SS on a walk, Obersalzberg. Prime Minister Chamberlain arriving. Mussolini and Hitler. Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Hitler and Bernile. With Uschi Schneider. Bernile, Obersalzberg Helga Goebbels possibly , Hitler and Blondi, Obersalzberg. Hitler and Blondi, Berghof. Blondi with Tornow. Blondi in a Tree. Blondi and Tornow, Ukraine. Blondi in Winniza, Ukraine. Hitler in His Berghof Office. The Great Room.
Great Room Window. Great Room. View of the Untersberg. Window after bombing. View of the Untersberg from the Berghof Ruins. Hitler's office. Dining room. Entryway ruins.
Hitler's desk. Gatehouse below the Berghof. Eva Braun. Skiing with the SS. Taking a break. Eva and Hitler on the Terrace. View from Bormann's house. Berghof after the bombing. Obersalzberg Area After the Bombing. American Soldiers at the Berghof.
Ruins of the Berghof. Main Berghof Building. East Wing of Berghof. Path to Berghof ruins, former east-wing driveway.
Hitler in driveway. Berghof driveway. But for him, he said, the Germans have only just started talking. Then there was the second generation with student protests in and people started to ask questions. We are strong enough to look at these pictures … We have an obligation to remember and take warning. This article was amended on 25 September because an earlier version said Dora Reiner was transported to Riga.
Reiner was transported to Kaunas, Lithuania. What to do about Hitler's Berghof? Museum challenges far right interest. The bark of the surrounding trees has been scored with Nordic runes and with the double lightning bolt of the SS. Ignored by historians and neglected by government officials, all of whom find the site too "toxic" to deal with, the Berghof ruins have inadvertently become Germany's secret shrine to Adolf Hitler.
Eighty-two years ago this spring Adolf Hitler, then a thirty-four-year-old political upstart, called on his fifty-five-year-old mentor, Dietrich Eckart, a rabid anti-Semite who was being sought by the Bavarian police and was in hiding in a small pension on the Obersalzberg.
At the time the Obersalzberg was little more than a cluster of farmhouses and summer vacation villas in a meadow overlooking Berchtesgaden and across the valley from the imposing face of the Untersberg.
In the company of a fellow Nazi, he trudged up the mountain on foot to the pension where Dietrich Eckart was hiding, arriving late in the night. After that spring Hitler returned repeatedly to the Obersalzberg. In he rented the "Haus Wachenfeld," which he bought in with royalties from Mein Kampf. After the Nazis seized power, in January of , Hitler undertook a major renovation of the house, adding a series of extensions, a wood-paneled library on the second floor, a bowling alley in the basement, and a giant picture window that could be lowered mechanically in order to provide a completely open view of the Untersberg.
He named his refurbished residence the Berghof—"Mountain Court. At the same time, the Obersalzberg's other residents were evacuated to make room for Hitler's closest associates, and the area gradually evolved into a retreat for the Nazi elite, with a movie theater, a kindergarten, and two SS barracks with a subterranean shooting range to keep the daily target practice from disturbing the alpine tranquillity.
The Obersalzberg comprised three security zones. Hitler spent much of August at the Berghof, making final plans for the invasion of Poland. The assault on the Soviet Union was named Operation Barbarossa, after the great red-bearded king whose spirit was said to reside in the Untersberg. Less than two years later, following the defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad, Hitler transformed the Obersalzberg into the alpine fortress where he had originally intended to make his final stand. In April of , just days before his suicide in Berlin, Lancaster bombers devastated much of the Obersalzberg, flattening many of the buildings and seeding the area with unexploded ordnance.
Although the Berghof suffered only slight damage the kitchen and one wing were hit , Hitler ordered the retreating SS units to set the house ablaze. By the time the soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division arrived, the Berghof was a smoldering ruin.
The entire area was confiscated by the Allies, and the Obersalzberg was placed under U. By the early s the Berghof ruins were attracting a steady stream of tourists and Hitlerpilger , who scrawled graffiti on what was left of the walls and searched for mementos in the rubble.
And the bombers had entirely missed the difficult-to-target Kehlsteinhaus, a small chalet on a 6,foot outcrop that juts up two miles south of Obersalzberg. A visiting diplomat humorously dubbed it the "Eagle's Nest," and among English speakers, the name stuck. While for many modern visitors "Berchtesgaden" is synonymous with " Hitler's Eagle's Nest ," "the Eagle's Nest" actually refers just to this small lodge itself, perched alone amid spectacular scenery like a Bond villain's lair.
Built in with precision stonework evoking fascist obedience, it was Hitler's 50 th birthday gift from his inner circle. The lodge and the road up to it cost a fortune — but Hitler, who was afraid of heights, visited only 14 times. It wasn't even much of a lodge: While Nazi officials met and hosted visiting diplomats here — and Eva Braun was fond of sunbathing on the terrace — it never had any beds. Today, the chalet that Hitler ignored is basically a three-room, reasonably priced restaurant with little in the way of artifacts, and views that are often obscured by fog.
On nice days, however, the terrace offers a magnificent panorama, and the tunnel, elevator, and mountain road — Germany's highest — that lead to the Eagle's Nest are dramatic in any weather.
0コメント