Berghof

Berghof was the resting place and second government residence of Adolf Hitler in Obersalzberg , in the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden , Germany .

It was his refuge in 1924 , after prison immediately after the Putsch in Munich, then their place of residence that was, during most of World War II , besides being one of the Führer Headquarters best known ¹ Which spread throughout Europe.

The origins

The house was located between 900 and 1000 meters (2,952 - 3,280 feet), belonging to the German citizen Hans Wachenfeld in the early twentieth century. In 1924 he was hired to Adolf Hitler, who at the time was a mass agitator, fresh from jail, after the failed Putsch in Munich . In this house, Hitler took refuge while the NSDAP was rebuilt in 1925. Later it lived of alternative way between Munich and the house. In 1932, with the fruits of the repeated editions of his book “Mein Kampf” (this being his personal money) managed to buy the house and moved his half sister Angela Raubal with the intention of care and function as a housekeeper and General manager.

The Berghof was originally a modest alpine house of ordinary wood and was known as Haus Wachenfeld . Rebuilt, enlarged and remodeled between 1934 and 1936, Berghof as such, expanded to just over 30 rooms and was endowed with ample cantilevers. Only the west-wing of the original house was left unscathed. ² The first floor was destined to the bedroom of Hitler and Eva Braun, a large living room with a large window and that allowed him to also watch movies to taste, the decoration was in charge of the architect Troost. Generally, the atmosphere that was printed in the Berghof was rather familiar than governmental and made to the measure of Hitler.

It had a function as a residence for a little less than twenty years. In this remodeled house, dignitaries such as Kurt von Schuschnigg , Austrian Chancellor, on February 12, 1938, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain were welcomed on September 5, 1938. It was the permanent residence since 1936 of Eva Braun and her sister Gretl Braun . ^[3] In the Berghof, only high-ranking SS officers such as Himmler , Reinhard Heydrich , Joachim von Ribbentrop and Hans Heinrich Lammers , head of the Reich Chancellery, were admitted for state matters . The intimate social circle of Berghof was made up of the servants of the service, personal photographers like Walter Frentz and Heinrich Hoffmann , helpers like Wilhelm Brückner and Fritz Weidemann , the Goebbels family and the Speers , was never included Hermann Göring . ⁴

The area of ​​the Berghof that was permanently under construction had perimeter fencing, guardhouses and large tunnels, bunkers and shelters throughout the area.

Martin Bormann on the commission of the same Hitler expropriated in 1935 all the native residences and surrounding inns as part of the belt of security of Hitler and made them demolish, it also relocated to all the natives outside the zone and within its delineations were constructed houses for Albert Speer , Martin Bormann himself and other dignitaries such as Hans Heinrich Lammers and Himmler who belonged to the so-called Berghof circle. Hermann Göring built residence not far from there in Obersalzberg . Bormann also administered the passes to the interior of the Berghof. In 1937 he was incorporated the most modern communications technology to keep Hitler connected to the outside world. Due to the extreme security measures, an effective attack against Hitler in the Berghof could never be made despite the intentions of the intelligence allied.

The residence was abandoned for good by Hitler on October 16, 1944 to go to settle in the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia and from there to Berlin until its death in the Führerbunker . She only returned her secretaries and other trusted personalities to destroy all of Hitler’s private documentation at the end of March 1945.

On April 25, 1945, the house was bombed by the British Royal Air Force , in addition to the fire by the SS troops on their retreat in early May. It was finally looted on May 4, by Allied troops arriving in the area and finally demolished by explosives in 1953, where 1,181 tons of explosives were killed, stopping strong pilgrimages of cult tourists from around the world who visited the old “Hitler’s house.”

References

• This work contains a translation derived from Berghof (residence) of Wikipedia in English, specifically of this version , published by its publishers under the GNU Free Documentation License and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license .