High Hitler

Eagles Nest, Berchtesgaden

When we were living in Frankfurt Germany, we took this very cool vacation all over Europe. This included Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Belgium. We visited the town of Berchtesgaden Germany, which is in the German Alps Mountain Range. The landscape is breathtaking, right out of a scene from “The Sound of Music” and the Von Trapp family adventures. One of the most interesting sites near Berchtesgaden is Adolph Hitler’s summer home and bunker called the Eagles Nest. Eagles Nest during the Nazi rule was home to several high German officials including Hitler, and a Headquarters for various Nazi groups. Eagles Nest was featured in the final episode of the HBO Mini-series “Band of Brothers”. This WWII show depicted the challenges facing a squad of American soldiers during the war in Europe. The Eagles Nest is a mountain top hideout where Hitler had this awesome underground bunker built. Above ground was a large set of stone buildings, which were the daily living quarters. But below ground was a single corkscrew staircase down into the hard rock. After descending down the staircase for a while, the bottom turns into a long zigzagging corridor. Our tour guide told us to look back over our shoulders when negotiating a zig and when I looked back I saw a machine gun port. Each zigzag in the corridor had a machine gun nest pointing into the backs of anyone walking. There were a series of these zigzags, each with a machine gun nest protecting it. With no cover and nowhere to hide, an enemy in that hallway would have been cut to pieces if the gunner decided to open up on them. Seeing those gun ports sent chills down my spine. I could just imagine the Nazi’s zeal to protect Hitler and how the machine gunners would have absolute power over life and death in the corridor. After the zigzags came a small cluster of small, very plain rooms, where Hitler and his staff could hide from air raids. The rooms were so small and ordinary that it was a bit of a let down after all the other security precautions taken to protect the underground bunker. Please don’t confuse this bunker with the one in Berlin where Hitler spent the final days of the war in, and then committed suicide in. The easiest way to get to the Eagles Nest Hotel was by cable car, and the ride was breathtaking. The hotel was very beautiful and the scenery was even more spectacular.

Mountain side gun ports were all along the winding road leading to the Eagles Nest. The gun ports were spaced about every 50 yards along many miles of this road. The ports were about ankle high and gave the gunner a great field of view to kill anything on the narrow road in front of him. Some of these bunkers were cut into solid rock and my Dad and I could not find a single entrance to these gun port bunkers.

My Dad and I decided to walk across the grassy fields near the Eagles Nest Hotel. Suddenly in the middle of one field we found a large irregular hole about 15 feet by 10 feet. We did not come prepared for exploring and had no flashlights. But when we bent down and looked in the hole, we saw a titled room. It appeared that it was an underground bunker complex that we discovered and the hole exposed a bathroom. I had vivid fantasies of find Nazi loot or memorabilia, but we could only look. To this day I wish I could get permission to go back and explore that bunker complex.

This entry was posted on December 22, 2006 at 1:33 am and is filed under Germany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.