gravity-fed water from the mountain, which carried dissolved salt 17 miles away to Bad Ischl, where the water was evaporated, leaving behind the salt, the mine was not naturally humid, as the salt in the mine's walls absorbed excess moisture, keeping the chambers at a constant 65% humidity, while the temperature only varied from a low of 4 degrees Celsius (40 degrees Fahrenheit) in the winter to 8 degrees Celsius (47 degrees in the summer). Mining operations continued as the artwork was loaded into the mines, with the miners occasionally dragooned into helping to unload. According to James S. Plaut, who from November 1944 to April 1946 was Director of the Art Looting Investigation Unit of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the salt mines held: 6755 old master paintings, of which 5350 were destined for Linz, 230 drawings, 1039 prints, 95 tapestries, 68 sculptures, 43 cases of objects d'art, and innumerable pieces of furniture; in addition, 119 cases of books from Hitler's library in Berlin, and 237 cases of books for the Linz library.In Monuments Men Edsel gives a slightly different list, which had been prepared by Karl Sieber, the art restorer, and Max Eder, an engineer at the mine, and subsequently given to MFAA officer George Stout: 6577 paintings 230 drawings or watercolors 954 prints 137 pieces sculpture 129 pieces arms and armor 79 baskets of objects 484 cases objects thought to be archives 78 pieces furniture 122 tapestries 181 cases books 1200–1700 cases apparently books or similar 283 cases contents completely unknown Edsel with Witter (2009), p.384 The noted Ghent Altarpiece – the stealing of which had caused Jacques Jaujard to protest vehemently and temporarily lose his job – arrived in the salt mine from Neuschwanstein in the autumn of 1944, and Michelangelo's Bruges Madonna in October of that year. Detailed records were kept at Dresden and moved to Schloss Weißenstein at the end of the war, where they were confiscated by the Russians, but these were primarily of the paintings stored in Munich in the Fuhrerbau. Also in the Altausee repository was The Plague in Florence by Hans Makart, a favorite of Hitler's It had been given to him by Mussolini after Hitler had asked for it numerous times. In April 1945, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower gave up Berlin as a "prestige objective" that would not be worth the troops killed in order to