Hitler's Mountain: The Führer, Obersalzberg and the American Occupation of Berchtesgaden (review)

The Berchtesgadener Land is an alpine idyll of exquisite natural beauty. Its magnificent mountains, deep gorges and waterfalls, fast running rivers and crystal-clear lakes, brooding pine forests, and blooming meadows have attracted many famous visitors to this secluded part of south-eastern Bavaria. Some of its more recognisable visitors have included Sigmund Freud, the famous Bavarian poets and novelists Ludwig Ganghofer and Richard Voss, the composer Richard Strauss, the artist Casper David Friedrich, and the Bavarian royal house of Wittelsbach. It also, sadly, attracted a disturbed young veteran of the Great War in the spring of 1923, Adolf Hitler. The future Führer was smitten by the powerful presence of the mountains and by their mystical Teutonic history. After a brief spell in Landsberg prison, following the failed Putsch of 9 November 1923, Hitler returned to his mountain. Living in a rustic log cabin, the Kampfhäusl, he dictated the second volume of Mein Kampf. Profits from this radical political testament enabled Hitler to purchase Haus Wachenfeld and to establish his permanent residence on the Obersalzberg. Soon the entire mountain was a Nazi building site, constructing homes for Hitler's paladins and then the extensive infrastructure to support a burgeoning Nazi bureaucracy. The construction only ended in the spring of 1945 when first Allied bombers and soon after advancing American and French armies put an end to the last endeavours and fantasies of the Third Reich.

Arthur Mitchell, in his book, Hitler's Mountain, has told an engaging story of the transformation of Berchtesgaden and the Obersalzberg from sleepy nineteenth Century farming and spa communities to the second seat of government in Nazi Germany and the subsequent American military occupation after 1945. He has drawn on a wide range of contemporary as well as more recent interviews of famous and lesser known inhabitants, visitors and American occupiers to illustrate the changing human face of this stunningly beautiful yet tragic alpine wonderland. The book is divided into four main areas: Hitler and his arrival in Berchtesgaden, the Berghof (Hitler's house on the Obersalzberg), the mountain redoubt and the 'final prize' of the defeated Third Reich, and lastly, the American occupation from 1945 to the present control of the mountain by the Bavarian government. The last two sections are the strongest both in terms of new research and the contribution Mitchell has made to our understanding of the importance of culture and nature to Hitler's Weltanschauung and, subsequently, his political/military decision making.

The struggle between American and French forces to capture the last prize of the Third Reich is another area in this story where Mitchell excels as is the ongoing difficulties this area has caused for the Bavarian authorities in Munich. The book is well supported with relevant photographs, many of them not previously published, and an extensive bibliography. It is also one of a number of new books recently published by McFarland that addresses important gaps in the history of Nazi Germany well outside of the conventional economic, military and political histories that are a staple of many English language writers and presses.

Professor Mitchell ends his account of the history of the Obersalzberg with an acknowledgement that now, more than sixty years after the end of the Nazi era, the awful legacy of 'the man and the mountain' lingers on depressingly strong. Toxic historic sites are the new controversies drawing the attention of scholars in increasing numbers to the ever growing field of war and memory. There is little doubt that this book is the first of many that will look at the Führer in his favoured habitat.