Hitler’s telephone fetches R3.2m

ADOLF Hitler’s personal telephone, which he used to dictate many of his deadly World War 2 commands, has sold for $243 000 (R3.2-million), a US auction house said.

The Siemens rotary phone, originally black Bakelite and later painted crimson and engraved with Hitler’s name, was found in the Nazi leader’s Berlin bunker in 1945 after Germany’s surrender.

It is embossed with a swastika and the eagle symbolic of the Third Reich.

Alexander Historical Auctions dubbed the phone “arguably the most destructive ‘weapon’ of all time”.