HITLER’S FORTUNE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 April 1939, Page 9

HITLER’S FORTUNE

PROFITS FROM “MEIN KAMPF” COMPUTED AT £1,500,000. LUXURIOUS MOUNTAIN HOME. This is the room from which Hitler rules Germany. It is the great reception hall of the Berghof, Hitler’s palatial mountain-top home at Berchtesgaden, two miles from the former Austrian frontier. In it are hatched the plans that i shake the world. Schuschnigg, once Chancellor of Austria, here had that fateful interview with Hitler which led to Austria becoming a German province. Mr Chamberlain was taken straight to this room when he went to Berchtesgaden. When the Fuhrer is overstrung members of his staff play Wagner to him on the grand piano. The vast window, looking out on to the Austrian Alps, is sixty yards long and forty yards high. Once a week he has a cinema show in this room. It is flashed on to a screen from a projector hidden behind the priceless Gobelins tapestry hanging on the wall over the long settee. The five heads on the great oak cupboard symbolise branches of the Reich’s fighting forces. Berchtesgaden is as far from Berlin as Dundee from London, yet Hitler spends every weekend there. He makes the journey by ’plane and car in three hours. The Berghof was specialy built for Hitler. “Mein Kampf” his autobiography, has sold over 5,000,000 copies. Editions have appeared in Arabic and Japanese. Its sale has brought him personally £1,500,000. Hitler collects art treasures for his mountain home. A huge painting of a naked woman hangs on one wall of his hall. He has just added a world famous picture to his collection. It is “The Artist in His Studio,” a painting by Vermeer, famous Dutch seventeenthcentury painter. Its value is estimated at about £150,000. For, in spite of his avowed Socialism, Hitler enjoys every luxury that money can buy. This is only his private home, yet it is far more luxurious than President Rdosevelt’s White House, his offiicial residence. Neither Britain’s Prime Minister, nor Stalin, Mussolini, or Daladier has any dwelling comparable to this. Nearly every ceiling is of rare pannelled wood. The walls of the dining-room are of polished wood. The table seats fourteen guests, with Hitler at the head. The lighting is different in every room. In this hall there are huge candelabra with electric candles. Eight globes of light hang over the dining-table. Cubes of opalescent glass illuminate guest-rooms. These guest-rooms have double windows to keep out the cold. There are two or three tables in each guest-room also huge cushioned divans, pastel-coloured carpets, shelves of books, a supply of newspapers and magazines. Flowers are on every table throughout. They are always fresh, whether Hitler is there or not. One room is furnished in a severe style, a style which Hitler believes reflects the virtues of the Nazi character. Hard-cushioned benches run round the wall. They are the only seats. A map and the portrait of a Nordic woman’s head are the only decorations. The entrance to the palace is through a long corridor with a square window at the end. Its roof is a series of vaulted arches. An arch sweeps above the staircase to the first floor. The balustrades are of polished marble. Hitler’s study is decorated in beige and green. His personal radio stands there as well as his cages of brilliantly coloured tropical birds. There is only one ’phone on his desk. It is

linked to Berlin by a private line that is always kept open. The house is carefully guarded. Anti-aircraft emplacements protect it from air raids. A great bomb-proof cellar, hewn out of solid rock, runs beneath it. A ring of Black Guards always surround it. No visitor can approach without written permission from the Gestapo. Not until a ’phone call has been made to the house are the steel gates opened to let the visitor's car through. Most Germans believe the house is a simple mountain chalet. Nazi leaders, who have told the people that they must have guns and not butter, do all they can to foster this belief. The Nazi Press never mentions the luxury of this palace, perched on top iof the mountains.