A World War II veteran from Kansas took some of Hitler’s personal letterhead back to the United States after spending the night in the führer’s private office.
It was April 1945 when Charles Staubus was in Germany after senior Nazi party officials had begun to flee and Hitler had just committed suicide.
As the German war effort rapidly crumbled, Staubus found himself in Berchtesgaden, Germany, the home of Adolf Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.
Nearby was Hitler’s other office known as the Small Reich Chancellery, with Hans Lammers in charge.
The official was essentially the second seat of government of Nazi Germany.
Charles Staubus arrived in France with the 82nd Airborne Division of the US Army
In April 1945 he spent a night in an office used by senior Nazi Party officials and found some of Hitler’s personal letterhead which he used to write a letter to his father.
Staubus had previously arrived in Europe with the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division along with 160,000 Allied troops in June 1944.
After Hitler’s disappearance and with German soldiers scrambling to escape, Staubus found himself spending the night in Lammers’ office after the compound was heavily bombed by the Allies and captured by American forces.
‘I picked the lock on his desk. The only thing I had left on his desk was this: a seating chart for all the top Nazis,” Staubus explained to KDAF.
In addition to the seating chart, Staubus also discovered a cache of Hitler’s personal stationery with the legend “Der Führer” written in ink.
‘I lifted this lid. It was like a chest of hope. It was half full there. There were only two sheets of it.
“I kept one of them for my copies and on the other I wrote a letter to my father and told him the war was over.”
In a letter dated May 8, 1945, Staubus wrote to his father using Hitler’s letterhead.
“Dear Dad, Well, this is it, VE Day,” said the first words. Staubus, which will turn 100 in September, has since retained the 1938 letterhead and seating chart.
He never told the U.S. military what he took home as a souvenir or, as he liked to describe it, “liberated.”
“They didn’t know anything about it,” he said with a cheeky grin.
The city of Berchtesgaden, Germany, was the home of Adolf Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. Nearby was Hitler’s other office known as the Small Reich Chancellery, with Hans Lammers in charge.
Staubus, who will turn 100 in September, has kept the 1938 letterhead and seating chart ever since and still maintains it at his assisted living facility in Lenexa, Kansas.
Only two sheets of letterhead remained. Staubus left one blank and used the other to write a letter to his father.
The note paper is in very good condition considering it is over 80 years old.
On the desk there was also a seating chart for all the senior officials of the Nazi Party and Staubus took it too.
He had previously arrived in Europe with the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division along with 160,000 Allied troops in June 1944.
‘When I first arrived in France, they took me to a big tent full of uniforms and told me that all the people who had them were dead. Anyone like you can have it,” Staubus told KDAF while remembering the D-Day invasion on its 80th anniversary.
D-Day commemorates the day when Allied forces launched a massive invasion of Nazi-occupied Normandy, France, as part of Operation Overlord that 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 transporting huge numbers of Allied troops across the English Channel to fight Nazi control.
It would become the largest air, land and sea assault in history, the beginning of the end of Hitler’s takeover of Europe.
Thousands of American 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 was the beginning of the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control.