Situated on the periphery and of no strategic importance, it served until 1944 as a storehouse for Nazi plunder - works looted in France. It was administered by the NSDAP's Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg.
The Germans kept a photographic record of the looted works. After World War II, 39 photo albums documenting the extent of the looting were found in the palace. They are currently housed in the United States National Archives.
In April 1945, there were plans to blow up the castle to prevent the looted art and the building itself from falling into Allied hands. The plan failed, however, and at the end of the war Neuschwanstein was handed over intact to representatives of the Allied troops. It was eventually returned to the Bavarian government.
The Bavarian Archives used some of the rooms in the castle for a time as temporary storage for the surviving archives, as the archive rooms in Munich had been bombed.