It is a dated but ordinary piece of office equipment of the kind that might normally only attract the attention of retro-conscious hipsters. 

But the rotary dial Bakelite telephone that went under the hammer at a Maryland auction house this weekend is not just a curiosity from the pre-digital age. 

It is Adolf Hitler’s personal travelling telephone, which the dictator almost certainly used to issue orders that led to the deaths of millions. 

The Seimens W38 phone sold for $243,000 (£195,000) on Sunday. Andreas Kornfeld of Alexander Historical Auctions said the bid was made by phone, the auction house does not disclose the names of buyers.

The phone, originally gifted to Hitler by the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany, was discovered by Soviet soldiers after they stormed his Berlin bunker in 1945. 

Red Army officers then presented it to Brigadier Sir Ralph Rayner, a British officer, when he visited the bunker days after the fall of Berlin, the auction house says. 

Bill Panagopulos, from Alexander Historical Auctions in Chesapeake City, which is now selling the phone on behalf of Rayner’s son, calls it a ”weapon of mass destruction".

He says the seller and auction house hope that the telephone ends up in a museum, where people who see it "really understand what extreme fascist thinking can bring about."

The red-painted telephone is emblazoned with Hitler’s name and a Nazi party symbol and features several special adaptations.

The  handset of the phone must be rotated almost 60 degrees before it can be lifted out of its cradle, which would have prevented it from shaking loose while being transported with Hitler on trains and  vehicle.