Columbus Globe For State and Industry Leaders - Whereabouts

Whereabouts

Numerous globes claiming to have been owned by Hitler exist throughout the world, although the authenticity of many of them is doubtful. There are three in Berlin: one at a geographical institute, another at the Märkisches Museum, and the third at the Deutsches Historisches Museum. Another two reside in public collections at Munich. Many of the globes show Germany with a bullet hole or simply wiped out, an act committed out of contempt by either Soviet or American soldiers. Based on photographic evidence, none of these globes, however, are from Hitler's office in the New Reich Chancellery, the one most iconic and the one that inspired Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator (1940).

It is known that Lavrentiy Beria did inspect the Chancellery after the fall of Berlin and it has been suggested that he may have taken a globe to his office in the KGB Headquarters at Lubyanka where it remains to this day. However, neither the KGB nor its successor the FSB have ever commented on this.

In May 1945, one globe allegedly owned by Hitler, and possibly the Columbus globe, albeit smaller, was found by an American soldier among the ruins of Hitler's "Eagle's Nest", a command complex near the Bavarian Alps. The complex had been nearly completely looted by the time the soldier arrived; save for one globe sitting on what he assumed was the dictator's desk. The soldier, John Barsamia, took the globe home and kept it for sixty years before selling it at an auction in San Francisco. Bob Pritikin, an entrepreneur from San Francisco, bought the globe at $100,000, five times the original estimated price of $20,000.