A new hotel in the Bavarian Alps marks the spot where Hitler planned the Holocaust. Is it the peak of anti-Semitism or just a great spot to dance and yodel? Brian Boyd pays a call
A one-hour trek by foot up a near- vertical mountain road in driving snow in minus 15 degrees is never something I thought I'd enjoy. As the dozy little hamlet of Berchtesgaden fades mournfully from view and this truly heroic ascent of the Bavarian Alps continues, the eerie silence gets louder and louder. You're sure you can feel the red corpuscles in your blood expanding as the air rarefies, but just as you're about to put in an emergency call to the local hospital for oxygen masks (and maybe some brandy while you're at it), you reach the summit at 1,000 metres above sea level and it's so beautiful you could weep. If you had the strength.
The snow like cornflakes under your feet; the hallucinogenic Bavarian sunset; the almost disturbing mountain-top stillness; and air so fresh it couldn't possibly be good for you - this is Obersalzberg. Exactly 80 years ago another young man trudged this same route up the mountain and quite possibly had the same "wow!" experience. His name was Adolf Hitler.
Then just out of prison, Hitler came to Obersalzberg to celebrate the completion of his book, Mein Kampf. He was so entranced by the view that one of the first things he did when he became German chancellor in 1933 was to turn the place into his own private playground. He sealed off the area, threw the locals out of their houses, built his Berghof residence and used Obersalzberg as a part-time seat of government where he and other Nazi leaders often met to plan the assault on Europe and the Holocaust. Mussolini and Britain's Edward VIII were enthusiastic visitors and Hitler and his lover, Eva Braun, can be seen in now-familiar archive footage, frolicking on the mountainside or greeting bemused schoolchildren dressed in lederhosen.
Goering and Bormann were so enamoured of this retreat that they bought houses next door to their leader. Bormann, whose sycophancy knew no bounds, built the "Eagle's Nest" folly for Hitler's 50th birthday.
Obersalzberg/Berchtesgaden escaped the ravages of the war until 1945 when, mistakenly informed that the area would be used for a "last stand", it was flattened by Allied bombers. Within weeks, the US military moved in, and, being transfixed by the remarkable natural beauty, they decided to use Obersalzberg as a "rest and recreation" centre for their German-stationed troops. The nine-hole golf course they constructed still stands.
When the US left in 1996, German neo-Nazis visited on "pilgrimages" - scrawling graffiti on the walls and leaving candles and flowers at hastily built "shrines". The Bavarian government, wary of "Nazi tourism" in the area, built a museum here in 1999 which documents the area's wicked political past.
Last Tuesday a controversial five-star hotel was opened in Obersalzberg. Built by the InterContinental Hotels Group, the plan was sanctioned by the local Bavarian government despite protests in local and national German media about the idea of a "luxury hotel resort" in such a politically-loaded area. The German Jewish writer, Ralph Giordano, told German television in the run-up to the hotel's opening that "either people don't know the significance of the Obersalzberg, which is bad enough, or worse - they know exactly what kind of place it is, as Hitler's second seat of government, and they are doing this regardless".
At a press conference before the hotel opened, Bavarian finance minister Kurt Faltlhauser said: "Yes, Obersalzberg is a loaded place. It was a site linked to the perpetrators, which is a stigma that lingers and will continue to do so. But Obersalzberg has another side. It was always also a place to recuperate in stunning landscape. The new hotel is part of this tradition."
The InterContinental Hotels Group is being strongly criticised by Jewish groups for its advance publicity on the project. An article in the hotel chain's magazine, Highstyle, under the heading "Berchtesgaden: It's not just a peak, it's a treat" advertised Obersalzberg as "a cosy spot for a display of thigh-slapping local dancing" and "a particularly fine spot for yodeling".
It has been pointed out that the hotel has opened as Europe marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps.
"This hotel dishonours the memory of all the victims of Nazism, offends the survivors and teaches tomorrow's murderers that scenic beauty can camouflage and efface their atrocities," wrote a member of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in an open letter to the InterContinental Hotels Group chairman.
AN ARTICLE IN an Israeli newspaper this week used the headline: "Welcome to Hotel Hitler" and remarked: "Nothing has really changed in over half a century. Relive it. Indulge in it. Treat yourself to the Hitler Hotel. The summit of insensitivity. The peak of anti-Semitism".
So what's the hotel like? Come in and have a look. The first thing you'll notice is its horse-shoe shape which ensures that each of its 138 rooms has a mountain-top view and, to further capitalise on the immense beauty, it appears the whole hotel is built of glass. Designed along "classic contemporary" lines, where there isn't glass, there is natural stone and wood "to reflect the atmosphere of the surrounding mountain landscape" the hotel's publicity pack says. If you want it in one: it's like a bigger and better version of Dublin's Morrison hotel on top of a big mountain.
The hotel claims its "USP" (unique selling point) is its New Age Mountain Spa. In the basement you can be pummelled with hot stones in the massage ritual room, get stuff rubbed into you in the shiatsu-Asia room or choose from a saline steam or herb aromatherapy sauna.
Alternatively you could hang out in the meditation centre and stare at the crystals on the table. If balneology is your thing (it's something to do with a mineral bath), you'll do okay for yourself here. An indoor and outdoor swimming pool complete the package, and a ski slope and a golf course await you outside.
It's all fantastically calm and chilled-out; the bedrooms look great and the American Bar (to reflect the 50-year US military presence) looks inviting. A great place to go, no doubt, for a deluxe bout of relaxation or if you were recovering from an interesting addiction. It's only if you look in your bedside cabinet that you'll find a book called Deadly Utopia which details the area's disturbing political history.
"All guests staying here are told about the nearby museum which documents the Nazi stay here," says a spokeswoman for the hotel. "I think one of the positive things about building a hotel in this particular area is that it makes it a public place and all the more difficult for neo-Nazis to come and build their shrines. Even though we are separate to the museum, all the staff here have been trained in the history of this place. You know, all the cooks and waitresses are aware of the location and can talk to you about it if you want. Having said that, they are not historians."
Back down at sea level in Berchtesgaden, the local population seems generally supportive of the hotel.
"It will bring more people to the area and, with the German economy the way it is, we need that here," says the young woman who works in the souvenir shop. "And you have to remember that a lot of the people who come to visit Oberzalberg do so out of a real interest in politics and history and not because of the wrong reasons to visit it."
An elderly woman at the train station says she couldn't care less about the hotel and that too much is made of the area's history: "The Nazis were only in Oberzalberg for 12 years. The mountain was there before them and it's still there after them. I'm not going up to the hotel - my neighbour went up and she said a cup of coffee costs €6 . . ."
• The InterContinental Resort Berchtesgaden is now open, www.ichotelsgroup.com. Single room rates begin at €160 a night. Berchtesgaden is 135km fromMunich airport (the train journey takes three hours) or half an hour by train from Salzburg airport in Austria