In May 1945, as American forces overran southern Germany, an eight-man patrol from the 36th Texas Infantry Division captured a fine villa in the village of Gmund on the Tegernsee lake. The owner was gone. His wife and daughter had fled days earlier, abandoning everything. The house belonged to Heinrich Himmler, the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany and the most feared man in the Reich.
The place was stuffed with treasures. Soldiers looted it thoroughly, grabbing souvenirs as they explored the rooms of the Reichsführer SS’s home. One of those soldiers was First Sergeant Paul E. Davis of Company E, 22nd Infantry Regiment.
He walked out with a bundle of items that would eventually make him part of collecting history: stationery, photographs, a sash from an Italian order, and a pristine white summer tunic that belonged to Himmler himself. Davis was photographed outside the house wearing that tunic and the sash, standing proudly while holding a pre-war SS parade helmet he had also recovered. The helmet later ended up in a museum in New York, donated by the family of another soldier from the same unit. But the tunic, a finely tailored white summer dress uniform made of doll skin wool, with silver buttons, French cuffs, hand-applied Nazi party armband, and Himmler’s unique rank insignia, was something beyond rare.
It was the only authenticated Himmler uniform to have survived the war. Inside the right breast pocket, a maker’s label read “Steckbart” and in handwritten script: “Reichsführer SS Himmler, 22nd of April, 1938. ” The tunic had been put into long-term storage before the war, stripped of its medals and badges, which Himmler had transferred to his everyday field gray uniforms. The summer whites had been packed away, deemed unnecessary for wartime use.
For years, Davis kept his collection in the United States. He was honorably discharged in February 1946 at Fort McPherson, Georgia, and the items stayed with him. It wasn’t until June 1982, thirty-seven years later, that he sold the entire lot to a private collector. He even wrote the receipt on Himmler’s personal headed notepaper, noting the date he took the items from the Gmund house.
The tunic passed through the hands of collectors, becoming the crown jewel of the most prominent Third Reich collection in America. It appeared in reference books and was famous among militaria enthusiasts. After the last owner’s death, his collection was auctioned off in Germany. The white tunic, once hanging unheard of in a captured villa, sold at auction for a staggering $2.
2 million, including the buyer’s premium. It became the most valuable SS relic in existence. Yet, unlike the parade helmet which now sits in a museum where anyone can see it, the tunic has vanished again into another private collection. And the question remains: were there more?
Several of Himmler’s field gray World War II uniforms have never surfaced. Some of his clothing was burned by a secretary before the Americans arrived, and some material was trucked out or destroyed. But rumor has it that a few GIs walked away with Himmler’s uniforms as souvenirs. They have never been seen since.
Maybe they’re still sitting in an attic trunk, in a basement, or in a veteran’s old footlocker, unrecognized for what they truly are. Somewhere, someone might be sitting on a literal goldmine, not knowing the value of the name stitched inside the collar of an old uniform.
