The unnamed bidder who last week bought was what was said to have been Adolf Hitler's phone for $243,000 (230,000 euros) may have been sold a fake, German media reported on Saturday.

"This is clearly a fake," the Head of Collections at the Frankfurt Museum for Communication told the respected daily "Frankfurter Allgemeine."

The men who led Nazi Germany Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) As Hitler's Propaganda Minister, the virulently anti-Semitic Goebbels was responsible for making sure a single, iron-clad Nazi message reached every citizen of the Third Reich. He strangled freedom of the press, controlled all media, arts, and information, and pushed Hitler to declare "Total War." He and his wife committed suicide in 1945, after poisoning their six children.

The men who led Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) The leader of the German National Socialist Workers' Party (Nazi) developed his anti-Semitic, anti-communist and racist ideology well before coming to power as Chancellor in 1933. He undermined political institutions to transform Germany into a totalitarian state. From 1939 to 1945, he led Germany in World War II while overseeing the Holocaust. He committed suicide in April 1945.

The men who led Nazi Germany Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) As leader of the Nazi paramilitary SS ("Schutzstaffel"), Himmler was one of the Nazi party members most directly responsible for the Holocaust. He also served as Chief of Police and Minister of the Interior, thereby controlling all of the Third Reich's security forces. He oversaw the construction and operations of all extermination camps, in which more than 6 million Jews were murdered.

The men who led Nazi Germany Rudolf Hess (1894-1987) Hess joined the Nazi party in 1920 and took part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, a failed Nazi attempt to gain power. While in prison, he helped Hitler write "Mein Kampf." Hess flew to Scotland in 1941 to attempt a peace negotiation, where he was arrested and held until the war's end. In 1946, he stood trial in Nuremberg and was sentenced to life in prison, where he died.

The men who led Nazi Germany Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962) Alongside Himmler, Eichmann was one of the chief organizers of the Holocaust. As an SS Lieutenant colonel, he managed the mass deportations of Jews to Nazi extermination camps in Eastern Europe. After Germany's defeat, Eichmann fled to Austria and then to Argentina, where he was captured by the Israeli Mossad in 1960. Tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity, he was executed in 1962.

The men who led Nazi Germany Hermann Göring (1893-1946) A participant in the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Göring became the second-most powerful man in Germany once the Nazis took power. He founded the Gestapo, the Secret State Police, and served as Luftwaffe commander until just before the war's end, though he increasingly lost favor with Hitler. Göring was sentenced to death at Nuremberg but committed suicide the night before it was enacted. Author: Cristina Burack



"The actual telephone was manufactured by Siemens & Halske, but the handset comes from an English telephone. It was never produced this way," Frank Gnegel said. "It must have been assembled later in England."

Gnegel presides over one of the most important collections of telephonic history in Europe.

The fact the phone and the Hitler emblem were painted red aroused further suspicions.

"Siemens would have built a proper example from dyed plastic, instead of unprofessionally painting over a black telephone," Gnegel told the paper.

"Everything to do with Hitler was produced in a high-quality fashion; why should an engraving be simply be painted over? In addition, it is totally implausible that Hitler had a telephone with a rotary dial because he was always hand-connected in the telephone exchange."

Several details on the phone have phone enthusiasts puzzled

Phone enthusiasts skeptical

In response to incredulity about the device's authenticity, the US auction house that sold the phone posted photos from inside the phone, but that just aroused further suspicion among online phone enthusiasts.

Dutch telephone restorer and blogger Arwin Schaddeleeraised several questions about its authenticity.

"The claim that this was a custom-made telephone by Siemens is contradicted by several clues on the telephone itself. Firstly it is marked W38. That is a designation used by the German post office. This indicates the telephone was originally supplied to them," Schaddelee wrote.

"So if it was supplied to anyone else, it was not by Siemens but by the post office. If it was a custom telephone made by Siemens & Halske it would not, by definition, conform to the W38 specifications.

"Somebody found an interesting incomplete damaged phone, repaired it, painted it and cooked up a nice story to go with it," he concluded.

An American phone enthusiast and head of the small non-profit The Telephone Museum, was similarly skeptical, pointing out several problems with the phone.

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