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.
