ABSTRACT
This chapter examines changes in attitudes and doctrine regarding cultural property and its protection among the British, US and German armed forces from the First World War to the establishment of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. The central body of international law covering this subject (the 1907 Hague Convention) remained consistent throughout this period, while doctrine and practice reveal significant innovation. This study considers the principal drivers of change in this period, including technological changes in the waging of war, political and cultural factors and, crucially, the initiatives of military personnel themselves. It evaluates the successes and failures of those innovations. It also examines the backgrounds and activities of specialist military cultural property protection personnel (the Allied Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives organisation – the ‘Monuments Men’ – and the German Kunstschutz), and the advantages and disadvantages in this regard of the large-scale mobilisation of citizen soldiers that characterised the world wars of the twentieth century.
