Throughout history, various wars have affected human fragility, losing power structures and countless lives, and marking a spirit before and after each conflict, to give rise to a new one.

But sometimes there are things that are not resolved over time. And during humanity's worst war, World War II, lives were not the only thing that was lost forever. The cultural heritage and the years of history told through it could not be let go without any consideration, so a group of art specialists, curators, architects, among others was created who committed themselves to the incredible mission of seeking the security of as many monuments, sculptures, paintings and buildings as possible. Made up of a total of 200 men without any military experience, these men went down in history as "The Monuments Men."

German forces had stolen a large amount of art from various countries, both from museums and private Jewish collections, to create the museum with the largest art collection in the world, the Führer Museum. There was no strict criteria for the theft of works, but not all of them suffered the same fate in the selection of the Nazi leader. Many paintings by modern artists, such as Picasso, were simply not to the Führer's liking and were destined to end up destroyed. The selected works were hidden by the German army in different locations. Several of these were discovered by the Monuments Men, who also had the task of pointing out the buildings and monuments that should not be bombed by Allied planes, as they were world heritage sites.

Although a large number of works were recovered, a considerable number of these remain lost, others have not been able to return to their legitimate heirs and several were definitively destroyed. Such was the case with the art collection of more than 400 paintings in the Flakturm Friedrichshain tower. This collection was burned when the Nazis lost the war in 1948, the 417 works that were there were lost and several of them are only known of their existence through records, while others have photographs that give us a little more to remember them with, however , it is impossible not to think about the incredible value of these. In this tragedy for the art world, paintings by Caravaggio, Goya, Rubens, Van Dyck, Friederich, Italian Renaissance masters, Dutch artists, among others, were destroyed. It is even natural to assume that human lives are worth more than a painting, but they were also very clear about the value of years of culture, achievements and history that will not be repeated and that is impossible to estimate.

However, not everything in the mission was a tragedy, among the platoon's achievements, the discovery of a collection of more than 6,000 works in Neuschwastein Castle in Germany, the recovery of valuable objects in a mine in Austria and the task of returning each item to the country that was its home.

Nowadays we can look at a painting and wonder about its value, its meaning, the name of its author and perhaps its date of creation, but the story before and after it has been made, of having reached the hands of a collector or the halls of some museum, is a little more difficult to consider. The story of famous thefts and disappearances, such as Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, could overshadow other even more exciting stories, a consequence of the same Nazi theft of Europe's artistic heritage; That is why it is important to reflect that if works such as the Gante's Polyptych and the famous altarpiece by the Van Eyck brothers had not been recovered, very few people would know them, and a smaller number would have been able to see them in person.

And after all, it is even harder to imagine what the present would be like if none of them had recovered. Imagining the work of the Renaissance masters when we see their works is something that goes hand in hand with texts, series and films, and perhaps that is why it is easy for us to recreate and value that experience in part because it is something wonderful that was done many times. long ago; We know that the person who did it will not return and even if his work is replicated, it will never be able to replace the original. That is why we must consider that the loss of sculptures, paintings and other items lost in the war should lead us to reflect on the value that we can give to the heritage that we have today, since in the history of humanity, We already had the opportunity to miss the work of great masters of the quattrocento, cinquecento, Baroque and many more.