Feb. 18 (UPI) — A red telephone personally used by Adolph Hitler during World War II is set to be auctioned in Maryland.
Auction house Alexander Historical Auctions said the bidding in Chesapeake City will begin at $100,000 and its current owner, the son of British officer Sir Ralph Rayner, hopes it will sell for as much as $300,000.
The phone has Hitler’s name engraved at the bottom and was found in his Berlin bunker in 1945.
It was originally gifted to Hitler by the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany, and later presented to Rayner by Russian officers after Germany’s surrender.
Bill Panagopulos of Alexander Historical Auctions referred to the phone which Hitler used to deliver deadly orders during the war as a “weapon of mass destruction.”
He said his hope is for the phone to be placed in a museum to allow people who view it to “really understand what extreme fascist thinking can bring about.”
