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 going 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 phone, originally gifted to Hitler by the Wehrmacht, was discovered by Soviet soldiers after they stormed his Berlin bunker in 1945.
Red Army officers then presented it to Brig. Sir Ralph Rayner, a British officer, when he visited the bunker days after the fall of Berlin, the auction house says.
Bill Panagopulos of 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 it ends up in a museum, where people who see it "really understand what extreme fascist thinking can bring about."
The Seimens W38 model phone is estimated at $200,000 to $300,000 and Mr Panagopulos says bidding will start at $100,000 this weekend.
The red-painted telephone is emblazoned with Hitler’s name and a Nazi party symbol and features several special adaptations to ordinary models.
The handset of the phone must be rotated almost 60 degrees before it can be lifted out of its cradle, to prevent it from shaking loose while being transported with Hitler on trains and vehicles.
