The telephone said to have been Adolf Hitler’s personal ‘hotline’ which sold for $243,000 at an auction in Maryland last week could be a fake.
The rotary dial Bakelite phone, which has an engraving of an eagle, a swastika and Hitler’s name stamped onto it, had been expected to sell for more than $500,000 but after some experts cast doubt on its authenticity it fetched less than half that.
The buyer’s identity is unknown.
In a further twist, the British man who sold the phone has revealed the whole process has caused a rift between him and his sons Ralph and Giles. Ranulf Rayner, 82, has blamed “American organisations” for “pouring doubt” over the phone’s provenance.
He said: “My two sons are somewhat upset with me firstly because they didn’t really want me to sell it. Secondly, if it was going to be sold they wanted it staying in the UK preferably to a museum. Now it’s gone abroad and we don’t know who the new owner is and it’s a great shame.”
According to Mr Rayner, his father, military officer Sir Ralph Rayner, was given the phone by Russian troops after he entered Berlin following the Nazi surrender in 1945. He gave it to his son in the 1970s, who tried to establish its authenticity by contacting Hitler’s switchboard operator and searching the archives of Siemens, which made it.
But Frank Gnegel, of the Frankfurt Museum of Communications, said the peeling paint was suspicious. He said Hitler would have had a phone made from dyed plastic. The Telephone Museum, an American non-profit organisation, also raised doubts about it.
Mr Rayner said: “Prior to the auction two American organisations poured doubt on its provenance… I just wish I hadn’t put it up for sale now.”