After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Wolfram Sievers wrote to Himmler stressing the need to appropriate exhibits from numerous museums. The Reich Main Security Office "Standartenführer" Franz Six oversaw SS-"Untersturmführer" , who was commanding a small team that entered Kraków to obtain the 15th-century Veit Stoss altar. Because the Poles had foreseen the German interest in the altar, they had disassembled it into 32 pieces, which were shipped to different locations, but Paulsen located each piece, and on October 14, 1939, he returned to Berlin with the altar in three small trucks and had it stored in the locked treasury of the Reichsbank. After conferring with Hitler, who had not initially been told of the operation to capture it, it was decided to send the altar to an underground vault in Nuremberg, for safety.