Bruno Lohse - Interrogation and Imprisonment

Interrogation and Imprisonment

Lohse fled Paris in August 1944, and briefly served in one of Göring's safe Berlin regiments before travelling to Neuschwanstein Castle in February 1945, where a major cache of art looted in France (as well as the Rothschild family jewels) had been safely stored. Lohse was ordered by Robert Scholz to protect Nazi art holdings and records from destruction, and to "turn them over to the American authorities at such time as Füssen might be occupied."

Facing a possible death sentence for crimes witnessed in Paris by Rose Valland (and others), Lohse underwent a two-month interrogation, during which he shared a cell with two other notorious Nazi art looters, Karl Haberstock and Walter Hofer. The suicide of Baron Kurt von Behr proved to be a godsend to Lohse, permitting him to blame the systematic confiscation of French art collections on his former ERR chief in Paris. Lohse cooperated with American occupiers and repeatedly traded his encyclopedic knowledge of the Nazi art trade for further leniency—he testified, for example, in the Nuremberg trials in November 1945, providing evidence against his superiors and professing a personal distaste for activities of the ERR.

After being transferred from American to French custody in 1948, Lohse was acquitted in a 1950 military tribunal in Paris against some officials of the Einsatzstab Reichleiter Rosenberg. Lohse never conceded responsibility for art looting, admitting only to possessing furniture stolen from deported Jewish families which Lohse had abandoned in his Paris apartment.