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Hitler's Former Retreat, Eagle's Nest
Berchtesgaden, Germany |
While our guests were here we visited a variety of former Nazi hangouts. Hitler was quite active in Bavaria and there are many things to see, even if they aren’t widely publicized. With Joe’s parents we toured Eagle’s Nest and Dachau, and with his brother and my parents we explored the Rally Grounds in Nuremburg. We also learned that both Mercedes in Stuttgart (not Bavaria, I know) and BMW in Munich used concentration camp inmate as forced laborers in their factories to keep up with demand from the Fuhrer.
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Sun and snow
Berchtesgaden, Germany |
Eagle’s Nest is an interesting place to visit, but it hardly retains any of the vestiges of Nazism. This house on top of a mountain was a 50th birthday present from the Nazi party to Hitler. Like the German cars of the time, the house was built by slave labor. When the war ended, there was talk of blowing it up, but the mayor of a nearby town convinced people it should be saved. The building was spared from total destruction, but it was ransacked and stripped of anything valuable. Joe’s dad visited it 20 years ago and said all the windows were gone and it was open to the elements—like a true eagle’s nest. Since that time a restaurant has bought and repaired the building; they’re open from mid-May to October, depending on the weather.
Eagle’s Nest is in the Alps and at the top of the mountain the weather is vastly different from the valley below. When we visited, the weather below was mid-70s, but there was still snow on top of the mountain! The views were stunning and we were in the cloud line; they were changing by the second, revealing and concealing panoramic vistas. I do think that the ticket was a little expensive; to reach the summit you could either walk/bike up, or you could ride the bus for a mere 17 euros per person. It was like 1 euro/minute!
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No man's land, Dachau Concentration Camp
Dachau, Germany |
Dachau was an informative site, but I have mixed feelings about it; not surprising as it’s a former concentration camp. When the war ended, and the camp was liberated, almost everything at Dachau was leveled. The buildings on the site now are exact replicas, something I found a little odd. I was also annoyed with groups of noisy tourists not showing the place enough respect, and with the people snapping happy family portraits: inappropriate.
Some aspects of the camp remained as they were in the 40s: the ovens and the geography. Around the perimeter of the camp was a tall, electrified fence with barbed wire on top; it’s still there, but no longer electrified. Immediately inside the fence is a 4 foot wide strip of land called no-man’s-land. If a prisoner entered no man’s land, they were shot and killed. To even make it to no man’s land they would have to cross the deep ditch filled with the rushing water from the Amper River. Inside the ditch was finally the area of the camp where prisoners could walk. The camp seemed large until I realized how many people were crammed into the space. The beds were triple bunk beds and they put at least 3 people in each bunk. This sounds like an impossible feat until you remember the prisoners were emaciated to point of resembling skeletons.
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Some of the ovens at Dachau Concentration Camp
Dachau, Germany |
During the height of the 3rd Reich, Dachau was used as a model camp and all the other camps were based off its design. The first people imprisoned were political prisoners and the camp was periodically inspected for cleanliness and safety. At some point though, the line was crossed and the camp was used to house “undesirables”: Jews, Poles, Roma, and the mentally ill. When this occurred, systematic killings began, and they incorporated the gas chambers and the ovens. Anyone asked to run these machines could have no doubt about the moral implications. This is not something to turn a blind eye on, claiming ignorance of the operation. This was a carefully orchestrated way of methodically ending lives. So many bodies piled up waiting to be incinerated, and the original ovens were so overworked, the camp needed to purchase several new, larger ovens. The ashes were dumped in piles outside; to this day no one knows how many people were disposed of in this way. It’s been decades since the ovens were used and they appear ghost-like, bringing unbidden thoughts to my mind; is that residue ash; am I walking over thousands of remains; why did this happen? The camp was close enough to the town that there could be no mistaking what happened there, and with the ovens running almost non-stop, the smell would have been undeniable.
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Former Nazi Party Rally Grounds, now it's an occasional racetrack
Nuremberg, Germany |
With Jason we visited Nuremberg and the Nazi Party Grounds. On the outskirts of the city, Hitler was building a massive complex of buildings and parks for use by the Nazi party. He finished the Rally Grounds, and for several years there were annual rallies held, drawing thousands of visitors for speeches, parades, and ceremonies. Hitler also began construction on a large building modeled after the Colosseum, but this was never finished. Today it houses the Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände; incidentally the largest German words we’ve seen to date.
Dachau and the Holocaust museum serve as memorials to the victims and details the horrors they experienced in the camps. The Docu-Center is about the Nazis themselves, providing a different view of the situation. In no way does it glorify the Nazis, but it does provide the history of the party and eventually the war. It provides historical information, but its focus is not the Holocaust. The museum has a 5 euro admission and comes with a free audio guide that translates all the signs from German. The exhibits are chronological and detail the party’s rise to power. They also provide background information on some of the support systems, such as the secret police and the propaganda team. There is a wealth of information here including pictures, videos, sound clips, and, as the name suggests, documents. When you find yourself at a Holocaust memorial, baffled by the number of victims, and you’re asking, “how could this happen”, the Docu-center is the place to go for some answers.
Useful Links!
Joe and I were all set for a quiet New Year's Eve at home. We bought a bottle of champagne at the local grocery store, and while we were there we noticed they were selling fireworks. I was looking for some party poppers, but there were none to be found. Apparently, shooting off fireworks is a tradition.
