(CNN) -- When the likes of George Clooney, Matt Damon, and Bill Murray come storming across film screens this winter, in the drama The Monuments Men, viewers will be immersed in the world of Nazi art theft. The Monuments Men were a group of some three-hundred Allied officers charged with locating, protecting, and recovering art and monuments that were endangered by the fighting in World War II. They would eventually learn of Hitler's elaborate and highly-organized plan to strip Europe of its art. Indeed, Hitler had established a military unit solely dedicated to art and archive theft and made detailed plans to restructure the entirety of his boyhood town of Linz, Austria, into a city-wide "super museum," containing every important artwork in the world. We have the so-called Monuments Men to thank for the salvation of tens of thousands of masterpieces, among the estimated five million cultural objects stolen during the war.
@highlight
December 14 marks the 100th anniversary of when Mona Lisa was returned after being stolen
@highlight
It was snatched by an Italian handyman who worked inside the Louvre
@highlight
He had mistakenly thought that Napoleon had looted it and wanted to repatriate it
@highlight
Confusion remains where Mona Lisa was kept during WWII
The most famous act of theft associated with the @placeholder took place about a century ago.