THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF SPIES: THE ARCHEOLOGISTS WHO FOUGHT THE NAZIS AND SAVED THE TREASURES OF ANCIENT GREECE by Stephan Talty

(Nazi German flag being raised over Acropolis, 1941.)

Most people with a knowledge of history are aware of the Nazis insatiable appetite to steal and destroy the cultural artifacts of others. Whether we are speaking of the art works stolen from the Louvre in Paris, the personal possessions of Jews, archeological treasures from museums, and a host of other sources the Nazis had to be outsmarted by those who sought to save their countries treasures. A special example of how a group of people made up of archeologists, academics, epigraphers, classists, and other vocations did so in World War II Greece which is wonderfully portrayed in Stephan Talty’s latest book, THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF SPIES: THE ARCHEOLOGISTS WHO FOUGHT THE NAZIS AND SAVED THE TREASURES OF ANCIENT GREECE.

Talty’s monograph is broken into a number of subjects. First, the problem of the relics and how to keep them from the Germans. Second, a useful description of how and where the relics would be hidden and preserved. Third, the recruitment of individuals to serve as agents for the Greek Desk created to oppose Nazi actions. Fourth, the conduct of the missions needed to defeat and block Nazi attempts at destroying relics or shipping them back to Berlin. Fifth, the introduction of the most important individuals, their training, and missions to thwart the likes of Adolf Hitler and Herman Goering as they attempted to seize Greece’s cultural heritage. Sixth, a section on the status of relics following the end of the war.

. (William J. Donovan).

Talty immediately introduces the reader to Rodney Young, the first of many important characters that are developed. Young was an American archeologist, an east coast blue blood and heir to the Ballantine Beer fortune whose mother had a passion for Latin and Greek culture. Young earned a Ph.D from Columbia in the Classics and Archeology. He rejected the life of the “social register” to pursue his chosen field in Athens. He would be based at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. He would be recruited by OSS head William Donovan to set up a spy ring to thwart the Nazis in Greece. Young would recruit an unusual cadre of people who would be known as “the Greek Desk.”

Once the Germans arrived in Greece many American archeologists returned to the United States as Hitler in particular made plans to seize as many artifacts as possible. The Nazis had taught their followers that Ancient Greece had been built by their own ancestors. The Nazis wanted to curate Athenian ruins and see what they could bring back to Berlin as Hitler and his cohorts were fixated on Ancient Greek artifacts. Hitler believed that the Aryan race had given birth to Ancient Athenian culture. He wrote in MEIN KAMPF that a racial kinship connected Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Nazis in a straight line. Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS created a German Ancestral Heritage Society and charged scholars to locate the missing links between the “true German culture.” Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s racial theorist would order teams of archeologists to central Greece to locate “pre- and post-historic” Germanic and Slavic finds which would prove the connection between Ancient Greece and early Germanic culture. By using what Talty describes as archeological strip mining, the Germans located 10,000 relics which they argued proved the missing links were found.

(This well-known photograph of Rodney Young at Gordion shows him in his excavation “uniform”)

Talty delves into the Greek government’s plan to bury their relics under the National Archeological Museum in Athens. Before he met William Donovan, Rodney Young was one of the volunteers. Fearing a full German invasion the volunteers had to work quickly to bury artifacts in the ground under the museum and throughout the city. In addition, homes, bank vaults ,and air raid shelters were also used. By April 1941, the most important items were taken from the museum which then stood empty which did not make the Nazis happy.

Donovan played a major role in blocking the Germans as he believed that a classic spy network was needed. He was convinced that conventional methods could not alone defeat the Nazis. His plan was to create a series of guerilla units to be drawn from Greek immigrant communities in the United States, train them in sabotage, and have them infiltrate their ancestral homeland. Once Young was chosen he recruited a number of important colleagues. Among the most important were Dorothy Hannah Cox, an excavation architect and numismatist; Jerome Spirling, an archeology professor at Yale with great experience excavating Troy in Turkey; and Jack Caskey, fluent in Greek he spent part of his youth in Athens and was a trained archeologist. Except for Cox, among Young’s two dozen classist recruits, most were overwhelmingly male, Wasp, and from monied families.

Talty does an exceptional job explaining how the Germans went about looting relics and shipping the ones they did not destroy back to Berlin. For example, items that were too large to ship or were attractive enough were ground up and used for military purposes, since marble and stone made for excellent building materials for bunkers and other needs.

Young’s headquarters were in Cairo and Talty goes to great lengths describing how agents were recruited with new identities provided, how information was gathered, and how cable traffic was managed. Young created his own merchant marine using Caiques, traditional Greek fishing vessels to transport agents, information, and the tools that a spy needed to operate. The Greek Desk created German documents employing a separate team of counterfeiters. The OSS bureaucracy was of little help, and neither were the British who saw the Balkans being part of their sphere of influence.

(Nedjmettin Bekhtori, age 12, and Dorothy H. Cox, architect of the expedition, washing an Amphora (vase) just excavated by Miss Cox).

Talty is correct as he explores British distrust of American agents in Greece. Cox reported that Winston Churchill saw Washington as interlopers in the Balkans who supported liberal elements rather than King George II. She believed that the British pressured the Turks not to cooperate with American agents. Once the Germans were defeated and withdrew from Greece Churchill wanted to forbid elections and hold on to power. Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin met in Moscow from October 9 to October 19, 1944, at a summit codenamed the Tolstoy Conference. Their discussions defined the postwar map of Eastern Europe and produced the “Percentages Agreement,” on October 9, whereby Churchill and Stalin negotiated a secret “spheres of influence” deal for the Balkans. Churchill wrote percentages of dominance on a piece of paper (i.e., granting the Soviet Union 90% control in Romania and 10% in Greece). Stalin famously reviewed the list and simply marked it with a large red tick. The agreement was made without Franklin Roosevelt’s approval.

The reader is introduced to a number of remarkable characters. Cornelia Kapp whose father was an Abwehr agent posing as a diplomat switched sides and worked with the Americans spying on Ludwig Moyzisch, the German attaché in Ankara, Turkey. Helias Doudoulakis sent by Young to set up a network of spies and operators in Salonika, and his brother George was effective in obtaining valuable information about German rail and Caiques schedules, bridge locations etc. Nikolaos Platon the head of the Heraklion Museum on the island of Crete refused to give into the demands of Nazi Commander Julius Ringel whose stolen relics were mostly recovered after the war.

(Helias Doundoulakis in 2012)

Talty is very critical of the British role after the Germans withdrew and their refusal to cooperate with Greek leftists and allow elections which led to a bloody civil war fostered by the emerging Cold War. It would take until 1948 for the National Archeological Museum to reopen in Athens after three years of excavating and recovering relics. Despite the retrieval of thousands of objects, thousands more were not, though over the years many were returned.

Talty’s work tells the story of two sets of agents sent to Greece. Each had a distinct mission. One was to harass and kill Germans by blowing up trains, calling in airstrikes and passing on military secrets. The other group was to safeguard Greece’s treasure trove of archeological riches. Talty does well as he describes the work of these agents and how they survived and were able to make a major contribution to the war effort, in addition to recovering Greece’s national treasures.