Nazi Artifacts

Pieces of the Berghof.

Piece of camoflouge use to protect the home from airbourn Allied bombings.

Photo of part of the Berghof ruins in 2019. Image courtesy of Jonovision82 and Wikimedia Commons.

This is a small collection of pieces from Adolf Hitler's house, known as the Berghof, which was located in Obersalzberg in the Bavarian mountains. 

The site of the Berghof was originally home to the Haus Wachenfeld, which was built in 1916 for a banker and his family to be used as a vacation house. His wife's maiden name happened to be Wachenfeld and so he named it after her. Sometime around 1927 or 1928, Hitler rented the house for 100 Reichsmarks a month and it wasn't until 1932 when he was able to buy it from the family. In June of 1933, he officially purchased the house for a price of 40,000 Goldmarks and he decided to completely remodel it from its original form. 

Soon after becoming Reichskanzler, Hitler hired architect Alois Degano to begin designing modifications. The first new additions were a sunroom at the front of the house, a terrace above the garage, and a series of separate buildings on the property which would become known as the Berghof Adjutancy. These major additions were finished in mid-1933, with the second round of modifications being done in 1936, yet again with Degano at the helm. In 1945, the house was destroyed in a bombing by the British Royal Air Force which turned the building from a once beautiful home to nothing but a gutted shell. On April 30, 1952, the Bavarian government, fearing the ruins would become a breeding ground for tourists and neo-Nazis alike, blew up the ruins leaving nothing besides the garage left. The garage was demolished in 1995.

Today, parts of the Berghof still survive and the ruins can still be visited. At the site, there is a sign with the history of the former structure. These artifacts were taken from the site by a collector from whom the museum acquired them. These pieces include parts of the foundation along with a piece of plastic camouflage used to protect the home from Allied bombings.

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Eva Braun's Personally Owned Soup Spoon

Eva Braun with her dog. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

This is Eva Braun's personally owned soup spoon dating to some time around the late 1930s or early 1940s. The spoon was made by Bruckmann and Sohne, a German silverware manufacturer established in 1805 by Georg Peter Bruckmann in Heilbronn, Germany. During WWII, Bruckmann had several famous customers including Hermann Goering, Eva Braun, and even Hitler himself. After the war, the company's factory was destroyed and had to be rebuilt. Bruckman would continue operation until 1973 when they filed for bankruptcy and were forced to cease operations.

This spoon was part of one of Braun's personal silverware sets, of which she owned several during her life, and in particular, this spoon was meant to be used for soup. At the end of the handle is Eva Braun's monogram (EB) which was designed for her by architect and loyal Nazi Albert Speer. It is commonly known as her "butterfly monogram" due to the fact that it resembles a butterfly.

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The image to the right is the full page of the newspaper the photograph was featured in and the image below is a close up of the image. Both images courtesy of Newspapers.com.

This is a 1939 wire photo of the German Chancellor and Führer Adolf Hitler. To learn more about what a wire photo is click here: Newspaper Photographs. But to put it simply, a wire photo is a photograph published in a newspaper. This particular photo is a closeup of Hitler's face and was featured in the August 31, 1939 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune where it was shown alongside a photograph of then-British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. The caption under the picture read, "The grim-faced Hitler of Germany, who holds power to plunge Europe into war over his Polish demands." It is also interesting to note that the newspaper this was issued in was released a day before Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. The caption from the paper the photo was used in can be found on the back.