A World War II veteran from Kansas took some of Hitler’s personal stationery back to the US after spending the night in the Führer’s private office.
It was April 1945 when Charles Staubus found himself in Germany after high-ranking Nazi Party officials had begun to flee and Hitler had just committed suicide.
As the German war effort quickly crumbled, Staubus found himself in Berchtesgaden, Germany, home of Adolf Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.
Nearby was Hitler’s other office, known as the Small Reich Chancellery, with Hans Lammers at the helm.
The officer was essentially the second seat of Nazi Germany’s government.
Charles Staubus arrived in France with the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division
In April 1945, he spent a night in an office used by top Nazi Party officials and found some of Hitler’s personal stationery with which he wrote a letter to his father.
Staubus had previously arrived in Europe in June 1944 with the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, along with 160,000 Allied troops
After Hitler’s downfall and as German soldiers rushed to escape, Staubus stayed overnight in Lammers’ office after the complex was heavily bombed by the Allies and captured by American forces.
“I picked the lock on his desk. “The only thing he left on his desk was this: a seating chart for all the top Nazis,” Staubus explained. KDAF.
In addition to the map, Staubus also discovered a stash of Hitler’s personal stationery with “Der Führer” inked on it.
“I lifted this lid. It was like a hope chest. It was half full there. There were only two sheets of it.
“I kept one of them for my copies, and about the other I wrote a letter to my father telling him the war was over.”
In a letter dated May 8, 1945, Staubus wrote to his father using Hitler’s letterhead.
“Dear Dad, this is it, VE Day,” were the first words. Staubus, who turns 100 in September, has kept the 1938 letterhead and map ever since.
He never told the U.S. military what he had taken home as a souvenir, or as he liked to put it, “liberated.”
“They didn’t know anything about it,” he said with a cheeky smile.
The town of Berchtesgaden, Germany, was home to Adolf Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. Nearby was Hitler’s other office, known as the Small Reich Chancellery, with Hans Lammers at the helm
Staubus, who turns 100 in September, has kept the 1938 letterhead and map ever since and still has them in his assisted living facility in Lenexa, Kansas.
There were only two sheets of letterhead left. Staubus kept one blank and used the other to write a letter to his father
The stationery is in remarkably good condition considering it is over 80 years old
Also on the desk was a seating chart for all top officials of the Nazi Party, and Staubus took that with him as well
He had previously arrived in Europe in June 1944 with 160,000 Allied troops with the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.
‘When I first arrived in France, they took me to a big tent full of uniforms and said the people who had them were all dead. Everything you, like you, can have,” Staubus said KDAF as he recalled the D-Day invasion on his 80th birthday.
D-Day commemorates the day Allied forces launched a massive invasion of Nazi-occupied Normandy, France, as part of Operation Overlord which took place on June 6, 1944.
Thousands of American and Allied paratroopers landed around Normandy Beach, ahead of the largest armada of thousands of ships ever assembled carrying vast numbers of Allied troops across the English Channel to combat Nazi control.
It would be the largest air, land and sea attack in history, the beginning of the end of Hitler’s conquest of Europe.
Thousands of Americans and Allied troops died on D-Day and in the fighting that followed.
The successful invasion marked a major turning point in the war, as it marked the beginning of the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control.