| Kevin Wheatcroft’s collection of Hitler heads. He claims to have the largest collection in the world. Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian |
The long read
The man who sleeps in Hitler’s bed
Kevin Wheatcroft has quietly amassed the world’s largest collection of Nazi memorabilia. Now he wants to share it with the world. What is behind this dark obsession?
Alex Preston
Wednesday 24 June 2015
When he was five years old, Kevin Wheatcroft received an unusual birthday present from his parents: a bullet-pocked SS stormtrooper’s helmet, lightning bolts on the ear-flaps. He had requested it especially. The next year, 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.