Where the auction is

I collect old LIFE magazines, Baltimore Colt and Oriole memorabilia, and the occasional bit of ephemera, such as a Blue Öyster Cult guitar pick and some Japanese WWII Navy equipment my Dad brought home (don't ask.)

World War II was the saddest time, the darkest days in our history, and yet, there is interest in things once used by Adolph Hitler. People who should be ashamed of themselves instead are wearing Nazi regalia and lining up to see Hitler's car in a carnival.

And, apparently there is a market here for underwear that once was worn by Adolph Hitler and his wife of 36 hours, the delightful Eva Braun.
That fun couple really knew how to do it up under their forbidding Nazi regalia!

I'm sitting here trying to figure out why someone shelled out $4,000 for a pair of lacy purple panties that Braun once wore. I mean, really. I can't imagine. But that's the fee they brought at auction.

And now someone has paid $5,000 for Adolph Hitler's underwear, boxer shorts to be exact about it. They really look like a strait jacket for the nether regions of the most murderous madman ever to do evil on earth.

The drawers were left behind in April of 1938, after the Fuhrer stayed for a few says at the Parkhotel Graz in Austria. I'm sure this has happened to even those of us who didn't have our minds occupied with plans to kill six million people soon. That madcap Adolph probably had a hard time getting his suitcase closed, the hotel towels were so fluffy, and when he saw the draws still on the bed, he probably said, "Scheiß die Wand an," German for "The hell with it."

In case you wanted to know, Adolph wore a size 39 waist in his boxers, which were made by the Schüler Company in Berlin. And his initials are embroidered near the fly, because you can imagine those sleepovers with Richard Glücks, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler getting wild, and no one wanted to be caught running Adolph's banana hammock up the flagpole at SS Headquarters as a prank.



The people who owned the hotel found the bloomers and kept them in a nice box, all wrapped up in tissue paper, for some eighty years before the novelty of owning this disgraceful fabric wore off, and they put it up for auction.

Some day I am sure I will understand parting with 5 G's that could have been used to help people in order to purchase Hitler's knickers. But that day is not today.