As soon as they came to power, the Nazis developed an aggressive cultural policy, which on the one hand attacked so-called degenerate art, and on the other, tended to enrich the personal art collections of the Führer and other Nazi dignitaries. On July 17, 1940, the Rosenberg Organization was founded: its purpose was to eliminate Jewish cultural life throughout Europe by confiscating art and book collections. The Sonderstab Musik commando was also created: eminent German musicologists assigned to ferret out music scores, books about music, and musical instruments.

That formidably efficient cell organized a system for looting musical artifacts throughout the occupied territories. Willem de Vries describes their actions with great precision.

Seizures, foreclosures, forced sales, exchanges, and seemingly voluntary transactions: Nazi pillage and plunder came in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. French Jewish art dealers and collectors were easy prey, and their collections were fought over by the different services the Führer had ordered to seize artwork. In France alone, over 100,000 works of art and several million books were stolen from 72,000 homes and transferred to the German Reich.

This unique book is devoted to the massive looting of Jewish-owned musical items (instruments, scores, recordings, books) throughout occupied western Europe, under the aegis of the Sonderstab Musik commando.