by Mark Felton
The next complex on the right of the road beyond the Kindergarten was the SS-Kaserne, a large white barracks complex completed in 1937. This housed more members of the SS-Wachkompanie-Obersalzberg (actually in battalion strength) that patrolled the entire complex. It consisted of a large parade square enclosed by barrack blocks, kitchen, mess hall, vehicle maintenance facilities, gymnasium, and a staff headquarters building. The entire complex was pulled down in 1951. The basements, tunnels and air-raid shelters were torn out and filled in during 2001–2002.13
At the end of Hitler’s greenhouse, opposite the SS-Kaserne, was a small road that branched left and wound upwards into the thick trees. The road divided into two, with one road leading to Hermann Göring’s private house. Similar in design to the Berghof, Göring’s chalet was decorated in ‘fancy rustic’. This building has been pulled down. The second road led to the Adjutanter Göring (Göring’s Adjutants’ House) where Hitler’s chief Luftwaffe aide General der Flieger Karl Bodenschatz and his staff lived and worked. There was a telephone exchange inside. This three-storey building remains intact and is currently a private home.
Turning right at the SS-Kaserne, a road led to a further complex of buildings. First on the right was the Platterhof Garage, a long building. Inside was stored a large assemblage of VIP vehicles, particularly the armoured Mercedes cars so beloved of the Nazi elite, while staff quarters were provided on the floor above. Only a retaining wall and the building’s basement remains today.
Behind the garage stood the large Platterhof Hotel. Originally opened in 1877, the Platterhof was extensively remodelled by the Nazis and converted into a luxury guesthouse for visiting dignitaries. In 1943 the building became a military hospital and convalescent home with beds for 80–120 soldiers. Within the Platterhof was the Bergschenke, a fairly inexpensive beerhouse-cum-restaurant with a kitchen underneath. The five or six waitresses were dressed in blue dirndl frocks, assisted by three or four foreign waiters. Refurbished by the US Army in the late 1940s, it was renamed the Hotel General Walker. The complex was torn down in 2000, though one side-building that was used as a restaurant by the US Army until 1995 survives intact. The hotel site is now a car park for the Obersalzberg Documentation Center and the Kehlsteinhaus bus ticket office.14
The nurses and staff from the Platterhof and the Bergschenke lived in the adjacent Gefolgschaftshaus. A barber operated a hairdressing shop under the Platterhof. SS-Schütze Obernigg called the barber ‘an enigma’. He spoke fluent Italian and spoke German with a Bavarian accent and employed three Italian assistants. The garage beneath the Gefolgschaftshaus was used to store two buses for taking patients to the theatre in Salzburg and for other trips, and the SS also parked some of their trucks there.
On a short road that led away from the Platterhof Hotel was the Ga¨stehaus. This building was used by Bormann’s staff and also had VIP guesthouse facilities. Rebuilt after the war, the building is now the Obersalzberg Documentation Center with information about the Nazi period, the Holocaust and the Second World War. The bunker complex below the building is open to the public.
The last building of major significance was located on another small road beyond the Platterhof. This was the Kampfhausl, the cottage where Hitler wrote the second half of his book Mein Kampf after his release from Landsberg Prison in 1925. This building became a Nazi shrine and was pulled down in 1951. Its foundations are clearly visible in the woods across from the Documentation Center.15
There were several other buildings of less significance dotted around the area. These included Haus Speer, where Armaments Minister Albert Speer lived with his wife, children and nanny. There was a Post Office operated by an official wearing the Golden Party Badge with three girl assistants, a clerk and a postman who had lost an arm in the First World War.16 Ga¨stehaus Hoher Göll was used for guests and aides, and this is where Eva Braun ‘officially’ lived. It is interesting to note that among rank-and-file guards like Obernigg, they referred to Braun as ‘Hitler’s secretary’,17 though also noting that RSD men surrounded her. Frau Josepha, who was overseer of all women in the Obersalzberg district, kept the building, and Hitler’s Press Secretary, Dr Otto Dietrich, would live here during his visits to the Berghof. It was equipped with a teleprinter.
There were also complexes of housing. The Vorderek consisted of two houses. The first house was the administration headquarters for the Obersalzberg area and was run by a Nazi Party man named Schenk. Second-in-command was SS-Untersturmführer Bredow. There were servants’ quarters above and quarters for men from the SSBegleitkommando who would live there when Hitler was in residence. The second house was where Schenk lived and was also the LS Befehlsstelle (Air Raid Control Room) under Bredow’s command.18
There were two large housing complexes, the Klaushöhe and Buchenhöhe that were used for civilian housing or as married quarters for the men of the SS garrison. The Klaushöhe complex consisted of three rows of houses. The first row, Nos 1–6, consisted of a grocery shop at No. 1 and at No. 6 the women who worked in the SS barracks lived. The second row, Nos 7–14, were for German workers. The third row, Nos 15–22, included an SS doctor at No. 18, and Herr Grundner, who was responsible for rations at the SS barracks, at No. 22.19 Most of these buildings, consisting of medium-sized white alpine chalets, remain intact and are rented out as holiday homes today. Some bombed ruins are scattered through the woods close by.20
Driving to Hitler’s house on the road from Berchtesgaden, visitors would pass through a series of checkpoints, each requiring a special pass. The deeper one went into the protection zone, the more detailed the checks. At the outer checkpoint RSD officers would examine passes in detail. They checked that the pass matched the person who was carrying it, that it was genuine and that it contained the necessary weekly stamp. A record was kept of all comings and goings. It did not matter whether you were an SS private returning from leave or a field marshal attending one of Hitler’s daily military conferences, all visitors received the same level of scrutiny. After the fall of Stalingrad at the end of January 1943 all hikers and tourists were banned from the area, so the only people the RSD encountered were persons with specific business or employment at the Obersalzberg.
Travel into the protected zone by car was only possible if the RSD had been given prior notification. Even the cars containing Nazi top brass like Himmler, Göring and Bormann were stopped and carefully inspected. Bormann was adamant that such scrutiny was necessary. ‘If the gate guards open the gates upon the sounding of a horn, then this is the most outrageous carelessness, because sounding a horn is not identification.’21 Neither was a uniform considered identification, no matter how exalted the rank of the wearer. Only the pass was important. This level of security meant that the chances of infiltrating a doppelga¨nger into the complex, perhaps disguised as a senior Nazi official or military officer, was unlikely to be successful.
The most senior security personnel had ‘access all areas’ passes. These special passes were coloured dark blue, ‘and all require a stamp (which is numbered) to be affixed every week,’ recalled SS-Schütze Obernigg, the former guard at the Obersalzberg complex. ‘Passes bear the imprint of Bormann’s or Rattenhuber’s signature.’22 SS personnel carried a special pass stating that they were members of the guard company and were allowed into the ‘Führerschutzgebiet’ when on duty. Interestingly, although Bormann was most emphatic about everyone being carefully checked, former guards have admitted that fellow SS were mostly recognised by the RSD and civilian guards and not properly checked, particularly if senior Nazis like Bormann were not around. ‘Children under 5 require no pass. The milkman, an employee of the Gutshof, and the woman who delivers the secret letters are never checked,’ stated Obernigg to his British interrogators, indicating that familiarity caused security lapses despite Bormann’s best efforts.
Those permitted to enter Bezirk I, the Obersalzberg’s inner sanctum containing the Berghof, had their passes inscribed: ‘ist berechtigt, das Führergela¨nde und den Berg
hof zu betreten’ – ‘is entitled to enter the prohibited Führer zone and the Berghof’. This observation was required for an individual to pass through SS sentry posts 1 to 6 as well as any RSD personnel in the area. The inhabitants of the Gutshof, Bechsteinhaus, Atelier Speer, and the Haus Speer possessed passes. They were marked: ‘ist berechtigt, die Posten Tengelbrunn und Altenberg zu passieren’ – ‘is entitled to pass the sentries at Tengelbrunn and Altenberg’.23
Passes were also required to enter the SS barracks area, theatre and Göring’s house. ‘Whilst Göring is there, Picquet Göring 1 is instructed to be particularly conscientious,’ recalled Obernigg. ‘All officers who visit Göring must produce evidence of having been invited.’24 Göring was as paranoid as Hitler regarding assassination, and as Hitler’s chosen successor since Rudolf Hess’s flight to Britain in 1941, he had good reason to be cautious.
Some armed sentries walked particular patrol routes. For example, ‘Patrol 1’ consisted of a single SS soldier who would move between the Berghof and the Mooslahnerkopf Teehaus. ‘The stretch takes 15 to 20 minutes. Patrol usually chats for a long time with the civilian picquet at the Mooslahnerkopf,’25 recalled a guard.
Hitler would visit the Mooslahnerkopf Teehaus almost every afternoon during his stays at the Berghof. The walk was less than a kilometre across the Obersalzberg Valley to the wooded Mooslahnerkopf Hill where the circular teahouse had been built in 1937. The path was mostly wooded and at one point passed a scenic overlook of the entire valley, enclosed by a wooden railing and with a bench where the Führer often sat and discussed matters of state with his intimates. Hitler often fell asleep at the Mooslahnerkopf and was always driven back to the Berghof while the rest of his intimates strolled back on foot in the late afternoon. Because of its close association with Hitler the teahouse was knocked down after the war by the West German authorities.26
Confusingly, there is another teahouse in the valley that is also closely associated with the Nazi regime. Known today in English as the ‘Eagle’s Nest’, the Kehlsteinhaus is a chalet structure commissioned by Bormann in 1938 and presented to Hitler on his fiftieth birthday in April 1939. It perches atop Kehlstein Mountain near Berchtesgaden and the final 124 metres to the summit are made inside the mountain via an ornate lift that was bored directly through the granite. The lift, of polished brass and green leather, contains expensive Venetian mirrors. A huge red Italian marble fireplace that was a gift from fellow dictator Benito Mussolini dominates the main tea-room. The fireplace was heavily defaced by American troops in 1945, when they chipped off sections of the marble as souvenirs.
During the Nazi period the teahouse was known as the ‘D-Haus’ or Diplomatic Reception House. Unfortunately for Bormann, Hitler preferred the Mooslahnerkopf and only visited the Eagle’s Nest around ten times. ‘He complained that the air was too thin at that height, and bad for his blood pressure. He worried about an accident on the roads Bormann had had constructed up the sheer mountainside, and about a failure of the lift that had to carry its passengers from the large, marble-faced hall cut inside the rock to the summit of the mountain.’27
But although Hitler didn’t much care for Bormann’s gift, the property was nonetheless carefully guarded by the RSD. A wire fence surrounded the entire Kehlstein Mountain, within Bezirk III, with single-patrol guards who were armed with rifles being relieved every two hours. ‘Some lumber-jacks and a game keeper wander around the Kehlstein,’ according to a contemporary witness. ‘The place is completely wired off, and there are always one or two RSD personnel in the tea house at the top, which is very difficult to reach except by the lift.’ Visitors required a special pass that was clearly stamped ‘und Kehlsteingebiet.’28
The most significant event that occurred at the Kehlsteinhaus was the June 1944 wedding of Eva Braun’s sister Gretl to SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein, Heinrich Himmler’s dashing representative at Führer Headquarters. Today the Eagle’s Nest is a restaurant with an outdoor beer garden and remarkably little changed from Hitler’s day.
The wider Obersalzberg region was formidably guarded. Apart from the SS guard battalion and RSD troops near the Berghof there were several Wehrmacht mountain troop units and depots close by. The SS troops were on five minutes standby to react to any threat within the three Obersalzberg security zones. The Allies never seriously considered a coup de main against Hitler’s mountain eerie, primarily because the geography was extremely hostile to parachute or glider landings. Hitler’s greatest fear, and one that he shared at all of his military headquarters, was an Allied air raid. Bormann had assuaged this fear to some degree by constructing so many shelters and bunkers, but he also made sure that the SS provided plenty of anti-aircraft coverage.
By July 1944 the Obersalzberg was defended by twelve 105mm, eighteen 88mm and twenty-seven 37mm anti-aircraft guns manned entirely by SS Artillery and not by the Luftwaffe who was normally responsible for anything to do with aircraft. There were also six 20mm cannon and six 20mm quadruple flak guns.29 In addition, an ingenious smoke-generating unit could fill the valley with virtually impenetrable fog using large machines, disrupting any Allied raid and concealing the Berghof and other targets. This was coupled with attempts to camouflage the buildings from aerial reconnaissance with disruptive pattern paint schemes, netting and dummy trees. The one drawback of the SS smoke generators was that the artificial fog completely obscured the flak batteries aim, but Bormann solved this by moving most of the batteries to new positions higher up in the mountains. Unfortunately, this meant that the gunners suffered more from the elements during the winter.
For all its tight security features, the Obersalzberg complex had one very significant problem – Hitler. The Führer’s dislike of being guarded actually made him seriously vulnerable in the very place where he should have been safest, at home. When the British interrogated SS-Schütze Dieser and Obernigg, former members of Hitler’s guard unit captured in Normandy in 1944, they soon realised that there existed a very good chance of killing Hitler. He was much more vulnerable there than at his military field headquarters.
On 27 and 28 June 1944 meetings were held of the SOE Council to debate the idea of assassinating Hitler. Major General Colin Gubbins, Director of SOE, decided to order a feasibility study.30 The file would grow to include a huge amount of material on the Obersalzberg region, Hitler’s appearance, his habits and routine, his guarding arrangements, and details about his special train, the Führersonderzug.31
Three possible attacks were considered. The first was an attempt to derail Hitler’s train, but the limitations here were firstly gaining access to the track, which was guarded for the entire length of the train’s journey, and secondly whether a derailment would actually kill the intended target. It seemed a rather imprecise form of assassination. The second method also involved Hitler’s train. An idea was mooted to somehow introduce poison into the train’s drinking water tanks, but as the plan relied on an inside man that the British did not have, this idea was rejected. The third and final idea was to shoot Hitler at the Obersalzberg during his daily afternoon walk.
It was soon known that Hitler enjoyed walking to the Mooslahnerkopf Teahouse from the Berghof every day that he was in residence. Dieser and SS-Schütze Obernigg told SOE that Hitler’s RSD bodyguards were under orders to stay back when Hitler was walking with his small group of intimates. At one point during his stroll he passed close to a patch of woodland that placed him out of line of sight of the static SS sentry posts around the Obersalzberg. This meant that there was a window of opportunity to kill Hitler.
When Hitler arrived at the teahouse he would chat with his intimates, sip camomile tea and nibble on apple cake before invariably dozing off in his comfy armchair while the rest of his party chatted quietly around him.32 After an hour or so Hitler would be driven back to the Berghof while his companions walked the 1,500 metres back.
The idea was so attractive that SOE considered extending the operation to killing Himmler, Göring, Goebbels or Bormann,
and similarly detailed investigations into their movements, habits, routines and guarding arrangements were made.
Working with the information on Hitler, Major Court of the SOE, and his colleagues in London, began to work out how to assassinate Hitler at the Obersalzberg. It soon became clear that the most reliable method was a sniper attack when Hitler was walking along the path to the teahouse, and was very lightly guarded. The outline of the plan was for a German-speaking Pole and a British sniper to parachute into Austria. Dieser said that his uncle Heidenthaler, who was strongly anti-Nazi, would hide the two assassins in his house in Salzburg. From there, the two-man rifle team would infiltrate the Obersalzberg dressed in German Army mountain troop uniforms. There were mountain troops based quite close to the Obersalzberg, and of course the uniforms were only designed to divert the attention of locals and patrolling guards – the men would not try to enter the Obersalzberg security zone through any of the guarded gates, as they would not have the necessary documentation.
Once inside the enclosure, the sniper team would lie up in the woods close to the path that Hitler regularly walked. The Pole would act as spotter, using powerful binoculars, while the sniper would be armed with a Mauser Karabiner 98K rifle fitted with a Zeis Zielvier 46 (ZF39) telescopic sight. The rifle had an effective range of 1,000m, but the shot would be taken much closer, at a range of around 300m. A British officer, Captain Edmund Bennett, was mooted for the role of sniper and may have begun training in England against moving targets.33
An alternative scenario was to have the second assassin concealed along the road used by Hitler’s car to bring him back to the Berghof from the Mooslahrnerkopf Teahouse. This assassin would be armed with a PIAT anti-tank weapon to destroy the car should the rifleman have failed to get off a shot at Hitler walking.