The Nazis in charge of the Sonderauftrag Linz—Hitler’s art-looting task force—mistook Yost’s enthusiasm for the art for enthusiasm for their cause. Yost did nothing to discourage their misapprehension, for it gave him more responsibility, privileges, luxuries, freedom. That freedom allowed him to make contact with Resistance fighters, and through them to get word to the Allies that the world’s greatest concentration of art treasures was being housed in warehouse-like conditions in the center of Munich.

“As the Allied bombers grew closer and closer to Munich, I lobbied to have the artwork moved from Munich to safer quarters. I suggested the salt mines in nearby Austria. The idea appealed particularly to the SS, since it fit in with their Wagnerian notions of holding out to the last man in the rugged mountains. For the more realistic among the SS, it appealed even more, since they correctly felt it would be easier for them to loot the works of art to use for barter.

“I made trip after trip to the Salzkammergut region of Austria, and set up my headquarters in Alt Aussee so as to be convenient to the many salt mines nearby.

“I had a small cottage by the shore of the Alt Aussersee,” he said, as he drained the last of the beer from his mug. “It was just off the main road which ran between Alt Aussee and Bad Aussee. There was a church nearby, a Catholic church whose priest was a man named Hans Morgen.

“Of course, in a small Austrian town,” Yost continued, “the village priest is an important figure, and I quickly grew to know Morgen well.”

Morgen was initially suspicious of Yost and his Nazi connections. But as their acquaintance grew into genuine friendship, Morgen began to take him increasingly into his confidence. Not long after, Yost learned that Morgen was a linchpin of the local Resistance movement. Yost, deprived of his Resistance contacts still in Munich, began to pass information through Morgen.

“He was a truly heroic figure,” Yost said with admiration. “He risked his life daily, unlike so many in the Catholic Church who supported Hitler either actively or by their inaction. I was timid, yet he was graceful enough to make me feel that my role was important.”

The last days of the war, Yost continued, had been insane. As the sounds of Allied artillery and bombing echoed just over the mountains, many of the Nazis in charge of the caches of art stored in the mines panicked. One of them, a half-mad colonel in charge of a mine in the hills above Bad Aussee, made plans to blow up the priceless contents of the mine rather than “have it fall into the hands of the Jews.”

Feverishly, the colonel had his men drag five-hundred-pound bombs into the mine’s tunnels and place them next to statuary by Leonardo da Vinci and paintings by Van Dyck. The bombs were in place when Yost met with Morgen. All the colonel was waiting for was a demolition expert to come and remove the impact fuses from the normally airborne bombs, then replace them with fuses that could be detonated on the ground.