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Nearly fourteen million Germans voted for Hitler in March 1932, making the Nazis the largest party in the Reichstag. Do you honestly believe they had a clue what was best for them? No, of course not. Nobody did. All the people care about is a regular pay packet, cigarettes, and beer.’
‘I expect that’s why twenty thousand East German refugees were crossing into the Federal Republic every month – at least until you imposed your so-called special regime with its restricted zone and your protective strip. They were in search of better beer and cigarettes and perhaps the chance to complain a little without fear of the consequences.’ ‘Who was it said that none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who believe they are free?’ ‘It was Goethe. And you misquote him. He said that none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.’
My own belief is that the people are lazy and prefer to leave the business of government to the government. However, it’s important that the people don’t place too great a burden on those in charge of things.
The fact is that you agreeing to kill Anne French is a condition of remaining alive yourself.’
estimated once that the Gestapo had employed less than fifty thousand officers to keep an eye on eighty million Germans, but from what I’d read and heard about the GDR, the Stasi employed at least twice that number – to say nothing of their civilian informants or spylets who, rumour had it, amounted to one in ten of the population – to keep an eye on just seventeen million Germans.
this will only lend credibility to our own propaganda that the federal government is still Nazi. Which it is. After all, it was Adenauer who denounced the entire denazification process and who brought in an amnesty law for Nazi war criminals. We’re just helping people see what is already there.’
Most of the men in the Stasi had been trained by the Gestapo and were experts at finding people; giving them the slip would be like trying to evade a pack of English tracker hounds.
we used to joke that there were more Frenchmen killed by bad motorists during the fall of France in the summer of 1940 – as the French desperately tried to escape the German advance – than there were by the Wehrmacht.
‘Anything that you can find out about that bastard while you’re in Obersalzberg, I want to know about it.’ ‘I take it you mean the Leader’s deputy chief of staff.’ ‘He’s a megalomaniac,’ said Heydrich.
‘It was only something Goethe once said. That everything is hard before it’s easy.’
It was 750 kilometres from Berlin to Berchtesgaden,
Hitler, Stalin, Ulbricht, Khrushchev – they were all the same, the same monsters from the neurological abyss we call our own subconscious.
Nuremberg – effectively, the capital of Nazism in Germany
Julius Streicher, the political leader of Franconia,
Streicher was Germany’s leading Jew-baiter and the publisher of Der Stürmer, a magazine so crudely anti-Semitic that even a majority of Nazis shunned it. I
I wasn’t sure why Adolf Hitler had chosen a cosy little tourist town as his unofficial capital – which is what it was – but he’d been visiting Berchtesgaden since 1923, and in the summer it was impossible to open a German newspaper without seeing several pictures of our avuncular Leader with local children. He was always seen hand in hand with children – the more German-looking, the better – almost as if someone (Goebbels, probably) had decided being seen with them might make him seem like less of a belligerent monster.
‘The Kehlstein is the northernmost peak on the Göll massif.
‘Just to let you know, smoking is not permitted anywhere on the Kehlstein,’ said Högl. ‘The Leader has a very keen nose for tobacco and doesn’t care for it in the least.’
The lift doors parted to reveal a mirrored cage with a leather bench seat and its own RSD operator. We stepped inside and the brass doors closed again. ‘Powered by two engines,’ said Högl. ‘One electric. And a backup diesel engine that was taken from a U-boat.’
I smiled nervously as the lift cage rose up the shaft. It was the smoothest lift ride I’d ever taken, although I had the strong idea that it should have been travelling in the opposite direction.
log the size of the Sudetenland was smoking in the grate
‘First of all, do you know who I am?’ ‘You’re Martin Bormann.’ ‘And what do you know about me?’ ‘From what I’ve been told you’re the Leader’s right-hand man here in the Alps.’ ‘Is that it?’ Bormann uttered a scornful laugh. ‘I thought you were a detective.’ ‘Isn’t that enough? Hitler’s no ordinary leader.’ ‘But it’s not just here, you know. No, I’m his right-hand man in the rest of Germany, too. Anyone else you’ve ever heard of as being a person who’s close to the Leader – Göring, Himmler, Goebbels, Hess – believe me, they don’t amount to shit when I’m around.
The fact is that if any of them wants to see Hitler, they have to come through me. So when I talk, it’s as if the Leader were here now, telling you what the fuck to do. Is that clear?’
Not fat, but a burly middleweight going to seed, with a proper double chin and a nose like a parboiled turnip.
On the whole, the dead don’t mind much who gives them their last manicure.
Your best may be good enough for that Jew Heydrich but you’re working for me now and that’s as good as working for Adolf Hitler. Is that clear?
This is a harmonious community. This is not Berlin. This is not Hamburg. Berchtesgaden and Obersalzberg constitute a peaceful rural idyll in which decent family values and a strong sense of morality prevail. That’s why the Leader has always enjoyed coming here.’
I already hated Martin Bormann as much as I’d hated any Nazi, including Heydrich and Goebbels. There is evil in the best of us, of course; but perhaps just a little bit more in the worst of us.
Berlin isn’t the capital of Germany. Not any longer. No, really, I’m perfectly serious. Berlin is just for showcase diplomacy and propaganda purposes – the big set-piece parades and speeches. This crummy little Bavarian town is the real administrative capital of Germany now. That’s right. Everything is run from Berchtesgaden. Which is why this is also the largest construction site in the country. If you didn’t already know that after seeing the Kehlstein House – which cost millions by the way – then let me underline it for you. There’s more new building being done here in Berchtesgaden and
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This is not the harmonious rural idyll that Martin Bormann has described to you, Gunther. Nor is the Leader popular here, in spite of all those flags and Nazi wall murals. Far from it. The whole of Hitler’s mountain is riddled with disused tunnels and old salt mines. That’s where the mountain gets its name, of course. From the salt. But the local geology provides a very good metaphor for how things are in Obersalzberg and Berchtesgaden. Nothing is what it looks like on the surface. Nothing. And underneath – well, there’s nothing sweet going on here.’
These Obersalzberg Administration workers are all very well paid. In fact, they’re on triple time. And that’s not the only attraction. Construction work in this area has been declared by Bormann to be a reserved occupation. In other words, if you work on Hitler’s mountain, you won’t have to serve in the armed forces. That’s especially attractive right now, given that everyone thinks there’s going to be another war.
Nearly all of the houses and farms you see up on the mountain have been the subject of government compulsory purchase orders. Göring’s house. His adjutant’s house. Bormann’s house. The Türken Inn. Speer’s house. Bormann’s farm. You name it. In 1933 all of the houses on the mountain were in private hands. Today there’s hardly one that isn’t owned by the German government. It’s what you might call real estate fascism and it works like this. Someone in the government now favoured by Hitler or Bormann needs a nice house to be near to the Leader. So Bormann offers to buy such a house from its
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The fact is, the town of Berchtesgaden is full of small houses occupied by local Bavarians who used to own bigger houses on Hitler’s mountain.
And all of those people hate Martin Bormann’s guts.
By 1932, Hitler was rich from the sale of his book,
But none of this will come as a big surprise to Heydrich. It was Bormann who helped Himmler to buy his house. That’s not in Obersalzberg but in Schönau, about fifteen minutes from here. The Schneewinkellehen. The place used to be owned by Sigmund Freud. Figure that one out.
He did ask me to see if there’s any truth in a rumour that Bormann’s being blackmailed by his own brother. I imagine Heydrich wants to know what Albert has on his brother so he can blackmail him as well.’
Gentlemen prefer blondes but blondes don’t know what they prefer until they get a strong sense that they’re not going to get it.
God bless and keep the Leader, that’s what I say.’ I smiled because for once I didn’t add my usual under-the-voice coda to this thought, which was common enough in left-wing Berlin but best not uttered in Berchtesgaden: God bless and keep the Leader, far away from us.
I nodded all the same, hardly wanting to earn her displeasure by laughing in her face, which looked like a wax orange, there was so much paint covering it.
in September, when Chamberlain came to eat Hitler’s shit.
We get to keep half of what we earn on our backs.
in a cocks-out size contest between Martin Bormann and Rudolf Hess, I had no idea which would reveal himself to be in possession of the largest bratwürst.
Meanwhile Rudolf Hess had appeared behind his shoulder and regarded me with the kind of staring blue eyes that must sometimes have made even Hitler a bit nervous. The dark wave of hair on top of his square head was standing so high it looked as if it were concealing a pair of horns; either that or he’d been standing a little too close to the lightning conductor in Frankenstein’s castle laboratory.
It’s only Bavarians that Hitler really trusts.
Hitler hates Berliners. Doesn’t trust them. Thinks they’re all reds, so it’s just as well he’s not going to meet you, Gunther.
Hitler might have been a vegetarian and a teetotaller but it was plain Kannenberg liked his sausage and his beer.
during the Bavarian communist insurrection in 1919. They killed hundreds of people. In Munich and in Berlin.
I think Hitler cares more about little furry animals than he does about people.’
A list of all the fatalities sustained by the local workforce during the last couple of years. Ten workers killed in an avalanche on the Hochkalter. Eight killed when a tunnel collapsed under the Kehlstein. One worker who fell into the lift shaft. Five workers killed by a landslide below the Südwest tunnel. Three truck drivers killed when their vehicles went off the road. One worker stabbed to death by a co-worker at the Ofneralm camp, because he didn’t want to pay off a bet. And this is odd: there’s a P&Z worker listed as dead, cause unknown.’
