Deutschland über Alles (Chapter 2 - Eagles Nest, Germany)

It was a warm, summer day-the first we had really experienced since starting-and we were in fine fettle. A friendly, cloudless sky above and ahead, just ahead, snuggled between enormous limestone mountains, the village of Berchtesgaden.

The previous night we had spent five hours weathering a ferocious thunderstorm that had all but brought our tent down about our ears. So on that sunny morning we were grateful for the drying warmth that seeped into our steaming baggage and excited at the prospect of seeing the historic Kelsteinhaus, or Eagle's Nest, Hitler's eyrie, which even then seemed to dominate the entire country around us.

There it was, just a small stone house, nothing startling in itself, but perched upon the highest mountain in sight. We felt it was watching every little movement of the toy world below.

So how to reach the Kelsteinhaus? Certainly from the centre of Berchtesgaden-full of Tyrolean atmosphere and Nordic types resplendent in Lederhosen-it looked impossible to reach by road. It seemed to be at an altitude far above the tree line, a man-made dot on the majestic peak of white limestone. It looked unassailable by anything less than an expert team of mountaineers; this was obviously one of the original attractions of the site. But (as the jovial fellow in leather shorts, ornamental braces, and footless socks, told us) there was a way up the road, but it was a long climb and we couldn't hope to go all the way by 'autoroller'. However, there was 'some arrangement' farther up to make the final, virtually perpendicular approach. We took his word for it, fortified ourselves with a couple of enormous frothing beers, and started for the summit and the house on the roof-top of Europe.

Up and up, higher and higher, we wound our way through forested mountains, along a narrow road where water seeped from sheer rock walls on our left. While down towards the right, the village of Berchtesgaden-when we glimpsed it occasionally through the trees-became an increasingly diminishing picture as the minutes passed. Higher still, and the Prima purred with relief as I dropped down to second gear. Fifteen miles an hour and climbing steadily.

It must have been something like half-way to the top when we stopped to eat. The Kelsteinhaus would have to wait. It was much further than we had anticipated. The mountain air and those icy potent beers (wonderful appetizers) had made us desperately hungry. We stopped on the brink of a sheer drop into infinity and feverishly dug into our knapsack for Camembert cheese and one of the lead-heavy, nutrition-packed loaves of treacle brown, butter and tomatoes and the thermos of coffee.

We sat in blissful silence, gazing out over a vast horizon, wolfing every morsel with delight. I shall always remember that simple meal under the shadow of the Eagle's Nest with more clarity, perhaps, than the nest itself, for it was satisfying to a degree; which the Kelsteinhaus was not.

But first to reach it. More spiralling to the sky, with our little engine screaming valiantly in first gear and the trees around us rapidly thinning. How much farther? A long way. Up and up again, with the engine, incredibly, still keeping us in motion. Another walled sweep to the left then, suddenly, level ground again and we had arrived. Crowds of people, car-park attendants in local costume, side-stalls, and a row of Mercedes coaches parked in the middle. Had we arrived? No. Before us were some of the 'arrangements' for making the final step. Through a crowd of print frocks and racing children, we saw a large pair of canopied gates, the entrance to the private, one-way road that led up to the house. A road which could only be assailed via one of the coaches: price-eleven marks (or thereabouts) each person.

Evading the candy-floss vendors, postcard kiosks, and soft-drink stalls, we parked the scooter among the mass of other vehicles and, rather bewildered by everything, took our two seats in the rapidly filling Mercedes.

Presently the coach moved off smoothly beneath the massive gates, which at an earlier time must have been crested with a spread eagle and surrounded by officers of the elite Personal Guard. But on that day it was attended by a white-coated guide who waved our coach impatiently through. After a short time I began to see why the coaches were Mercedes and why they were all virtually brand new.

We ploughed on, one hairpin-bend after another, and all the time in first gear. I could only liken it to that first, almost vertical bend, of Porlock HilI in Somerset-save that this gradient went on and on and on. The ascent was frightening. Having at various times driven across the Pyrenees, the Atlas mountains, and part of the Himalaya range, I can claim some experience of alpine motoring, but never have I sat so tautly on the edge of my seat as I did on that horrific ride up to the Eagle's Nest.

It was not the climb itself-though that was nerve-tingling enough-but the wretched driver would insist on keeping up an endless patter and looking over his shoulder more than at the road ahead; or rather the road at the side, above, or below us. After the first ten minutes, with our ears crackling ceaselessly, and all the flippant chatter long since silenced, even Nita voiced her alarm, which was unusual for her. 'Mike, I shall have to get out and walk if this goes on much longer.'

'Nonsense,' I replied, in a voice that sounded strangely unlike my own. 'They do this every day of the week.' Nevertheless, we held hands all the way up and I'm not sure who was the more comforted.

I tried to see the majesty of the view from the window, but all that impressed itself on me was the height of the viewpoint, an elevation which was rapidly becoming positively stratospheric. The faces around us (save for the ruddy-visaged driver) were blanched and uneasy. Someone was sick. I saw Berchtesgaden below and the nearby lake that shimmered like a silver three-penny-piece-and about as big--so many thousands of feet below. A voice in English was saying that this road had taken four years to complete, from the entrance gates to the house. I hoped, fervently, that the project had been attacked with typical German thoroughness, and I comforted myself (and my wife) with this thought.

The driver, without pausing in his commentary, swung hard on the wheel and the front of the coach (which one felt was too long, under such confined conditions, to be manoeuvred safely) lurched out literally into space, hung there for what seemed an age, then swung back again on an incredible lock round a ghastly hairpin-bend and for the umpteenth time swept immediately into the next one. Someone else was sick-or it may have been the same person-as I watched in horrified fascination our progress round each dizzy spiral upwards, and Nita clung more fiercely to my hand. Always reluctant to tackle heights, this was almost more than she could take, and she was very brave in conquering such fear. It was parallel to my being asked to make a journey on a crowded tube train in total darkness, which is something my claustrophobic mind would find difficult to endure.

The coach burst through a layer of cloud, levelled out, and the straining engine died away to a burble and stopped.

Shakily, but with rapidly gaining confidence, we all alighted and the chatter was soon at a higher and faster pitch than ever. We were standing on the semicircular parapet, fenced with a low, stone wall. The parapet struck a chord in our memories. Yes, the old newsreel pictures of Hitler and Mussolini clinching some pact or other, sitting back, smiling and chatting amicably. Right here, just where Nita and I were standing at that moment. Could it really be fifteen years or more since those dim, half-remembered scenes had been news?

Now we understood why this place was called the Eagle's Nest. Standing on one of the highest peaks in Europe, we could look out towards a breath-taking expanse of Germany on the one side and Austria on the other. Flecks of cloud scudded past below and the air was chilled and thin. It was not difficult to forget the tourists around us and visualize the :Man, perhaps elated, perhaps morose, leaning hands on wall to gaze out across his two countries, with the wild mountain winds howling across the limestone summits. No one in the whole of Germany greater or mightier than he! At such times, amidst those surroundings he must have felt that all his dreams would surely be fulfilled.

But the parapet was, so to speak, merely the front garden. To reach the house itself there was one more climb to be made. A journey by lift up through four hundred feet of solid rock. The lift was a superb piece of workmanship, beautifully panelled and completely silent in operation. Entry on this last phase was by way of an electrically lit tunnel, which started from the parapet and reached deep into the centre of the mountain-top. Nita had experienced enough altitude for one day and would elevate herself not another foot; she 'Waited on the balcony while I went up with the camera. And there, on emerging from the lift in the entrance hall, was where the climax of my disappointment (first experienced at the commercialized bus terminus) was reached.

The place was spacious, but not pretentious, with walls, doors, and fittings finished in elegant natural woods and with undoubtedly the most inspiring view in Europe from any window, yet this tiny nucleus of modern history-infamous or otherwise- had been utterly spoilt. Today it is nothing more than a cafe, its original interior entirely altered. Not one picture on the wall, not one piece of personal furniture, no desk, no ornaments; nothing remains. True, the walls are adorned, but by written slogans -in English-advising all and sundry to 'Get your postcards here', and' Ladies this way'; one even advertising that' Parties are catered for'.

I walked through what must once have been the main room of this surprisingly modest dwelling, threading my way between tables crowded with diners and out between wall-wide french windows on to the sunlit terrace. More customers. The place was overrun with them. One could gain no conception of the original eyrie. Which was a pity. After a whole morning of exhausting climbing (not to mention the high entrance charge) the Kelstein-haus had revealed itself as an empty shell. There was but one tiny pointer and even that was oblique: the significant date plaque, 1938, over the entrance tunnel.

Greatly disappointed, I took the lift down again to the balcony, where Nita, standing well away from the edge, was gazing across a swiftly clouding sky to the immense distant slopes. I spent twenty minutes convincing her that there was no point in walking down-which would take at least three hours-and, firmly guiding my reluctant wife, climbed once again aboard the coach.

By the time we started it was raining steadily, and I began to reflect on the folly of authorities who could be so short-sighted as to turn what could have been an extremely interesting little museum into a tourists' cafe. However, people could, as we did, still stand on the mountain-top and contemplate if they wished to do so, and they could still nostalgically relive the past, as no doubt many Germans did. I had talked to the man at the entrance turnstile, and during a brief lapse in the constant clicking of the gate he had told me that the Eagle's Nest, by order, was to exhibit no reminder whatsoever of the past. Alles Kaputt.

Our ride down the mountainside was uneventful compared with the upward journey. Thick clouds obscured the heights and everyone felt, ostrich-like, safer with the drizzle turning the windows opaque. Down at the bus terminus, we collected the Prima and spent the next half-hour enjoying a long free-wheel run down to Berchtesgaden.

The whole episode had been interesting but disillusioning-as though we had just left behind a Tower of London stripped bare and operating as a canteen. And with that-our final glimpse of Germany-we ran on through a steady wet mist, to have our carnet stamped for the third time, and the gateway to Austria courteously opened for our pleasure.