Berchtesgaden Letter: Like hundreds of other visitors to the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps, I had gone looking for the man who wasn't there, in a place he hardly visited.
I wanted to stand where Hitler has been photographed with Unity Mitford, to see the shadow which the slaughter of millions had cast on the beautiful Alpine setting.
To be on top of a 6,400 ft high mountain, looking out across sheer drops to the glittering Konigssee lake below, and try to learn something about the madness which had infected him and wasted millions of lives.
The young Austrian travel agent who took my booking placed her finger across her top lip then drew her hand up in a swift Nazi salute.
The brochure discreetly referred to "a most enjoyable excursion . . . to a major feat of engineering". The Third Reich, her grandfather's war, never existed.
And I crossed to Berchtesgaden, from Austria, a short journey by coach.
The border which is not a border is a nominal frontier, customs posts abandoned. This Alpine region of Germany, south of Munich, and western Austria, and part of the north of Italy, where towns have names in Italian and German, is one mountainous whole.
I have walked these beautiful mountains year after year, breathing the clear air; I keep on coming back, but never completely shake off a feeling of disquiet.
The pretty Austrian city of Salzburg, 18 km away, is the capital in all but name.
The man who was not there was from Austria, and the Anschluss, the incorporation of Austria into Germany, which he decreed, seems to be the natural order of things here in lederhosen land.
There are two kinds of engineering in evidence in this busy Bavarian market town at the foot of a steep mountain. One is the spectacular ascent, in special climbing coaches, and then by luxury lift, to the Eagle's Nest, a mushroom-shaped conference centre in the sky.
Hitler's henchman, Albert Speer, described it as being "furnished in a rusticated ocean-liner style".
The brain behind this eyrie was another Nazi leader Martin Bormann, who displaced the local farmers and - in the real sense of the phrase - moved heaven and earth to build a mountain palace fit for the Führer to entertain other world leaders.
The problem was Hitler didn't like it. Looking down on sheer drops and the mist-wreathed lake from his mistress Eva Braun's special parlour did not do it for him.
He only went up to the Eagle's Nest about a dozen times.
What Hitler did like was his summer home in the valley below, the Berghof.
His close associates, Goering and Goebbels had holiday homes nearby, and for long periods, it was the command centre of the war effort, protected by 20,000 troops.
We discovered that all their holiday homes had long since been destroyed.
So the English-speaking tourists, many of an age to have a personal interest, a lost father, brother, husband, uncle, were on a fool's errand.
Perhaps not as great as the Germans, who are not encouraged to visit?
"The guided tours are only in English," our tour guide assured us. "They don't want to encourage the wrong sort of people. . ."
A pity, you might think, that they didn't do something about discouraging the wrong sort of people 60 years ago. So we munch kuchen and drink Kaiser beer in the conference room which is now a restaurant, and hope for the mists to part so we can see the jagged mountain peaks of the Watzmann, Hoher Goell and Hochkalter across the valley.
And that brings me to the second piece of engineering, that which surgically removes Nazi Germany from the mosaic of history.
The town below is a busy bustling place. Waitresses weave skilfully between tables in the streets, a tray of food in one hand, clearing used crockery with the other.
The scene is charming, the local produce fresh and appetising.
Many overseas visitors are there because of Hitler, but he is not mentioned on the streets of this town.
Not for the first time, I wonder about the futility of asking Modern Germany to explain Nazi Germany to the rest of the world.
In Berlin, a film has just opened - The Downfall - depicting Hitler as a soft-spoken dreamer, a human being, toppling into madness as the war grinds to an end.
Here is no ranting demagogue, but an ill man with a weakness for chocolate cake.
As you might expect, many object strongly to a process of "humanising evil", and compare it to those who deny the Holocaust.
Modern Germany has moved on, but if it cannot explain its past to us, who will?
In the cafes and souvenir shops of Berchtesgaden, in the shadow of the Kehlstein Mountain, the past is not confronted, but sidestepped.