Sacrificing their Lives for History’s Greatest Art
The film depicts the Monuments Men as a unit, working together to save the great works of art and cultural resources, and battling Hitler’s Nero Decree. But the Monuments never worked as a group. Nor did one of the most dramatic moments in the film actually happen. In the film two of the Monuments Men die in their mission.
Jean Claude Clermont, a fictional French member of the team, is shot, and, Donald Jeffries, played by Hugh Bonneville, gives his life to save Michaelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges. In real life, two of the Monuments Men died in the war as well, but under different circumstances. British Monument Man Ronald Balfour died while trying to move an altarpiece to safety and was hit by an exploding shell. The other was an American, Walter Huchtlhausen, shot near Aachen in Germany.
