Amid the battles of World War II in Europe, a group of men were tasked with the job to rescue and preserve priceless art and
historical artifacts plundered by the Nazis.
It was also the focus of a 2014 motion picture documenting the exploits of this little-known group called The Monuments Men.
A former president of the University of Southern Mississippi — William D. McCain — was part of this group who worked to save humanity’s treasures.
While you won’t see an A-list actor portraying McCain in the film, which stars George Clooney, John Goodman, Matt Damon and others, he spent 1944 and 1945 in Italy locating and preserving records of the Italian government and gathering materials that painted a picture of what life in Mussolini-led Italy was like before and during World War II.
Before the war, McCain was an assistant archivist at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. before becoming the second director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in 1938.
His experience in those roles would offer him a chance to do some spectacular things during the war.
Entering active duty with the U.S. Army in March 1943 as a first lieutenant, McCain was then sent to the Mediterranean Theater of Operations in December 1943, where he served as historian with the headquarters of the Fifth Army.
In September 1944, his knowledge of libraries and archival background got him pressed into service as the regional archivist for the Lombardia region of northern Italy, serving with the Subcommission for Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives.
In 2014, McCain’s service and the rerelease of the film inspired MDAH state government records archivist, Jim Pitts, to research McCain’s role in the now-famous group.
According to Pitts’ report on McCain’s service in the war, he was “ ‘… to plan to take care of the archival deposits in northern Italy, to plan for the restoration of archival service in northern Italy, and to plan for the protection and return to Rome of the records of the ministries which had been removed northward as the Allied armies advanced … ’ During the winter of 1944-45, McCain worked with Italian state archivists to collect information on the archival depositories in northern Italy and make plans for their recovery, protection, and return.”
Pitts, himself a retired Army officer, said he knew of McCain’s service in World War II and had read the book Saving Italy by Robert Edsel, who also wrote the novel The Monuments Men that inspired the film of the same name.
Pitts said he enjoyed reading the stories of the men in Italy, who worked to save such priceless works of art such as Da Vinci’s The Last Supper and Michelangelo’s David.
Edsel’s book says the work of the Italian monuments men, saving the beloved and priceless art and history the country is known for was preserving not only Italian heritage, but the heritage of mankind.
And their job was difficult and never-before tried.
“During World War II, the task of saving Italy’s artistic and cultural treasures fell to a diverse and often surprising cast of characters, including army commanders, Italian cultural officials, leaders of the Catholic Church, German diplomats and art historians, Nazi SS officers, OSS operatives and partisans. Motives ran the gamut. Not everyone behaved as expected — far from it,” Edsel writes.
“But there was also a little-known group of American and British men — museum directors, curators, artists, archivists, educators, librarians, and architects — who volunteered to save Europe’s rich patrimony. The became known as “Monuments Men.” This middle-aged group of scholar-soldiers faced a seemingly impossible task: minimize damage to Europe’s single greatest concentration of art, architecture, and history from the ravages of a world war; effect repairs when possible; and locate and return stolen works of art to their rightful owners. Their mission constituted an experiment dreamed up by men who at the time occupied offices far away from war. Nothing like this had ever been tried on such a large scale.”
While McCain was not rescuing priceless works of art hidden by retreating Germans, his work was important to the understanding of dictator Benito Mussolini’s government and preserving records of the government so it could resume its post-war duties.
In an entry in Vol. 34 of the Journal of Mississippi History, McCain recounted his experiences in Italy, saying one of his greatest finds was propaganda materials from the Mussolini government, which he sent to the Duke University Library.
“The most valuable materials secured by Captain McCain, however, are those representing Italy at war. Through his efforts Duke University Library now possesses social, economic, and political materials which afford a splendid picture of the Italian corporative state under wartime conditions. These materials include statutes, decrees, and other documents issued both by Mussolini’s old government and by the new government which he set up in northern Italy in 1943. A vast amount of ephemeral propagandistic material — posters, broadsides, pamphlets, newspapers … supplies insight into the means employed by the government in directing popular sentiment,” McCain wrote.
McCain also discovered a huge library at the villa of Italian patriot Gabriele d’Annunzio, which contained 50,000 books and more than 300,000 papers.
In May 1945, McCain, who was an avid genealogist, found the genealogical records of the Italian nobility, hidden at Villa Bettoni in Gargnano by Mussolini. And, McCain gathered medieval legal pamphlets and manuscripts, which he sent to Harvard University. He also supervised the restoration of several libraries.
In August 1945, McCain found and gathered the remaining archives of the Italian government in Milano, which finalized the restoration and return of the archives to Rome.
The next month, McCain began his return to the United States and was discharged from the Army in December 1945.
He then returned to his position as state archivist, where he held the position until 1955.
He was appointed president of the University of Southern Mississippi in 1955 and held the position until his retirement in 1975.
The special collections and archives at USM are named in his honor.
