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It is a dated but ordinary piece of office equipment of the kind that might normally only attract the attention of retro-conscious hipsters. 

But the rotary dial Bakelite telephone that went under the hammer at a Maryland auction house this weekend is not just a curiosity from the pre-digital age. 

It is Adolf Hitler’s personal travelling telephone, which the dictator almost certainly used to issue orders that led to the deaths of millions

The Seimens W38 phone sold for $243,000 (£195,000) on Sunday. Andreas Kornfeld of Alexander Historical Auctions said the bid was made by phone, the auction house does not disclose the names of buyers.

The phone, originally gifted to Hitler by the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany, was discovered by Soviet soldiers after they stormed his Berlin bunker in 1945. 

Red Army officers then presented it to Brigadier Sir Ralph Rayner, a British officer, when he visited the bunker days after the fall of Berlin, the auction house says. 

Bill Panagopulos, from Alexander Historical Auctions in Chesapeake City, which is now selling the phone on behalf of Rayner’s son, calls it a ”weapon of mass destruction".

He says the seller and auction house hope that the telephone ends up in a museum, where people who see it "really understand what extreme fascist thinking can bring about."

The red-painted telephone is emblazoned with Hitler’s name and a Nazi party symbol and features several special adaptations.

The  handset of the phone must be rotated almost 60 degrees before it can be lifted out of its cradle, which would have prevented it from shaking loose while being transported with Hitler on trains and  vehicle.

 

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Photo album also up for sale . . . .

 

A photo album containing never-before-seen shots of Adolf Hitler relaxing during WWII has been unearthed 72 years after a journalist took it from Eva Braun’s bedroom drawer.

The remarkable images show the Nazi dictator and his henchmen during the Second World War.

There is one snap of a grinning Hitler offering a salute outside his Berghof headquarters. Two more show him smiling in front of a crowd of children who are saluting him.

Other images depict evil SS chief Heinrich Himmler smiling at the camera, Joseph Goebbels - the architect of the Holocaust - being wildly cheered by a crowd of Germans and portly Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering climbing into a car.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...led-photo-album.html

 

Would you pay £20,000 ??

Saint
Saint posted:

That people are selling these to profit from their macabre history is very distasteful.

Profiting from the war? Not ok.

 

All should go into museums for educational purposes

I totally agree Renton....and all points 

Baz

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