Scenes from the village Obersalzberg. An amateur filmmaker filmed them in the years 1933/34. Hitler is already Chancellor. In June 1933, shortly after seizung power, he purchases Wachenfeld House, a small chalet-style home he had been renting since 1928. But Hitler's house is still only one of many in the village where life continues unchanged. At the beginning of the 1930s Obersalzberg is a settlement that has grown organically, consisting of alpine farms, small guesthouses and the large summer chalets of wealthy city dwellers. City dwellers bring money to the village and seek rest and relexation in the idyllic Alps. an idyllic spot, beautiful yet sparse, where the local people of Obersalzberg had been living comfortably ever since visitors from outside had provided the village's artisans and craftsmen, servants and traders employment and income. Obersalzberg was an idyllic village with farmers and cottagers and people with small guesthouses and then there were big wealthy landowners such as the Counsilor of Commerce Winter. What Hitler purchased was his summer residence. And then there was the Bechstein villa, we knew the grand piano family quite well. Then the Linde family, Carl von Linde invented the ice-making machines in Obersalzberg, he also had a poperty up here. So there were rich people up here, like Doctor Eichengrün, rich people who gave a lot of support to the community of Salzberg and the people who lived there. And then we had a sanatorium for children, a chapel and then a forester's house. Geiger, the forester lived up there, and then we had a general store run by the Lochner family. The son was a painter. The Steiner guesthouse was there, Bechstein was our neighbour and Herr von Linde, he was a very nice man, he was also a neighbour. And that's how it developed up there and suddenly Adolf Hitler came to Obersalzberg. He lived in a small wooden cabin owned by guesthouse Moritz. That's where he first lived. He was our customer, came to us to shop, for bread and flour and whatever he needed. At that time he wasn't important, he was a very approachable person. I can remember him having a dog and a whip. He was actually quite approachable, he was friendly to my mother as well when he came to do his shopping. One day I walked past with my daughter and he called out and said I should take his photo together with my daughter, so I did. And then afterwards everything changed completly. That's when he became inaccessible, didn't he? Unfortunately. Hitler's first visit to Obersalzberg was in 1923. The villagers had built their church just two years previously - all by themselves. And then people went round to the farmers with little money boxes and everyone made a donation and at the end of the month they were emptied. That's how the farmers helped out and how the chapel was built in 1921. The locals went to the Maria Hilf Chapel. "Pilgrims" was the term used by the villagers for the people visiting Hitler, the party leader. Even before the seizure of power the Wachenfeld House had become the most visited private property. Before 1933 they were mostly NSDAP officials. From then on the Jewish family Eichengrün who lived diagonally opposite Hitler, began receiving threatening letters. Worn down by constant threats the Eichengrüns gave up their house Mitterwurf in 1932. In the spring of 1933 Hitler tourism suddenly began with people coming from all over Germany. Village life went on during these developments. And now, of course, we needed a chaplain and that is when Dr. Baumann came onto the scene. He was from the country, from somewhere near Teisendorf or whereever he lived. He was a very decent man, a really lovely man. It was especially depressing for us when on a holy Sunday the "pilgrims", as we called them, came up from Berchtesgaden to pay their respects to Hitler. And when they came – my little church, the Maria Hilf Chapel, was roughly 50 meters higher up – these people came along chanting: "We want to see our Führer. We want to see our Führer. We want to see our Führer". With increasing vehemence. And what could I answer to this, not just because I was the chaplain, but because everyone else could also say the same: "Tu solus sanctus, tu solus dominus. You alone are the Saviour, You alone are the Lord, You alone are the Almighty". The number of Hitler pilgrims kept increasing. A film made by the tourist office hows how the village was adjusting to the new tourists. Special trains brought them to Berchtesgaden Brass bands played music for the visitors on the railway platforms. Egon Hanfstaengl and his mother were guests in Hitler's Wachenfeld House in 1934. He was twelve at the time. He saw with his own eyes how the daily march-past had its effect on the "pilgrims", but also on Hitler and his people. And then lots of tourists came, Nazis from all over Germany and they stood in groups of 30 to 50 at the roughly waist-high garden gate. They stood outside and then he went out and signed pictures and shook hands and afterwards I saw how a woman had managed to get past the gate and take some pieces of gravel that Hitler had been standing on, and then she had a small bottle and filled it with the stones and pressed it against her breast and looked up in a kind of ecstasy zowards heaven, a bit like a baroque Madonna with bulging eyes rolled upwards. And I found the whole thing so distasteful, for me she had gone much too far. From the perspective of the onlookers the Wachenfeld House was a peaceful, private idyll. Nonetheless, this was the place where Hitler developed many of his political plans, including the boycott of Jewish businesses, the banning of political parties and trade unions. Also here the powerful figures of the Third Reich decided on the persecution of their political opponents. Yes, and so my mother and I were sitting on a terrace and there was a small gravel path where Hitler and Göring were walking up and down. And we could hear them when they came near us, fragments of their conversation. And then we heard Göring say, smugly and almost smiling, as if he were proud of it and really pleased with himself, saying "I've just signed 20 death warrants". And my mother and I found that shocking and alarming, but we didn't think about it for very long, because even father used to say and usually in English: "You can't have an omelette without breaking eggs und you can’t have a revolution without cracking heads“. That was the general attitude in germany, people were prepared to accept such violence and cruelty in the interest of law and order, peace and security. Until 1935 Hitler made do with high wire-mesh fences to protect his property. At this time Martin Bormann began to buy up all the surrounding properties on behalf of Hitler. The goal: the setting up of a Führer's off-limits area. For the time being, however, all visitors could walk right up to Hitler's house. If he was at home, they would often wait for hours to catch a glimpse of their hero, as in this scene where Hitler is just leaving his house. His car slowly drives past the line of waiting visitors. They were ecstatic of course. They ran down the drive, it was only a few meters, and then they lined up and shouted: "We want to see our Führer. We want to see our Führer". Then the Führer came out an shook their hands and kissed the children and people picked up pieces of gravel where he had walked. They pulled off small pieces of wood from the fence which the Führer had touched. And that was a fiasco, it was a circus. And then they didn't was the hands afterwards, because the Führer had shaken hands with them. And they didn't eat anything, day and night they didn't eat anything, because they had been waiting down there day and night. It was awful. It was a complete joke. The people went crazy when the news came that the Führer was there and could be talked to. They dropped everything they were doing and crossed various fences until they reached Hitler's house, there was every opportunity for an assassination attempt with the result that those protecting the Führer were very concerned for his safety. In 1936 Wachenfeld House was converted into a mountain retreat, the Berghof. The small alpine holiday home was remodelled into a large, rather massive, prestigious building. The plans for the Führer's off-limits area were now completed. It was now time to build the SS barracks and to extend thea area around Hitler's house. Work also began on the building of the Kehlsteinstrasse and the Kehlstein house, the so-called Eagle's Nest. In the eyes of Hitler and Bormann most village properties in the proximity simply had to make way for all these building projects. Whether their owners wanted or not was irrelevant. The first ones to sell got good prices for their properties and where then able to set themselves up succesfully somwhere else. Of course, they didn't really want to leave, but the money was a big temptation. Naturally it got worse and worse and my father was a marked man anayway, because he wasn't in the party. He was a red flag to them all anyway, because he was a good Catholic and a friend of Dr. Baumann, and this this made him a red flag for Bormann. And the other farmers, of course, yes, they were dispossessed as well, they didn't want any of this. They were farm people, they didn't want to give up what they were used to. Yes, that's they way it was. Bormann had someone call us: "Someone should come out into the road". Then my mother asked "What's it all about?" Then he said: "It's about the sale of the house". And my mother replied: "Herr Bormann, we didn't buy the house in the street and we don't intend to sell it in the street". Then he ordered me, or rather us, to come up the road. I went up to Färber and sortted out the matter with him. He yelled at me and said: "What do you want then for that shack". And I said: "Herr Färber, that isn't a shack. My mother gave birth to thirteen children in that house and we have all grown up to be decent and upright people". He wasn't very approachable by that time. He approved a price of 48,000 MArks for the house and a couple of days later the sale, the whole matter was officially certified. And we had to move out, yes, in the middle of winter. They had already started taking the roof off while we were still living in the house. On the 2nd February Bormann came to the house, to see my father in the living room. My three brothers had lost their jobs in the meantime because my father hand't sold the house. My father was a civil servant, and he also lost his job. So the whole family was together and your heart always began to pounder with fear when brownshirts came by. And then Bormann arrived. He was wearing breeches and boots and a leather jacket and his SS cap, in other words he looked quite brutal. I can see him now, the way he walked into the house. I say to myself, this isn't a good omen. Then he said: " Herr Hölzl, I'm telling you today for the very last time. If you don't go to the notary tomorrow, we'll come and drive you there and if you don't sign and hand over the house voluntarily, your whole family, just as they are now, standing here, will go to Dachau." Then we brothers and sisters said: "Father, go and sell the house, life up here in Obersalzberg isn't worth anything anymore". Then he went and signed the papers. Tragic, tragic and then the Tuesday came when he had to say farewell to Obersalzberg. Very painful for us when you consider that, for example, in the house on my sexton, the father of the farmer Emmerer, three, four centuries of one family have lived. The deceased have put themselves on the agenda with their rightful claim. No, one simply can't do this to us, but there was nothing to do about it. Hitler's mistress Eva Braun was housed in the rebuilt and extended Berghof and its outbuildings. She and her relationship with Hitler were a state secret. The public was not allowed any knowledge of her existence. This policy of keeping her out of public view worked perfectly. Eva Braun was an amateur film maker. She captured on film everyday life of the inner circle living at the Berghof. Occasionally she had herself filmed in some scenes with Hitler. Not until after the war were some photographs printed from Eva Brauns films. They appeared without commentary, alongside NS propaganda pictures. Those seeing these photos must have gained the misleading impression that the easy-going, jovial lifestyle enjoyed by Hitler's trusted friends, his servants, aides and secretaries, was known to the public. But not even the official visitors to the Berghof knew anything about Hitler's mistress. Eva Braun was forbidden to show herself during state visits and at appointments with ordinary party and state officials. Only the most important functionaires, such as SS-Führer Heinrich Himmler, Security Service leader Reinhard Heydrich, Martin Bormann, Joseph Goebbels, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop or Albert Speer knew Eva Braun and she was allowed to show herself when they were present. Whenever Hitler set off on his daily walk he met no one unexpectedly. He moved within a hermetically sealed off security zone, usually accompanied wherever he went by Martin Bormann, by his aides and secretaries. Their job was to take down Hitler's monologues at the afternoon gatherings in the especially built teahouse near the Berghof. This half- finished film material, which a camera team had been commissioned to shoot for the NSDAP, was found in the Federal archives. The village of Obersalzberg has been demolished. The spontaneous Hitler tourism of the early years no longer exists after the off-limits area is set up. The only people allowed in are those who have an appointment. The visits of Hitler Youth or BDM (League of German Girls) delegations have been transformed into strictly staged rituals. Marching up to the assigned spot, lining up before Hitler, singing a few songs, marching off. Afterwards in the Berghof Hitler would return to official duties. This is where the military campaigns against Poland, France and the Soviet Union were planned. For the outside world the Berghof was used above all, as a backdrop for state visits, as, for example, when the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini came to visit. "The discussions between the two heads of state were held in the spirit of close friendship and unwavering military alliance between our two peoples and their leaders. The outcome was total agreement about the present position which has been achieved through the overwhelming victories of the Axis powers and about the further war strategy of our two nations in the political as well as military domain. The resolute determination of Germany, Italy and their allies to secure final victory with all the instruments of power at their disposal was expressed yet again." Hansl Brandner had a small photo laboratory at Rappold's, that was a carpenter's workshop, and he had set up everything very nicely and was a really pleasent young man. He had 13 brothers and sisters, or 12, 12 or 13 siblings. It was a very poor family from around Berchtesgaden, who also had had to give up their house. And then he had wanted to have, 25,000 Marks as compensation. At that time we were 21, had a lots of debts, and then they wanted to give him a mere 1,500 Marks and that wasn't enough for him. Then he wrote a letter to Hitler and he gave him the letter personally in the street, as they were driving down it, that's when he gave Hitler the letter. And the others said that Hitler had said: "This man needs help". And then they came in the night and took him away. And the sisters, all of them signed and they got him out of the concentration camp. And Dr. Baumann was heavely involved as well. He was the one who arranged everything. "Herr Reichsleiter Bormann, please accept our apologies if we turn to you you today with a big request on my sister's wedding day..." – that's me! "...the father who has signed this letter
and the brothers and sisters of Johann Brandner, a Salzberg photographer who has been interned for more than two years in Dachau, would like to humbly ask for his release." This is what they did when I married. "We solemny promise to do all in our power to help our son and brother turn into an acceptable German citizen. Heil Hitler." He had already changed. He hardly had any teeth left and hardly dared open his mouth to say anything. He said, "The walls have ears". He didn't dare say anything then. He did say something, that they had hit him really hard. Do you know what "droschen" [German word for hitting] means? Yes, he didn't say a great deal, because he was always afraid someone could be listening in. I was in the house and said, "You can talk freely, no one one is listening. This door is locked, this door is locked. No one will hear you." But he hardly dared to say anything. And then he had to report every day, I don't know for how long. Early in the morning at 9, that's when the first bombers came over the Kehlstein. Then the Hermann Göring anti-aircraft batteries opened up at Rossfeld and the smoke screen people didn't manage to get the smoke screen started. Normally, the whole of Obersalzberg would get covered in smoke, so that the enemy wouldn't have anywhere to aim at. It was a wonderful sunny morning. Then the first planes driopped their bombs in the Oberau because they were being fired at, so that they wouldn't be hit by the flak – that's what i guess. And then roughly 20 minutes later the second attack came, with a huge number of bombers, and they flattened Obersalzberg. And that was terrible, that was really bad, you could hear the droning of the planes through the mountains, the echoing, it sounded dreadful. People thought the end of the world had come. Yes and then before the Americans arrived the district administrator gave everyone three days time to take what they wanted, so we went plundering and brought down food and other stuff that we found. In the bunkers there were tons of sugar, flour and cigars in boxes, in crates, covered in tin foil, and cuttery and God knows what people took, bed linen and pieces of furniture and everything. Then the SS set fire to the Berghof. The SS were still there, there were some of them up there still. And then they set fire to the Platterhof and the Berghof. And there were flames up there and I said to my father "that is the best thing I've ever seen, that Hitler's house is also burning, just as our house was burned down." There was pent-up hatred, obviously. My father and I stood outside in the garden and I said: "Look father, now they're getting a taste of their own medicine". But he wasn't angry. It wasn't as if he didn't feel hatred, but here in Oberau we felt happy again. He was simply happy that everything was now over. Yes, that was the way it was.
