Himmler's Car: Somebody Bought It!

On the face of it, it sounds like any wealthy car collector's dream - a 1930s vehicle in pristine condition, its past brimming with stories, up for sale for £400,000.

But any buyer will have to come to terms with the fact that this was the very vehicle that used to transport infamous Nazi Heinrich Himmler around during World War II – when he was the architect of the Holocaust.

The military Wanderer W11/1 was the S.S. and Gestapo chief's official transport as he inspected the concentration camps and the killing fields of Russia, where he witnessed mass executions of Jews and partisans.

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Nazi mass-murderer Heinrich Himmler's car, the military Wanderer W11/1, is going up for sale for £400,000 at a vintage car dealership in Germany

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Michael Fröhlich, who is selling the car, said he has already had some interest from neo-Nazis, to whom he refused to sell it

Now it is being offered for sale by vintage car dealer Michael Fröhlich, whose Oldtimer Agency has been running for 40 years in Germany. He has previously sold the Rolls-Royce of the Moroccan king and a host of vehicles owned by celebrities.

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The four-seater with a three-litre, 65 horsepower engine was acquired by Himmler in 1939. It has 63,500 miles on the clock and was used in conjunction with his private fleet of limousines, mostly in the European territories conquered by the Nazis.

Fröhlich says he acquired the vehicle through a financial consulting firm.

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The four-seater, three-litre vehicle, which has a 65 horsepower engine, was used by Himmler as he went about his business in the European territories conquered by the Nazis

Some interested parties have already called seeking to buy it, but he considered them neo-Nazis and refused to sell it. The car has been authenticated by Second World War historians as being the one that transported the Third Reich's angel of death on his sinister travels.

The car was built by a company in Chemnitz, eastern Germany, which became Karl Marx Stadt under the communists. The firm moved to Munich after the war and went bust in 2010.

In 1991 the vehicle was recovered from a museum in Riga, Latvia, which was also going bankrupt. It is now in a storeroom between a McDonald's restaurant and warehouses on an industrial estate in Mettmann in North Rhine-Westphalia.

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Hitler's henchman Himmler was overlord of the S.S., chief of the Gestapo and planner of the Holocaust which killed six million Jews

Its steep price and dark past means it might be stuck up in a warehouse for some time more, but Frölich is hopeful that a rich American collector might snap it up.

Himmler killed himself with a poison capsule in May 1945 after he fell into the hands of a British army patrol as he wandered with a band of compatriots dressed as an ordinary German soldier.

Last Friday his devoted daughter Gudrun 'Puppi' Burwitz celebrated her 85th birthday in a Munich suburb with a speech to former S.S. men. She is one of a handful of people in modern-day Germany who believes her father was a great man.

HEINRICH HIMMLER: THE HOLOCAUST'S ANGEL OF DEATH 

The son of a school teacher, Heinrich Himmler was born in Munich on October 7, 1900, and went on to become the architect of the Holocaust and one of the Nazi party's most dreadful chiefs.

His first involvement with the Nazis was in 1923, and he was their propaganda leader between 1926 and 1930. He was made head of the S.S. - the Schutzstaffel - a major organisation and Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguard, which became one of the most powerful organisations under his leadership during the Third Reich. Himmler developed it from a 290-man battalion to a huge group with its own military.

He became president of the Gestapo (Secret State Police) once the Nazis had come to power in 1933, and set up the very first Nazi concentration camp, Dachau, the same year.

Himmler was obsessed with the idea of the Germans as the Aryan race and racial purification - he encouraged Aryans to only breed with each other in special programmes he set up. During the Second World War, after Hitler had successfully invaded Poland, he was able to force out more than a million Poles and 300,000 Jews out of the west of the country.

In 1941, Himmler was present at the shooting of 100 Jews by firing squad in Minsk. He deciding that having to witness such killings might affect the mental health of his S.S. men, and declared that alternative methods of genocide be found. 

In 1942 he was charged with control of 'the final solution to the Jewish problem' - the Holocaust. He was given control of the concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and by the spring of that year it was greatly expanded to include gas chambers. In total, close to six million Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. 

When it became clear that the Nazis were going to lose the war, Himmler attempted to bargain with the Allies, and Hitler consequently stripped him of all his duties. After the surrender he used a fake identity to try and escape, but was captured.

He committed suicide while being held by the allied forces on May 23, 1945, by swallowing a poison capsule. 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2721979/Nazi-chief-Hitler-henchman-Heinrich-Himmler-s-vintage-World-War-Two-car-used-Holocaust-goes-sale.html#ixzz3HutnyH7C
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