Nazi Board Games

In the 1940s, while British children played marbles or tiddlywinks, their German counterparts were playing games that glorified bombing.

"We had propaganda in Britain during the war, too, but I have never found a comparable British toy that would glorify the idea of bombing German cities such as Dresden or Berlin," historian and auctioneer Richard Westwood-Brookes told the Associated Press in an interview Monday.

In one game from the 1940s, battleships could travel to Britain and back, destroying allied ships and other North Sea targets.

Full points for London

In a pinball-style game called "Bombers Over London," the goal was to destroy London, which scored 100 points, as did taking out the submarine base at Scapa Flow, Scotland. Players also tried to hit Calais, France (100 points) and British cities such as Aberdeen (60), Birmingham (50) and Liverpool (40). They lost points by accidentally hiting Brussels, Belgium or Amsterdam, Netherlands.

In another game, players had pieces shaped as an airplane and a parachute. As the plane passed over the board, participants dropped the parachutist off, trying to land on places with point values.

"Also, after the war German children wouldn't have wanted to pretend they were bombing London after their own cities had been smashed apart," Westwood-Brookes said.

Auction banned in Germany

The rare Nazi-era board games come from an unidentified collector in Germany who was unable to sell them because of German law, Westwood-Brookes said. The games will be sold Thursday at Mullock's auctioneers in Ludlow, in central Great Britain. Auctioneers will also sell other artefacts from the Nazi era, including witness statements from Holocaust victims who were held in Nazi concentration camps.

Each game is expected to bring in between 100 and 300 British pounds ($200-$400, 150-440 euros) at auction.