Gordon Gilkey and World War II: an artist’s service to the U.S. Military

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Undated photograph of Gordon Gilkey | Credit: OHS Research Library, Gordon Gilkey Collection, Acc. 26690.

By Jessica Krueger, CLA Student Writer - October 31, 2025

“Everything was leveled,” Gordon Gilkey said in a 1998 interview with the Oregon Historical Society. “Everything … was bare. It just wiped everything out.”

Before Gilkey gathered German war art in the aftermath of World War II, he served as a captain in the United States Air Force. Tasked with assessing the effectiveness of the U.S.’s atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early Aug. 1945, Gilkey examined photographs of the damage incurred by the nuclear attacks.

“I thought (they) worked too well,” Gilkey said of the atomic bombs, a brief but poignant statement which no-doubt fails to capture his mourning for the lives destroyed. Confronted with the horrors of the Atomic Age and ever-worsening accounts of Nazi atrocities, Gilkey was forced, like others of his generation, to reckon with extreme and often terrible manifestations of human nature.

In art, Gilkey found solace — and he wanted to save it, resurrect it, even.

After the war’s end, Gilkey headed the German Wartime Art Project of the U.S. Army’s Historical Division. Gilkey and his troops tracked down and gathered over eight thousand pieces of German art produced under Adolf Hitler’s rule, some of which perpetuated violent militarism and Nazi ideology. 

The purpose of this effort was two-fold: first, U.S. occupation authorities wanted to prevent German people from reverting to Nazism after Hitler’s defeat; second, specialists such as Gilkey recognized that art produced under the Third Reich, not all of which was problematic, documented monumental shifts in German politics, military history, and weltanschauung or world view. It was crucial, Gilkey believed, that such art be preserved. 

Gilkey’s official position within the U.S. military was different from members of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program, better known as “Monuments Men.” While Gilkey gathered and preserved art produced under the Nazi regime, the Monuments Men were tasked with saving masterpieces that the Nazis had looted. More similar than different, Gilkey and the Monuments Men often worked side by side. 

Before the war, Gilkey had worked as a printmaker and art instructor. In 1939, he and other Americans concerned about the safety of European art sent preemptive letters to President Franklin D. Roosevelt requesting, should the U.S. ever declare war, that efforts be made to preserve the cultural relics threatened by Nazi takeover.

Gilkey and the Monuments Men recognized what many others did not. They understood the great power and influence of the arts in society and, furthermore, they understood the oft-overlooked capacity of military forces to protect important artifacts and nurture human culture.

“There was a … community of surviving Jews west of Frankfurt,” Gilkey recounted, “and the elders learned that I was involved in art.” With anti-Jewish sentiments still running high, they wanted to keep their youth safe and off the streets. “Would you come over and get them started making drawings and paintings?” they asked. 

So Gilkey taught them art. 

He had seen first-hand the terrible conditions Holocaust survivors endured under the Nazi regime when he walked through the Dachau concentration camp after its liberation. “I was so mad and sad, but I couldn’t cry then. I cried that night when I got back to my quarters. (It was) horrible,” Gilkey said. 

Gilkey recognized the capacity of art to glorify Hitler’s terrible plans. But he also recognized the dual capacity of art to, in fact, rid the world of people like Hitler, to democratize societies in the creation of a better world. 

“A group of (German generals) wanted to learn art. So (my) colonel volunteered me,” Gilkey said. “I went up and took them these art supplies: ink, brushes, pencils. I said, ‘I want you to make drawings of your memories of the fortifications and so on (where) you fought and some of the places that you were in, and that will become part of the history of the war.’

“I could look at their drawings and tell them to put a little shadow here to emphasize that, and just draw lines around things and then shade it, and they did it. Some of them were very detailed and meticulous. Some of them were quite free,” Gilkey said.

After the war, Gilkey was honored for his service: both for his official duties with the U.S. Air Force and for his efforts to build connections with those he met abroad. He received the U.S.’s Meritorious Service Medal and was knighted by France. He received honors from several other European countries as well. 

In 2014, the Obama administration celebrated Gilkey and the Monuments Men with a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award possible. It is given to people or groups who have made a significant impact in American history or culture, often for acts of extreme dedication and enduring heroism. 

Approximately 450 pieces of the art that Gilkey collected with the German Wartime Art Project remain in Washington, D.C., under the jurisdiction of the U.S. government. Not all of the pieces produced under the Third Reich exhibited Nazi iconography or propaganda. Some say that Gilkey went too far in collecting German war art. Thankfully, efforts to repatriate the art have been ongoing since 1951. Today, most pieces have been returned to their original artists, rightful owners, or the German government.

This is the first installment in a series which discusses the life of Gordon Gilkey (1912-2000), a well-known printmaker and the first dean of Oregon State University’s College of Liberal Arts. Born and raised in Lane County, Oregon, Gilkey graduated from the University of Oregon in 1936 with a Master of Fine Arts. After his work with the German Wartime Art Project in post-World War II Europe, Gilkey returned to Oregon where his service to the arts continued. He had tremendous impact on OSU, local and national art scenes, and museums across the U.S. In 1998, oral historian James Strassmaier sat down with Gilkey to document his legacy for the Oregon Historical Society. Read part 2 and part 3 of Gilkey's story.