‘Most destructive weapon of all time’: Adolf Hitler’s wartime telephone goes under the hammer

Adolf Hitler’s personal telephone, which the Fuehrer used to dictate many of his deadly second world war commands, will hit the auction block this weekend, the US house selling it announced.

Originally a black Bakelite phone that was later painted crimson and engraved with Hitler’s name, the relic was found in the Nazi leader’s Berlin bunker in 1945 following the regime’s defeat.

Auction house Alexander Historical Auctions estimates its worth between US$200,000 and US$300,000. On Sunday, the company, located in the eastern US coastal state of Maryland, will auction off more than a thousand items – including the Siemens rotary telephone embossed with a swastika and the eagle symbolic of the Third Reich.

Alexander House dubbed the phone – which Hitler received from the Wehrmacht, Nazi Germany’s armed forces – as “arguably the most destructive ‘weapon’ of all time, which sent millions to their deaths”. It said Hitler used it to give most of his orders during the last two years of the second world war. Russian officers gifted the device to British Brigadier Sir Ralph Rayner during a tour of the bunker shortly after Germany’s surrender.