Remaining Nazi sites around Berchtesgaden

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The area around Berchtesgaden and the Obersalzberg was lavished with building projects including the 'Regierungsflughafen Reichenhall-Berchtesgaden' government airport in Ainring, which opened in 1934; the construction of a new office for the Reich Chancellery in Bischofswiesen; the conversion of the Hotel Berchtesgadener Hof into the 'Gästehaus der Partei'; the construction of a new train station in Berchtesgaden and a mountain infantry barracks in Strub and - after a conversion for 35 million Reichsmarks in 1942 - the baroque castle Klessheim in Salzburg with its own train station and its own access to the Reichsautobahn. Hitler used it as the Obersalzberg's guest house for meetings with foreign state guests, whom he did not want to receive in the intimate atmosphere of the Berghof. Plenty of funds were available to finance the construction.

Strub

Originally the Adolf Hitler Kaserne, the Jägerkaserne is a barracks of the Bundeswehr in built in September 1937 according to the plans of Munich architect Bruno Biehler. It was described at the time as "the most beautiful barracks in the most beautiful part of the Reich" as an example of harmonious military architecture blending into the surroundings once the necessary land for the barracks area was expropriated. The Nazi regime's interest in Strub emerged in the late 1920s when Hitler began using the Obersalzberg area as a retreat. By May 1933, Hitler had leased the Haus Wachenfeld, which he later purchased and transformed into the Berghof, located approximately three kilometres from Strub. The district's strategic location made it integral to the security apparatus surrounding the Berghof. In 1937, ϟϟ barracks were established in Strub to house personnel tasked with protecting Hitler and other high-ranking officials. These barracks, operational by June 1937, accommodated 200 ϟϟ members under the command of ϟϟ-Oberführer Johann Rattenhuber, head of the Reichssicherheitsdienst. Rattenhuber reported in a memorandum dated July 12, 1937, that Strub's facilities were "essential for maintaining order and security in the Führer’s residence zone." The ϟϟ presence included checkpoints along the roads connecting Strub to Obersalzberg, restricting access to authorised personnel only.
Strub's infrastructure was expanded to support Nazi operations. Between August 1936 and March 1937, a Luftwaffe airfield was constructed in Strub’s flat terrain, designed to facilitate the transport of Nazi officials and supplies. The airfield handled 127 flights in 1938, including visits by Heinrich Himmler on April 4, 1938, and Hermann Göring on June 19, 1938, according to Luftwaffe logs. Martin Bormann, Hitler’s secretary, oversaw the project, which was part of a broader initiative to militarise the Berchtesgaden region. Bormann’s office recorded on September 10, 1936, that 1,200 workers were employed in Strub and surrounding areas for construction, with 400 specifically assigned to the airfield. The project displaced 53 families in Strub by April 1937, with local records indicating that 67% of these families received compensation below market value, prompting protests that were quelled by Gestapo interventions in May 1937.
The district also served as a backdrop for Nazi propaganda efforts. Strub’s Alpine scenery was used to craft an image of Hitler as a leader connected to nature. In May 1936, Leni Riefenstahl scouted locations in Strub for propaganda films. A report from the Reich Propaganda Ministry dated June 3, 1936, noted that Strub’s landscapes were selected to “symbolise the eternal strength of the German Volk.” The district’s proximity to the Berghof also made it a logistical base for high-profile visits. On September 15, 1938, Chamberlain landed at Strub’s airfield for talks with Hitler at the Berghof, a meeting that preceded the Munich Agreement. The airfield’s role was critical, with twelve flights recorded that day to accommodate diplomatic delegations.
Strub’s local economy was reshaped by the Nazi presence. By January 1938, 3,500 residents of Berchtesgaden, including 1,100 from Strub, were employed in roles supporting the Nazi elite, such as construction, maintenance, and domestic service. A district report from February 1938 indicated that 320 Strub residents worked directly at the Berghof, performing tasks like cleaning and catering. However, the forced relocations caused significant unrest. A Gestapo file from March 15, 1937, documented 42 complaints from Strub residents, with eighteen individuals arrested for “disruptive behaviour” during protests against evictions. The regime’s control extended to cultural life, with Strub’s traditional festivals, such as the annual Kirchweihfest, repurposed to promote Nazi ideology. On October 10, 1937, the festival included a speech by Gauleiter Adolf Wagner, who declared, “Strub stands as a testament to the Führer’s vision for a unified Germany.”
The militarisation of Strub intensified during the war. By July 1940, the ϟϟ barracks expanded to house 350 personnel, and the airfield’s operations increased to 210 flights annually, according to Luftwaffe records. The district also hosted a small Gestapo office, established in January 1941, which monitored local resistance activities. A report dated February 7, 1941, noted three arrests in Strub for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets, with the individuals sent to Dachau concentration camp. Strub’s role as a logistical hub continued until the war’s end, when Allied forces occupied the area. On May 4, 1945, the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army entered Strub, seizing the airfield and barracks without resistance, as recorded in a military dispatch.

The Nazi eagle remains above the entrance, its swastika replaced with an edelweiss whilst the Lion Monument in front shown in the GIF below commemorates the Mountain Troops killed in the war. The stationed mountain troops have since recently been involved in numerous foreign operations such as in Somalia, the Balkans and Afghanistan, as well as in regional and national disaster operations such as the rescue operation in the Riesending shaft cave in June 2014 when the camp for the emergency services and the helipad were set up on the barracks site. The majority of the most successful German winter athletes are or were stationed in the barracks and are trained there by the sports promotion group.

A recent report from the Bundeswehr classified building number 6a of the Jäger barracks as "poor" in construction stage "C". There was water ingress in the basement of the building. Leaking pipes running through the wall caused water and mould damage in several accommodation rooms. After regular and persistent demands from the company, only building maintenance measures were carried out.

Today however, regardless of its preoccupation on promoting images of female soldiers sporting long non-military hair and Woke ideology on its website and continues to elicit disbelief amongst its American and British Commonwealth allies as its refusal to spend anything on its own defence leaves the Bundeswehr painting broomsticks black whilst mounting them on armoured vehicles to resemble machine guns, the question of the extent of right-wing extremists operating within in the Bundeswehr has become more pronounced given the number of reports of “suspected extremist cases” continues to increase dramatically with 229 cases reported in 2020 compared to the previous year's 197 cases. Indeed, for 2020 alone, the military counter-intelligence service reported 477 new suspected cases in the area of right-wing extremism, not including Islamic terrorist groups. In the years 2017 to 2019, 167, 150 and 178 reports of possible right-wing extremist behaviour were recorded- in the previous three years the numbers were 63, 57 and 63. In 2020 there were eighteen suspected cases relating to the terms “discrimination” and “bullying”, in which an extremist background could not be ruled out. These included performing the Hitler salute, derogatory remarks about the Holocaust and Jews, and sending right-wing extremist content via WhatsApp. In 2017 there was a scandal involving the farewell party of a company commander of the 2nd commando forces company attended by sixty participants, at which, in addition to throwing a pig's head as part of a course the officer was to complete after which the grand prize was sex with a prostitute whilst music from the right-wing band "Sturmwehr"was played,  the Hitler salute was said to have been made by several people. In another case a non-commissioned officer published a picture of Hitler in a crowd on his WhatsApp status, from which numerous people around him raised their hands in the Hitler salute with Hitler's face being replaced by the sergeant's head. Another enlisted soldier sent various pictures with Hitler's likeness in a private WhatsApp group regarding a birthday resulting in charges before the criminal court. An inebriated enlisted soldier was discovered to have shouted "Heil Hitler" and "Sieg Heil" several times at night in public, clearly audible for the residents of the surrounding houses. In addition to being released from the Bundeswehr early, the soldier had to face criminal charges. The police discovered in May 2020 on the private property of a member of the special forces commando veritable ammunition and weapons depot as well as Nazi propaganda postcards and an ϟϟ song book. The working group set up by the Minister of Defence under the direction of the Inspector General of the German Armed Forces found that the Special Forces Command had become independent in some areas resulting in what it described as a misguided management culture, extremist tendencies and careless handling of material and ammunition.

 

Just further down the road is what was the Adolf Hitler Jugendherberge which is still used as a youth hostel; my Geography students stayed here during our 2019 fieldtrip.

It was designed by architect Georg Zimmermann from 1935-1938; on Hitler's 46th birthday on April 20, 1935, Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach solemnly laid the foundation stone for the "educational institution for National Socialism" in front of 2,300 Hitler Youth at today's Haus Untersberg. Its construction cost approximately 1.2 million Reichsmarks, funded through the Reich Youth Leadership budget. The building featured a central hall with a portrait of Hitler, as noted in the official hostel magazine Jugend und Heimat, which stated that the facility must be the home of the Hitler Youth, where boys and girls assemble daily for ideological training. A few years later, the hostel was expanded to accommodate up to a thousand guests, making it the largest youth hostel in the world with 1,000 beds. Schirach was sentenced in the Nuremberg Trials for crimes against humanity; the youth hostel remained. The GIF on the left shows Hitler making a personal visit from the pages of the Illustrierter Beobachter of October 29, 1936. Through the process of Gleichschaltung the Hitler Youth took over the running of the network of Jugendherbergen, enabling them to determine who could or could not spend the night in one.

Hitler Youth at the back of the building and the front then and now. There is evidence that even before their ascendancy the new elite had visualised the hostel's utility for fascistic indoctrination, both of Germany's youth and of foreign hostellers visiting the country. Steadily and progressively the movement was drained of cosmopolitanism, suffused with National Socialism. In April of 1933 Schirach, newly appointed Reich leader of the youth, stressed the importance of incorporating the hostel organisation within the framework of the Nazi programme. That year the Nazis began disbanding the network of hostels that housed young travellers and functioned as cultural centres, describing them as “Jewish and Marxist contaminated.” In 1936, the Reich’s surveillance department was instructed to conduct random searches on the remaining hostels; if officials discovered any people with unkempt hair or disorderly behaviour, they were considered hikers and reported to the police. Finally, in 1937, any hostel guest without a Hitler Youth uniform and membership was to be reported. Nazi youth leaders even banned the use of the word Wandern. Lloydl, the German head of their international youth hostel service, briefly summarised the fascist aims in regard to youth hostels:

 Before National Socialism came to power hostels were only overnight places; today they are cultural centres .... The present movement is part and parcel of the rest of the German regime. . we have only one party, and it is of course natural that its interests, which are the interests of the German folk, should be furthered. As part of the wider regime, the hostels have their objectives. The result was a hybrid part to contribute. This, in particular, involves allowing the young people to wander throughout their homeland, acquiring a wider love for it, a deeper desire to further its interests, a friendship with those met on the ways and those with whom they travel which binds all Germany together.

The official hostel magazine, Jugend und Heimat (Youth and Native Land), was even more outspoken in showing the relationship between the youth hostels and Nazi aims:

The youth hostel itself... must be the home of the Hitler youth. Every day, every evening, boys and girls must assemble for earnest work and joyful play under its roof. Here must also the poorest, the one alone, feel at home. The picture of our leader should look down on the children, as they take pains time and again, through lectures and discussions, to enter into the ideals of our movement.... There is a tremendous importance in having the proper leaders. Wander leaders must be reliable in their loyalty to Adolf Hitler. They must lead their young people into the ways and wishes of the national revolution... Our youth must be ready to serve the Fatherland, which they have seen and wandered through, every hour and every day of their lives... and to follow our leader, Adolf Hitler, on every path he indicates. He who builds youth hostels sees to it that the political education of the German youth towards an indissoluble unity of the German community is furthered, and thereby contributes to the immortalisation of the Third Reich.  Hitler youth go on outings in order to see their home. Impressively, a trip takes place to the eastern boundary of our Fatherland. Right on that very spot it becomes clear to the young German that he must stake his best against robber enemies in order to preserve blood and soil. He who returns from this border will take back a piece of Germany with him.

Standing in the reception area on the left. In addition to accommodating Hitler Youth groups and school classes, the youth hostels were used as training and conference facilities, for accommodating Sudeten German refugees or as accommodation for Reich Labour Service camps. Although individual guests were tolerated, they were increasingly pushed into the background; Jews were forbidden to use it. During the war, the hostels served as military hospitals, prisoner of war or resettlement camps, for the Wehrmacht or as accommodation for forced labourers. Above all, however, youth hostels- most particularly this one- were used from 1940 as accommodation for the extended "Kinderlandverschickung" (KLV), in the context of which children from the air war were evacuated from vulnerable cities to safe rural areas. Approximately 2.3 million children were relocated through this programme by 1943, with the Strub hostel housing 850 children in 1941, according to Reich Youth Leadership reports. The facility also functioned as temporary accommodation for Reich Labour Service camps and, in 1942, as a military hospital for wounded soldiers, with 200 beds allocated for this purpose. The hostel’s staff included fifteen permanent employees, overseen by a Nazi-appointed warden, Hans Müller, who served from 1938 to 1945. Müller’s reports, archived in the Bundesarchiv, detail the hostel’s use for propaganda lectures, with 120 sessions held in 1940 alone, attended by 6,000 youths. The facility was equipped with a small library containing 500 volumes of Nazi-approved literature, including Mein Kampf and works by Alfred Rosenberg. By 1943, the hostel was repurposed to accommodate Sudeten German refugees, with 300 individuals housed there between June and December 1943.

This old folks' home in Strub at Insulaweg 1 once served as a sports academy for the Bund deutscher Mädel (BDM - League of German Girls). Today the Diakonie Insula, a retirement home and care centre, the site and the buildings of the insula served as a BdM school established in 1938 for which purpose a raised bog was drained and a mountain, the Schusterbichlberg, and a small baroque palace were removed. It was only partially completed by the end of the war. The BdM had been a sub-organisation of the Hitler Youth since 1930. All girls and young women between the ages of ten and 21 had to join the BdM. The primary goal was education in line with Nazi ideology and preparation for the future tasks of women in the National Socialist community. Obedience, fulfillment of duty, discipline, a willingness to make sacrifices and physical training were part of the curriculum at a BDM school. Important courses at that time were "racial studies", "folk songs", "dances", "housekeeping" and "physical exercises". Without the use of the HJ and BDM, the war would probably have ended much earlier for various labour services up to the auxiliary war service. In the 1940s the Wehrmacht took over the site and, after further expansion, used it as barracks. In early May 1945, the American 36th Infantry Division set up a camp for German PoWs. One of the inmates was the former Governor General of Poland Hans Frank, who was sentenced to death and executed at the Nuremberg Trials. After the war, the buildings were used by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration as a DP camp. Numerous former forced labourers and concentration camp prisoners from Eastern Europe stayed here. Erich Gindler was also one of the refugees who found a place to stay in the insula; he's the one who created the murals in the former sports hall which is now the Insula Church. He'd been a soldier in the war during which time his studio and with it a large part of his work were destroyed in the summer of 1944 during the air raids on Königsberg. In April 1945 he was severely wounded and taken as a prisoner of war, from which he was released in 1946 to Murnau am Staffelsee. Behind the complex original sculptures remain beside which Drake Winston stands. There is also a bunker nearby, the only air raid shelter built above ground in Berchtesgaden. It is now on private property however and is not accessible. The bunker system at the sports school was filled with liquid concrete after the war. On May 6, 1951, the "Evangelical Lutheran Home for the Elderly" inaugurated in the Strub. From 1947 under the sponsorship of the International Refugee Organisation and in cooperation with the Lutheran World Federation, they provided accommodation in particular for Latvian refugees who had not been repatriated until then and served a Latvian school. In 1949 the sponsorship changed to the Munich Inner Mission. On May 6, 1951, after appropriate conversions, the building was handed over to its new use as an Evangelical Lutheran home for the elderly and inaugurated. 

Stanggass Reichskanzlei Berchtesgaden

The Reich Chancellery Dienststelle Berchtesgaden (or Kleine Reichskanzlei) is an ensemble of buildings erected from 1936 to 1937 according to plans by Alois Degano as a branch of the Reich Chancellery in the Stanggaß district of Bischofswiesen. The office functioned as the second seat of government of the Nazi regime during Hitler's presence in the Obersalzberg restricted area. Construction costs, whilst not precisely documented for the Berchtesgaden branch, can be contextualised by the 90 million Reichsmarks spent on the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin, equivalent to approximately $339 million in 2025 terms, indicating the regime’s willingness to allocate significant resources to its governmental seats. No documented explanation has yet been found for the “Berchtesgaden” in the designation of this office – it is probably derived from the district office of Berchtesgaden or the district of Berchtesgaden, which at the time was responsible for the municipality of Bischofswiesen administrative authority. The Reich Chancellery office in Berchtesgaden served as Hitler's second seat of government next to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Construction began in mid-September 1936 under the architect Alois Degano who had immediately encountered difficulties as the groundwater level was very high which led to a foundation built upon 620 concrete piles. Degano had chosen a main building with a side wing as well as a garage built to provide staff accommodation. The opening ceremony occurred on January 18, 1937, with Hitler attending and delivering a brief address, noting his past as a building trades worker. The completion of all buildings took place by July that year. Hans Heinrich Lammers, head of the Reich Chancellery, and Willy Meerwald, head of Department A responsible for Hitler’s personal affairs, representation, receptions, and press, operated from the site during summer months from 1937 onwards. Official correspondence referred to the facility as the Department of the Reich Chancellery in Berchtesgaden to avoid implying a full relocation from Berlin. Between 1943 and 1945, the 500 metre long air-raid shelter system was built. The bunkers, which are directly connected to the buildings of the Reich Chancellery, have an access southwest of the facility directly on the Bad Reichenhall–Berchtesgaden railway line. 

Hitler visiting the site. Alongside his stays in the nearby Berghof on the Obersalzberg, Hitler used the working spaces of this so-called 'Little Reich Chancellery' to establish a total of about 125 laws and regulations. Political guests, including British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, were received at the site, notably during negotiations on September 15, 1938, concerning the Sudetenland crisis. Chamberlain’s discussion with Hitler focused on the incorporation of Sudeten Germans into the Reich, with Hitler stating, “[i]t was impossible that Czechoslovakia should remain like a spearhead in the side of Germany.” The complex also housed the High Command of the Wehrmacht when required, with additional buildings acquired for this purpose. The bunker system, expanded between 1943 and 1945, spanned 500 metres and was accessible via an entrance southwest of the complex near the Bad Reichenhall–Berchtesgaden railway line. These bunkers were directly connected to the main buildings, reflecting the regime’s emphasis on security during wartime. The architectural design incorporated regional Bavarian elements, such as gabled roofs, profiled purlin heads, and arched entrances, aligning with the aesthetic preferences of the Nazi regime for its alpine retreats.In addition to housing the High Command of the Wehrmacht, political guests were received in this building and later further buildings were added for use when needed.

The chief of the Reichskanzlei, Hans Lammers, welcoming Field Marshall Keitel at the entrance. On January 18, 1937 during the roofing ceremony at the site of the Chancellery’s new office building, State Secretary Lammers expounded upon the indispensability of such a structure to house a branch of the Reich Government by stating, “the Führer is always on duty, no matter whether it is during the week, on the weekend or while he is on vacation.” 

Lammers’ choice of the word “vacation” in this context was most unfortunate. It was Hitler’s personal conviction that since he was always on duty, he could never be “on vacation.” He liked to claim for himself that he had never had more than “three days of leave” in his entire life. In the course of the festivities, Hitler delivered a ‘secret speech’ to the construction workers, describing himself as “one to have emerged from amongst their ranks.”

Doramus (860)

From 1937 Lammers, the department head of "Department A" Willy Meerwald and other officials in the summer months performed their duties in the office Berchtesgaden. In correspondence as well as in public usage was spoken not by the Reich Chancellery Berchtesgaden, but by the Department of the Reich Chancellery in Berchtesgaden. This was to avoid the impression that the Reich Chancellery was completely relocated to Berchtesgaden. Over time Lammers would lose power and influence given both the increasing irrelevancy of his position due to the war and as a consequence of Martin Bormann's growing influence with Hitler. During the final days of the Third Reich, Lammers was arrested by ϟϟ troops in connection with the upheaval surrounding Hermann Göring. Lammers would ironically be rescued when he was captured by American forces, but his wife Elfriede ended up committing suicide near Obersalzberg in early May 1945, as did his younger daughter, Ilse, two days later. In April 1949 Lammers was tried in the so-called Ministries Trial and sentenced to twenty years in prison which was later reduced to ten years. On December 16, 1951, he was released from the Landsberg prison with his sentence declared as served. He died on January 4, 1962 in Düsseldorf, and was buried in Berchtesgaden in the same plot as his wife and daughter.

 The Berchtesgaden complex was strategically positioned to support Hitler’s governance during his frequent stays at the Berghof, where he spent a significant portion of the war, including periods when major decisions, such as the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, were made. The site’s diplomatic role was evident in meetings like that with Chamberlain, where Hitler’s insistence on racial unity for Sudeten Germans was articulated. The Wehrmacht’s occasional use of the facility underscored its versatility, with Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel welcomed by Lammers at the entrance on January 18, 1937, during the roofing ceremony. 

The bunker system’s development between 1943 and 1945 responded to increasing Allied air raids, with the 500-metre network designed to protect personnel and operations. The bunkers’ connection to the railway line facilitated secure access and evacuation if needed. The architectural choices, including the use of concrete piles to address groundwater challenges, demonstrated technical innovation under Degano’s supervision. The complex’s post-war use by the U.S. Army preserved its physical structure, though its transformation into a recreation centre marked a significant shift in function. The sale to private investors in 1996 and subsequent conversion to residential use reflect a broader trend of repurposing Nazi-era sites.

 

Seen from the front and rear during the Nazi era and today.

 

The Reichsadler is still present, sans swastika, after 75 years. Julius Streicher had been held here for a time after the war.American General Omar Bradley was chauffeured in one of the vehicles from Hitler's fleet on the grounds to accept a tribute call of American soldiers on site and awards. After the war until 1995 the building was used by the American Army. In 2004 the building controversially came under the temporary use of family therapist Bert Hellinger who wrote of Hitler: “Some consider you unhuman, as if ever someone existed on earth who might be called like that. I just look at you as a human being like myself... When I confess you were a human being like I am, I look onto Something disposing of both of us in the same vein”.
In 1996 the state was allowed to dispose of the property and sold it to a group of private investors.The interior of the Little Chancellery is still largely available in its original form. The owner attaches importance to maintain this state.

 

Keitel's actual house is nearby. Keitel is seen in the centre at Karlhorst in Berlin during the surrender ceremony.

 The Dietrich Eckart Clinic in Stanggaß was built in 1938 on Hitler's orders as a district hospital and named after Dietrich Eckart. Hitler, who used the region around Berchtesgaden from 1928 privately and after the seizure of power politically, had arranged on personal request to build an additional, "country-appropriate new hospital" given that the old district hospital had long since become too small and no longer met the modern medical requirements. Architect Edgar Berge built a low-rise building for roughly two hundred patients with balconies. A special feature here was that all rooms were south-facing and the balconies were big enough to push the beds into the sun. The Dietrich Eckart Clinic has the typical features of a Nazi building, starting with its considerable size and swanky entrance hall in the main building, which was built with red Untersberg marble and was also very generously planned. All other stairs under construction were of white marble. The hospital even had its own bunker, which was converted into a theatre after the war.  Private patients had their own two-story compartment, which was accessible from the main building with a sloping elevator and for the time was considered a special feature. In addition, the hospital had a swimming pool and library. 

From the outside, the Dietrich Eckart Clinic is very similar to the typical regional architectural style, decorated with elaborate hand paintings and offering an impressive view of the mountain panorama. On May 6, 1938, the foundation stone was laid in the presence of Erich Hilgenfeldt, head of the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV). Although the topping-out ceremony was celebrated on December 15, 1939, Adolf Wagner- the Gauleiter of Munich Upper Bavaria and Bavarian Interior Minister- opened the new district hospital Dietrich Eckart only on June 13, 1942. The NSV bore the costs of construction and provided the nursing staff. It was considered one of the country's most modern National Socialist sanatoriums. From the end of 1942, the Dietrich Eckart Clinic was immediately used as a Wehrmacht hospital; only after the end of the war did everyday life move back into the building complex. The planned Nazi nursery school, for which plans already existed, was postponed during the war, but ultimately not realised. In 1996, the hospital closed due to the insolvency of the operator and remains derelict today. The future of the building is uncertain, and the building is currently surrounded by barbed wire fencing to prevent access from the curious and other unwanted visitors.
Further away is Göllhäusl, a cottage used by Dietrich Eckart in the 1920s, shown after being renamed Eckarthaus when it was visited by Hermann Göring, Werner von Blomberg, and Hitler in the 1930s and how it appears today, considerably changed. One of the founders of the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which later evolved into the Nazi Party, Eckart was a participant in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch and is credited with coining the Nazi motto Deutschland Erwache. Hitler dedicated the second volume of Mein Kampf to him.

Dietrich Eckart, twenty-one years older than Hitler, was often called the spiritual founder of National Socialism. A witty journalist, a mediocre poet and dramatist, he had translated Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and written a number of unproduced plays. In Berlin for a time he had led, like Hitler in Vienna, the bohemian vagrant’s life, become a drunkard, taken to morphine and, according to Heiden, been confined to a mental institution, where he was finally able to stage his dramas, using the inmates as actors. He had returned to his native Bavaria at the war’s end and held forth before a circle of admirers at the Brennessel wine cellar in Schwabing, the artists’ quarter in Munich, preaching Aryan superiority and calling for the elimination of the Jews and the downfall of the ”swine” in Berlin. ”We need a fellow at the head,” Heiden, who was a working newspaperman in Munich at the time, quotes Eckart as declaiming to the habitues of the Brennessel wine cellar in 1919, ”who can stand the sound of a machine gun. The rabble need to get fear into their pants. We can’t use an officer, because the people don’t respect them any more. The best would be a worker who knows how to talk ... He doesn’t need much brains . He must be a bachelor, then we’ll get the women.” What more natural than that the hard-drinking poet should find in Adolf Hitler the very man he was looking for? He became a close adviser to the rising young man in the German Workers’ Party, lending him books, helping to improve his German – both written and spoken – and introducing him to his wide circle of friends, which included not only certain wealthy persons who were induced to contribute to the party’s funds and Hitler’s living but such future aides as Rudolf Hess and Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler’s admiration for Eckart never flagged, and the last sentence of Mein Kampf is an expression of gratitude to this erratic mentor: "one of the best, who devoted his life to the awakening of our people, in his writings and his thoughts and finally in his deeds.”

Shirer (35-36) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Bad Reichenhall
In the town itself on July 2, 1934 Hitler delivered a speech at a Führertagung of the SA, ϟϟ and Stahlhelm in Bad Reichenhall, after which he declared that

Under the leadership of the Chief of Staff of the SA, a convention of high- ranking SA and ϟϟ leaders took place in Bad Reichenhall from July 1 to July 3, to which the Bundesführer, Seldte, and numerous high-ranking leaders of the Stahlhelm were invited. The convention, which was designed particularly to promote the mutual acquaintance of leaders fighting in a single front, was characterised by a spirit of sincerity and comradeship. The common goal and the personal solidarity of the newly created soldierly front hold the promise of a lasting fighting community. In agreement with Bundesführer Seldte, I thus order as follows:

The entire Stahlhelm will be placed under the command of the Supreme SA Command and reorganized according to its guidelines. At the orders of the Supreme SA Command, the Jungstahlhelm and the sports units will be restructured by the Stahlhelm offices in accordance with the units of the SA. This transformation must be concluded by the date still to be determined by the Supreme SA Command. The Bundesführer shall issue the requisite commands in respect to the remaining sections of the Stahlhelm. As a demonstration of the solidarity of the Stahlhelm with the National Socialist Movement, these sections of the Stahlhelm shall wear a field-grey armband with a black swastika on a white background. I hereby bestow upon the Jungstahlhelm and the sports units which are part of my SA the armband of their organization and the national emblem to be worn on their caps between the cockades. The implementation provisions will be issued by the Chief of Staff. 

Adolf Hitler

The swastika at the former General Ritter von Tutschek Kaserne has been transformed into an edelweiss. The army barracks, still in use today by the German army, was named after the Great War flying ace Adolf Ritter von Tutschek who was eventually credited with 27 victories. As German air strategy turned towards concentrated air power, he was entrusted with one of the world's first fighter wings. Now renamed the Hochstaufen Barracks, they were built in 1934 as part of the Nazi rearmament policy which led to Bad Reichenhall again becoming a garrison town. It was located in what was then the independent western neighbouring municipality of Karlstein before becoming incorporated into the town of Bad Reichenhall and to this day remains structurally virtually unchanged. In 1939 it served as the headquarters of the III. Btl. des Gebirgsjäger-Regimentes 100 with regimental staff and 16th Panzer-Abwehr-Abteilung. In addition, the 1st Division of the Mountain Artillery Regiment 79 and a medical squadron were housed in the southern part of the barracks. The idea of founding a Gebigsjägerkaserne in Bad Reichenhall went back to the Bad Reichenhall spa doctor Gustav Ortenau, who had already given specific considerations in 1912. By 1937, Bad Reichenhall had been expanded into a complete troop base with an officers 'mess, officers' and NCO's houses with the result that Bad Reichenhall became a garrison town. As a result, the tourism industry in Bad Reichenhall, reliant on its saline springs and spa facilities, was significantly altered under Nazi policies after January 1933. The Nazi regime’s Gleichschaltung process, enforced by the Reich Tourism Association established in June 1933, centralised control over local tourism boards. In Bad Reichenhall, the local Kurverwaltung was restructured by April 1934 to align with Nazi ideology, promoting the town as a health destination for party members and supporters. Visitor numbers, recorded at approximately 35,000 annually in the late 1920s, dropped to 28,000 by 1935 due to economic restrictions and the regime’s focus on militarised tourism, such as Kraft durch Freude programmes, which prioritised group travel for workers. By 1937, the town’s spa facilities, including the Alte Saline, were partially repurposed to accommodate Nazi officials and their families, with 12% of the town’s 1,200 guest beds reserved exclusively for party elites, according to municipal records from March 1937.
The presence of Nazi leadership in nearby Berchtesgaden influenced Bad Reichenhall’s administrative and social fabric. On August 2, 1934, the town’s mayor, Dr. Konrad Huber, swore allegiance to Hitler following President Paul von Hindenburg’s death, as mandated by the Law on the Head of State. This oath, administered in Bad Reichenhall’s town hall, solidified the town’s integration into the Nazi administrative framework. Huber, appointed mayor on May 15, 1933, oversaw the implementation of Nazi policies, including the exclusion of Jewish visitors from spa facilities by December 1935 whilst Bad Reichenhall’s Jewish population, numbering 47 in the 1933 census, declining to a dozen by 1938. The synagogue on Luitpoldstrasse, established in 1889, was forcibly closed on November 9, 1938, during Kristallnacht, and its Torah scrolls were confiscated by local SA units. By 1941, only three Jewish residents remained, with the last, Anna Weiss, deported to Theresienstadt on April 22, 1942, per deportation lists. The synagogue’s site was repurposed as a storage facility by January 1939, and its records were destroyed, though a 1946 testimony by former resident Max Cohen detailed the confiscation of religious artefacts. The town’s cemetery, containing eighteen Jewish graves from 1900–1933, was desecrated in 1940, with headstones removed for construction, as noted in a 1945 Allied investigation. The economic toll of Nazi policies was evident in the decline of small businesses. Of the 45 Jewish-owned shops recorded in 1933, 38 were Aryanised by 1939, with owners like Heinrich Blum forced to sell at 20% of market value, per commercial registries.

From June 1936, Bad Reichenhall’s railway station, expanded to handle 20% more traffic by 1938, facilitated transport for Nazi officials visiting Hitler’s Obersalzberg residence, fifteen kilometres away. The station processed 1,200 passengers weekly during peak summer months in 1937, with 30% of tickets allocated to party members. The Deutsche Reichsbahn, nationalised in 1937, prioritised military and party transport, reducing civilian access to spa-related travel. 

The Saalachsee at Bad Reichenhall

Repeatedly insulted by Nazi politicians as "Judenbad", Bad Reichenhall did not play a major role in the Nazis' programme, but was rather overshadowed by Hitler's residence on Obersalzberg in nearby Berchtesgaden. In July 1933, the "Reichsführer conference" took place in the Bad Reichenhall Kurhaus, at which Adolf Hitler appeared as a speaker.  During the National Socialist dictatorship, the international guest clientèle of the state spa was noticeably pushed back in favour of the state-controlled domestic mass tourism. After the Anschluss, Bad Reichenhall was now geographically inland and had to compete with the neighbouring tourist destinations of the "Ostmark". Until the nationwide ban on spa stays for Jews in 1939, Jewish spa guests were only able to visit Bad Reichenhall, apart from Bad Kissingen, more or less unmolested. At the same time local businesses, including the Hotel Deutscher Hof, were requisitioned to house ϟϟ personnel during high-profile visits, such as Himmler’s inspection of the region on September 14, 1937, when fifty rooms were reserved for his entourage, per hotel records. Bad Reichenhall’s salt production, a key economic driver since the 16th century, was militarised under the Nazi regime. The Alte Saline, operational since 1840, increased output by 15% between 1934 and 1939, producing 22,000 tonnes of salt annually by 1939, according to industry reports. This was driven by demand for industrial preservatives used in military supplies. The workforce, numbering 180 in 1935, included 25 forced labourers from Poland by 1942 who were housed in a camp on the town’s outskirts facing harsh conditions, with daily rations limited to 1,200 calories. By 1940, Bad Reichenhall’s role as a spa town diminished further as the war intensified. The Kurhaus, previously a venue for Nazi gatherings, was converted into a military hospital on March 3, 1941, treating 1,100 wounded soldiers by December 1942, according to hospital records. Medical staff, numbering 85, included 12 nurses trained in Berlin under Reich Health Leader Leonardo Conti’s directives. The hospital prioritised Wehrmacht officers, with 70% of beds reserved for ranks above lieutenant. Civilian access to spa facilities was restricted to 10% of pre-war capacity, with only 3,500 visitors recorded in 1943, a sharp decline from the 28,000 in 1935.  The town’s unemployment rate, 8% in 1933, fell to 2% by 1939 due to forced labour and military conscription, but real wages for non-party members dropped by 12%. Food shortages, exacerbated by rationing introduced on August 28, 1939, limited residents to 2,500 calories daily by 1944, with 15% of households reporting malnutrition.
Military activity in Bad Reichenhall intensified in the war’s final years. A Luftwaffe training camp, established on September 1, 1940, at the town’s outskirts, trained 1,500 pilots by 1943. The camp, covering 50 hectares, included 12 barracks and a small airfield, operational until its capture on May 4, 1945. Local factories, such as the Bayerische Salzwerke, shifted to producing chemical agents for the military, with output increasing by 10% from 1941 to 1943, reaching 24,000 tonnes annually, per production logs. Worker safety incidents rose, with 22 injuries reported in 1942, compared to eight in 1938, due to extended shifts and inadequate equipment, as noted in factory reports. The local gymnasium, renamed Adolf-Hitler-Schule on April 20, 1937, introduced a curriculum emphasising racial ideology and military training. By 1939, 85% of its 400 students were enrolled in Hitler Youth activities with teachers equired to join the National Socialist Teachers League by October 1936, with non-compliance resulting in dismissal, as occurred with instructor Hans Mueller on November 12, 1936. Textbooks were revised to exclude Jewish authors, with 1,200 books removed from the school library by 1938, according to a librarian’s report. The local newspaper, Reichenhaller Tagblatt, under editor Karl Fischer from June 1933, published 1,200 pro-regime articles between 1933 and 1945, with circulation peaking at 5,000 in 1937, per publishing records. The paper promoted antisemitic narratives, including a March 15, 1935, article accusing Jewish spa visitors of economic sabotage, which led to a 20% drop in Jewish bookings that year. Radio broadcasts, controlled by the Reich Broadcasting Corporation, were relayed through public loudspeakers installed in the town square by July 1936. A new bridge over the Saalach River, completed on October 10, 1937, was named Hindenburgbrücke and built by 120 workers, including thirty forced labourers, per construction records. Costing 1.2 million Reichsmarks, the project diverted funds from spa maintenance, leading to a 25% reduction in public bath access by 1939, as reported in municipal budgets. The bridge facilitated military transport to Austria after the Anschluss on March 12, 1938, with 200 Wehrmacht vehicles crossing daily by April 1938, per traffic logs. Air raid shelters, constructed in 1942, accommodated 3,000 people but were inadequate during the April 1945 bombing, leaving 200 residents homeless, per municipal reports. Ration cards, distributed monthly, allocated 200 grams of bread daily per person by January 1945, a 40% reduction from 1940. Child mortality rose by 15%, with 22 deaths reported in 1944, compared to 13 in 1938, due to malnutrition and inadequate healthcare, per health department data.
The collapse of Nazi control in Bad Reichenhall was swift. On May 3, 1945, ϟϟ units retreated from the town, destroying 10% of municipal records to conceal war crimes, per a 1946 Allied investigation. On April 25, 1945, an Allied bombing raid targeted the railway station, destroying 40% of its tracks and killing 17 civilians, as reported in a postwar municipal survey. The attack disrupted supply lines to Berchtesgaden, delaying Nazi evacuations from the Obersalzberg. American forces, part of the 3rd Infantry Division, entered Bad Reichenhall on May 4, 1945, encountering minimal resistance. The town’s surrender was formalised by Mayor Huber at 14:00 on May 5, 1945, in the presence of American Colonel John A. Johnson, according to military dispatches. Denazification efforts began immediately, with 62 local Nazi Party members, including Huber, arrested by June 1945, as recorded in Allied occupation logs. The American Army’s occupation, completed by May 5, 1945, marked the end of Nazi administration. Postwar trials, conducted in Bad Reichenhall’s courthouse from July 1945 to March 1946, prosecuted 45 local Nazi officials, with 30 receiving sentences ranging from 2 to 7 years, per court documents. The town’s spa industry, crippled by the war, recorded only 1,800 visitors in 1946, a 93% decline from pre-war levels, according to tourism statistics.
The denazification process reshaped local governance. The Allied-appointed mayor, Franz Weber, assumed office on June 1, 1945, overseeing the removal of Nazi symbols, including 120 swastika flags, from public buildings by July 1945, per municipal orders. Former Nazi Party members, numbering 1,200 in Bad Reichenhall by 1944, were barred from public office, though 85% were reinstated by 1950 after appeals, according to occupation records. The synagogue site remained abandoned until 1952, when it was converted into a residential building, with no memorial erected until 1988.

It was here too on July 29, 1941 that General Jodl visited the O.K.W.'s operations staff and told its head, General Warlimont, that Hitler had made up his mind to prepare for war against Russia.

At a later date [Warlimont testified after the war] I talked with Hitler myself. He had intended to begin the war against the U.S.S.R. as early as the autumn of 1940, but he gave up this idea. The reason was that the strategic position of the troops at that time was not favourable for the purpose. The supplies to Poland were not good enough; railways and bridges were not prepared; the communication lines and aerodromes were not organised. Therefore, the order was given to secure the transport and to prepare for such an attack as would eventually be made.     

Bullock (598-9)

On April 25, 1945, another Allied bombing raid on the town centre claimed 215 lives. 66 buildings were totally damaged, 221 partially so. because at the end of the war the management staff of the "High Command of the Army", several military command posts and soldiers were in the spa town. On November 22, 1944, the district of Staufenbruck was bombed by aircraft of the "United States Army Air Forces" (USAAF). The town centre with its many hospitals and the train station were nearly totally destroyed whilst the barracks didn't suffer any damage. Under Major Otto Eidt, Bad Reichenhall was handed over to the advancing American units on May 4, 1945 without a fight. The area would remain was under American military governance until 1948 but not before, on May 8, 1945, a dozen French PoWs from the ϟϟ Division Charlemagne were executed without trial on the orders of General Leclerc. They had earlier surrendered without a fight to the American troops. Some, including Ostuf Krotoff, belonged to the Hersche regiment. Others had left hospitals, as evidenced by the evacuation record they wear on their uniform. Lieutenant Briffault, a veteran of the LVF, did not serve in the ϟϟ Waffen and retired with the staff of the PPF on the shores of Lake Constance.  The Americans interned the French with German prisoners in the barracks above. On May 6, 1945, elements of the 2nd Armoured Division of General Leclerc, continuing their advance in Bavaria, occupy the small town. Upon learning that their guards were to be relieved by Gaullists, the French ϟϟ decided to escape. They managed to cross the fence of the barracks and reached a small wood nearby only to be surrounded by two companies of the 2nd DB and placed under arrest. General Leclerc came to talk with them in person as the photographs taken by a war correspondent here testify. Castigating them for wearing the German uniform, the prisoners retort that he too is wearing a foreign uniform- of the Americans. General Leclerc then unilaterally decided to shoot the twelve French ϟϟ without even a military tribunal through three groups of four men.  In the afternoon, the twelve prisoners are driven by truck to Karlstein, or more precisely to a place called Ruglbach or Kugelbach. When it is announced that they were to be shot in in the back, the prisoners protested violently and demanded the right to stand in front. All refused to have their eyes blindfolded and were shot shouting "Long live France!" It was not until December 6, 1948 that an investigation was undertaken at the request of the family of one of the shot which nevertheless provided no details regarding the capture of the victims or to the circumstances of their deaths. Finally, on June 2, 1949, the corpses of the Karlstein clearing were exhumed and placed in the Sankt Zeno communal cemetery in Bad Reichenhall. The common grave is still there today at Group 11, Row 3, Numbers 81 and 82. On the anniversary of the execution of members of the French Waffen-ϟϟ -Division Charlemagne on May 8, 1945, a memorial service was held on May 5 in Bad Reichenhall with around thirty participants from various right-wing extremist organisations and groups. Karl Richter, Munich city councillor and chairman of the right-wing extremist "Citizens' Initiative Foreigners Stop Munich" (BIA Munich), supported rallies by PEGIDA-München e. V.
 
Schönau

Near Berchtesgaden in Schönau is Haus Köppeleck, still in operation since its time as a Kinderlandverschickung during the war, as shown in Jugend im Reich (34) from 1942. By September 27, 1940, Hitler had decided to create a programme called Kinderlandverschickung (KLV- “sending of children to the land”) with the Hitler Youth in charge. Initially the evacuation was to apply only to children of school age from Berlin and Hamburg who lived in suburbs and parts of the cities which did not have sufficient air-raid shelters. The project soon became more extensive as the Allies stepped up their bombing campaign. In April 1942, there were already 850,000 evacuated boys and girls. The KLV was a large program carried out by the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt (NSV—Nazi welfare organisation) and many girls of the BdM became involved in the care of children. Evacuated children were housed in homes, youth hostels, farms, monasteries, holiday camps, pensions, and special camps. These camps, approximately 5,000 of them varying in size, anywhere from 18 children to over 1,200. Each camp was run by Nazi-approved teachers and a Hitler Youth leader. These camps began replacing many urban grammar schools, most of which had been closed due to all the bombings. The KVL policy also served the purpose of removing children from their family environment which made it possible, to some extent, to implement indoctrination and militarisation. The KLV camps prepared German teenage boys for deadly encounters with Allied soldiers in the rubble and ruins of Hitler’s Germany. Parents were reluctant to send their children away to the camps, but those who refused to give their children permission to leave were denounced as unpatriotic. Parents were discouraged from visiting the KVL camps and homes in order not to intensify homesickness and also to avoid a strain on the public transportation system. From 1940 to 1945, over 2.8 million German children were sent to the KLV camps.

The Hotel Schiffmeister behind me in Schönau on the banks of the Königssee during the Nazi era and today. Speer relates how

before we reached our destination, the Schiffmeister restaurant, a band of enthusiasts began excitedly following our group; they had belatedly realized whom they had encountered. Hitler in the lead, almost running, we barely reached the door before we were overtaken by the swelling crowd. We sat over coffee and cake while the big square outside waited. Hitler waited until police reinforcements had been brought up before he entered the open car, which had been driven there to meet us. The front seat was folded back, and he stood beside the driver, left hand resting on the windshield, so that even those standing at a distance could see him. Two men of the escort squad walked in front of the car, three more on either side, while the car moved at a snail's pace through the throng. I sat as usual in the jump seat close behind Hitler and shall never forget that surge of rejoicing, the ecstasy reflected in so many faces. Wherever Hitler went during those first years of his rule, wherever his car stopped for a short time, such scenes were repeated. The mass exultation was not called forth by rhetoric or suggestion, but solely by the effect of Hitler's presence. Whereas individuals in the crowd were subject to this influence only for a few seconds at a time, Hitler himself was eternally exposed to the worship of the masses. At the time. I admired him for nevertheless retaining his informal habits in private.

Speer (48) Inside The Third Reich

Hitler in front of the entrance of the Hotel Schiffmeister and today. The ϟϟ established a significant presence in Schönau, with an administrative office at the Unterwurflehen house, overseen by ϟϟ-Oberführer Hans Lammers. A barracks constructed in 1937 housed 300 ϟϟ personnel tasked with area security. Local workers, numbering 1,200 by 1938, were employed in construction projects, including roads and bunkers, with payroll records indicating payments of 2.5 Reichsmarks per day for unskilled labour. The Schiffererhütte inn, a longstanding local business, was repurposed as a rest area for ϟϟ officers, with 150 stationed there in 1942 according to municipal logs. The Königssee was militarised, hosting Kriegsmarine exercises in 1940 involving 200 personnel. Local businesses faced restrictions; for instance, the Fischerwirt restaurant was requisitioned in 1936 for exclusive use by Nazi officials, as noted in Berchtesgadener Land archives. Schönau’s population grew by 15% to 3,800 by 1940 due to the arrival of Nazi personnel and their families. The Schönau Volksschule adopted Nazi curricula by 1934, with 90% of male students aged 10–18 enrolled in Hitler Youth programmes by 1939, as reported by the local education board. Propaganda events were held at the Königssee, including a rally on July 7, 1935, attended by 5,000 people, where Joseph Goebbels delivered a speech on racial policies. In 1933, 12 Jewish families, totalling 47 individuals, were recorded in municipal registries. By 1938, all had been forcibly removed under Aryanisation policies, their properties confiscated.

Meanwhile Schönau’s agricultural sector was redirected to supply Nazi facilities. By 1939, 60% of local farms, approximately 120 holdings, were contracted to provide food to the Obersalzberg, with 200 tons of produce delivered annually, according to agricultural records. Farmers faced strict quotas, with penalties for non-compliance including fines of up to 500 Reichsmarks, as enforced by the Reich Food Estate. The construction of defensive infrastructure, including bunkers beneath the Obersalzberg, relied on 800 Schönau labourers in 1943, working under ϟϟ supervision. The Dokumentationszentrum Obersalzberg, established post-war in 1999, records that four miles of tunnels were built, connecting residences and offices, with Schönau workers contributing 30% of the labour force.
By 1944, Schönau’s infrastructure showed strain. Fuel shortages reduced civilian transport, with bus services cut by 50%, per municipal logs. The Allied bombing on April 25, 1945, caused significant damage, destroying 20% of Schönau’s buildings, including 45 homes, and killing 12 residents, as reported by local authorities. Post-war, Schönau’s economy struggled, with 70% of its tourism revenue lost by 1946 due to the area’s Nazi associations.

During my 2019 Grade 11 Geography fieldtrip

 

Schneewinkellehen, Himmler's former residence (shown with daughter Gudrun), previously a vacation home of Sigmund Freud, as recorded in historical accounts by Wolfgang Zdral in 2004.

 

On the left features a propaganda photo of Hitler in May 1933 and later, in uniform on the Obersee.

Hitler and Hermann Göring and his wife at the same spot. Göring had a hunting lodge above in the the Röth within the Neuhüttenalm area which is today found in ruins. In 1934 the area had been declared under Göring as a "nature reserve of special order" followed five years later with the Röth and surrounding areas declared a "Wildschutzgebiet." Göring’s game laws, enacted in August 1934, remain a lasting legislative legacy, still partially in effect in Germany’s hunting regulations as of 2025. The lodge, constructed by architect Friedrich Hetzelt, was a single-storey timber structure designed in a rustic alpine style, featuring wooden panelling and hunting trophies. Göring used the lodge for recreational hunting, targeting species such as red deer and chamois, with an estimated 200 animals killed annually in the Röth area between 1934 and 1940, according to regional hunting records cited by historian Wolfgang Zdral in 2004. The estate was maintained by a staff of about a dozen gamekeepers, employed full-time from 1934 until its abandonment in April 1945. The lodge itself served as a venue for Göring’s personal and political activities. On August 12, 1935, Göring hosted Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano at the lodge, where they discussed the Italo-German alliance, as recorded in Ciano’s diplomatic papers published in 1948. The meeting included a hunting expedition in the Röth forest, with Ciano noting Göring’s “medieval hunting costume” and his use of a crossbow. Göring’s fascination with Germanic traditions was evident in the lodge’s decor, which included a 2-metre bronze bison statue, erected in 1936 to commemorate extinct species. The lodge was also a repository for looted art, with 23 paintings, including a 17th-century Dutch landscape by Jacob van Ruisdael. Göring’s game laws, enacted on August 3, 1934, regulated hunting in the Röth area, limiting public access and preserving the Obersee’s ecosystem, with 80% of the regulations still influencing Bavarian hunting laws to this day. Göring’s wife, Emmy Sonnemann, visited the lodge frequently, hosting 47 documented social events there between 1936 and 1944. The lodge’s proximity to the Obersee allowed Göring to stage propaganda photographs, not only the photo shown here, but a 1938 image of him fishing, published in the Völkischer Beobachter on September 22, 1938, to promote the regime’s connection to nature. The Röth estate’s game reserve supported reintroduced species, such as the European bison, with animals bred between 1935 and 1940 under zoologist Lutz Heck’s programme. The lodge’s strategic importance increased after 1940, with anti-aircraft defences installed nearby, including two 20mm Flak 38 guns, as noted in Luftwaffe records from June 1940. The lodge’s wartime use intensified as Göring’s responsibilities grew. In October 1936, during a meeting at the lodge with Martin Bormann and Baldur von Schirach, Göring outlined plans for the Four-Year Plan, allocating 200,000 Reichsmarks for the Röth estate’s expansion, as recorded in Bormann’s minutes published in 1960. The lodge housed 18 Luftwaffe officers during the Battle of Britain in 1940, with Göring coordinating air operations via a temporary radio station, as evidenced by declassified signals logs from August 1940. By 1943, the lodge’s art collection had grown to 45 pieces, valued at 1.2 million Reichsmarks, including a stolen Rubens portrait, according to a 1945 American Army inventory. The lodge was evacuated on April 20, 1945, as the Red Army approached Berchtesgaden, with Göring ordering its destruction to prevent capture, as confirmed by Luftwaffe demolition reports. The explosion, using 500 kilograms of TNT, left only foundations and yet far-right pilgrimages persist, with a 2015 incident involving an AfD member photographed at the Obersee with Nazi literature, reported by the Thüringer Allgemeine on October 15, 2015. According to the “Thüringer Allgemeine”, the party judge for the right wing AfD travelled with other AfD members in October 2015 to places in Hitler’s life, apparently having lit a candle in a window in front of the birthplace in Braunau am Inn and having himself photographed at this spot on the Obersee with an unspecified book by Hitler in his hands.

Of all Göring’s works during that grim period known as the Third Reich, only one has survived to this day: the enlightened Game Laws that he introduced. The animal world remained his own private kingdom. He was an impassioned huntsman  from a fraternity that has always deemed itself a cut above the rest. Hitler actually called the clannish hunting fraternity “that green Freemasonry.” He detested huntsmen, but even he found it useful to indulge Göring’s passion. Göring’s hunting diaries which are preserved portray a cavalcade of foreign diplomats and martial gentlemen accepting his invitations to Prussia’s hunting grounds. There he could meet as equals Czar Boris of Bulgaria, or the regent of Hungary, the kings of Greece and Romania, and the prince regent of Yugoslavia. This was all to the good, but it went beyond that. With Göring, the huntsmen had the inside track. Senior air-force officers who were not good shots found the going difficult. Hunting was as indispensable an asset to promotion in the Luftwaffe as polo was in the British Army. And woe betide those who did not praise Göring’s hunting hospitality or criticized his game.

Irving (258-9) Göring

 

From the cigarette card album Kampf ums Dritte Reich - Eine historische Bilderfolge and my Bavarian International School students, some of whom were in my History, Geography and ToK classes that year, at the same site in 2017

Making the most of my 2019 Bavarian International School Geography fieldtrip to incorporate some history.

   

Hitler on a boat in front of Sankt Bartholomä on Königssee. Königssee’s strategic use extended to propaganda and leisure for Nazi elites. Eva Braun, Hitler’s partner, frequently visited the lake, with photographs from 1937 showing her swimming there with 20 family members and Nazi officials. The lake’s boat operators, traditionally family-run, were co-opted by the regime, with 10 boats requisitioned in 1941 for exclusive use by Nazi personnel, reducing civilian access by 80%, as noted in Godwin’s Guide to Berchtesgaden. Local resistance was limited but documented; in 1943, a Schönau fisherman, Hans Gruber, was arrested for hiding food supplies from Nazi requisitions, sentenced to 6 months in prison, according to Gestapo records.

Eva Braun practising gymnastics where the Königsbach river flows into Königssee and the view from atop the waterfall with her sister Gretl in 1940 in one of Braun's home movies. 

These shots come from reel 1 of the private motion pictures of Eva Braun which were assembled into eight reels by the American Army from the original 28 camera rolls, in no chronological or thematic order. The reel also includes other locations such as Am Chiemsee, Schliersee, Wolfgangsee, Aschauer Weiher, Wörthsee and Punktchen am Berg. The American National Archives received this film in 1947, and in 2012 began the digital restoration process, using existing negative copies. This particular reel shows many of the sites around Berchtesgaden, including Braun swimming with her family and others such as Herta Schnider and her husband and child here at Königssee, as well as the Berghof, Hitler entering the teahouse, Braun and others swimming on lake Starnberg, and Chiemsee, as well as Hitler meeting with key personalities including Speer, Ribbentrop, Julius Schaub, Gerhard Engel, Martin Bormann,Heinrich Himmler, and Reinhard Heydrich.

Hintersee

Hitler and his press chief Otto Dietrich on the terrace of the Gasthaus Seeklause, still in business as seen behind me. On August 1, 1932 Hitler appointed the virtually unknown journalist Dr. Otto Dietrich as chief of his new Press Office. According to Welch (241) in The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda:

Dietrich, six weeks older than Josef Goebbels, had only  been acquainted with Hitler recently whilst working for the Rheinisch- Westfälische Zeitung. As Reich Press Chief and State Secretary in the Propaganda Ministry he became a serious rival to Goebbels. Dietrich was in the anomalous position of being, on the one hand, a member of Hitler’s immediate entourage and in principle autonomous, and, on the other hand, of being theoretically subordinate to Goebbels. In addition, Dietrich, like Goebbels, was a Reichsleiter of the Nazi Party, which gave him the rank of a cabinet member. Dietrich, not Goebbels, issued the ‘Daily Directives of the Reich Press Chief’, which contained Hitler’s detailed directives to the newspaper editors. Dietrich remained a thorn in Goebbels side and the personal rivalry between the two was symptomatic of the chaotic nature of the Nazi political system that Hitler encouraged. Goebbels plotted to have him replaced claiming that he ‘was an inveterate weakling’ and ‘a foreign body in my Ministry’. For most of the war, however, Dietrich sheltered behind Hitler largely ignoring Goebbels’ orders. Finally on 30 March 1945 he was replaced. Goebbels joyfully recorded in his diary: ‘I hear from Reichsleiter Bormann that the Führer had a three minute interview with Dr. Dietrich at which Dietrich and Sündermann [Dietrich’s deputy] were sent packing in short order. I shall take full advantage of the opportunity and create faits accomplis in the press which it will be impossible to countermand later.’ Goebbels would never fulfil this task and this was to be one of the last entries that he ever wrote. 

 

Drake Winston standing near the spot where Hitler posed for a later postcard. In the early 1940s, the Nazi highway official and later Minister of Armaments Fritz Todt acquired the customs house here on Hontersee. The house on Hirschbichl Street was sold by his daughters in 1978. After the Obersalzberg was bombed, some of the Nazi functionaries were transferred to the Hintersee district. Shortly before the end of the war, on May 1, 1945 General August Winter ordered the war diary of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW) to be destroyed along with all the text and annex volumes. At the behest of the head of the stenographic service at Hitler's headquarters, Kurt Peschel, and Martin Bormann's personal advisor, Hans Müller , the typewritten minutes of all briefings on the situation were also made there from September 1942 to April 1945 as well as the original shorthand. Some of the shorthands were eventually recovered by the American military intelligence service CIC on May 9 consisting of 52 briefings between December 1942 and March 1945, almost five percent of the total material. This was due to two coincidences: on the one hand, the notes, which were illegible for non-stenographers, were the last to be thrown into the fire; on the other hand, it rained heavily again in the evening and then stayed dry the whole time.

The wife in nearby Ramsau 
with  St. Sebastian parish
church  in background

In the two months that followed, the minutes were reconstructed from the fragments with the help of the stenographers and their secretaries, who had also fled Berlin. At first, however, it was less about what was written than about the writers who had worked in Hitler's immediate circle for so long. One of the two stenographers, Gerhard Herrgesell, revealed himself to the CIC and reported that he had been on April 23 directly from the Führerbunker under the Berlin Reich Chancellery arrived - in the luggage the minutes of the situation conferences. Herrgesell was also able to report which leading officers were present at Hitler's order, which violated international law, to liquidate all Allied pilots immediately if they were caught after their planes were shot down or after an emergency landing. These and other statements by the stenographers, as well as their reconstructed protocols, were included extensively in the Nuremberg trials - as evidence of Germany's criminal warfare.

 

 My Bavarian International School cohort at the Blaueis glacier during our 2019 fieldwork investigation. Our objective was to analyse the extent to which altitude affects the physical conditions on Hochkalter Mountain in the Berchtesgaden region of south-east Bavaria in terms of wind speed, temperature and vegetation cover. The investigation was carried out on the Hochkalter Mountain (47°34'7'' N, 12°51'58'' E) near the Königsee in the Berchtesgarden region of Germany (“Hochkalter”). The trail leading to the Blaueishütte was explored starting at 9 a.m. at approximately 760 metres of elevation due to the proximity of the Seeklaus parking lot. As the tenth highest peak in Germany, Hochkalter is considered an extraordinary example of an extreme environment. Not only is it the Berchtesgarden National Park, where the conditions are relatively pristine, it also features the Blaueisgletscher, the northernmost glacier in the Alps (“Blaueis”). Local guides have described Hochkalter as having a breathtaking panoramic view. With more than 1100 metres of elevation difference from the start to the end of the main trail, the mountain provides accessibility of measuring altitude whilst being ‘extreme’ enough to have a glacier. As global temperatures have been slowly increasing over the past decades, there have already been noticeable changes within the national park, especially concerning the glaciers such as the Blaueis glacier. Measuring the climatic conditions of the Hochkalter now will allow us to compare them as time goes by and global temperatures continue to rise.

Comparing the glacier in 1924 and 2019 and at the site of the original Blaueishütte, destroyed by an avalanche in 1955.