The Eagle's Nest 6,000ft up in the Bavarian Alps was a gift to Hitler and is now a restaurant, writes DAVID RICE
ONCE UPON a time there lived a wicked baron who threw many people off the mountainside and built a mighty fortress there. But finally his enemies destroyed that fortress, leaving not one stone upon another.
That’s the story of the Berghof, Hitler’s hideout on the Obersalzberg, a mountainside high above the Bavarian alpine town of Berchtesgaden. Hitler first came to the area in 1923, under the pseudonym Herr Wolf, and fell in love with the breathtaking beauty of the region. He rented a modest chalet called Haus Wachenfeld, which he later bought.
Over the years up to the second World War, the house was gradually extended into a proud palace called the Berghof, from which Hitler governed Germany, spending at least one-third of his time there. More than 50 landowners were bought out, or kicked out, to create a Nazi fortress-town on the mountainside, with SS barracks, houses for Nazi bigwigs, parade grounds, shooting ranges, hotels and cinema for the party faithful – much of which was replicated in a massive network of tunnels within the mountain.
The Berghof was where Hitler met British prime minister Chamberlain and deluded him into the Munich Agreement which paved the way for war. It was here Hitler made the decision to invade the Soviet Union.
On April 25th, 1945, shortly before the end of the war, over 300 RAF Lancaster bombers reduced the Obersalzberg hideout to rubble and, in the years that followed, the German government set out to bulldoze every trace of it and plant trees on the site. So what is there left to see?
What remains is a dramatic construction, and the one thing the bombers missed – the Eagle’s Nest. This was the name used by a French ambassador to describe an extraordinary stone chalet clinging to the 6,000ft Kehlstein mountaintop, high above the Berghof. It is reached by a tunnel drilled into the heart of the mountain, which ends at an elevator shaft which goes up through the mountain to the chalet. The whole undertaking was forced through by Martin Bormann in an incredible 13 months in 1938, as a 49th birthday present for Hitler.
A visit to the Eagle’s Nest – known to Germans as the Kehlstein Haus – is an experience hard to forget. A bus takes you up a cliff-clinging road to the tunnel entrance. Then a 400-metre walk into the mountain ends at a lift lined with polished brass that holds 50 people, with green leather seats around the walls for Hitler and his entourage.
At the top you emerge to a panorama that usually only mountain climbers enjoy, with views of the snow-clad Watzmann and Hoher Göll peaks, and of green valleys meandering into nearby Austria. On a clear day you can see the spires of distant Salzberg.
The Eagle’s Nest is now a restaurant where, if you sit on the terrace, enormous black raven-like birds with yellow beaks try to steal the french fries off your plate. It is as if they are the spirits of the departed SS.
People often think that here is where Hitler did most of his scheming and warmongering. In fact, he did not much like the Kehlstein Haus and rarely visited it. He disliked heights. Besides, it would have been far too small for the work of government. He used it occasionally to impress distinguished visitors, such as French ambassador Poincet, who wrote later: “Hitler’s house gave me the impression of a building hovering in space. The whole sight, bathed in the half light of autumnal dusk, appeared intensely wild, like a mirage. Was this Monsalvat Castle, inhabited by the Knights of the Holy Grail?”
At the Kelstein Haus there is no reference whatsoever to Hitler – it’s now just a restaurant above the clouds. However, the Berghof site below still reeks of the Führer. There is a recently-built Documentation Centre, which is simply a museum of the Hitler era, contrasting the idyllic and indulgent Berghof lifestyle of the Führer with the atrocities committed throughout Europe on orders that came from here. In the museum basement is the entrance to the network of tunnels where the Nazis continued their work underground.
There are signposts pointing to everything – except to the site of the actual Berghof. And everyone we asked was vague about it: “Down there somewhere – not quite sure where.” I was told that people fear the site might become a neo-Nazi shrine.
We finally found a rough forest path, which led to a plaque set among trees, beside an ivy-grown concrete retaining wall which is all that is left of the Berghof.
The plaque reads, in part: “You are here at the centre of the former Führer’s off-limits area. The Obersalzberg served as the second centre of power of the German Reich alongside the official capital Berlin. Hitler spent more than a third of his time in power here. Decisions were made here which led to the catastrophe of the second World War and the Holocaust, causing the death of millions.”
Go there
Ryanair (ryanair.com) flies daily to Munich West (Memmingen) from Dublin; Deutsche Bahn has direct rail services from Munich to Berchtesgaden; bus from Berchtesgaden railway station connects to Obersalzberg site and documentation centre and from here a second bus links to Eagle’s Nest tunnel.
STAYHotel Watzmann (hotel-watzmann.de) is excellent and reasonably priced; Hotel zum Türken (hotel-zum-tuerken.com) is a short distance from the Berghof site and is one of the few surviving buildings from the Berghof complex.