He made it his home,
his retreat, his sanctuary.

The Obersalzberg
was an ordinary Bavarian mountain until Adolf Hitler discovered it in 1923.

Up on top, 700 kilometers from Berlin, the Nazi leader
spent a quarter of his reign surrounded
by his most faithful lieutenants and his mistress, Eva Braun.

At the center of the ultra-secure compound
stood his immense house, the Berghof.

Above that,
perched on a rocky peak at 1,800 meters, the famous Eagle’s Nest
dominated the region, symbolizing their thirst for grandeur.

Here, overlooking
a breathtakingly beautiful landscape, the darkest ideas
of humanity were conceived.

However, on the site, despite the bombings
and the will to make the past disappear, there are some remnants.

This is in the right place to be this.

Through field studies, survivors’ stories,
and computer-generated imagery, we’ll discover how
a quiet little mountain was changed into a massive military-political complex.

Seventy years after the end of the war, what are the Obersalzberg’s trees hiding? What remains of the network of tunnels
and the sprawling bunker system dug inside the mountain? How does history live on in every corner
of Adolf Hitler’s alpine refuge? Bavaria, Germany,
in the early 1920s.

In a country decimated by war
and economic collapse, a new extreme right-wing party,
the NSDAP, is growing in Munich.

The National Socialist
German Workers’ Party is symbolized by a black swastika
on a red and white background.

It’s commonly referred to
as the Nazi Party.

Its leader is about 30 years old.

His name is Adolf Hitler.

Anti-Semitic and anti-Communist, this great orator
and former German Army corporal is skilled at using simple language
and persuasive arguments.

He claims to want to restore
the country’s greatness and crisscrosses Bavaria,
building his propaganda machine.

In the spring of 1923,
he goes to Berchtesgaden, a small village in southern Bavaria,
for the first time.

It is a small, quiet mountain community.

The young Adolf comes to meet
the anti-Semitic writer Dietrich Eckart, one of his most fervent supporters,
who will also become his friend.

He registers at the Moritz guesthouse
under the pseudonym Mr.

Wolf.

This pretty inn,
highly regarded by the Bavarian nobility, is located on a small mountain
that climbs to 1,000 meters, the Obersalzberg.

In front of it stands the Untersberg, a large massive that runs along the border
between Austria and Germany.

It all began on the morning
of April 29th, 1923, when Hitler woke up, looked out that window, and as he said,
fell in love with the landscape there, in particular, the Untersberg.

This spring morning in 1923
will forever change the destiny of the Obersalzberg.

It was here that Adolf Hitler returned
to stay a year later, before which
he was imprisoned for nine months for attempting
to take power in Bavaria by force.

In his cell,
he began to write his book, Mein Kampf, and decided that when he was free,
he’d return to nature on the Obersalzberg to complete his work.

During his stay in prison, Dietrich Eckart died
from his alcohol and morphine abuse.

Hitler finished
the second volume of his book.

He dedicated it to his author friend, who had given him
his ferocious hatred of the Jewish people.

“I want also to reckon among them,
that man who has one of the best,” “by words, and by thoughts,
and finally, by deeds,” “dedicated his life
to the awakening of his,” “of our nation, Dietrich Eckart.

” Dietrich Eckart is one of the most
underestimated individuals in Hitler’s life.

He shaped Hitler as a person.

He was absolutely vital
in Hitler’s early political career.

This may be part of Nazi mythology, but Eckart was alleged
to have said on his deathbed that Hitler would dance,
but it was he who played the tune.

The first evidence the Nazi leader
left in the Obersalzberg region, dates back
to the death of Dietrich Eckart.

It can be found in the basement
of the Berchtesgadener Anzeiger, the local newspaper,
where the archives are kept.

The first notice
of Dietrich Eckart’s death on December 26th in Berchtesgaden appears
here in the Berchtesgadener Anzeiger from December 29th.

The first notice
was written by his friends.

A few pages later, there’s a second death notice
with the swastika.

The swastika is backward,
perhaps due to the type at the printers.

It’s quite interesting to see
that there is a death notice from his friends
and a death notice from the party.

It shows that there was already
a political party at the time, which only grew from there.

Beginning in 1924, Adolf Hitler’s steady rise
gradually led to irreversible changes on the peaceful little Bavarian mountain.

Jeff Walden is one of the top
Obersalzberg experts.

Passionate about the Second World War, this former American soldier
spent years stationed in Germany.

He has dedicated
a great deal of time for his research.

He’s published several books on evidence
of the Third Reich in the region.

In recent years, Jeff has scoured the area
to find remains from the period, so he knows every inch of the mountain.

In order to carry out his investigation,
he has used the original plans and thousands of archival photographs
collected throughout Europe.

He knows precisely where the buildings
occupied by the Nazis once stood and what remains of them today.

On the mountainside,
he found the remains of the Kampfhaus, the first chalet
that Adolf Hitler stayed at in the early 1920s.

When he was released from prison, he came back to the Obersalzberg
he had visited before.

He came back here to stay and use this quiet area
as a writer’s retreat.

There were a few trees in the woods here, but not as many
as there are now blocking the view.

There was a little wood cabin here.

The stones are what’s left
of that cabin’s foundation.

He used that as a writer’s retreat
to finish his book, Mein Kampf.

During the Nazi era, this house was preserved
as a sort of shrine to Hitler and his book Mein Kampf.

To the visitors
who came to the Obersalzberg, this was one of the special sites
that they came to visit.

In 1928, Hitler decided
to rent the Haus Wachenfeld, a small house located a few hundred meters
below the small chalet.

This typically Bavarian building
rented for 100 marks per month.

Little by little,
what was once a hideout opened its doors to the admirers who flocked to him.

Before 1933,
this was Hitler’s very private retreat.

He interacted with the locals.

We know Josepha Mitzi Reiter, a girlfriend with whom he had
a serious love interest early on.

There were a lot of local interactions.

Clearly, in 1933,
when he became Chancellor, it became a place of pilgrimage.

This is where we see these crowds, the hundreds and even thousands of people
who come from all over Germany to walk past his house.

Hitler bought the Wachenfeld Haus with the income
from Mein Kampf’s colossal sales.

Very quickly,
overwhelmed by the idolatrous crowds and busy in his role
as the Chancellor of the Reich, he decided to enlarge it
and heighten its security.

Between 1935 and 1937, the construction work took place
in three main phases.

First, a botanical garden and a garage
were added to the Wachenfeld Haus.

In 1936,
during the largest expansion phase, the small wooden house was swallowed up
by a huge adjoining building.

A deck was created above the garage.

The last phase extended the left wing and created another one
on the right side of the house.

In 1937, the Wachenfeld Haus
gave way to an enormous building now called the Berghof.

Its 30 rooms house Hitler’s apartments,
his photographer, his mistress Eva Braun, and all the staff.

The centerpiece of the house
was the central living room and a panoramic bay window.

Made up of 90 small windows, it was seven meters long
and four meters high.

Twenty-eight square meters of glass, a real show of technical skill
that offered Hitler’s guests a breathtaking view of the Unterberg.

Hitler once said
he designed the Berghof around a window.

Hitler would bring
political leaders there, stand them before the window, and essentially indicate
that it was his power, his realm.

Bombed at the end of the war
by the English and then by the Americans, the buildings were entirely destroyed
by the Bavarians themselves to prevent the Obersalzberg
from turning into a Nazi pilgrimage site.

Today, there is very little evidence
of Adolf Hitler’s famous Berghof.

The main thing that can be seen
on the Berghof site today is the retaining wall
that was behind the house.

This was not part of the house, and the house
was not attached to this wall.

It was just a large concrete wall
that was put here to hold the hillside from moving forward
into the back of the house.

Visitors would arrive at the driveway, then ascend the grand staircase.

The SS Honor Guard would be lined up here, and then they would enter
through one of these three archways into the Berghof proper.

It’s thought that this piece of stone here
is the base of one of these two pillars that form the main entrance
to the Berghof.

I have taken a tape measure here
and have done a lot of measuring, and this is in the right place to be this.

It’s right about up there.

Hitler’s bedroom was right up there.

The famous terrace
was on top of the garage itself, so it would have been right up there.

Just above the Berghof, the Zum Türken Hotel was transformed
into a barracks for Hitler’s bodyguards.

Above that lived Martin Bormann,
the one who oversaw everything.

Bormann ran Hitler’s property.

Totally devoted to the Führer, he was the feared master
of the Obersalzberg.

Today, a luxury hotel stands
where his house once was.

However, the building’s original plans
are kept at Munich’s Architekturmuseum.

[German spoken audio] This old Obersalzberg house
was a children’s sanitarium.

What’s interesting
is that from the outside, it looks typically local, simply to keep the vacation home feel.

[German spoken audio] Inside, we know that the house
was furnished quite luxuriously.

In the Munich archives, invoices prove that he possessed
the most expensive collection of minerals and that everything was very luxurious.

Martin Bormann knew that for Adolf Hitler
to continue to come to his Berghof, his inner circle must accompany him, and his loyal followers must be near him
to ponder the Reich’s future.

He had to either refurbish or build homes
and barracks to house soldiers.

Under Bormann’s oversight, 60,000 workers were sent
to the Obersalzberg, and the mountain became
a gigantic construction site.

The Obersalzberg illustrates the way
Bormann put himself at the forefront.

By appropriating
this personal project of Hitler’s, he seized his chance
to exercise his power.

He forced all the Obersalzberg residents
to give up their property.

When he did not force them out,
he threatened to do it.

He ran a brutal construction site.

Omnipresent and bad-tempered, the architects complained about a man who,
without a clue of what he was doing, put an enormous amount
of pressure on everyone.

[German spoken audio] A part of Martin Bormann’s success was that he was always
two thoughts ahead of Hitler.

He was always anticipating
what Hitler might want or need.

Before Hitler even needed
to ask the question, Martin Bormann
had already delivered the answer.

In just a few years,
the Obersalzberg changed its appearance and became the second
Nazi decision-making center after Berlin.

To ensure the safety of the Chancellor,
access to the area was forbidden.

Eventually,
the entire Obersalzberg was a closed area.

Hitler was protected by two
or three rings of security where he lived.

There was an inner ring
right around the Berghof area itself, and all of these rings were fenced off
with fencing just like this here.

This is part of the original fencing.

The secure area possessed by the Nazis
covered ten square kilometers.

Guard posts were placed
around the three security perimeters, and 35 new buildings were built.

Among them was a house
for Hermann Göring, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, and another for Albert Speer, the Nazi’s party chief architect.

There was even a theater.

Here we are in the ruins
of a large theater hall, the so-called Theaterhalle.

It was built in 1937
to provide a venue for entertainment for all the workers
stationed here on the Obersalzberg.

This was mainly a place
where they could come and watch cinema films.

All the workers were allowed to come in,
the seats were free.

This was the audience area.

The projection room
was at the front of the theater hall, so the films would have been projected
on a screen on the back wall.

We’re standing below the floor area,
the main area of the theater hall.

It was supported
on these concrete pillars, so we’re in what would have been
the basement then.

[German spoken audio] As we can see from the plans, the theater was 35 meters wide
and probably 65 or 70 meters long.

That’s big.

The building was designed
for 2,000 workers.

Sometimes there were also
propaganda events.

Clearly, we can see
the Reich Eagle everywhere.

They used it
to try to influence the workers.

On the mountain, it was highly important
that Nazi dignitaries and their staff
could live self-sufficiently.

To feed them,
Martin Bormann had big plans.

Beneath the secured area, he transformed a building
into a huge farm called the Gutshof.

We’re standing
on what is now a golf course, but in the 1930s and 1940s,
it was just a meadow of the Gutshof farm.

The main buildings we see
in the valley with a silver tin roof were part of the Gutshof farm.

It was built
as an experimental or model farm.

Martin Bormann was a farmer at heart, and farming continued
to be one of his hobbies.

Therefore, he had to have a farm here.

On the Obersalzberg, the farms were destroyed,
the farmers were driven out, and everything was replaced
by the Bormann Pilot Farm.

However, this farm
was absolutely not productive.

It did not work at all, simply because they did not have
the local peasants’ knowledge of the land.

This is a plan for the greenhouse
that was built near the Berghof.

It was 119 meters long and 26 meters wide.

They were shaped like a crescent.

They tried to grow vegetables
and flowers for the Berghof, but it was not enough.

The Nazis were never able
to grow enough food for everyone.

However, with his passion for grandeur
coupled with his adulation of the Führer, Martin Bormann wanted to do more.

He wanted to offer Adolf Hitler
a physical metaphor of his domination.

In 1937, he decided to build a house on the peak
of the Kehlstein mountain at 1,824 meters.

Built by 3,000 men in less than 13 months, it would later be christened
the Eagle’s Nest.

From the Obersalzberg, the climb begins
with a 6.

5-kilometer mountain road topped with five tunnels
leading to a plateau.

From there,
a long tunnel carved into the rock leads to an elevator shaft.

There were two elevator cars.

The top one was for the Nazi elite,
and the one underneath was for equipment.

They climbed the last 120 meters
in approximately 40 seconds, arriving in the center of the house.

Today, the elevator
and its bronze car have been preserved, and the Eagle’s Nest,
untouched by the bombing of 1945, has been transformed
into a high-altitude restaurant.

This mythical place
became a symbol of Hitler’s domination during the Second World War.

However, the place played
virtually no role during the war.

Hitler was agoraphobic
and did not like heights.

He went up there only a handful of times.

Ultimately, this house would be used
mostly by Hitler’s most private companion, his mistress Eva Braun.

In one of his amateur videos, we recognize the marriage celebration
between her sister Gretl Braun and Hermann Fegelein, an SS general.

On this 1944 summer day, he was already responsible
for tens of thousands of deaths.

When Hitler came to spend a few days
in his Berghof, time seemed to stop.

The Führer wanted
to take advantage of his mountain while reflecting on his political
and military strategies.

Albert Feiber works
at the Contemporary History Institute in Munich.

As part of his research, he has studied
how life at the Obersalzberg was organized and has researched Hitler’s habits
while he stayed at his home.

His days were actually quite boring.

As we know, Hitler lived at night.

He got up very late,
often skipping breakfast and lunch.

[German spoken audio] Generally, he held his first meetings
at the end of the morning.

After a late lunch, Hitler and all his Berghof entourage walked to the teahouse
on Mount Mooslahnerkopf on the road we’re on now.

During these ritual walks,
he sought a privileged confidant.

The path was very narrow.

There was only room
for two people side by side.

They discussed highly political subjects.

From the Berghof,
they walked an hour down the valley to reach the tea room.

Bombed in 1945, and finally destroyed in 2006
by the local authorities, the tea room has almost disappeared, and its ruins
have been overrun by the forest.

Here, we are on the last remains
of the Mooslahnerkopf tea room.

Once people got here,
they drank tea, coffee, ate cakes, and talked innocently.

We don’t know if it is true, but it is said that Hitler fell asleep
once or twice during his monologues.

After an hour and a half,
everyone drove back to the Berghof.

After dinner,
guests gathered in the Great Hall to listen to Hitler’s long monologues.

Sometimes they would watch a movie, and the evening went on
until four o’clock in the morning.

[German spoken audio] Hitler was a big fan of American movies.

They were officially censored in Germany,
but they were his favorite films.

He was a big Mickey Mouse fan too.

Life at the Berghof
is the antithesis of life in Berlin.

Here, the fierce dictator,
ready to exterminate millions of people, gives way to a simple man,
his love of nature, and alpine folklore.

The decoration is typically Bavarian, and even the smallest object
must show the Chancellor’s glory.

French soldiers brought back
many pieces as trophies to Paris when they came
to liberate the mountain in May 1945.

This is a tablecloth
with Adolf Hitler’s initials.

It was made in Munich
and bears a floral motif.

It’s quite suitable for life
in the mountains in Berchtesgaden.

[French spoken audio] There are several other examples
of matching tablecloths and napkins.

There are several napkins
of questionable color, all with Adolf Hitler’s initials.

Here is the swastika.

Here, we have a knife that comes
from Hitler’s personal silverware set.

It is a bit more elaborate, with a sort of Greek motif on the handle, and then the German Eagle
and Adolf Hitler’s initials.

It becomes a personality cult
to Adolf Hitler, since all the elements
found at the Berghof, including the Kehlsteinhaus, are almost always
systematically marked “AH,” the initials of Adolf Hitler.

Hitler used this object.

It was on his personal desk.

Photos show it at the Berghof,
where we can see it on his desk.

In it, there are his letterhead, envelopes, and calling cards
with his name, Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi emblem.

There is still the card from his secretary reminding him

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