Chamber of horrors
June 24, 2015 3:54 AM   Subscribe

The man who sleeps in Hitler’s bed Wheatcroft is now 55, and according to the Sunday Times Rich List, worth £120m... The ruling passion of his life, though, is what he calls the Wheatcroft Collection – widely regarded as the world’s largest accumulation of German military vehicles and Nazi memorabilia.
posted by fearfulsymmetry (42 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
It's not like he's doing something crazy like collecting replicas of Hitler's head.
posted by double block and bleed at 4:46 AM on June 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


Well we went to B&Q but nothing really caught our attention - we wanted something eye-catching, a bit out of the ordinary, to welcome people to our home, so we went with Auschwitz replica gates.

Jesus wept.
posted by biffa at 4:53 AM on June 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


There are so many striking details in this story. it reads like well-constructed fiction, only weirder:
…at a car auction in Monte Carlo, he asked his multimillionaire father for a Mercedes: the G4 that Hitler rode into the Sudetenland in 1938. Tom Wheatcroft refused to buy it and his son cried all the way home.
Despite being one of seven children, Wheatcroft was the sole beneficiary of his father’s will. He no longer speaks to his siblings.
“That’s the door to Hitler’s cell in Landsberg. Where he wrote Mein Kampf. I was in the area.” A lot of Wheatcroft’s stories start like this – he seems to have a genius for proximity…
“I have the largest collection of Hitler heads in the world,” he said
The electricity was off in one wing of the house, and we made our way in dim light through a conservatory where rows of Hitler heads stared blindly across at each other.
“[...] a senior British diplomat who, in his regular trips to Germany in the lead-up to the war, amassed a sizable collection of Nazi memorabilia. He continued to collect after the war had finished, the most interesting items hidden in a safe room behind a secret panel.
posted by misteraitch at 4:53 AM on June 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


The Churchill/Hitler letters surely must be fake. If not, what a find!
posted by lollusc at 4:56 AM on June 24, 2015


He says he's overwhelmed by the demands of his Nazi collection, but then casually mentions his collections of pub condom machines and Kray Twins memorabilia.

Also, David Irving selling locks of Hitler's hair seems a much more fitting way for him to be making a living than pretending to be a historian. The repulsive old fraud.
posted by sobarel at 4:59 AM on June 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


replicas of Hitler's head
I saw one of those in a second hand shop in Poland, a small plaster bust. I was totally weirded out. Not sure why, as I could have guessed these would exist. But it felt very... wrong. The strength of my own reaction took me by surprise.

For a fleeting moment I considered buying it. But, no no no no no no no no.
posted by Too-Ticky at 5:01 AM on June 24, 2015


You know that thing were you get emails meant for your namesake? Well I've got an namesake in the US who collects nazi related items... not had any for a while, thank god, because it was more than bit unnerving to get emials like 'Congratulations, My Name you have won that auction for an SS Troopers Helmet / Obscure and very detailed book on SS regiments etc etc'
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:05 AM on June 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


Reminds me of this scene in American Beauty.
posted by Fizz at 5:11 AM on June 24, 2015


"a legend in the blokey, Clarksonish world of online military history obsessives"

ha.
posted by theorique at 5:14 AM on June 24, 2015 [1 favorite]



I wonder... does he have anything from the Allied side ?
posted by nicolin at 5:15 AM on June 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


If a large fire were to destroy all of it, nothing of true value would be lost. No one really needs to see this stuff to know what a monster Hitler and his cohorts were, so what could be the possible reason to need to see it?
posted by inthe80s at 5:18 AM on June 24, 2015


Here's me betting that They Saved Hitler's Brain is Wheatey's favorite movie.
posted by octobersurprise at 5:39 AM on June 24, 2015


I had a boss who collected this shit. Oddly he was, I think, a genuinely nice guy who just happened to have a collection of Nazi daggers. Anyway, the opening up of Eastern Europe resulted in a lot of battlefields being dug over for "memorabilia"... which is what happens when you get the capitalism first and the rule of law after.
posted by Leon at 5:41 AM on June 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


If a large fire were to destroy all of it, nothing of true value would be lost.

The vehicles.
posted by Leon at 5:44 AM on June 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


Dude owns 88 tanks. I wonder if he's keeping it precisely at 88 on purpose...
posted by Beardman at 6:06 AM on June 24, 2015 [15 favorites]


Reminds me of this episode of Father Ted. It's possible to watch all episodes of Father Ted on demand in the UK, but not sure if it works elsewhere
posted by Myeral at 6:28 AM on June 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


"we wanted something eye-catching, a bit out of the ordinary, to welcome people to our home, so we went with Auschwitz replica gates."

Your guests must have been captivated! Arbeit macht friei!
posted by markkraft at 6:45 AM on June 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


Wheatcroft scratched at the palimpsest of paintwork to reveal layers of colour beneath: its current livery, the duck-egg blue of the Christian Phalangists from the Lebanese civil war, flaking away to the green of the Czech army who used the vehicles in the 1960s and 70s, and finally the original German taupe. The tank was abandoned in the Sinai desert until Wheatcroft arrived on one of his regular shopping trips to the region and shipped it home to Leicestershire.

After the Nazis, there's more that's dispiriting?
posted by hawthorne at 6:49 AM on June 24, 2015


Gotta say though, I am digging those Nazi-era amphibious cars on his site, designed by Hans Trippel. The cool thing is he kept developing the cars after the war, and made the AmphiCar, which has a dedicated group of enthusiastic collectors.

Would love to have one of those for drives around the bay...
posted by markkraft at 6:56 AM on June 24, 2015


I wonder if he snatched up this.
posted by lagomorphius at 7:04 AM on June 24, 2015


I wonder... does he have anything from the Allied side ?

I went to his website, though the bulk of his collection is German he also has a fair selection of American and British vehicles as well as a handful of French and Soviet pieces.
posted by MikeMc at 7:09 AM on June 24, 2015


Personal story time: Being a pirate, I enjoy nautical memorabilia or anything that looks distinctively piratical. Once I was perusing a small antiques store in England, and inside one of their display cases I spotted a lovely silver skull-and-crossbones badge, just the sort of thing to pin to my tricorn hat. Fortunately I had done some research beforehand, and so knew not to buy it.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:46 AM on June 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


Time ranking the top 10 most famous toilets.

Time is so over.
posted by srboisvert at 7:47 AM on June 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


A wax figure of Hitler surveys the dining room in Kevin Wheatcroft’s house.

Jackalope head's not looking so weird now, is it?
posted by jquinby at 7:56 AM on June 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


Not wax, adipocere.
posted by Leon at 8:07 AM on June 24, 2015


“Everyone just assumes that I’ve inherited a race track and I’m a spoilt rich kid who wants to indulge in these toys,” he told me, a defensive edge to his voice. “It’s not like that at all. My dad supported me, but only when I could prove that the collection would work financially.

No indeed! I'm sure your multi-millionaire father who left you everything made sure to have you work out a business plan when he bought you those things when you were a child. I'm sure your grandmother gave you enough money to buy 3 WWII jeeps when you turned 15 because she saw the value in restoring them for resale. It was all a business venture, from day 1, that you put together from your paper route money! Say, I wonder what the resale value is on replica Auschwitz gates these days, eh? Quite a shrewd investment there, no doubt. You are truly a self-made man, pulled yourself up by the bootstraps.

This fucking guy.
posted by Hoopo at 8:13 AM on June 24, 2015 [16 favorites]


What a fascinating story: On the one hand, and obsessive collector, on the other, eh, Hitler
posted by growabrain at 8:14 AM on June 24, 2015


"Personal story time: Being a pirate, I enjoy nautical memorabilia or anything that looks distinctively piratical. Once I was perusing a small antiques store in England, and inside one of their display cases I spotted a lovely silver skull-and-crossbones badge, just the sort of thing to pin to my tricorn hat. Fortunately I had done some research beforehand, and so knew not to buy it.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:46 AM on June 24 "

We've got skulls on our caps…are we the baddies?
posted by ShawnString at 9:09 AM on June 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


I wonder if he snatched up this.
posted by lagomorphius at 10:04 AM on June 24 [+] [!]


Probably not, that looks like a shit deal.
posted by Fizz at 9:17 AM on June 24, 2015


Wheatcroft owns a fleet of 88 tanks – more than the Danish and Belgian armies combined.
posted by standardasparagus at 9:27 AM on June 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


Would it be worth it to hire a Hitler impersonator to knock on his door and ask for all his stuff back?
posted by lagomorphius at 9:53 AM on June 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


Would it be worth it to hire a Hitler impersonator to knock on his door and ask for all his stuff back?

Who can find a Hitler impersonator? They keep getting killed by time travelers who get lost after bouncing off the Department of Chronological Stability's interdiction field over the first half of the 20th C. They can all read the time machine operations manual, but they can't read one damned page of regulations. People are suck slackers in the 25th C.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:39 AM on June 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


If a large fire were to destroy all of it, nothing of true value would be lost. No one really needs to see this stuff to know what a monster Hitler and his cohorts were, so what could be the possible reason to need to see it?

I think any historical artifact is worth preserving. Which is not to defending hoarding such things in this way. "IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM!" after all.
posted by brundlefly at 11:01 AM on June 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


I think any historical artifact is worth preserving.

Yeah, though sometimes it does give one pause. Self-link to a related conservation project I did: Preserving the very worst.
posted by Shadan7 at 11:34 AM on June 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


Who can find a Hitler impersonator?

More importantly, how do you tell the difference between an off-duty Hitler impersonator and an off-duty Charlie Chaplin impersonator?
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:45 PM on June 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


You don't have an instinctive urge to punch the Chaplin impersonator.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:43 PM on June 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


80's, should we preserve the Allied vehicles, uniforms, weapons, and miscellanea? Why or why not? Should we preserve anything that reminds us of atomic weapons? WW1? The US Civil War? Korea? Vietnam? The various recent wars? Should we preserve anything of Stalin or Pol Pot? The uncountable atrocities perpetuated by empires all over the world?

I consider myself a (amateur, armchair) military historian. I admittedly have a huge love of the terrible grandeur of the implements of war. But I also know that men- and women and children- fought in, around, or were simply massacred by- these machines. I'm reminded time and time again of the costs to humans. Inflicted by humans. And yet.... after 30ish years of studying war, I am still shocked almost every time I turn around by the actual costs of war; some new horror.

I think we need to preserve... not glorify, but preserve and educate about... these items. Because war is truly horrible. And I for one think that history needs to be shown, in ways stories and movies may not be able to convey.

War is incredibly stupid, and until we can obliterate it entirely I think we as a species need frequent reminders.
posted by Jacen at 2:05 PM on June 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


I think any historical artifact is worth preserving.

They're not really historical artifacts when they're striped of context like this. It's like, you can buy ancient (1000-2000 years old) oil lamps quite cheaply. There were zillions of them; they were the matchboxes and cigarette lighters of their day. I wouldn't think much of someone who deliberately destroyed them, but it's hard to imagine an isolated lamp having any historical value except when it's part of a documented dig. So when it's Yet Another Bust of Hitler or (what Irving claims to be) a strand of Hitler's hair - that's just fetishism; it's not research.

In fact I'd go further than that: Wheatcroft is actually destroying the possibility of genuine research. If he's telling the truth about Eva Braun's suitcase and if he wasn't deceived, then the collection is potentially of some historical interest - if only as a footnote. Was it opened under controlled conditions? Was the position of the contents recorded? Were the artifacts bagged, to preserve (e.g.) DNA? How about those champagne flutes, did people touch them with bare hands? The letters, are they going to be scanned and made available to researchers? I suspect that the answer is no, because he basically stuck Hitler's suit in a cupboard, as he did with all the other stuff he collected.

The Nazi era is close enough that we're not wondering about small details like "what did they eat, what did they wear?" We don't really need to know about Hitler's love letters, either. The big things, like the distribution of authority are either known or not known; they're unlikely to be learned from the contents of that suitcase. But it has some historical value, and this guy is certainly not preserving that.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:31 PM on June 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


I don't really know how to pre or post roll this. I feel like i'm usually a better storyteller, but anyways...

My mom is an intimidating presence. She moved to the Big City at 16 in the 70s as a young brown girl, got a job, and just kind of got smacked upside the face by life. She ended up buying most of her stuff from thrift shops and consignment shops and such and living in a number of weird places.

So one day she's in a consignment/antique shop, and realizes they have an enormous display case of nazi artifacts/memorabilia. The owner guy excitedly proclaims of having even more in the back and at home.

She decided to act like she was super in to it... and started coming back every time she got tips from work or a paycheck to buy a handkerchief, or a hat, or a helmet. Whatever the next small thing was she could afford.

She smashed and burned it all. One piece at a time. As much as she could buy until the store closed and the guy disappeared.

I kind of wish someone would do that here, too. Something about the glee taken in it disgusts me the same way the grossest people from that plantation museum twitter did.

Smash and burn it all. Maybe burn him too, while you're at it. "Not racist, just you know, racism fandom and enthusiasts"
posted by emptythought at 4:17 AM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


All I can think of is the Aryan Mustache sequence from Kung Fury.

"Are you going to cry?"
posted by longbaugh at 4:30 AM on June 25, 2015




It's not like he's doing something crazy like collecting replicas of Hitler's head.

When I first saw this I thought it was an obscure joke, because surely no one...oh.
posted by corb at 4:52 PM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


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