On this day, 27 years ago, September 1, 1998 (July 11, 1998 in the lunar calendar), Russia auctioned Nazi archives online. Russia is selling a number of secret Nazi archives to the West, including the diaries of Hitler's chief liaison officer Martin Borman. It is said that these archives were obtained by the Soviet Red Army after it captured Berlin in the final stage of World War II. The archives, which are about 1 million pages, may provide new clues to researchers in World War II. These included not only Nazi documents, but also some French documents that the German army took back to Berlin after the capture of France. At that time, the Soviet Red Army packed these documents in iron boxes and transported them to Moscow by train. For safety reasons, the Soviets scattered them to other cities and villages for preservation. Israel Shamir, a Moscow journalist involved in the sale of the archives, said: "These documents were piled up in a disorderly manner in government storage rooms with locked doors. People have almost forgotten it, and the only sign that someone has touched it is that some of the documents have Beria's handwriting." After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, Moscow announced that scholars and historians could look through the archives, but no one had done it. No one knows where the iron boxes in which these files are held or what the files are content. Last year, a private company composed of several Russian entrepreneurs proposed to the Russian government that they were willing to pay to count the archives on the condition that they were allowed to develop and utilize the value of the archives. The government agreed to their suggestion. The company has now decided to sell the archives. Shamir said that due to possible disputes over the ownership of the archives, the Russian company has decided to sell only copies of the archives. The following is a list of the archives provided by the company: -Martin Borman's diary from January to May 1945, which records the final stages of Hitler's life in the Berlin basement. -- Personal documents of SS commander Heinrich Himmler. Among them is a letter written to him by Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner Yeats after visiting Berlin in 1938, saying that Nazi Germany left a deep impression on him. -- Hundreds of letters between General Ludendorff, then chief of the German General Staff during World War I, and Walter Nikolay, head of the German intelligence agency from 1919 to 1923. --Correspondence between Nikolay and Rudolf Hess, Hitler's aide from 1920 to 1939. -- Personal file of Franz von Baben, who helped Hitler become German Chancellor, including letters between him and Hitler, Himmler and Hess. -- Some documents from the Second Bureau of the French Intelligence Agency revealed that Paul Ravou, the head of the Havas News Agency established by France in Berlin from 1933 to 1937, was actually a French spy. Shamir said he could not disclose who was backing the company or the content of all ongoing negotiations with potential Western buyers. So far, they have auctioned off the archives through the "Internet". "The company has no address, it exists in cyberspace," he said.