Original subtitles

(orchestral music)

He made it his home.

His retreat, his sanctuary.

The Obersalzberg was an ordinary Bavarian mountain

until Adolf Hitler discovered it in 1923.

Up on top, 700 kilometers from Berlin,

the Nazi leader spent a quarter of his reign,

surrounded by his most faithful lieutenants.

And his mistress, Eva Braun.

At the center of the ultra-secure compound

stood his immense house, the Berghof.

And above that, perched on a rocky peak at 1,800 meters,

the famous Eagle's Nest dominated the region,

symbolizing their thirst for grandeur.

Here, overlooking a breathtakingly beautiful landscape,

were conceived the darkest ideas of humanity.

(dramatic music)

But on the site, despite the bombings

and the will to make the past disappear,

there are some remnants.

This is in the right place to be this.

Through field studies, survivor's stories,

and computer-generated imagery,

we will discover how a quiet little mountain

was transformed into a gigantic military-political complex.

70 years after the end of the war,

what are the Obersalzberg's trees hiding?

What remains of the network of tunnels,

and the sprawling bunker system dug inside the mountain?

How does history live on

in every corner of Adolf Hitler's Alpine refuge?

(dramatic music)

Bavaria, Germany, in the early 1920s.

In a country decimated by war, and in economic collapse,

a new extreme right-wing party, the NSDAP,

is growing in Munich.

The National Socialist German Worker's Party,

symbolized by a black swastika

on a red and white background.

It's commonly referred to as the Nazi Party.

Its leader is about 30 years old.

His name, Adolf Hitler.

Anti-Semitic and anti-communist, this great orator

and former German Army corporal

is skilled at using simple language

and persuasive arguments.

He claims to want to restore the country's greatness

and criss-crosses Bavaria building his propaganda machine.

In the spring of 1923, he goes to Berchtesgaden,

a small village in southern Bavaria, for the first time.

It is a small, quiet, mountain community.

The young Adolf Hitler comes to meet

the anti-Semitic writer, Dietrich Eckart,

one of his most fervent supporters,

who will also become his friend.

He registers in the Moritz guesthouse

under the pseudonym Mr. Wolf.

This pretty inn, highly regarded by Bavarian nobility,

is located on a small mountain

which climbs to 1,000 meters, the Obersalzberg.

In front of it stands the Untersberg,

a large massif that runs along the border

between Austria and Germany.

It all began on the morning of April 29, 1923,

when Hitler woke up and looked out that window,

and as he said, fell in love with the landscape there,

and in particular the Untersberg.

This 1923 spring morning

will forever change the destiny of the Obersalzberg.

For it was here that Adolf Hitler returned to stay

a year later.

Before which he was imprisoned for nine months

for attempting to take power in Bavaria by force.

In his cell, he began to write his book, Mein Kampf,

and decided when he was free to go back to nature

on the Obersalzberg to complete his work.

During his stay in prison,

Dietrich Eckart died from his alcohol and morphine excesses.

Hitler finished the second volume of his book,

dedicating it to his author friend who had given him

his ferocious hatred of the Jewish people.

"And I want also to reckon among them that man

"who as one of the best, by words and by thoughts,

"and finally by deeds, dedicated his life

"to the awakening of his, of our nation,

"Dietrich Eckart."

Dietrich Eckart is one of the most underestimated

individuals in Hitler's life.

He really shaped Hitler as a person,

he was absolutely vital in Hitler's early political career.

This may be part of Nazi mythology,

but Eckart was alleged to have said on his deathbed,

"Hitler will dance, but it is I who played the tune."

The first evidence the Nazi leader

left in the Obersalzberg region

dates back to the death of Dietrich Eckart.

It can be found in the basement

of the Berchtesgaden Anzeiger, the local newspaper,

where the archives are kept.

(speaking foreign language)

The first notice of Dietrich Eckart's death

on December 26th in Berchtesgaden

is here in the Berchtesgaden Anzeiger from December 29th.

The first notice was written by his friends.

And a few pages after, there's a second death notice,

with a swastika.

The swastika is backwards, perhaps because of the type

at the printers.

It's quite interesting to see that there is a death notice

from his friends and a death notice from the Party.

It shows that there was already

a political party at the time.

Which only grew from there.

Beginning in 1924, Adolf Hitler's steady rise

gradually led to irreversible changes

on the peaceful little Bavarian mountain.

Geoff Walden is one of the foremost experts

of the Obersalzberg.

Passionate about the Second World War,

this former American soldier spent years

stationed in Germany.

He has dedicated a great deal of time to his research.

He has published several books

on evidence of the Third Reich in the region.

In recent years, Geoff has scoured the area

to find remains from the period.

So he knows every inch of the mountain.

In order to carry out his investigation,

he has used the original plans

and thousands of archival photographs

collected throughout Europe.

So he knows precisely where the buildings

occupied by the Nazis once stood,

and what remains of them today.

On the mountainside, he found the remains of the Kampfhaus,

the first chalet Adolf Hitler stayed at in the early 1920s.

When he was released from prison, he came back

to the Obersalzberg, he had visited before.

He came back here to stay and used this quiet area

as a writer's retreat.

There were a few trees in the woods here

but not as many as there are now, to block the view.

There was a little wood cabin here.

The stones are the remaining foundation of that cabin.

And he used that as a writer's retreat

to finish his book, Mein Kampf.

During the Nazi times this house was preserved

as a sort of shrine to Hitler,

to Hitler and his book, Mein Kampf.

And, the visitors who came to the Obersalzberg,

this was one of the special sites that they came to visit.

In 1928 Hitler decided to rent

the Haus Wachenfeld, a small house

located a few hundred meters below the small chalet.

This typically Bavarian building

rented for 100 Marks per month.

Little by little, what was once a hideout

opened its doors to the admirers who flocked to him.

You know, before 1933,

this was Hitler's very private retreat.

He interacted with locals that we know.

Mitzi Reiter, a girlfriend that he had

a serious love interest early on.

A lot of local interactions.

Clearly, in 1933 when he becomes chancellor,

it becomes a place of pilgrimage,

and this is where we see these crowds,

the hundreds, even thousands of people

who've come from all over Germany to walk by his house.

Hitler bought the Wachenfeld house

with the income from Mein Kampf's colossal sales.

Very quickly, overwhelmed by the idolatrous crowds,

and busy in his role as the chancellor of the Reich,

he decided to enlarge it, and heighten its security.

Between 1935 and 37, the construction work

took place in three main phases.

First, a botanical garden and a garage

were added to the Wachenfeld house.

In 1936, during the largest expansion phase,

the small wooden house was swallowed up

by a huge adjoining building.

A deck was created above the garage.

The last phase extended the left wing

and created another one on the right side of the house.

In 1937 the Wachenfeld house

gave way to an enormous building,

now called the Berghof.

Its 30 rooms house Hitler's apartments, his photographer,

his mistress Eva Braun, and all the staff.

The centerpiece of the house was the central living room

and panoramic bay window.

Made up of 90 small windows, it was seven meters long

and four meters high.

28 square meters of glass.

A real show of technical skill that offered Hitler's guests

a breathtaking view of the Untersberg.

Hitler once said he designed the Berghof around a window.

Hitler would bring political leaders there

and would stand them before the window,

and essentially say, this is my power, this is my realm.

Bombed at the end of the war by the English

and then by the Americans,

the buildings were entirely destroyed

by the Bavarians themselves

to prevent the Obersalzberg

from turning into a Nazi pilgrimage site.

So today there is very little evidence

of Adolf Hitler's famous Berghof.

The main thing that can be seen on the Berghof site today

is the retaining wall that was behind the house.

This was not part of the house,

and the house was not attached to this wall.

It was just a large, concrete wall

that was put here to hold the hillside

from moving forward into the back of the house.

Visitors would arrive at the driveway.

They would come up the grand staircase.

The SS honor guard would be lined up here.

And then they would enter through one of these

three archways into the Berghof proper.

And it's thought that this piece of stone here

is the base of one of these two pillars

that formed the main entrance to the Berghof.

I have taken a tape measure here,

and I've done a lot of measuring,

and this is in the right place to be this.

Just right about up there.

Hitler's bedroom was right up there.

The famous terrace was on top of the garage itself.

So it would have been right up there.

Just above the Berghof,

the Zum Tuerken Hotel was transformed into a barracks

for Hitler's bodyguards.

Above that lived Martin Bormann,

the one who oversaw everything.

Bormann ran Hitler's property.

Totally devoted the the Fuehrer,

he was the feared master of the Obersalzberg.

Today, a luxury hotel stands where his house once was.

However, the building's original plans

are kept at Munich's Architecture Museum.

(speaking foreign language)

This old Obersalzberg house

was a children's sanitarium.

What's interesting is that from the outside

it looks typically local,

simply to keep the vacation-home feel.

But inside, we know that the house

was furnished quite luxuriously.

In the Munich archives,

invoices prove that he possessed

the most expensive collections of minerals,

and that everything was very luxurious.

Martin Bormann knew that for Adolf Hitler

to continue to come to his Berghof,

his inner circle must accompany him.

And his loyal followers must be near him,

to ponder the Reich's future.

He had to either refurbish or build homes

and barracks to house soldiers.

Under Bormann's oversight,

60,000 workers were sent to the Obersalzberg,

and the mountain became a gigantic construction site.

(speaking foreign language)

The Obersalzberg illustrates the way

Bormann put himself at the forefront.

By appropriating this personal project of Hitler's,

he seized his chance to exercise his power.

He forced all the Obersalzberg's residents

to give up their property.

When he did not actually force them out,

he threatened to do it.

He ran a brutal construction site.

Omnipresent, bad-tempered.

The architects complained about a man who,

without a clue about what he was doing,

put an enormous amount of pressure on everyone.

Part of Martin Bormann's success

was that he always was two thoughts ahead of Hitler.

He was always anticipating what Hitler may want

or could need.

And before Hitler even needed to ask the question,

Martin Bormann had already delivered the answer.

In just a few years,

the Obersalzberg changed its appearance,

and became the second Nazi decision-making center

after Berlin.

To ensure the safety of the chancellor,

access to the area was forbidden.

Eventually the entire Obersalzberg was a closed area.

Hitler was protected by two or three

rings of security where he lived.

There was an inner ring right around the Berghof area itself

and all these rings were fenced off

with fencing just like this here,

this is part of the original fencing.

The secure area possessed by the Nazis

covered 10 square kilometers.

Guardposts were placed around the three security perimeters.

And 35 new buildings were built.

Among them was a house for Hermann Goering,

commander in chief of the Luftwaffe.

And another for Albert Speer,

the Nazi Party's chief architect.

And even a theater.

Here we are in the ruins of a large theater hall,

the so-called Theaterhalle.

It was built in 1937 to provide a venue for entertainment

for all the workers who were stationed here

on the Obersalzberg.

This was mainly a place

where they could come and watch cinema films.

All the workers were allowed to come in,

the seats were free.

This was the audience area.

The projection room was at the front of the theater hall,

and so the films would have been projected

on a screen on the back wall.

We're actually standing below the floor area,

the main area of the theater hall.

It was supported on these concrete pillars,

so we're in what would have been the basement then.

(speaking foreign language)

As we can see from the plans,

the theater was 35 meters wide,

and probably 65 or 70 meters long.

That's big, yes.

The building was designed for 2,000 workers.

Sometimes there were also propaganda events.

Clearly we can see the Reich eagle everywhere.

They used it to try to influence the workers.

On the mountain, it was highly important

that Nazi dignitaries and their staff

could live self-sufficiently.

And to feed them, Martin Bormann had big plans.

Beneath the secured area, he transformed a building

into a huge farm called the Gutshof.

We're standing on what is now a golf course

but in the 1930s and 40s it was just a meadow

of the Gutshof farm.

The main buildings we see in the valley

with the silver-tin roof.

That's part of the Gutshof farm, it was built

as an experimental farm or model farm.

Martin Bormann was a farmer at heart,

and farming continued to be one of his hobbies,

so he had to have a farm here.

(speaking foreign language)

On the Obersalzberg,

the farms were destroyed, the farmers were driven out,

and everything was replaced by the Bormann pilot farm.

But this farm was absolutely not productive.

It did not work at all.

Simply because they did not have

the local peasant's knowledge of the land.

This is a plan of the greenhouse,

which was built near the Berghof.

It was 119 meters long.

And 26 meters wide.

And was shaped like a crescent.

They tried to grow vegetables and flowers for the Berghof,

but it was not enough.

The Nazis were never able to grow enough food for everyone.

But with his passion for grandeur,

coupled with his adulation of the Fuehrer,

Martin Bormann wanted to do more.

He wanted to offer Adolf Hitler

a physical metaphor of his domination.

In 1937, he decided to build a house

on the peak of the Kehlstein mountain,

at 1,824 meters.

Built by 3,000 men in less than 13 months,

it would later be christened the Eagle's Nest.

From the Obersalzberg the climb begins

with a 6-1/2 kilometer mountain road,

topped with five tunnels leading to a plateau.

From there a long tunnel carved into the rock

leads to an elevator shaft.

There were two elevator cars.

The top one was for the Nazi elite,

and the one underneath was for equipment.

They climbed the last 120 meters

in approximately 40 seconds,

arriving in the center of the house.

Today, the elevator and its bronze car have been preserved.

And the Eagle's Nest, untouched by the bombing of 1945,

has been transformed into a high-altitude restaurant.

This mythical place became the symbol

of Hitler's domination during the Second World War.

However, the place played virtually no role

during the war.

In fact, Hitler was acrophobic,

he really didn't like the heights.

He went up there literally a handful of times.

Ultimately, this house would be used

mostly by Hitler's most private companion,

his mistress, Eva Braun.

In one of his amateur videos,

we recognize the marriage celebration between her sister,

Gretl Braun, and Hermann Fegelein, an SS general.

On this 1944 summer day, he was already responsible

for tens of thousands of deaths.

When Hitler came to spend a few days in his Berghof,

time seemed to stop.

The Fuehrer wanted to take advantage of his mountain

while reflecting on his political and military strategies.

Albert Feiber works at the Contemporary History Institute

in Munich.

As part of his research he has studied

how life at the Obersalzberg was organized,

and has researched Hitler's habits

while he stayed at his home.

(speaking foreign language)

His days were actually quite boring.

As we know, Hitler lived at night.

He got up very late, often skipping breakfast and lunch.

Generally, he held his first meetings

at the end of the morning.

After a late lunch, Hitler and all his Berghof entourage

walked to the tea house on Mount Mooslahnerkopf,

on the road we're on now.

During these ritual walks, he sought a privileged confidant.

The path was very narrow.

There was only room for two people, side by side.

And they discussed highly political subjects.

From the Berghof they walked an hour

down the valley to reach the tea room.

Bombed in 1945,

and finally destroyed in 2006 by the local authorities,

the tea room has almost disappeared,

and its ruins have been overrun by the forest.

(speaking foreign language)

Here we are on the last remains

of the Mooslahnerkopf tea room.

Once people got here, they drank tea, coffee,

ate cakes, talked innocently.

We don't know if it is true, but it is said

that Hitler fell asleep once or twice

during his own monologues.

After an hour and a half,

everyone drove back to the Berghof.

After dinner, guests gathered in the Great Hall

to listen to Hitler's long monologues.

Sometimes they would watch a movie, and the evening went on

until four o'clock in the morning.

(speaking foreign language)

Hitler was a big fan of American movies,

which were officially censored in Germany.

But they were his favorite films,

and he was a big Mickey Mouse fan, too.

Life at the Berghof is the antithesis

of life in Berlin.

Here the fierce dictator,

ready to exterminate millions of people,

gives way to a simple man, his love of nature,

and Alpine folklore.

The decoration is typically Bavarian,

and even the smallest object

must show the chancellor's glory.

French soldiers brought back to Paris many pieces

as trophies when they came to liberate the mountain

in May 1945.

(speaking foreign language)

This is a tablecloth

with Adolf Hitler's initials, which was made in Munich,

and bears a floral motif.

Quite suitable for life in the mountains in Berchtesgaden.

There are several other examples

of matching tablecloths and napkins.

There are several napkins of questionable color,

and always with Adolf Hitler's initials.

And here the swastika.

Here we have a knife

which comes from Hitler's personal silverware set.

Which is a bit more elaborate,

with a sort of Greek motif on the handle.

And then the German eagle, and Adolf Hitler's initials.

It really becomes a personality cult to Adolf Hitler.

Since really all the elements found at the Berghof,

including the Kehlstein house, are almost always

systematically marked AH, the initials of Adolf Hitler.

Hitler used this object.

It was on his personal desk.

Photos show it at the Berghof,

where we can see it on his desk.

In it there is his letterhead, envelopes, and calling cards

with his name, Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi emblem.

There is still a card from his secretary,

reminding him about Bormann's mother's birthday.

The French soldier's trophies from the Berghof

show a sumptuous lifestyle, in high contrast

to that of the Berchtesgaden residents.

(speaking foreign language)

The residents of the city of Berchtesgaden

call the residents of the Obersalzberg,

Adolf and his cronies, "those other."

There are waiters in white gloves,

everything is very methodical,

orchestrated with a high level of protocol

for the visits of the heads of state.

Since the Berghof was a place of power, we found objects

given by dignitaries to show their friendship.

As is the case for this box.

It was a gift given to Hitler for his 50th birthday,

on April 20th 1939.

It is a gold and silver box, it shows the functions

of the chancellor as the nation's savior.

With time, the Obersalzberg

became the Reich's second capital.

Between the trinkets and the men standing at attention,

politics continued to operate.

It's quite surprising,

but the mountain had become a real second seat of power

that functioned completely outside of normal bureaucracy.

When Heinrich Himmler was there, in this quiet,

green environment, they did not talk about the weather

but about the deportation of the Hungarian Jews,

or how many people

were going to be murdered in the gas chambers.

And all of this was decided orally.

So, mixed with their daily, ordinary conversations,

weighty decisions were made.

A symbol of the chancellor's omnipotence,

the Obersalzberg and the Berghof became key places

in the diplomatic relations

between Germany and the rest of the world.

The press often reported on world leaders and ambassadors

who made official visits to Hitler

in his vast Bavarian residence.

Hitler would orchestrate these arrivals.

Sometimes he would come all the way down to the steps,

I think when the Prince of Wales was there,

he actually met him at the base of the stairs

and then accompanied him up.

When Chamberlain came,

Hitler walked halfway down the stairs.

On other occasions he stood at the top of the stairs

and just waited for the person to come up to it.

He designed his own protocol, his own theatrics around it.

From the writing of Mein Kampf

to the final decisions of the war,

it was in this breathtaking setting

that Hitler hatched the key strategies of the Third Reich.

The planning for, in the summer of 1939,

all of that planning took place there.

Across from the Berghof you have the Untersberg,

and in the Untersberg is said to reside

the soul of Frederick Barbarossa,

who one day would rise to conquest and power.

And Hitler named the invasion of Russia

Operation Barbarossa.

This really was the place

of quote-unquote inspiration for him.

He famously said,

this is where I spent my most pleasant times,

and conceived my great ideas.

When it comes to ideas, the list is long.

It was at the Berghof that he ordered the boycott

of all Jewish businesses in 1933.

Where he prepared the Munich Agreement in 1938.

And ordered the handicapped euthanasia program in 1941.

And finally it is where Hitler ordered the deportation

of half a million Hungarian Jews in 1944.

Behind these gruesome scenes was Eva Braun,

Adolf Hitler's mistress.

She started living there secretly in 1936

because Hitler wanted to show the world

that he had no private life.

But when he had no guests, or when he was absent,

Eva Braun took over the premises,

and filmed her leisurely daily life.

For Eva Braun, the Berghof

is a kind of refuge.

She is recognized there, she's the boss.

And Hitler always says to her, go to the mountain.

Take your friends, your sisters.

Robert Brandner is an antiques dealer

in Berchtesgaden.

He specializes in a niche market, the Berghof's relics.

Numerous objects have passed through his hands,

and among them, letters written by Eva Braun

to her best friend, Herta Schneider.

Herta received her letters or cards,

and I had a bundle of them, saying,

how are you, my little Herta?

Do you want to spend a few days in the mountains?

I'm a little lonely up here.

I would enjoy your company,

my sisters are coming next week, et cetera.

Upon her death,

Eva Braun left many belongings to Herta Schneider,

and Robert Brandner was later in charge of selling them.

I had suitcases, clothes, nightgowns.

Tights, gloves, really everything.

Some furniture, too.

This dressing table comes from Eva Braun's room

and stayed at the Berghof until the end.

At the end of the war, a resident of Berchtesgaden

took it from the Berghof.

One could also say that she looted it.

It turns out it was probably fair game,

since Martin Bormann himself

had stolen it in the first place.

During the war,

Eva Braun continued to spend time with her close entourage.

In 1944, the marriage between her sister

and SS Fegelein was the occasion

for a final festive moment.

For at that time, Germany was undergoing

the Allied forces' incessant attacks.

And in 1943 when bombs fell on Munich,

which was just a 20-minute flight away,

the Obersalzberg trembled.

Hitler and his faithful secretary, Martin Bormann,

knew that their mountain was vulnerable.

Despite all the precautions taken

to build an ultra-secure area,

an air strike could easily destroy their Bavarian retreat.

To protect them, Martin Bormann launched

an enormous new project.

The construction of a network of bunkers and tunnels

buried deep inside the mountain.

This was one of the emergency exits

to Hitler's own personal tunnel.

This is the only access to Hitler's tunnel system today

because all the other entrances have either been buried

or blocked off.

Back there in Hitler's own tunnel system

there were some 17 rooms if you count the toilets.

There were rooms for Hitler, for his mistress Eva Braun,

for his personal physician Doctor Morell,

for his personal servants, and his closest adjutants,

and also some staff rooms for the SS guards.

The Berghof's bunker was first built in 1943.

Its construction took place in three distinct phases.

Section A was completed around Christmas 1943.

It went from a staircase located just behind the Berghof

and extended to the basement

of the former Hotel zum Tuerken,

where Hitler's personal bodyguard stayed.

It included the personal apartments

of the Fuehrer and his entourage.

Section B, built in '44, extended westward.

It contained all of the operational facilities.

A telecommunications room, archives, a kitchen,

a control room for the electricity and air conditioning.

Section C, whose construction could not be completed,

included a tunnel that went even deeper into the mountain

to escape potential attackers.

The Fuehrer's bunker was equipped

with several emergency exits, but was also connected

to the bunker of Martin Bormann by a tunnel.

Between the two, a shelter designed to accommodate 400 men

was built under the SS barracks.

Goering and Speer's houses had their own burrows.

In total, in less than two years,

a sprawling, six-kilometer, 22,000 square meter network

was dug inside the Obersalzberg.

This rare footage dates back to 2004.

It comes from one of the rare times the Bavarian government

authorized a complete exploration

of the Obersalzberg's bunkers.

It was led by a German archeologist

accompanied by a camera operator.

Here's another pass.

Here, we are under Martin Bormann's house.

Although Allied forces went through these tunnels

just after the war, there are still traces

of the German occupation during the war years.

Here, they called it the casino.

Which served as a living room and dining room.

It's some ointment.

We're heading for the emergency exit.

We are again above the air ducts.

Here we can see the old armored door

which is on the ground.

To avoid neo-Nazi pilgrimages,

the Obersalzberg's bunkers are now closed off.

But one area a few hundred meters long is still accessible.

In this second seat of power,

the bunkers were to be used not only

as anti-aircraft shelters but also as the government's

underground headquarters.

That's why they were intended to be so immense

right from the start.

Axel Drecoll is the site's custodian.

The Contemporary History Institute of Munich

has entrusted him

with maintaining the Obersalzberg's memory.

Here we are in a room

originally reserved for the operations.

Hence the appearance of a large hall.

Otherwise many rooms were supposed to accommodate

the families of senior Party officials for long stays.

They were therefore habitable.

Of course it was sparse, not luxurious.

But the small rooms could serve as bedrooms,

offices, control rooms.

The idea was to be able to continue the war from here.

Inside, everything was designed

so that the occupants could remain underground

for as long as possible

while remaining isolated from the surface.

In the 1940s, Goebbels called for total war,

and the logical consequence was

that as the ideological delirium no longer worked

above ground, they buried themselves underground.

That's what the bunker shows.

The sprawling network has two levels.

One filled with habitable shelters.

The second, located just below, held the electricity,

heat, water, and especially

the very sophisticated ventilation system.

At a rate of 3,000 cubic meters per hour,

the air was drawn in, filtered, dehumidified,

and then vented into the bunker's corridors.

A slight extra pressure then allowed the stale air

to be pushed outside.

This system made it possible both to renew the air

and most importantly to prevent any contaminated air

from infiltrating the network.

In the event of a chemical attack or a bombing,

leak-proof valves were used to block chemicals and fumes

from entering the tunnels.

The underground complex could thus operate

in a closed circuit for several hours.

This gigantic construction mobilized the Reich's

best engineers, making it almost indestructible.

The tunnels were constructed from several materials.

First, solid concrete that touched the rock.

Then, a first brick wall to drain water leaks.

Then a later of plastic insulation.

And finally a second wall made of a double row of bricks

covered with plaster.

In 1945, as the war was ending,

the network was still under construction.

The Nazi leaders' goal was to create another,

even deeper level.

Behind there is still an elevator shaft.

The shaft is finished, but there was never an elevator.

Imagine lifts that could carry trucks.

In fact, it should have been a real underground city.

Here we have a bunker entrance or exit.

It could be reached by this staircase.

And at the bottom of the stairs,

access was monitored by soldiers armed with machine guns.

On the surface,

the Luftwaffe added a few lines of classic defense.

A battalion of anti-aircraft artillery.

A fog machine.

In addition to camouflaging the main buildings.

In the spring of 1945,

when the German Army suffered heavy losses on all fronts,

and the country was being massively bombed

by Allied aviation,

the Royal Air Force decide to strike the Alpine retreat

of Adolf Hitler as a symbolic gesture.

On April 28th 1945

a shower of bombs fell on the Obersalzberg.

It was practically the only thing in Germany

that hadn't been bombed, but it was I think,

a strategic decision to say, we're moving the war

into this particular location.

At the time

there was an early warning system.

When the 15 warning sounded you had 15 minutes

to get to safety, so you had to go home.

With the 10 and five warnings you had to go

to the nearest bunker.

On the day of the Obersalzberg bombing,

I did not want to go down in a bunker.

Because I wanted to go home.

But I was half an hour's walk from my house.

On the road, a plane shot me.

Imagine, I was on the road, and a plane shot me.

A little kid.

On the surface, all buildings were affected.

But the bunker had worked.

The bombing caused only six deaths.

In the region, the residents of Berchtesgaden

were traumatized, and would soon discover

the atrocities committed by the Nazis.

I was convinced that the Fuehrer

was the biggest and the strongest.

I did not understand why my parents did not agree.

At the end of the war I was 13 years old.

You must understand that for me, a kid,

losing the war was a catastrophe, a humiliation.

We were the ideal country, the Nazis were the best, pure,

and without flaws.

I did not know anything at the time.

As the locals finally ventured

into the mountains,

French troops from General Leclerc's Second Armored Division

moved towards the quintessential symbol of Nazi power.

At the same time, US forces were also arriving.

Even today, two versions of history

don't agree on who arrived at the Berghof first.

Berlin had fallen a few days before.

Apparently the ground troops didn't know

that Hitler had committed suicide.

They think maybe he's up there, so it's a race to victory.

The Americans arrived

in the city of Berchtesgaden on May 4th.

They believe they have reached their goal, Hitler's house.

They are close, but actually so far away.

However, not knowing the area, they stop in the city center.

The Second Armored Division

arrives on their heels, two or three hours after,

according to the railways records.

The French knew more about the area,

because an officer who had been taken prisoner

and had traveled through there in 1940,

took them to the Berghof.

So the French were the first to arrive on the Obersalzberg.

A few hours earlier, the last SS soldiers

on the site had set fire to the buildings.

So the French soldiers happened upon a smoking Berghof.

Alain Raphael is one of the first soldiers

to have entered Adolf Hitler's lair.

At that time he was 24.

We traveled up to it

on an extremely damaged road.

We parked our tanks under the terrace.

I can still see myself entering this room

that overlooked the Alps.

I had seen photos and movies of Hitler parading around,

and I found myself in this room.

I enjoyed it.

Under the stairs we broke down a door,

and discovered a small room.

And in there there were items

that were as kitschy as you could imagine.

Everyone helped themselves to as much as they could.

But as I lost my tank afterwards,

I wasn't able to keep anything.

French soldiers found the huge tunnel network

built under the Berghof.

To mark their passage, three of them engraved their initials

as well as the Cross of Lorraine,

the symbol of the Free French forces.

Very quickly the GIs caught up with the French

on the mountain,

also finding the smoking remains of the Berghof.

After having lived under the Nazi stranglehold,

the village was about to live with the American Army

for 45 years.

The last remains of the Berghof

were completely destroyed in 1952.

And until 1995 US soldiers went to the Obersalzberg

to relax in their free time.

Once Germany reunited, Bavaria tried to make the mountain

attractive to tourists again.

The area has been reforested.

And the last remains of the structures built by the Nazis

were destroyed to make room for new buildings

like this immense luxury hotel.

Today the Obersalzberg has become peaceful again.

But what little remains from the war time

offers precious evidence of the period.

In their own way, the remains recount

the 20 years of Nazi occupation

which saw Adolf Hitler and his followers

take over a small Bavarian mountain

to satisfy their thirst for power.

(dramatic music)