THE MUNICH DESK SET SAGA #3

My thanks to the reader who sent in a scan of a period Hoffmann postcard print of a photograph taken of Adolf Hitler signing the Munich Pact. The photograph shows the bronze desk set discussed in two earlier instalments.

As pointed out previously, the outer edges of the inkwells, inspired the Honour Temples built on  Munich's Königsplatz in 1935 to house the remains of the sixteen National Socialists killed in front of the Feldherrnhalle in the 1923 Putsch, are not in line with the outer edges of the pen well. This non alignment is particularly clear in this photograph. The 1940 colour photograph reproduced below is even clearer.  

Not quote the same as the real 1938-era desk set...

In this photograph of the desk set claimed hailed by various parties, including more than a few print and television journalists who failed to carry out minimum due diligence, the outer edges or walls of the Honour Temple inkwells are perfectly aligned with the outer edges of the pen well. 

Another reader wrote in to comment upon the letter from Lt John McConn to his parents, written on Adolf Hitler's personal stationery and dated 6.5.1945: "Look at the letter supposedly sent airmail by McConn. Wouldn't US troops have been using V-Mail for several months after the war and, also, regular US postal stamps would have been a low priority shipping item until well into the Allied occupation. Genuine V-Mail would be hard to fake while this document with civilian-type stamps and  envelope would be much easier for a 'paper expert' to forge.".

Indeed. John McConn, 1st Lieutenant late of the 179th Infantry Regiment and a Silver Star holder, certainly existed and is, apparently, still alive. 1st Lt McConn apparently wrote the letter to his parents on 6.5.1945 on Adolf Hitler's personal stationery. He was serving with Company G, 179th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division at the time, as the envelope indicates, which raises questions of operational security. Would an officer have been able to send a letter with his unit details in clear? An 1989 article by Brigadier-General Felix L. Sparks,  then the CO of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, also part of the 45th Infantry Division, contains the following passage: "On May 1, the following morning, I received an order to relieve the 15th Corps troops at the Dachau concentration camp. I thereupon sent Company L back to the camp. During the afternoon of May 3, both companies L and K were relieved of their concentration camp duties by the 179th Infantry Regiment of the 45th Infantry Division, never to return."

John McConn has said that he was stationed in the Führerbau, protecting the so-called Monuments Men and recovered artworks and treasures there, until the end of August 1945. Elements of the 45th Infantry Division were tasked with manning collection and dispersal points for surrendering German troops in and around Munich throughout the month of May 1945 before being repatriated to the USA in June. Neither he nor his family have responded to questions about their relationship with the American militaria dealers and television experts like Craig Gottlieb to whom the desk set was entrusted in 2008, 2010 and 2011. John McConn was described as having wished to auction the desk set himself, hence the promotional website set up on 19.3.2008 by Mr McConn's legal firm and Magnet Media Group, a movie production company with offices in Los Angeles, Cologne and London. MMG CEO Jeanette Buerling has not responded to questions about her company's involvement with the McConns and the Munich Pact Desk Set. Neither of the Californian militaria dealers, Steve Wolfe and his one-time runner Craig Gottlieb, have responded to questions about alleged Munich Pact desk set, said to have been 'sold' after an unsuccessful auction in New England to a "West Coast collector". 

THE BEN LIEBER ADOLF HITLER COLLECTION

Julius Schaub

On 23.4.1945, Adolf Hitler ordered his adjutant and personal assistant SS-Obergruppenführer Julius Schaub to locate and destroy all of his personal effects and papers in Berlin, Munich and Berchtesgaden. A meticulous officer, General Schaub and his staff followed the Führer's order to the letter, as confirmed for example by Frau Annie Winter, the housekeeper who looked after Hitler's apartment in the Prinzregentenstrasse in Munich. Just for good measure, they drove up to the Berghof and destroyed everything they found there before motoring down through the mountains to Zell am See where they blew up Hitler's personal railway train. Some of Hitler's uniforms, clothing and personal effects survived and these are for the main part well-known and catalogued. 

In September 1970, former US Army Lieutenant Benjamin Lieber, late of the 692nd Tank Destroyer Battalion, won a lawsuit against New York militaria dealer Mohawk Arms, securing the return of a collection of Hitler-related memorabilia said to have been stolen from Lieber by his chauffeur in 1968, who had apparently sold it to New York City militaria dealer Peter Hlinka, who had in turn sold it to Raymond Zyla of Mohawk Arms in Utica NY. Zyla and his lawyers claimed that Mr Lieber had no grounds for demanding its return as he "never obtained good and legal title" and the loot "properly [belonged] to the occupational military authority and/or the Bavarian Government". This defence had no legs under Louisiana State Law. 

J. Robert Lynch Jr, the lawyer who represented  Ben Lieber in Louisiana, had told the court: "In 1945 the plaintiff, then in the United States Army, was among the first soldiers to occupy Munich, Germany. There he and some companions entered Adolph Hitler’s apartment and removed various items of his personal belongings. The plaintiff brought his share home to Louisiana. It included Hitler’s uniform jacket and cap and some of his decorations and personal jewellery. The plaintiff’s possession of these articles was publicly known. Louisiana newspapers published stories and pictures about the plaintiff’s collection and he was the subject of a feature story in the Louisiana State University Alumni News of October, 1945. There is some indication that the articles were occasionally displayed to the public." Before returning the collection, Raymond Zyla and his brother Joseph called on Lieber's New York lawyer Charles Drake and offered what Raymond Zyla described in a 1985 deposition as "a large amount of cash". The offer was accepted and the collection remained in Mohawk Arms' possession.

The above photograph dates from 1969 and shows one of the visor caps to which various related depositions and affidavits refer as having been stolen from Ben Lieber together with other items from his Adolf Hitler Collection. The other cap was described as a mouse-grey "stormtrooper" style cap. Although period newspaper articles refer to caps taken from Hitler's Munich apartment by Lieber, none of the accompanying photographs seem to show these caps. In other words, the earliest photographic evidence dates from the end of the 1960s, when the collection had already passed through the hands of dealers whose reputations for passing off fakes and forgeries are well-known to the point of causing merriment amongst collectors. By 1981, when the photograph below appeared in a magazine article, credited to Mohawk Arms, the cap had been somewhat straightened out. 

The Ben Lieber Adolf Hitler Collection passed from Mohawk Arms to Wolfe-Hardin in September 1995 and was recently acquired by dealer Craig Gottlieb. A local San Diego newspaper reported: “According to a 50-page provenance document that came with the collection, the items were taken from Hitler’s home in Munich in 1945 by Lt. Ben Lieber of the U.S. Army. Over the years, the collection passed through the hands of several private collectors. Gottlieb said he had his eye on the collection for years, but it wasn’t for sale and, until recently, he didn’t have the money to buy it. 

The same cap three decades later

"Rather than keep the items for himself, he’s selling them to recoup his investment and make what he calls a small profit. He has already sold some of the smaller items to one collector, including a locket with a photo of Hitler’s mother, Hitler’s drafting tools, a shaving mug and a presentation box from the Hitler Youth. The item that has drawn the most interest is the early political visor, a brown uniform hat, that Gottlieb said he plans to sell for about $1 million.” The pre-1938 cap is of the type worn by Hitler and it might be authentic."

The fifty-page provenance is available here at the time of writing. It shows Hitler wearing his pre-1938 pattern visor cap in well-known various publicity and media shots like the one above, taken at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Hitler's service uniforms were made by the foremost military tailors Wilhelm Holters, whose premises were on Berlin's Wilhelmstrasse, and whose work was second-to-none. The bullion-embroidered insignia found on Holters garments is of the highest quality. The party eagles adorning Hitler's visor caps were embroidered directly onto the crowns. 

Photographed in Munich with Benito Mussolini in 1937, Hitler appears to the wearing the same visor hat as the one he wore at the Olympic games the previous year. This is not to suggest that the cap Benjamin Lieber said he found in the Prinzregentenstrasse apartment or in the Führer-Bau, depending on which version of the story one has read does not date from the 1935-1938 period when Hitler adopted a new pattern with a military-style cockade. Hitler's valets are known to have kept various formal outfits ready for him in various locations. However, the cap from the Ben Lieber Adolf Hitler Collection and the cap or caps of the same pattern seen in period photographs and footage from Berlin and Munich are not the same. This means that Holters either produced near-identical visor caps for the Reichskanzler in 1935 or that they had different artisans producing caps of different styles, like the cap from the Ben Lieber Adolf Hitler Collection. 

The two Hitler caps said to have been taken from the Führerbunker by the Red Army are similar to the Lieber Collection cap. 

The field-grey military-style version contains a Holters label under the celluloid diamond as does the Lieber Collection cap.

The interior and lining of the Lieber Collection cap show no signs of wear. As the San Diego Herald carefully noted, it is "of the type worn by Hitler and it might be authentic."