HITLER'S HOMES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20040, 12 September 1939, Page 8

HITLER'S HOMES

MOUNTAIN TOP RETREATS SECRETS OF ‘EAGLE’S NEST’ ’’MILLIONAIRE’S DREAM” GUARDED DAY AND NIGHT Twelve years ago Hitler wrote a book telling the world what he was going to do and how he was going to do it. The book was “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle"). It has sold millions of copies and from these sales Hitler has made a profit of over £1,000,000, states The Toronto Star Weekly. With some of this money he has built his houses. They are marvellous houses. Hitler said once': “It doesn't matter if the Germans of to-day eat grass so long as the spirit of Germany endures.” But Hitler doesn't eat grass, and he doesn’t live in grass houses He builds palaces for himself on mountain tops. Flat in Munich Hitler said when opening the magnificent new chancellery in Berlin “I am the same as ever I was, and I do not want to be anything else My private apartment is exactly the same as before I came to power, and it will remain so.” He was speaking of his comfortable private flat in Munich. But :he said nothing of the luxurious chalets he lias built on the mountain tops.'fitting homes lor his brooding, mystic soul. At the foot of a mountain in the i Baverian Alps, just two miles from the frontier of what once was Austria, is the beautiful little village of Berchtesgaden, and on the side of the mountain is the Berghof, Hitler’s beloved home. The Berghof was once a simple mountain chalet. Hitler has rebuilt it into a millionaire's dream ITe spends nearly every week-end there. He flies from Berlin to Munich from Munich motors in a fast black car to his luxurious residence. The Berghof is guarded better than the Bank of England. It is surrounded day and night by a heavy cordon of Black Guards. In the solid rock underneath it there is an invulnerable bomb-proof shelter. It has antiaircraft batteries near by. And it is hidden from view by great steel gates. No visitor may even go near those gates without written permission from the secret police. The German papers have never been allowed to mention that behind the steel gates there is no longer a simple mountain chalet but the most luxurious mountain home that money can buy. The great sitting-room in the Berghof is said to be one of the most spectacular rooms ever planned. It has only one window, but that window is a single sheet of plate glass 10 feet in height and 28 feet long; It is the largest window in the world and from it Hitler and his guests have a magnificent view across the Bavarian Alps. At the Window The Fuehrer’s most passionate pleasure is to sit at this window looking out across the deep valleys while one of his friends plays selections from Wagner on the grand piano a few yards away. In that room Hitler dreams, broods, forges plans that shake the world. It was there that Mr. Neville Chamberlain had his first meeting with Hitler. The great room is handsomely and expensively furnished. It contains a great cupboard made of the most beautiful German woods; two huge Persian rugs; two oil paintings, one a nude and the other “Artist in His Studio,” a Vermeer caifvas worth about £20,000; a very valuable Gobelin tapestry- At the foot of the tapestry is the round table, the arm-chairs and the settee where Hitler and his advisers hold their councils. In comparison to Hitler’s “chalet”

the White House in Washington is poor and dull. The Berghof, which means “mountain court," has every luxury that money can buy. The Germans boast that Hitler lives abstemiously, and as far as eating and drinking goes, it is true. He is a vegetarian, a tce-totaller, a nonsmoker. But on his houses, his pictures, his motor cars, he lets himself go. “Mountain Court” The Berghof is on the side of a mountain, Obersalzberg mountain. But by far the strangest house that Hitler built is the hide-out he has had constructed right on top of another mountain, the Kehlstein, 2500 ft higher, than Obersalzberg. It is called the Adlerhorst, the Eagle's Nest. No megalomaniac Titan of history' has ever built such a strange and costly eerie as this mountain retreat where Hitler goes to be alone. No mention of it has ever been made in the German papers, but it was described for me by one of Hitler’s friends, a journalist who visited the Eagle's Nest on September 10 last year. Eagle’s Nesl This eerie is more of a pavilion than a palace, and has only a few rooms. But suppose you were in Berlin and Hitler invited you to come with him and visit the Eagle's Nest. This is what you would see. If it were summer, you w'ould fly from Berlin to Munich. If it were winter, or the weather bad, you would go in Hitler’s special train. At Munich you would leave the train and enter a. powerful black cai and rush down toward the mountains along the wonderful new highway from Munich to Salzberg. You would come to Berchtesgaden, pass the Berghof, and go on for another six miles. You would stop in front of a wall of rock at the base of Kehlstein mountain. You would see before you two huge bronze doors. And at Hitler’s open sesame the great doors would open and you would drive into the mountain. It is an Aladdin's cave 450 ft long, with garage space for 12 cars. It is lit by big bronze electric lights. The walls are of marble. Tunnel Entrance From this cave a tunnel leads on farther into the mountain. At the end of the tunnel is a spacious lift lined with burnished copper and containing leather chairs. Hitler and His friends enter the lift and are shot 700 feel up through the mountain. The lift doors open right into the sittingroom of the Eagle's w Nest —and the first thing the visitor sees is a mountain scene that takes the breath. Built out on the very edge of the precipice, the room is walled on three sides by great glass windows, and as far as the eye can see in every direction are great peaks of the ißavarian Alps. Water is pumped to the summit of the mountain by electricity. There is electric heating and lighting. There is a spacious kitchen and comfortable beds. Outside there are rock gardens and grottoes and powerful telescopes through which the visitor can look nearly 100 miles into Austria. Such is Adolf Hitler's eerie—and it has been suggested that he built it for a mausoleum as well as for a retreat from life. Such a tomb would be dramatically fitting for him. It is like an idea from the mystic German mythology which is such a large part of Hitler’s thoughts. Place of Escape Perhaps Hitler was building for the future when he planned this eagle’s nest. It is protected by many antiaircraft batteries. Who knows but that the day may come when lie flees to this retreat to escape some wrath or nemesis, in the days of ruin, when his own people hound him and when he realises that even Adolf Hitler is but a man. Hitler’s hobby is architecture. He turns to architecture to relieve his nerves. In Munich he has built a vast, pretentious “Leader’s House” at a time when ordinary Germans are being exhorted to go without butter so that the State may have more guns.