Adolf Hitler's personal phone has been sold to an anonymous bidder for $243,000.

An auction catalog describes it as 'arguably the most destructive weapon of all time, which sent millions to their deaths.' 

The Russians offered Rayner a telephone that belonged to Eva Braun, Hitler's bride, but he joked that he preferred red.

“His Russian hosts were pleased to hand him a red telephone,” the auction house said in the catalog. “The telephone offered here.”

Rayner told CNN that his father brought the phone and a dog figurine, which was made by slave laborers at Dachau concentration camp, back to their home in Devon.

"My father didn't see it as a relic of Hitler's glory days, more a battered remnant of his defeat, a sort of war trophy," Rayner told CNN. "He never thought it would become an important artifact."

The dog figurine sold for $24,300.

Rayner told CNN he hoped the objects would be purchased by a museum.

"I don't want them to be hidden again," he said. "I want them to remind the world of the horrors of war."