'd bhaet the 17 monuments officers, so many of their kids, other people who were participants, talked about the manuscripted for "saving italy" which the book wasn't finished yet but we were in editing stage. although the film is not about italy it's important background material. >> rose: it's about france and brussels and moscow and the russians and everybody else. why was this story not sufficiently known? >> well, i think -- >> rose: because so much has been written about world war ii. >> our friends at the national world war ii museum, dr. nick mueller, best friends with stephen ambrose who is a ph.d. himself and knows about world war ii contacted me after "monuments men" came out in 2009 and said "we need you involved at the museum. we don't know this story and we're embarrassed we don't." i think those that have written about it, their books were out

of print print. they didn't come home until 1951 because their job was just beginning after the war. they had to return the arttor the countries in which they were taken and like other world war ii veterans they didn't come home and bang their chest about what they'd done. a couple talked about in class but it got lost in the fog of history and other people in have written about it have focused on details, more of an academic telling, a lot of times focused on whan the bad guys were doing and that's all-important background. but i was interested in this new kind of soldier, the good guys and why in the world would they walk away from having life made to doing this. >> rose: mononuplts men refers to the u.s. army's monuments, fine arts and archives section. how did that become part -- the beginning of of the story? >> there's a man named george stout who's the character george clooney's character plays, george stokes in the film. and stout is a pioneer in the conservation of works of art. he fought in world war i, he's

convinced there will be another world war. he starts developing pamphlets to protect america's cultural treasures that become quite timefully the aftermath of the japanese sneak attack on pearl harbor. he realize it is great risk now of the united states in the war is that in the process of trying to defeat naziism we might defeat western civilization in this effort. so he comes up with the idea of cultural preservation sfers. there's a bunch of people lobbying for this, paul sox is director at the fog and francis henry taylor at the met. but stout's effort comes across president roosevelt's desk and he likes it. it characterized the united states and others as bar baneians to destroy culture, it went against that. in the summer of '43, the near destruction of the last summer takes place by allied bombing and that sets off a lot of alarm

bells. it's publicly announced in the days after that and there's an urgency to come up with these officers and so they're trying to find people in have any kind of military background to transfer them into active units but they're never a formal section. it's a bunch of individuals attached to different armies, one two here and there and stout is a remarkable guy because not only he thinks of it but he goes over there and he is the glue. he's the calm force that goes into these salt mines and caves where there are tens of thousands of stolen things and often "new york times" the heat of battle calmly goes through and assesses their condition, i venntorys them and takes them to safety. >> rose: it really did have this sense of mission and people who loved the art and understood the art but also a race against time. >> there was and i think the monuments officers, the nobility of what they did is so impressive. they risked their lives, two of whom were killed during combat, one american, one brit. so these guys weren't sitting in office safely, their average was

about 40 years old. there are only about 45 monuments officers ever in italy which is an absurdly low number. 120 or so in europe by the end of ward war two responsible for all of the western continent but only a dozen with the troops trying to get into towns and, yes, in the closing months of the war hitler issues this knee roe decree ordering albert spier to destroy the infrastructure because he considers the german people are the weaker race. and spier realize there is's a death sentence. there's confusion that i refer to it as a period of a void where the bad guys aren't in control but the good guys aren't in control yet and there are interpretations of these orders by some of the most fanatic nazis that the destruction extends to all the works of art. >> rose: there's also a race between russia and the united states as well. or the allies because of the fact that the russians believed that they have suffered so much in the war that this was a kind

of payment for them. >> you're right and -- you're absolutely right on two points. they did suffer very heavily during the war. 25 million soviet people killed during the war. 17.5 million civilians, 7.5 million soldiers. the united states in contrast lost 400,000 men and women. so there was so much of their country gone, nothing to go back to, not making it a case, there's no basis in law for it but when the laws were passed in 1907, the hague convention against using works of art as a form of reparations in kind. i don't know that anybody in 1907 could even fathom 25 million people in one country being killed. >> rose: show me what you have here. >> this is a remarkable artifact. this is one of the hitler albums or e.r.r. albums. >> rose: did it come in this box? >> no, we put this together. it's caused us interesting problems at u.s. customs coming into the country when we've taken it overseas. but this album was one of, we believe, maybe as many as 100 albums created for hitler by

this looting organization showing photographs of the works of art that have been stolen from collectors in france with inventory numbers for the family numbers. so you'll see "r-1171." that's the 1,171st object stolen from the rothchild family. each family had a different code. these would be submitted to hitler to show what a great job we're doing in our instructions to steal these things and hitler would flip through them like a mail order catalog. this was taken from his home by a soldier up there. >> rose: how did you get your hands on it? >> thearys to this soldier contacted the monuments men foundation and said our uncle was there in the closing weeks of the war. picked it up as souvenir. so you see this remarkable calligraphy, handwritten photo album number 6 and this album happens to be very intact. this is the pernicious part of what they're doing. so you see the inventory numbers rothchild, boorman, david aisle

with. and so you see each of these families, the name of the artist and the name of the work of art and inside the album are these photographs, these remarkable photographs of the works of art that have been stolen. so in this case this is rothchild 437. the painting of a portrait of a woman and the remarkable thing about that this is the first album that the foundation has found all in the possession of american soldiers or heirs that pick these things up in different units. this painting is one of the photographs you have with wormer in it and although the albums were found about three and a half hours away from a castle, the castle is where 21,000 of these works of art stolen by the gnat cyst were found that wormers and his soldiers are tearing down the steps and they're carrying this painting. so it's a remarkable coincidence and it was informative because our good friends at the national

archive have done such a good job preserving these documents didn't know there were these additional out there. the 39 albums that the monuments officers found were the primary prosecution exhibit at the nuremberg trials for the portion of the trials pertaining to the theft. so this is part of the crime scene and no one could see it as such then. it's taken years of perspective to see it. now they're important for us to find. we've donated other three albums of monuments men information. this is where this one will go here. >> rose: let's talk about histh hitler. he was a failed art student and he was going to build this huge thing in austria. he wanted to rebuild this hometown and at the center it was going to be a cultural complex. there were also drawings by hitler. we put some of those photographs in my first book where he's sitting there drawing sketches

of what he wants it to look like so housed in this museum is going to be some of the great works of art, including the great german painters in the 19th century that hitler feels like, like him, were overlooked by others and that no one can understand why they're great because i'm the fuhrer and you can't understand what i know. but of course they didn't stand the test of time, these painters. they're not unimportant but they're not the kind of paintings that people perhaps except inside germany are going to see. >> rose: so these monument men are in europe and you're looking at the paintings. and there are other fascinating stories as to what happened in terms of what have great museums were doing before the nazis arrive? >> that's absolutely right. and lynn nicholas whose documentary i produced does a great job of describing the plan of hitler the nazi looting and the extraordinary effort by thousands of volunteers at different museums to save things. >> rose: like that mona lisa. >> and i cover this a lot in "saving italy."

the david can't be moved due to its size and weight so it's entombed in brick. the great fear being the allies will bomb and the roof will collapse. the last supper wh which we do tilt our hand on that in george's film was protected by sandbags and scaffolding by local museum officials and it was a miracle that will this survived a british bomb that landed 80 feet away and blasts out the east wall, the roof collapses. so there are all these really precarious moments during the war. >> rose: what were the biggest losses because of allied bombing? >> i think the montagna frescoes at a chapel in padua is certainly a remarkable loss and it was horrifying to the monuments officers in italy that are looking at these photographs estimate damage photos but these are art historians looking at them and they realize this is a catastrophe and when they saw the photo of the last supper, of the building where there's no east wall, the painting is on the north wall, there's no roof and braces are holding up the wall from both sides, they

reelize this sets off the alarm bells from washington and it's a moment of inflection. >> rose: and tell the story of where they found a lot of the paintings. >> well, i do think this is just one so many examples in this story and i've tried to tell a lot of them -- a lot of them i fell in the monuments men of life and war being stranger than fiction. the monuments officers at the beginning their role is preservation. the monuments men are preservation officers trying to steer allied bombing away from churches and other monuments but as they get into germany the devastation is so severe there's not much to preserve and they've gone through western european cities, michaelangelo, the madonna is missing, and tens of thousands of works from paris and they start their role as art detectives and it really is very haphazard. it's funny to me, a lot of the scenes in the film which i think george did such a great job with that are the most unbelievable scenes are the ones that are

being told exactly as they happened. a tooth ache needing to go see a german dentist-- god forbid--. >> rose: he knows somebody. >> and you've got an overly converse sant dentist who says "my son-in-law has a bunch of information." he t son-in-law isn't to too happy to see monuments men show up at his door with questions. so that's exactly true. very important they find their -- the key information about where are the works going to hitler's museum at a salt mine in austria. and it eluded them up until then and by coincidence they find out. >> rose: then they find out that all the gold that the whole entire german economy is dependent son in one of these mines. >> they trip over that. there's a military policeman who sees some women walking past curfew, one of whom is pregnant. and they explain that, well, she's going the midwife, et cetera. they offer her a ride and she points over there and says "there's gold in there." and the world gets out in the military and they check and

there's an area freshly mortared walled up, and they open it up and find the equivalent of -- it would be like discovering fort knox by accident. some $5 billion in gold and currency and the army was focused on that. the monuments officers were called immediately because there were thousands and thousands of works of art from the berlin museums that have been evacuated weeks before to get them out of allied bombing. >> rose: let's talk about pictures you have. you can see the real george stout. there he is. tell the story about the madonna. >> well, the madonna, it's such a great example of the degree of premeditated looting taking place by hitler and the nazis because you would figure human nature, the allies from a few weeks down the road from brugge and the germans are thinking well, we haven't got than piece, we need to get to go back and get it. they drive up in an ambulance in the dead of night, they come in and at gunpoint take the gruj e brugge ma donna. they wrap in the a mattress and you can see it's still around it. they took other paintings and put it on a ship, take it around

to the north sea and hide in the a salt mine and the monuments officers, it's one of the last major discoveries they make and you see stout, who, again, is an expert in how to protect works of art but there are no rule books or guidebooks for what you do when you find a two ton sculpture by michaelangelo on the ground and he has to find a way to levitate it and move it down narrow passageways in a go several miles without dinging it on the side of the wall. it's a dramatic moment. >> rose: next is 65 years after the war. this is harry ettlinger. >> he's our youngest monuments officer, still living. 88 years old. he's one of five living monuments officer. we're living on borrowed time. he's in great shape. harry's story is fantastic and it's hold in the film by a young actor named dimitri leonidis that george was masterful in finding. they was last boy to have a bar mitzvah in germany. his family flees before

kristallnacht, takes up rez disy in new jersey, he holds down two jobs, go to school and life stranger than fiction goes into the earn a army, drafted and leaves his new country to go fight a war in his old country. when the monuments men are in the closing months of the war, they're finding these documents and they realize he speaks german and they need translators and they pull him in and the person he works with is the man who goes on to be the sixth director of the met. >> that's played by matt damon. he's the wunderkind in the world of museums. >> people kept saying he was 39 when he went over there, 40. towards the end of the war he was the curator at the cloisters. and matt's character, named granger, matt does a great job. >> rose: this is general bradley general patton and general eisenhower expecting german treasures in the mine. so after they found the mine, these guys came at what point? >> they come -- you put your finger on it. april 12, 1945. we still have almost a month of the war going on and eisenhower goes into germany because they

want to see this for themselves. this story of the gold and the works of art from the museums, it's such an incredible story even they have a hard time believing it. they go in this rickety elevator some 2,000 feet down into this salt mine, they she the gold for themselves, look at the works of art and there are some horrific scenes. they discover chests filled with gold fillings, with other works that are destined to be smelted, they just haven't been. but april 12 is an historic day during the war. they leave there to go to the first concentration camp liberated by american forces in ord riff and it is there that patton and bradley -- patton throws up leaning up against one of the bunkers he's so sicken. eisenhower writes these deeply moving letters to general marshall saying "send the media, send the press because 60 years from now when someone says this didn't happen we need to have it documented." but what i think -- and that night, by the way, when they're going to sleep they find out that president roosevelt died earlier that day so there was an

effort to save the human lives but there was a focus on trying to save what defines human lives >> rose: and the question was asked in the film. is it worth it? >> and i think one of the monuments officers refrain it is question in a perfect way. he said? his opinion it wasn't worth the life of any single american boy to trade it for a single work of art but risking your life for a cause is a risk that's worth taking understanding you can be killed. and i think that is a better way of expressing how these monuments officers felt because it was like democracy, like free speech and this was the role that they played in trying to make sure our freedom-- which was not free-- is preserved. >> rose: i mentioned the supervisors the american gives in the next slide. you see them carrying paintings

down the steps of a castle. so some of them made their time with a castle in germany. >> in this case it is mad ludwig's castle about an newshour half southwest of munich in bavaria and this was one of the number of hiding places where works of art from france were taken >> talk about her played by cate blanchett, she's one of the stars of the whole thing. >> and cate blanchett and matt damon's characters have this -- they both bring it out so beautifully, i tried to do my best in describing hit in the book. there's this courtship going on, a vetting pro swresz cate blanchett who is a curator of the museum that all these stolen works of art are going through. for four years she's secretly -- she's working, keeping the lights on and the nazis are well aware of it but they don't understand speaks german and is making secret notes, observing, creates a list of all these things and where they've gone and at the end of the -- when

the liberation occurs in august '44 and recoverymer arrives they are pushed together like two teenagers at a dance and encouraged to get to know each other and talk because the chrab separation so bad she doesn't want to give up her information to anybody. it goes on for four or five months. she doesn't trust her at the beginning. he has to wind her trust. and i said matt damon and cate blanchett do a great job of showing this dialogue and they had a shared interest in the love of art. i think key here with the two of them is they both recognize they're people of destiny but they only have half the key. rose knows where the stuff is but she's not in the military. she has no method of transportation. wormer on the other hand knows he's going do something great. he now realizes "i can save the works of art for france but i don't know where to go." so it's a fabulous subplot within this bigger story. >> the next slide shows george stout with the altar piece.

>> it's a cultural icon like that leaning tower of pisa or the eiffel tower and it comes in a number of pieces. you what you see is labor with this central section, the adoration of the lamb and trying to figure out, again, how do you get this out in a crate? this was a highly contested piece that different countries owned portions of and then after world war i portions had to be given from germany back to belgium and it was a target of hitler's from the beginning of the war. >> rose: last slide shows harry and dale ford expecting a rembrandt self-portrait. >> this is a touching story, again. who can make this stuff up? harry ettlinger, this 19-year-old monuments man in the salt mine seeing a self-portrait by rembrandt that hung in the museum that as a young jew he was never allowed by threw go see and he happens to go into the salt mine and among the works of art that are in the salt mine being preserved is this painting by rembrandt from his own hometown. it's the first time he sees it.

>> wow. so now the story has been told in this book, it's been told until a movie, in the end how much art was lors? is there any metric that can describe what was lost? >> people talk about numbers in the tens and twentys of millions. it gets to be an exercise -- >> rose: pieces of art. >> pieces of art, cultural objects. if it was porcelain it's been broken. if it was an old coin it's been melted. there were some things that were destroyed. a lot of things went to former soviet countries, some were brought back in the '50s. >> rose: some are still there. >> but there are things in countries all over the world. look, the united states has things that soldiers picked up as souvenirs. the monuments men foundation with the support of sony and george and grant created a 1866 toll free number. 1-866-wwii art. to encourage kids or in their part to pick it up. just contact the foundation, we don't charge anybody.

we can eliminate this and get the stuff back. >> rose: great to see you, thank you. >> great to see you, charlie. >> rose: the monuments men is the book by robert edsel "allied heroes, nazi thieves and the greatest treasure hunt in history." thank you for joining us. see you next time. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

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