Trivia

The "Monuments Men" were a group of approximately 345 men and women from thirteen nations, most of whom volunteered for service in the newly created MFAA section during World War II. Many had expertise as museum directors, curators, art historians, artists, architects, and educators. Their job description was simple: to protect cultural treasures so far as war allowed.

From a newspaper report dated 13 December 2013: Police broke into the flat of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a Nazi art dealer who hoarded hundreds of works believed to have been looted by the Third Reich. Gurlitt has been the focus of huge media attention after a trove of over 1,400 previously unknown masterpieces were uncovered in his München flat. A task force appointed to research the origin of the art has said that around 590 pictures fall into the category of art looted or extorted by the Nazis from Jewish collectors. These include pieces by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, Paul Cézanne and others.

Motoko Fujishiro Huthwaite, who died on 4 May 2020, in Taylor, Michigan, was the last of the Monuments Women, the group of men and women whose actions are depicted in this movie. Born Motoko Fujishiro on 24 August 1927 in Boston, she was sent back to Japan with her mother and after the war being bilingual was part of the Monuments Men operations in Japan. She got the Congressional Gold Medal in 2015 for her work.

John Goodman claimed in an interview that making this film was the most fun he had ever had making a film.

The German vehicle (A "Kubelwagen") commandeered by Epstein and Stokes is eventually adorned with a hand-painted star in a circle on its side, redesignating it as a U.S. military vehicle. This is a recreation of an actual photograph taken during the war of a member of the Monuments Men driving the exact same model vehicle, complete with a hand-painted circled star on the side door. The recreation in the film is perfect, right down to the American military trailer it pulls behind it.

Alexandre Desplat: the film's composer, as the French man that lends his airplane to James Granger.