Crayton Webb

Welcome to Reputation Matters. Our guest today is an author, historian and cultural preservationist, best known for bringing to light the remarkable story of the Monuments Men, which of course, was adapted in the feature film in 2014 produced by George Clooney. He’s the founder and chairman of the Monuments Men and Women Foundation, and author of several best-selling books, including his newest work, which we’ll talk about today, Remember Us. He’s dedicated his career to honoring the past and protecting cultural heritage, and most importantly, perhaps, to preserving and recovering missing artworks from World War II. Robert Edsel, thank you for joining us on Reputation Matters. Great to see you. Appreciate you being here.

Robert Edsel

Good to be here.

Crayton Webb

What started this all? What got your interest in preservation of art?

Robert Edsel

That sounds even more organized than it was. It’s just curiosity. That’s all it is. Curiosity. I had an acute understanding at 39 years of age that 39 becomes 59 with the snap of the fingers, and I finally, after 20 years in the oil and gas exploration business, a business I started from the ground up, because it was the first job I was offered, and then left after a few years, started my own company because I needed to have a job, and that’s all I knew how to do. So, money was not a motivator. It was just having a job, and it happened to be a business that does involve a lot of money, the oil and gas business, and I was dancing around the bankruptcy fire for 16 years trying to make a go of it, with banks failing, oil and gas prices cratering, and only in the last few years, with the advent of horizontal drilling did my business take off. And at 39 I realized, you know, I’m finally a little bit ahead, and I mean a little bit, but I can pay off all the taxes. I can… acquiring company made an offer that they were foolish, and didn’t offer any of my employees a job. And I told all my employees, find a job that you like, take as long as it takes, and don’t take a job that you don’t want to do. And of course, the first question was, how long do we have? And I said, as long as it takes, but if I see that you’re not trying, I’ll fire you. And I made sure everybody had a job. I didn’t unemploy anybody. That was the thing I was proudest of. And there were all these other things I was interested in learning about, art, art history, cultural matters. I’d never studied in school, and I realized if I don’t deliberately press pause, I will be on autopilot. The next thing to do is to have a public company, and all the people around me said, you know, this will be great. You’re going to make more money. Well, I wasn’t motivated by getting into it for money in the first place. I mean, I like it as much as the next person, but I’ve always had an acute understanding that the real precious commodity in life is time. And I didn’t want to be someone that woke up at 59 and said, you know, now there are all these things I want to go do, but I’m 59 years old, I would have had a larger family, less time. Everything in my life functions off 168, that’s how many hours there are in the week. So if it’s just you, you got 168. If you have a wife, you have half that. If you have children – everything cuts into 168. You want to exercise, cuts into 168. You still got to get sleep. So I made this transition, this period, to get off the merry-go-round and go carve out time, the ambiguity of time, that’s how I refer to it. I had a complete anarchy. I could do whatever I wanted to do. I was reading eight to nine books a week because I had the time to read during the day. I was curious about things. I’d go see them. And I started studying art and architecture and my two worlds collided in a way I could never have seen, because I was reading a lot of books about World War II, and I was living in Florence, studying art and architecture. And I wandered one day on the Ponte Vecchio bridge, the only bridge that was not destroyed by the Nazis in August 44 when they fled the city. Well, if Europe was so beat up by World War II, how did all these works of art survive, and who are the people that saved them? I didn’t know the answer, and I wasn’t embarrassed about that, but I was embarrassed – it never occurred me to wonder, because I’d been in these museums. And I started asking people that were friends of mine, Europeans, and they said, I don’t know. It’s a great question. What’s the answer? And I said, Well, you live here. You should know. And to the person, they also – I never thought about it, and neither had I, and so it was hiding right there in front of us, because we all know these things couldn’t have been where they are today during World War II, or they would have been looted, destroyed. And we’re not talking about moving a few 100,000 or a few million things. We’re talking about having relocated tens of millions of things. The internet really was in its nascent stage, so there was no easy way to go get a quick fix answer, and the more I dug into it, the more elusive it seemed. And yet it seemed like a huge, huge story. So I was lured into this, and had the internet existed, I might have gotten an easy answer, and that would have been the end of it, but it didn’t. And once, I got engaged in it, in particular after 911 and then the problems we had in Iraq in 2003 not protecting the cultural treasures in the museum and the score in the United States experienced around the world, I thought, you know, this is a shame that during World War II, in the most difficult circumstance imaginable, the United States set the standard for the protection of cultural heritage around the world, and these Monuments Men and Women found and returned four and a half million stolen objects, surely in 2003, 4, 5, with the tools of technology available to us, we could do a better job than we did, and I think it wasn’t a case of us forgetting our history. We didn’t even know it. And that’s really what the motivation was in creating the Monuments Men and Women Foundation was to preserve these men and womens’ legacy, and, more importantly, put it to use. How could we go to school on this and do a better job in the future and get back to that high standard that existed.

Crayton Webb

But now you’re, you’re not a trained historian. You didn’t go to school to do this, and the Monuments Men was not your first book, even though it’s, it’s the most famous or most well-known.

Robert Edsel

Well, this is a common denominator of all that I have done in life, which is, I have no training for anything. I mean, my first ambition was to be a professional tennis player, and of course, I didn’t know how to play tennis when I had that ambition. Oil and gas exploration, I had no training in that. I wasn’t a geologist and engineer, a land man, but I know how to work hard, and I’ve learned how I learn best, I don’t learn well in a classroom because it doesn’t go at a fast enough pace. I learn like an athlete. I need a coach. I need to be pushed, I need to be criticized, I need to be pat on the back. You know, it’s great that you’re doing whatever you’re doing, and I learn great on that, but I’m a self-learner, and I’m, if I get interested in something, if I’m curious about it, then I’m a voracious reader about it, I’m probably not going to get interested by reading something. The reading follows the curiosity. But curiosity, to me is, you know, I heard someone comment the other day about the fallacies of saying, you know, find your passions and pursue those things. And I do think that general, as general advice? It’s reasonable, but I think it’s a trap too, because you can find your passions, but you still have to pay bills, but if you pursue your curiosities and can the gravitational pull on life as we get older is so intense and strong, people see you for how they’ve met you, the people you’re around, what you’re doing, and the idea that you’re going to press pause on that and go in a different direction, or slow down or do something different, I have found, threatens some other people in a way that you can’t even imagine, because it’s not supposed to be about them. It’s supposed to be about you. And many people will tell you, you can’t do that. You’re supposed to be doing so and so where you’re Crayton that runs this big company. Well, it’s your life. It’s the only one that we know of that you’re going to get. And this time with your children’s precious, this time with your wife’s precious, this time with your friends. And you don’t want to leave this world having these curiosities or interests and not have, not touch them, not explore them, in my opinion. I didn’t want to, and I was prepared to give up the identity people saw me as, this oil and gas guy or business guy, to go find out. Well, I know how I can do that, and I know I could have a public company, and my guess would be, it would be successful. But what else can I do? What are all these other things that I’m interested in? And I knew if I didn’t carve out time, which meant that magnificent moment in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indiana Jones has to cross a ravine that has no apparent bridge. But the message of the ages has been, if you take the leap of faith, the bridge will appear. And that was it for me. I thought, you know what? It’s going to be exciting. I don’t know where it’s going to take me. I have no idea, but I can accept the ambiguity of that for whatever the possibilities are that could come. And when I look back now at 68 and I think of invitations to the White House on merit, not as a donor, but to be recognized for things that we’ve done, the accolades from the Monuments Men and Women, the 21 that I knew and interviewed, the comments from their family members about the years we added to their lives, over helping them understand the big picture of what it was that they did and accomplished, and the places that we’ve been invited into, and the people that come and ask me to speak and share experiences. I’m not big on advice, but I love to share my observations about what I’ve seen on my journey. And if anyone can take something from that that’s meaningful, that’s great, but my situation’s my situation and other people’s is different. So I’m not here to tell anybody that my way is the way, but I do believe that that the path to a happy life is down the road of meaningfulness, and that involves service to others, and that is something that I’m a big believer in and embrace and try and encourage people – embrace the opportunity for public service, find ways to help people get engaged, pursue your curiosities, because I don’t think you’re ever going to look back and regret those things. You’re going to run into dead ends. You’ll find things that you looked interesting, but it’s not. That’s okay. That’s part of the process. Stay curious if you want to stay young, stay curious.

Crayton Webb

What came first, the Monuments Men and Women Foundation, or the “Monuments Men”, the book?

Robert Edsel

Well, the book did, because I got involved. When I first started reading about this, I’d read a book called The Rape of Europa by Lynn Nicholas, and her book was more about the bad guys and the looting that took place. I wasn’t really interested in the bad guys. There’s always bad guys. I mean, Hitler’s worse than most. I wouldn’t say he’s the worst. Stalin killed more people in his own country than Hitler did. But a horrific guy, a horrific period in history, no question about that. I was interested in who the good guys were. Who were these men and women that had accomplished careers. They had life made. They were too old to ever be drafted, who walked away from their careers, volunteered to go into military service, put on a uniform, go in harm’s way and do something no one had ever even thought about doing. Who were those people? What were they thinking? What can we learn from that, and what it reminded me of, and has proven over and over again, is the power of one person to make a difference. Now, it doesn’t happen instantaneously. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it happens, and in the case of Rose Valland, this great French heroine who she made a difference in her own country trying to slow down and muck up the efforts of the Nazis to loot her country of all these national treasures, this one courageous woman who worked for four years spying on the Nazis right underneath their eyes. She made a huge difference. George Stout, who had the idea to do this, who was convinced this will never work, because the government and the army are never going to listen to what we tell them about what they can and can’t shoot at, but we have to try. It’s the right thing to do. He referred to it as the “right conduct of war”, and to his great surprise, it did work, because people were interested. So you can’t tell, you can’t go into these things outcome focused, because you don’t know how it’s going to turn out, but you can be at the crossroads of making a decision about, Do I want to wilt in the face of the opportunity, out of uncertainty or fear, or do I have a conviction about this? This is the right thing to do, and I don’t know where it’s taking me, but I’m going to stick with doing the right thing, and I believe strongly in that. So telling the story of who these men and women were and what their experience was was the priority. As I got into that I had happened to me, what happened to Stephen Ambrose, as you talked to these World War II veterans, and as they, as you earn their trust, and they realize that you truly are interested, they have stories they share with you that they’ve never told. They have objects or uniforms or things they brought back during the war they want to give to you because they trust you. And I started receiving so many of these things that I thought, you know, we need a foundation, as Ambrose did with the National World War II Museum, to house all these things, and figure out later, what will we do with them? And the answer 20 years later was we joined forces with the National World War II Museum, proposed, designed, and it is now operational. The first permanent exhibition on the Monuments Men and women, called the Monuments Men and Women Gallery, and that is a, the manifestation of a permanent legacy. When we talk about putting their legacy to use, that is there, and it will be there for all time to teach and instruct, and we put all of the educational materials inside a recreation of a salt mine, so that it’s way cool for adults and especially kids to go through and see what was it like for these guys that went into these dark, very cold caves where hundreds of 1000s of the most important works of art were in hiding along with booby traps. It’s a great experience, yeah.

Crayton Webb

And for those who don’t know, in New Orleans, Louisiana, Smithsonian level, I mean, it’s not a Smithsonian Museum, but it’s got the, it’ll hold, hold its own against it.

Robert Edsel

It makes it more of a challenge for the museum, because it is New Orleans, and that’s not as easy to get to as, say, Washington, DC, but it has pride of place in New Orleans and is not competing with 50 other museums as happens in Washington.

Crayton Webb

Yeah. So in your wildest imagination, did you ever think that the characters you were writing about the real people would someday be portrayed by the likes of George Clooney, Matt Damon, John Goodman, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, you know, 2014 feature film produced by Clooney. Was that? Was that ever in the back of your mind?

Robert Edsel

That was the, that, it was the objective to have a film made. Because my belief is, I don’t think this is a good development in our world today, but the most effective tool for communicating is feature film. There’s just nothing – I mean, no book today has the legs that a feature film can have. As far as getting people engaged, it may cause, it probably will cause them to go and read the book. But there’s just a lot of people that need that visual presentation. And this is a story, if ever there was a story that’s visual, this is one that is. I always thought, I knew that Hollywood’s not going to make a film about a period piece, because they’re very expensive to make and they’re scared to death of, how do we get butts in the seat, as they refer to it? They need young audiences to go to these films. How are they going to do that if it’s a historical piece? So I knew the challenges, but I knew that they don’t do this unless there’s an existing book that one, has been vetted by the community of historians, that they’re not making a film about something that’s a wrong assessment of facts, exactly, and they need to see that the public had some level of interest in buying the book. If the book bombs, they’re going to think, well, why isn’t the movie going to bomb also? So there’s exceptions every now and then, but that’s generally the rule of thumb. Now, we’re worlds apart from believing there’s going to be a film on this, then having George Clooney be the person that’s going to make the film, never mind this other worldly cast that he personally went and lobbied one on one, rather than going through agents, he picked up, he went to Australia to meet with Cate Blanchett and said, I need you to be Rose Vallant. And she said yes. He did the same with the other actors. There was a moment when Daniel Craig was going to be in the film, but the Casino Royale film had blown up in such a big way that they extended the press junket, and he just couldn’t make the obligations. So that brought Hugh Bonneville into the picture. I mean, imagine you get a call from George, as I did one day I was on the way to the airport. It was with my assistant. She said, who is it? I said, it’s George. George? And I said, What does he want? He said, I don’t know. He’s not on the phone yet. Wait, I’ll tell you in a minute. And he said, you know, well, I have some good news and bad news. Well, the good news is, you know, Hugh Bonneville is going to be in the film. Bad news. Daniel Craig, can’t, like, that’s a pretty other worldly phone conversation. So this is how it went. And you know, the very first time I went to go meet with him, I’ll tell you a quick funny story. I went out there. And of course, we had so many ups and downs on the way to get to this moment and all these so many times that you feel like, okay, well, this is it. We’re going to take off after this. And you need the media coverage about your book and the work that you’re doing. I was in a room at the National Archives when we’d donated a hugely important historical object, and the room was filled with media people, flash bulbs going off everywhere, and I remember sitting there thinking, this is it. We’re done. We can prop our feet up. It was such a big story, but it was complicated. The media didn’t really know how to write it. We were press, past press deadline that day, and it was temporary, temperate coverage the following day, and we were just crestfallen, and this is how it went with a bunch of things. So on my way to his office that morning, I had an address, and I was having a car and driver take me, because they didn’t want to be late or get lost. And the whole time I’m thinking, I don’t know, maybe this will be it. Maybe he’s really going to make the film. I mean, he says he’s going to, but I’ve had so many people tell me stuff at this stage. I’m not sure I believe anybody, you know. So he’s, maybe he’s just kicking the tires. So I walked down the hallway of this bank building, and it was all windowless, and there was a door that said the name of his production company. And I pressed the buzzer, and, and I heard, and this guy said, you know, who is it? And I said, it’s Robert Etzel. I have an appointment with George Clooney at 10 o’clock. And hearing myself say that – other worldly, yeah. That was a moment. And I walked in of this long rectangular office, and there was this young guy, probably an intern, sitting at a desk on the opposite and he never looked up, and I’m just standing in there for a minute, and he says, do you want validation? And I said, validation. Are you kidding? Of course I want validation. Who in the world doesn’t want validation? I mean, I’ve been working all these years. This is fantastic. Yes, being here is validation. And he said, for your car? I said, well, actually, I had a car service drop me off. I was so obsessively focused on trying to make a good presentation, and it’s just hard to understand. And you see this at the Academy Awards. When people receive awards and they’re told, you’ve got 30 seconds, and they these people that are trained and articulate on how to express feelings and thoughts, just have diarrhea of the mouth, and they can’t stop. And it makes no sense to anybody else, and it looks like far too many people watching on TV that Hollywood’s run amok, et cetera. But it’s really simple to understand. These are creative artists that have spent their whole life, perhaps just on one project, trying to see it come to fruition. 10,15, years on a book or a film. And this moment’s finally happened, and they’re receiving recognition for something that they’ve probably believed in and given up on 100 times. And here they are, and they’re being acknowledged by all their peers. And of course, they’re going to lose it. There are so many emotions trying to get out of this turnstile at an office building at five o’clock when everybody wants to. It’s just too many thoughts, too many feelings. And my heart goes out to people now when I see this, because I understand what’s happening inside of them, emotionally, in the turmoil that they’re going through. And it’s why some people just go up and say thank you to my colleagues. You know, I’m incredibly humbled by this, because otherwise they’ll go on forever and ever. So you know, it’s the life of a creative artist is a high wire act, and it’s filled with ambiguity. You’re going to fall off. Sometimes it’s going to hurt. It’s a very public process. Your friends will be coming to you, as they did me. My friends made up a phrase, declare victory and go home. You’ve done enough. You’re going to go broke if you keep sticking with this. And I said there’s going to be a film telling you you’ve been saying that for four years, there hadn’t been any film. Well, it’s going to happen, trust me. And it did. It didn’t have to work out that way, though, and it certainly didn’t have to work out with the person that made the film or had the success that the film made.

Crayton Webb

And it doesn’t always go the way the original author thinks. So. I’m interested from your perspective, you know, you hear so many horror stories from authors who, you know, they’re polite about it, especially if somebody famous made the film, and if, especially if the film was somewhat successful, but behind the scenes, they feel like their story was butchered. Did you feel like your story was well taken care of? And let me say I understand fully. You’re going to say it’s not your story, right? It’s the story of these heroes and men and women. But did you feel like that your book was respected, your work of art?

Robert Edsel

Yes. When, first of all, I have been a business guy. I have a healthy respect for the cost of capital, and I know that there were maybe five people in Hollywood that could have gotten this film made on the strength of who they were, and George Clooney was one, and he went to bat for this film in a way that there were plenty of other people that passed. And had he not done that, this film wouldn’t have been made. He was the one that raised the money for it. At one point in time when they were going to run over the budget, they had to go get a second studio to come in and invest another many tens of millions of dollars. The film ended up costing about $160 million, so this is the bizarre part of that as a business is because of an idea I had and a book that I wrote, we created a business that had a capital expense of $160 million and provided jobs for thousands and thousands of people that worked on this thing for three or four years and generated revenues of, I don’t know, $180, $200 million etc., all because of an idea. It’s pretty extraordinary, because it’s all time collapsed into a window where there’s a starter gun, and it begins, and then the film shows and it goes into the after effect later. When I met with George, he asked me about, did I have issues about changing things? And I said, look, as long as you respect the overarching principles of the story, that it was an American-British led operation that President Roosevelt endorsed it. Generals Eisenhower and Marshall made it happen. There were two Monuments Men that were killed and that at the end of the war, millions of things were returned to the countries and individuals from whom these things were taken, which was a demarcation with 2000 years of civilization. You get those parts right. You change any way you want to. Because my objective – I’m really not an author. I’m a messenger. I don’t write books for the sake of writing a book. I write a book because I feel like I have some, I’ve been tapped on the shoulder by fate to tell a message, and this is the first salvo in that effort, getting to the film is the next stage, and all the while I have to be the one out there, because there isn’t anybody else, to be the propagator of the story, the person that keeps it alive, the person that talks to media and bring my passion to it and my experience on why I think this is important. And yes, there were, there were many things that he listened to my comments were sought throughout the whole process of script writing, and there were many comments that they accepted. There were some that they didn’t. I disagreed with some, but I always knew, as you said earlier, this is not about me, it’s about these guys. And there were things I was disappointed about in the film, but the film got made. The film showed in 100 countries. The book’s been published now in 30 different languages. There are people in caves in Afghanistan that can’t read, and if you ask them what they’re doing, they say, “like Monuments Men,” and they haven’t seen the movie, they haven’t read the book. But their point is, they’re preserving our shared cultural heritage. In our over message world, to get a name or a phrase out there that the New York Times and others no longer put quotes around, because it’s just in our daily parlance, that’s no small feat and so we have a debt of gratitude to George. I have, from time to time, scholars come in and criticize something about the film. And my response to that is this, you’re losing-

Crayton Webb

“What if your books were made into a movie?”

Robert Edsel

Yeah. Well, you know, they think, you know, why didn’t? Yeah, why didn’t you get a better film made? Slow down. My comments are twofold. The first: let me get this straight. You’re here with 200 other scholars that have been working in Serena for 20 or 25 years, long before I got involved in the scene, that are frustrated that you don’t get enough funding, you don’t get enough attention. No one really knows what it is you do. Nobody seems to care. These are the things that you talk about all the time to the same 200 people in here, the same 200 people that you’re preaching to, thinking that the world knows what you all know, but they don’t, because you don’t talk in plain English, you talk in scholarly language, and I can have those conversations, but then I’m not making any ground, because I’m convinced in the same 200 people that are already convinced. So from my perspective, there’s two attitudes you should have about this movie. The first is, you could just say to people, next time they ask you, what are you doing, or next time you apply for a grant or funding – “You know that movie, The Monuments Men with George Clooney? We do work like that.” And now all of a sudden, people are going to be interested in what you’re doing, and they’re going to think what you’re doing is cool.

Crayton Webb

And is relatable.

Robert Edsel

Is relatable. Now you’ve turned it in plain English. The second thing is an even bigger perspective. If you think that film is the worst film you ever saw, think of it, like this: George Clooney. Because of George Clooney, we just raised and created a two-hour public service film about the importance of preserving shared cultural heritage that cost $160 million, paid for by somebody else that is, has universal appeal. Do you think that’s going to help you in your endeavors in this area? Can’t get advertising like, well, you can’t and no, I mean, Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffett, no one’s going to donate money to do that. It could only happen through the auspices of Hollywood. So, you know, there’s plenty to criticize in everything, but what we managed to get accomplished again due largely to George believing that this was an important story to tell, is really a remarkable experience, lightning in a bottle, if you will. And you know, whether we can make it strike twice again with respect to “Remember Us”, remains to be seen. Of course, people say to me all the time, when are you going to have the film on “Remember Us” as if I was the one that made the film “Monuments Men”, but it’s a challenge, and here again, our world, in my opinion, spends too much time – athletics is the best example – focused on discussing outcomes and results. We don’t discuss process. So we look at Kobe Bryant, talked about this after his career was over, about what was really involved with how hard he worked, how many times a day he had training blocks. [INAUDIBLE] does the same thing, and everybody wants to go play Wimbledon on the second Sunday. But if you understood not just all the things athletes go through, but all the things they have to say no to, all of the fun times, all of the go out and stay out late, sacrifices. Most people would say, you know what, I thought I wanted to do this, but I really don’t. I’m not prepared to do that. And that’s true in business career. It’s true in anything that involves excellence. There is no shortcut, and it takes a long time, and that’s where passion is critical. It’s the glue, because it’s the one thing that keeps you from quitting. I mean, I had people come to me and say, you know, as I said, quit, go home, declare victory. And I thought to myself, you know what, if I quit, I’d go off, I’d go somewhere and sleep for two weeks, and if I had enough money to go back and do it again, I’d be right back where I left off, because I believe in it and so that’s critical, but passion can be dangerous, too, if you’re wild eyed about it, and not dealing with the practical reality that you need a job in between.

Crayton Webb

That’s really such a great- and I want to talk about your new book here in just a moment. But in the meantime, that’s such a great segue to a group of individuals that you’ve studied. You know you’ve obviously studied the veterans, you’ve studied the artwork, but, but I’m referring to the Greatest Generation. And what is it? I mean, you ask somebody on the street now, who’s in high school, what tell me about the Greatest Generation? They’ll say, who you’re talking about, my generation. They don’t even know what you’re talking about, what is it that made these people, or is there anything, in your opinion, that made them special, that gave them that grit, that drive, that determination to leave the camp, proverbial campground, a little bit cleaner than they found it from a from a reputation perspective, what is it that the greatest generation has or had, that the rest of us don’t?

Robert Edsel

Hardship. They had hardship. They knew what, they knew what difficult was, and we have no idea now.

Peace time breeds amnesia, war fosters wars all about hardship or difficult times. So the Greatest Generation, and I heard this from my father, who was a Marine in Saipan, Okinawa, Nagasaki, at 18 years old. I’ve heard this from Charlton Heston, told this to me one time. I’ve heard it from a number of veterans, that really the moment of embarkation, of difficulty was the Great Depression, that that was the arena in which their character was forged, that prepared them for new hardships when World War II came around the block. And it’s an interesting question you ask, because I will be speaking to the American Legion convention here very soon, and this is part of the observation I make, what defines the Greatest Generation? Are they the guys that went to go fight the war? Because while we had 15 to 16 million men and women in uniform, that meant we didn’t have all these people here to do the jobs. We only had a population of 125 million. Women were working everywhere. People had victory gardens in their homes. There was rationing. There was no American that wasn’t touched and impacted by this war. We were all in it together. And so I don’t believe the Greatest Generation are only the men and women that went to go fight the war, because if it hadn’t been for the people on the home front, doing what they did, the resources wouldn’t have been there for them to do it. And I don’t think it was only what happened during the war. It’s when they came back. They didn’t prop their feet up. They came back to build a new country. They brought with them the experiences of what they saw – beautiful cities. No longer wanting to build just cities here. Let’s make our cities beautiful, like what we saw in Europe. We smelled things we’ve never smelled, these fresh boulangeries. Let’s have those here. We saw churches and heard music on organs that we can’t, we’ve never heard before. All it takes is money. We have museums, but we don’t have great works of art, but we could. Europe needs to raise cash. We have an opportunity again. We just need money. We need museum directors. The United States transformed the world because we transformed ourselves. So I think the Greatest Generation, it’s not just what they did for the country in a public service role, either working on the home front or overseas. It’s what they did when they came back in, changing the country that we had and changing the world order, that for 80 years now, for 80 years after the war, they were putting deposits in the bank. And for the last 80 years, I believe our society has largely been spending those and now we’ve spent, we’ve spent it all. And we don’t have, here’s the great danger: we don’t have those teachers anymore. We didn’t learn about what the cost of freedom was in a classroom. We learned it from our parents, who were World War Two generation, or we learned it from our grandparents that were Depression era babies that survived that. My dad grew up in the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma. John Steinbeck wrote about in Grapes of Wrath. So he knew hardship. He was working two jobs while he was in after grade school. He had to go feed cattle, and he drove a truck from 13 years old, delivering diesel fuel to farms because the farmers had to have fuel to run to operate the farms so and that, they wouldn’t look at it as hardship dude. That’s just what you do. So imagine the parallels to today. What does anybody know about those things? You know, we’ve had a great world. We’ve had a great run here. But now the danger is, who’s going to tell everyone about what freedom cost, what it’s like to lose your life? It’s not a Game Boy, it’s not a Marvel movie. It’s horrible. It changes the course of your family’s history. It will leave a wound that will never heal. You can get through it, but you’re never going to forget about it. And so those are the things that I’ve learned in speaking to veterans, families of veterans that lost somebody during the war, and those wounds are still raw when you talk about them, they don’t forget about these, these members of their family. And I think that’s really important we understand that today, because we see Ukraine struggling in a way that historically we would come to their aid, because that’s what we did as a country. Those assumptions that everyone in the world made that we would automatically do that have proven to be questionable at this stage. We’re not doing that, or we’re doing it in fits and starts. There’s a lot of confusion, but we’re going to have to create a new Greatest Generation, because the challenges ahead aren’t going to get easier.

Crayton Webb

Right. And in order to do so, that could potentially take hardship. Or be caused by hardship.

Robert Edsel

You know, hardship we, we human beings, and I’m guilty of it as everybody else- we like comfort. We like, you know? We want to work hard so we can have things be easier. But there’s no growth in easy. There just isn’t. And we don’t learn anything from success. You don’t go to a bar and see some guy getting sloshed because things are going so good, I just got to get wasted. You see people at a you know, it’s a metaphor, but you see people at a bargain wasted because they’re depressed, they’re frustrated, stuffs not going right. If you can stay in that moment, not through alcohol, per se, but if you can stay in that moment, something great is going to come out of it. But you have to stay with it. You can’t quit. I’m going to ask you to do what I would imagine or I couldn’t do, impossible. You have a beautiful presentation at least an hour about your new book called “Remember Us”. I’ve seen it a couple times. Fantastic. Moving. Tears, you know, brings tears to the eyes. In a synopsis, tell us what this new story, this new book is all about.

Robert Edsel

Well, “Remember Us” is, the backdrop’s World War Two. But it’s not really a World War II story. It’s a story about humanity and remembrance and grace. The Dutch, the people of the Netherlands, were neutral during World War One. They didn’t suffer the horrible trench warfare losses. They declared neutrality in World War II, and were stunned when Hitler invaded them. They’d never lost their freedom in 100 years. They didn’t like it. They went through immense hardship. They weren’t prepared for it. They had no resistance network, because they didn’t have one during World War One, they had no black markets, and when the American forces liberated the southern part of the Netherlands in September 1944, these people literally got on their knees to give thanks to the Americans for what they did. And over the next five months, they got to know the Americans, because they were largely stuck in that area in an unusual moment in the war, waiting out winter for the final drive on Berlin. And they loved these boys. And when the war was over, a lot of them didn’t come back, and a lot of the ones that they knew. And even during the war, they were trying to find an answer to the question, how do you thank your liberators when they’re no longer alive to thank? They came up with an idea of a grave adoption program, the idea that a local person there would volunteer to look over and remember a fallen American that was buried at the cemetery in Margraten in the Netherlands that had at the end of the war, 17,800 boys and a few women buried there. It was our largest World War II cemetery in Europe. They pleaded with American families, “Leave your boys with us. We will watch over them like our own, forever.” And here, 80 years later, all 10,000 graves that are there today have an adopter, a Dutch adopter. Each person there is remembered by a family, and in many cases, it’s the third or fourth generation of those families. They’re out there at the cemetery multiple times a year on all the obvious dates, birth and death date, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Christmas. But they go more often than that. They take their children out, they take school classrooms out there. This cemetery is filled with life. It’s an inspiring place to go. And they remind these students that you’re able to stand here and think what you want to think and say what you want to say, because of the freedoms that were paid for by these American boys and women who had this privilege and gave it up for you.

Crayton Webb

Why? Why do they still do this? You know, you hear stories about the ugly American and the world doesn’t like us. These people love at least their liberators, and now third generation is still going to the grave. We don’t even do that with our own!

Robert Edsel

Well, we don’t, and that’s going to be a subject that I will bring up at the American Legion conference, because we in the United States should have a grave adoption program for Americans, by Americans. And in my opinion, the people that should be the adopters are our young people. Because I think I’m the proverbial optimist, but we’re wasting our time trying to educate people my age on the importance of freedom. We need to educate young people, and we need them to be doing this without depending on their phone. They need to go to cemeteries near where they are, find soldiers. I don’t care which war, any war that we fought, but, and starting with any guys or gals that are killed in combat or a training exercise today, they should have an immediate adopter. So we’re discussing, we’re bringing up expanding the Forever Promise project.

Crayton Webb

That’s what this is. Let’s, you’ve launched this thing called the Forever Promise project, which was the folks in Margraten, who made the Forever Promise.

Robert Edsel

Frover Promise Americans that will watch over your boys forever. And here they are, 81 years later. And you know, let’s put that into perspective. I mean, if you’re out socializing and you see someone, you know they’re going to say, “Hey, call me for lunch.” They’re not going to call. I mean, it’s like, hi, how you doing? They don’t really want to know how you’re doing. It’s just a salutation. Half the marriages that begin with “I do” end up with “I don’t.” So “I promise that we’ll watch over your boy forever,” right? Sure. Well, 81 years later, without interruption, complete continuity, they’ve done it. That’s amazing. That is a miracle, and as far as I’m concerned, and so we should build off that. We don’t have to create, we don’t have to start with a blank slate. We have a template that the Dutch have used with great effectiveness for 81 years. And my question is, we don’t have any more World War II veterans now to learn from. Schools aren’t teaching civics. We don’t talk about where our freedom came from. So we all treat it like our health. We feel good. We don’t think about it. We feel sick. We’re worried about it. The minute we feel better again. We don’t think about it anymore. Ask people in Ukraine what they think about freedom. They’ll tell you, because they’re dealing with it every single day. I mean, I get upset with my boys when they complain about whatever the food is on the table. It’s like, your roof’s not going to collapse on you tonight. You will have food on the table tomorrow. You will have a chance to go to a school, God forbid, school shootings, but it’s a different world that we’re living in here. But that’s not the way the rest of the world’s living, and it’s a dangerous world, and I think we’re doing a disservice if we don’t try and figure out how to get these messages across in an agent appropriate way, not too early. But I believe that we can, in a way, bring life to the veterans that are buried in this country, and use their legacy to speak to young generations by connecting the two, because we now have become disconnected. We have 350 million Americans now, I mentioned 125 million in World War Two, we had 15 million men and women in uniform then, we only have a million and a half men and women in uniform today that are taking care of 355 million Americans, and so you don’t have to care. That’s a bad system. I think we’ve created. You think, well, aren’t you concerned about our soldiers? I don’t know anybody that’s in military. Doesn’t impact me. Well, that’s not good, in my opinion. I wanted to change that.

Crayton Webb

I want to go back to the why. Why? Why do you think, you know I can appreciate and understand why the folks who met these soldiers, and they had them in their homes, you’ve shown pictures of them holding their children, these American, these American soldiers, they die. I can, I can understand you adopt the grave, but, but then to have their kids and their kids’ kids who never even met them, but just heard the story. What is it about the reputation of these soldiers, the reputation of America? What or why would they do that?

Robert Edsel

I think it’s a high water mark in just the decency of people. And I think it speaks to an eternal truth. Everybody hopes to be remembered somehow, some way, by somebody. I think the only people that don’t fall in that category are either young people who are not in touch with their mortality yet, that’s a good thing. The day will come. It’ll knock on their door. It’ll happen sooner than anybody will wish. But when none of us are getting out of this alive. Or elderly people that are wealthy, that feel like their wealth somehow is going to insulate them from the eventual certainty, or they’re going to find a solution to aging. You know, as I said, none of us are getting out of this alive. So what do you, do you want to be remembered? And if so, what do you want your legacy to be? How are you going to shape that? And no matter how great your legacy is, if there’s not someone out there that sees value in it, you know, it’s just a grain of sand and a long, long spectrum of time that people will never know about. So I think the Dutch felt like this, the average age of the men and four women that are buried there is 22, 23 years old. You know how? Of course, that’s horrible that they didn’t get to live their lives. But the question, a functional question, would be, how many artists, how many writers, how many inventors, how many great philosophers we never got to know about that are buried there in that cemetery because they never got a chance to live their lives. And I think the Dutch have never taken that for granted, and they realize that so many of their children that got to live those lives did so because of the sacrifice of these Americans. That’s something we need to put Americans in contact with, because we’re divorced from that, this idea of our country growing, tripling in size, and our military reducing by 90%, you know, 1/10 of what it was has created a disconnect between the two, and so, and especially with the volunteer service, where, you know, some people say, well, that’s what they signed up for. Okay, well, somebody volunteered to be a policeman or a fireman and run into your house, but still, if they run into your house and save your child, I don’t think you’re going to sit there and say, Well, that was their job and, and so, you know, you’re grateful and, and I just think now, I think we can, there’s a lot of things that merit overthinking. This, I don’t think we have to overthink. I think we’ve become, in a way, jaundiced, because we’re trying to find, there’s got to be okay, that’s a good answer, but there’s got to be another answer, right? The decency and goodness of human beings, and there’s plenty of reasons to be frustrated with people, plenty of reasons to have fears and concerns about what’s going on in the world and about the moment you’re ready to give up on people, they will surprise you and do the most amazing, touching, humane things and reinstill confidence that you know what, there’s still hope for us, because there’s people like that that are out there, those people that are the ones that feel like one person can make a difference. And the program worked in the Netherlands, not because of any sense of duty or obligation. Not because of any spectacular performance of one person, each person did what they were able to do, but the cumulative impact of each person doing something made the difference.

Crayton Webb

You have had a bit of a celebrity presence yourself with having had a, you know, being a New York, New York Times bestseller, having had a book turned into a movie. Now your new books, lots of media coverage. What’s that been like for you? Has it been difficult, or have you felt like it’s just been a megaphone for what your mission has been, that you’ve expressed so eloquently?

Robert Edsel

Well, no question that it’s a megaphone, and it’s a necessary part of it. Again, I see myself really not as an author, I see myself as a messenger. I would not go right- I spent eight years on “Remember Us”. I spent six years on “Monuments Men,” but 15 years overall, understanding the whole situation. You know, 15 years when I was in my 40s was one thing. Eight years when I was 60, those are eight precious years realizing there’s a lot less road in front of you than there is behind you. So there’s got to be some motivation for me to justify time away from my boys, time away from my wife, just solitude that you can’t get somebody else to do this for you. You’ve got to spend time, and a lot of the times, overcoming the terror of the blank page, trying to figure out how- the story is clear in my mind. How can I shrink it down to three or 400 pages to convey it to somebody else? Because they don’t want to know the 100,000 pages of stuff that I know, and- I, you know, if it was up to me, and I wasn’t involved in these projects, I’d be happy to just be a reader of news, rather than someone that’s out there making news. That wasn’t an ambition of mine. I happen to be good at it because I’m passionate about it and that authenticity, I can’t hide. I don’t want to hide it, but I’ve always, I believe, had a healthy understanding about fame or notoriety in my standard line. But I really believe this is, you want to have just enough to get into your favorite restaurant on Friday night if you forgot to make a reservation. And much more than that is generally a bad idea. It doesn’t serve a purpose. So my view in building teams and accomplishing missions are: put the person on the field that’s the most qualified to get the outcome we all want. It’s often times me. It’s not always me. Sometimes it’s Anna Bottinelli, the president of the foundation. Sometimes there are other people that Susan Eisenhower, who was on our advisory board, there’s moments where the gravitas of her and her family name can open a door that is more effective than me. So I don’t care who it is. If it’s me, I’m perfectly willing to go do it, and often times it is me. But if it’s someone else, that’s fine also. But these are just the things that are consequent to what you’re doing. I mean, if you’re going to be out there trying to positively impact the world in your own lane, as we’re trying to do, you know these are contacts and resources that you need to be skilled at and good. Your firm’s outstanding and advising clients on how, no matter how good they are, how to be better at it, and we can all always be better at it. And of course, someone said to me today, I don’t know how you go out and give these speeches. Well, you do it through practice, and you do it through having subject expertise and comfort that you’re, you know what you’re talking about, and you’re not going to be flustered by someone asking you a question or disagreeing with you, that’s fine. Disagreements are good. Questions are even better, because it provokes people to think and answer themselves rather than listen to something that you said. Those are all things that you learn in the course of time. But I just think anyone that is writing a book for any purpose other than you’re passionate and believe in some subject that you want to- if you can say, I’m not going to be a fulfilled person unless I get this down on the written page, even if nobody reads it, that’s a reason to write a book. Any other reason? Bad idea. You think you’re going to make money, you’re going to get a movie made famous, et cetera. Yeah. Really bad idea. If you’re pursuing fame or notoriety for the sake of it, I think it’s going to be a very hollow existence, and you’re going to be met with lots of disappointment along the way, if that is attendant to what you’re doing, if it’s as it is, in my case, necessary to get the outcome to cause change that we want to have as an example through 20 years of pleading, haranguing, encouraging the army, we managed to get them to reconstitute an Army Monuments Officer training program for 80 years after World War II, we never had any monuments officers, which was madness, but we have them today. And I was asked to deliver the first commencement address because we were no we weren’t the only one, but we were one of the most vocal people, and we had that flexibility, because we weren’t on the government payroll, we could say what we wanted to say, they couldn’t fire us, they couldn’t demote us, and we said it in the right way. You know, you want to be, reestablish that leadership. This is a good thing for the Army, and it’s a good thing for the country, but you need a platform, and you need media visibility to do that, and you have to be prepared. You know, as George said one time, when he was complaining about some media criticism he got and he mentioned it to his father, Nick, who’s a long time broadcaster, and he said, my dad said to me, very unsympathetic, if the kitchen’s too hot, get out. And there’s the advice, you know, you have to be prepared to deal with some criticism, and not everyone’s going to agree with what you’re saying. That’s okay.

Crayton Webb

Yeah. We’re going to finish with a lightning round we just have, these are really simple, kind of fun questions, and hopefully, hopefully you’ll play along. So I have to ask you, of all the World War II besides the Monuments Men, what’s your favorite World War II movie?

Robert Edsel

Saving Private Ryan probably.

Crayton Webb

Yeah, yeah, right.

Robert Edsel

And it’s just so brought to life with the animation that Spielberg was able to bring. And I think they, they really hit the mark in showing that there’s nothing glorious about war. It’s a brutal, destructive, horrific thing. And General Eisenhower understood that so well, because at the surrender, when the Germans surrendered on May 7, at 2:30 in the morning, and all of his officers are trying to write this glowing message, this overarching thing that would stand the testament of time, about what the great leader of of the Western armies thought about all this. And Eisenhower was so frustrated because he was so damn tired, and he grabbed a pen and he said, “This mission is accomplished at 2:31am – Eisenhower.” And that was it. And so that’s how it is, I mean. And Eisenhower just wanted to end the killing, and save American lives.

Crayton Webb

Of all the artworks that you’re aware that are still missing, if between now and the end of your life, one –  you had to pick one that was recovered. Can you pick a favorite?

Robert Edsel

It would be the “Portrait of a Gentleman” painted by Raphael in 1516, or so that went missing from the museum in Krakow in Poland, and we know it survived the war. It was stolen by one of the key Nazi defendants at Nuremberg, who we hung, Hans Frank, who was Hitler’s lawyer, and he took it along with the painting by Leonardo, the “Lady with an Ermine” and a Rembrandt. The Leonardo and Rembrandt were both found. The Raphael’s missing, and that would be great to find, because it would affirm, it would just be further evidence of how many other things there are that are out there.

Crayton Webb

So you know it’s still out there.

Robert Edsel

It’s there somewhere. Yeah, it may be sitting in a in a vault in Switzerland, you know, in someone’s home somewhere. But it could be in the former Soviet countries in Russia, but it’s out there.

Crayton Webb

That’s a whole other story. Is there one that was found that is also a particular favorite? That’s tough because there were so many found.

Robert Edsel

Well, there are works of art that are hanging on museum walls that don’t belong to the museums that have them, that they are fighting tooth and nail to keep from giving them up, because there’s enough cloud on the title that there’s an argument to be made. And this is the role of the Monuments Men and Women Foundation is, we don’t have a dog on the hunt. We’re not against museums. I love museums. We’re not for private collectors, per se. I know plenty of private collectors. We’re for the work of art. We’re for the work of art being where it belongs with the rightful owner. And I think it’s disgraceful if a museum has a work of art hanging on their wall, think in the context of blood on your hands, because it’s not going to make a difference to your museum to give that work of art up, but it’ll make a huge difference to the family that gets it back. So we try and use what bully pulpit we’ve got in the media spotlight to draw attention to that and try and right the rightable wrongs of World War II.

Crayton Webb

On a lighter note, not the real people, but the actors. Did you have a favorite character in the movie, “The Monuments Men”?

Robert Edsel

I truly did like all of them. I mean, when George Clooney first mentioned Bill Murray was going to be involved. You know, we have grown up on Bill Murray. And Bill Murray is, he is American pie, apple pie, rather, and he was a lot of fun on this set. Hugh Bonneville is a sweetheart of a guy. John Goodman, great guy, Matt Damon and Clooney constantly ribbing each other. That was fun to watch. Clooney was, without Damon knowing it, having the set tailor reduce the size of the waist on Matt Damon’s clothes. And each time he would come back in town and shoot a scene, he’d be thinking, Jesus, what in the world’s happening to me here? And it didn’t dawn on him till weeks into the shoot. So Clooney is great with practical jokes, and he has the resources to implement them, and he’s very good at pulling them off. But it was an amazing cast. Cate Blanchett was, you know, she’s such a lady and a phenomenal actress, it was a privilege to be around all of them. I can say that they each did this job, not out of- this wasn’t about making money. They all were artists. And I remember when I asked George, why do you want to make this film? He looked at me like, that’s got to be the dumbest question ever heard. And I said, well, I know. Okay, indulge me. I mean, you could do whatever you want to do. And he said, to make a film about an untold story of World War II, about artists and people in the creative arts saving art who don’t want to do that. I get to be the guy, yeah, well, I wanted to hear him say it. And he did say it. And that was essentially the appeal to all these other artists, the actors, because they felt, I think, a sense of full circle that we can we can bring visibility to how important it is to preserve these arts, whether it’s in the form of a canvas or a sculpture or a book or oration, these are all different creative forms, and we will be a lesser society if we don’t preserve these things.

Crayton Webb

Okay, a few questions we ask all of our guests. Favorite book?

Robert Edsel

“Remember Us”.

Crayton Webb

I should have said besides your own, you’re a brilliant man. Favorite subject you studied in school?

Robert Edsel

History. I love history.

Crayton Webb

Favorite day of the week.

Robert Edsel

Sunday, because I have gotten to where I really enjoy going to church, partly out of the of the habit of it, because I think it’s a great habit. And it’s a period for an hour and a half that my two boys sit there in my lap, and at 68 years old, I know that that is a fleeting moment in time, and it brings such deep satisfaction to my soul to be sitting there with my wife, with those two boys on me.

Crayton Webb

Very nice. The last show you binged watched or binged.

Robert Edsel

“Diplomat”. And I’m, I’m waiting with impatiently for season three.

Crayton Webb

Your hidden talent or superpower.

Robert Edsel

My relentlessly positive attitude.

Crayton Webb

And what person alive or dead, fiction or nonfiction, would you like to have dinner with or speak with the most?

Robert Edsel

General Eisenhower. No question. A man who not only, I believe that Eisenhower’s greatest asset was sublimation of ego. He was able to realize it couldn’t be about him. His mentor was General Marshall, and Marshall desperately wanted to lead the forces in Europe, but President Roosevelt, Marshall was his security blanket, and he just wasn’t willing to let him go. And General Marshall, who was is a, really an untold hero of World War Two, said yes, sir. He didn’t bitch, he didn’t moan, he didn’t complain. He just understood that’s what I’m being asked to do by the commander. I’m going to do it. And so Eisenhower was the one that he recommended. And Eisenhower had an impossible task, not only managing the war and dealing with constant criticism about- he’s not an experienced battlefield commander. He’s going to make mistakes, et cetera, but he was a logistician, and he understood about moving men, troops, all the problems with supply lines. He’d worked for MacArthur, and he had been in training for this job without knowing it his entire career. But then he found himself also in this ambassadorial role of trying to find a way to placate what Winston Churchill wanted for the British, what Charles de Gaulle wanted for the French, what people at Congress wanted and what the President wanted. And it was a truly impossible task, and yet he pulled it off with great success and kept it through and through about anything other than him. And that was in contrast to some of the battlefield commanders he had to man, whose egos he had to manage, Montgomery and Patton in particular, and by comparison, another battlefield commander, General MacArthur, who he worked for, who had a very different attitude where the world revolved around him. So I think Eisenhower is, you know, he was, people referred to his presidency as the do-nothing presidency, maybe what we’re learning today is a do-nothing presidency, on the outside, it’s actually a pretty good thing where there’s some air time available to talk about other things that we need to be talking about.

Crayton Webb

Steady as she goes. Yeah. New York Times, best-selling author Robert Edsel, “Monuments Men,” “Remember Us.” Congratulations. Thank you for your amazing stories and the incredible work that you’re doing with the Monuments Men and Women Foundation. Be sure to check out other episodes of Reputation Matters at sunwestpr.com or on your favorite podcast channel, and we’ll see you next time on Reputation Matters. Thanks so much for joining us.