• Berchtesgaden As It I s By VERNON BARTLETT I DROVE down
the valley in the dusk, and a° group of people outside the Berchtesgadener Hof looked terribly like the journalists. Pre* photographers and local inhabitants who had stood outside that same hotel thirteen 'years ago, waiting for Mr. Chamberlain to return from the first of his three visits to Hitler. (" And Hitler never even asked him to dinner! " said one hotel proprietor to me. "We never could understand that.") But this time the group was made up of American soldiers, and they were discussing nothing more serious than the respec- tive attractions of the bowling alley and a particular snack bar. For BerchtesgaVen is now a leave centre for American troops. and 'the Russians have long since cleared away Hitler's ashes with all the rubble of his proud Chancellory in their sector of Berlin. The Fuehrer's fleet of cars no longer sweeps through this little town in the early hours of the morning, on its way to the Berghof, his home in the mountains.
Now the home of this lonely maniac, whose ambition to be treated as a god brought more misery to mankindithan any other man's ambition in history, is a sinister ruin. The immense and famous window of his conference hall is an empty hole through which the autumn sun shines on broken bricks and charred wood. Upstairs are three safes with gaping doors. Even the tiles have gone from the bathrooms, and the names of American soldiers are scrawled over all the walls. The view of the mountains is marred by bomb craters, in one of which, near the entrance gate, the 'twisted remains of a motor-car show above the green slime.
Away to the right is a wrecked villa which used to house the loyal thugs of the security services, and behind it are the ruins of Bormann's mountain home—Bormann, whose possible survival has already given rise to legend. Goering's villa lies round the corner of a hillock that has been hollowed out to provide air-raid shelters, but I was not allowed to approach it, for yet one more dud bomb was about to be exploded in its neighbourhood.
A little farther up the mountain-side are the ruins of the spacious barracks that were needed by the men who had the task of protecting the Fuehrer, and of the " Platterhof," the guest-house frequented by those who were to be received in audience. Two workmen were prising up the marble paving- stones of its immense and splendid terrace, and were taking them away in wheelbarrows to some new destination.
Near the barracks another road climbs steeply up the moun- tain. Notices in English and German announce that nobody in any circumstances may make use of it. It zigzags through the pine trees almost to the summit. There it leads to the tunnel at the end of which is the lift to the Eagle's Nest, a house Which cost at least £1,000,000 to build and which Hitler used at the most on five occasions. Only for the, electric heating of this house and lift-shaft, which was switched on from the S.S. barracks when the Fuehrer's approach was announced, the German taxpayer had to produce some £1,700 a month.
In Hitler's time this whole area of Obersalzberg (not to be confused with Salzburg, miles away across the Austrian border) was shut in by an iron and barbed wire fence, for the more men , aspire to be treated as gods, the more remote they keep them-) , selves from contact with ordinary mortals. The fence has dis- appeared—the local farmers saw to that. But the problem of the future of the area is still unsolved. How can it be rendered harmless for future generations ? One suggestion was that the churches should combine to convert the Eagle's Nest into a chapel, but most pilgrims might have been political rather than religious. It might be blown up, but there is the danger that the blast would find an outlet down the lift-shaft, and leave the building itself more or less intact.
It now seems probable that it will become one of those place's that are marked by asterisks in Baedeker, to denote their fine views or their historic interest. The local authorities would be unpardonably stupid if they did not see in these ruins a wonderfid source of income, and there are many claimants to their owner-, ship. • Already the owners of cafés and kiosks near the Bergholl do a magnificent trade in picture postcards and surreptitious gossip about the old days—open talk is supposed to be banned lest it should degenerate into Nazi propaganda.
But indirect propaganda, or even unconscious propaganda (if - the two words may be associated), is not prevented as easily as that. Within three miles of the Berghof I met a smart young German who expressed his amazement that foreigners should visit the place at all. "We Germans," he said, "have almost forgotten about Hitler. We aren't interested in him, any more than we should be interested in any other big business-man who has gone bankrupt. Hitler was a super-business-man and his bankruptcy was, therefore, more sensational than that of others, But that's all there is to it."
There are many Germans who are thus preparing themselves, most probably unconsciously, for another national leader who condemn Hitler rather because he failed than because he so nearly succeeded in clamping an abominable and cruel system upon the world. There are many Germans who blame Chamber, lain for his appeasement, rather than themselves for allowing Hitler to gain so much power by such bestial methods (and their alarming lack of responsibility emphasises the courage of those other Germans who ran the greatest risks and suffered the worst hardships in their support of the elementary human rights that We in this country can still take for granted).
But it is unlikely that the rest of the world will so easily forget Adolf Hitler. For years to come pilgrims and tourists will drive up the steep mountain road from Berchtesgaden to the Berghof, and probably the still steeper road to the Eagle's Nest. The few Germans who have hitherto been allowed to make this latter journey seem to have been more angered by its cost to them as taxpayers than moved by regret over Hitler's downfall. Of the future visitors who may drink their beer or coffee in Hitler's study, or brave the winds that howl across the terrace of the Eagle's Nest, probably only a very small minority will have come to worship the dead leader. In any case, the decision may soon be taken out of the hands of the Western Powers, since the Bonn Government is so rapidly achieving independence of the three High Commissioners in the Petersberg, on the opposite side of the Rhine.
That is why the fate of Obersalzberg should be settled without delay. On the one hand, a fairly normal curiosity Ii likely to induce German and foreign tourists to part with their money to see this place from which Hitler so nearly ruled the world. On the other, there is an equally normal objection to the com- mercial and political abuses to which this curiosity might give rise. If the profits were used for some such international purpose as the exchange of students, then in time one would forget the bitter memories now aroused by these ruins that deface the mountain-side above Berchtesgaden.
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