Hitler’s Walking Horses saved from black market

The custom-made bronzes stood on either side of the stairs of the Nazi leader’s Chancellery

Two long-lost life-size bronze horse sculptures that once stood outside Adolf Hitler’s grand Chancellery here have been recovered, along with other Nazi-era artefacts.

After a series of raids on black-market art dealers, the police were able to recover the two sculptures, estimated at millions.

The Walking Horses , by Josef Thorak, were custom-made for the Berlin building, which was badly damaged in World War II and destroyed by Soviet forces.

The horses once stood on either side of the stairs into the Chancellery that Hitler had built in downtown Berlin.

A huge granite relief featuring muscled, shirtless fighters in what the police called a “typical Nazi style” is among the seizures. Eight people are being investigated in the case, BBC News reported.

The works were last seen at Soviet barracks near Berlin in 1989, shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

A report in the German newspaper Bild said the statues had been painted gold, damaged by bullets and played on by children up until their disappearance.

Illicit art dealers had in recent years asked for up to four million Euros on the black market for the works, the report said.