During World War II, the Nazis launched a well-oiled robbery industry in occupied Europe. Technologies for the seizure of artistic values, tested on Jewish artists and collectors in Germany and Austria, were then used on a continental scale. However, the devastation of European museums and galleries and the destruction of cultural monuments was not ordinary robbery and vandalism: these actions had the most important ideological and political implications. In order to confirm the idea of the global superiority of German culture, the very names of the artists were usurped: thus the Dutchman Rembrandt was declared the greatest manifestation of the truly German spirit. On the other hand, the “degenerate” art of modernism was intended to illustrate the creative failure of the “inferior races” or was generally subject to destruction. The book details the controversial and still unfinished process of restitution, describing in detail several court cases in which the heirs of the owners stolen masterpieces tried to defend their right to them.