A collection of 19 amateurish watercolours and two pencil sketches by Adolf Hitler sold for £118,000 yesterday, surprising the auctioneers, delighting their Belgian owner and infuriating a Hitler impersonator with a toothbrush moustache who proclaimed that they were really the work of Mussolini.

Had they been painted by anyone else the paintings would barely have qualified as art, let alone warranted an auction.

The sale, in an hotel in Lostwithiel, Cornwall, attracted bidders from around the world who were determined to own something touched by the hand of the man responsible for more death and destruction than perhaps anyone else in history.

Five were bought by a Russian buyer in dark glasses, a Paddington Bear hanging from his yellow rucksack, who refused to speak to anyone apart from the auctioneer. He paid £10,500 for the most expensive lot, a painting of the church at Preux-au-Bois.

Other buyers preferred to bid by telephone, ensuring their anonymity in an auction room packed with television cameras and press photographers.

According to the story that accompanied the pictures to Cornwall, they were found in a suitcase in the attic of a house in Belgium in the mid-1980s.

Although attempts were made to authenticate them, the auctioneers Jeffreys could describe them only as “attributed to Adolf Hitler”.

Perhaps even more intriguing than the desire of the buyers to pay several thousand pounds for paintings that no one suggested had any artistic merit, was the bravado with which several claimed they did not care whether they were genuine or not.

One buyer, a retired American professor who bid for every picture but went home with only one, said afterwards: “The colouring of the picture I bought is completely different to all the others so if any of them are fakes this is probably the one. But you know what, I don’t mind, the experience has been worth it.”

One of the few English buyers said that he had paid “£3,800 for lot 9, a pencil sketch of a chateau, on a whim having been drawn to the auction by curiosity.

He said: “I hadn’t intended to bid. Hitler was an historically important person but I didn’t buy them because I admire him. I bought them because they are a piece of history.”

Asked if he would be upset if he had bought a fake, he said: “I don’t mind, I’ve got lots of money.”

The auction was disrupted by Frank Sanazi, a Hitler impersonator. Accompanied by Aaron Barschak, the stand-up comedian who gate-crashed Prince William’s 21st birthday party dressed as Osama bin Laden, he yelled: “Six million. These aren’t Hitlers, they’re Mussolinis!” before a security guard escorted both men from the room.

Outside he said: “On a serious note I think it’s disgusting. The proceeds of this auction should go to the victims of the Holocaust and their families.”

Ian Morris, the auctioneer, said that the sale had almost doubled their expectations. “It was interrupted, but that’s just one of those things. These are historical documents and we can’t change history. Maybe it’s not so bad to bring this man back to the fore so the things he did are never forgotten.”

The rural landscapes were supposedly painted by Hitler when he was a corporal in the Bavarian regiment, while recuperating from wounds inflicted in Flanders during the First World War. Most were signed A. Hitler in a clumsy hand.

They found their way to Cornwall because the auction house sold a verified painting by Hitler last year.

Frank van Leemput, a lawyer who travelled from Antwerp for the auction, said: “These paintings are truly awful. If they are from the hand of the monster they explain some of the frustration that led to him becoming what he did. He wanted to be a painter, but had no talent. The result was one of the occasions the Devil truly did show his face on Earth.”

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