CONT:A bronze eagle that once towered over the Nazi Reich Chancellery in Berlin, and which is now one of the most striking relics of World War II in a British museum, has a mysterious chain of custody that its modern-day investigators are still trying to piece together. The enormous eagle is on public display at the Imperial War Museum in London, a battered trophy from the vast government complex designed by Albert Speer in the late 1930s. The building was reduced to ruins by Allied bombing and the brutal ground campaign for Berlin in April and May 1945. Berlin fell to Soviet forces on May 2, 1945.
British and American troops did not arrive in the shattered capital until early July, taking control of their designated occupation sectors. In the intervening months, Soviet troops extensively looted the government buildings of the former Third Reich, both unofficially and officially, as trophy units gathered material to ship back to Moscow to mark the victory over fascism. Despite this, the massive eagle remained in place on the Reich Chancellery during the May to July 1945 vacuum. The Reich Chancellery contained several large bronze eagles, with some experts suggesting around a dozen scattered across the complex, not all of the same design or size.
The particular eagle now in London was eventually ordered taken as a trophy by the Soviets. Photographs from the late 1930s show an identical eagle mounted above a doorway in the Mosaic Hall, which led into the Rotunda. Other images and film footage show the eagle remained on its pedestal above the ravaged Reich Chancellery for some weeks after the surrender, before it was removed, presumably by Soviet troops. The search for how the eagle came into British hands has been painstaking.
One investigator, who made a video about a separate War Merit Cross picked up by a British soldier in 1945, set out to trace the eagle’s journey. He obtained a list of the units that made up the occupying division in Berlin and contacted their regimental museums, looking for any records or photographs of the eagle. The trail went cold, but the investigation turned up significant clues. The first reference to the eagle only appears in 1946, in the records of the Control Commission for Germany, and in an exhibition titled “Germany Under Control” set up in the British Zone.
This exhibition outlined how Britain was ruling its parts of Germany. A Brigadier Lionel Cross was instructed to cooperate and produce material for it. Despite searching, no private papers from Brigadier Cross have been located. The eagle was eventually loaded aboard the SS Selby in Germany in July 1948, arriving at the docks in Hull on July 27, 1948, before being taken to London.
The eagle was not the only significant item in this collection. There was also Hitler’s personal standard, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz’s personal flag, and one of the death masks taken after Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler died in British captivity in late May 1945. The Imperial War Museum’s trustees wrote to the Control Commission, asking that when the “Germany Under Control” exhibition ended, the Army might consider giving them these interesting exhibits for display in London. A scrapbook from the 7th Armoured Division, found among General Lyne’s papers, contained original German orders, including documents about the surrender of Hamburg and the German surrender to Field Marshal Montgomery on May 4, 1945.
It also included blank sheets of notepaper taken from Hitler’s office in the Reich Chancellery, another example of souvenir hunting by British soldiers in 1945. Despite all this, the exact story of how the eagle was initially obtained by the British Army in 1945 remains frustratingly unclear. The investigator has asked the public for help, asking if anyone knows how the eagle came into British possession. The eagle remains a visceral reminder of the abject failure of Nazism, and its display is a powerful historical artifact.
As for the Reich Chancellery itself, it was demolished by Soviet authorities in 1949. The space where it once stood was waste ground through most of the Cold War until East German authorities built apartment blocks on the site in the 1980s. The search for the full story of the eagle continues.