A small chunk of Hitler's art collection went on view in Washington's National Gallery last week: 48 canvases by 16th and 17th Century Dutch artists. They were part of an elaborate bread-&-butter letter the Dutch Government had written the U.S. Hitler had "collected" most of the paintings from a Jewish-owned art houseGoudstikker of Amsterdam:for a museum in memory of his mother. (He assumed that all the North European paintings he liked must necessarily be "German" in inspiration.) U.S. soldiers rediscovered the Dutch loot among 4,000 paintings hidden in a salt mine at Alt Aussee.
Except for two Rembrandts, the paintings at the...