The lair of the beast
I AM DRIVING through the beautiful Bavarian countryside of Germany, passing charming villages that look like illustrations from a children’s storybook. I stop for coffee and pastries in a little bakery, walk around the village square, peek inside the whitewashed church of St. Michael, decorated with pastel pink burning hearts. I take photos of an impossibly high village maypole. I am headed to what was once Adolf Hitler’s mountaintop retreat, the Eagle’s Nest.
The keystone at the entrance tunnel is carved “1938”, the year the Eagle’s Nest was completed, a gift to Hitler for his 50th birthday. I ride in an elevator to the house at the apex of the mountain. The elevator walls are lined top to bottom with bright brass and mirrors, freakish as a funhouse ride, designed to quash Hitler’s claustrophobia.
I walk through the house looking at a massive fireplace carved from red Italian marble, a birthday gift from Hitler’s vile henchman, Benito Mussolini. I look inside the conference room, upholstered chairs circling a huge table. Evil sat here.
I look through the windows at the breathtaking view. This house is literally perched on the very top. The cadaverous Goebbels, the grossly obese Goring, Himmler the architect of death, all reveled on this mountaintop while millions died.
Eva Braun spent most of her time here, her sister held her wedding reception here. Was Hitler’s consort oblivious to the atrocities he was unleashing on the world? Or was she in denial? Perhaps she knew, but turned a blind eye to what was going on around her.
As I look out the window at the splendid, sweeping view, I see a huge, dark, menacing spider dangling just outside the glass.
How fitting.