Berchtesgaden Trip: The Eagle’s Nest

Finally on Saturday morning we got up to see the Eagle’s nest.  Our cabin was located on the same mountain just a little ways away so it was our closest day trip.  We parked in the parking lot and took the big tour bus up the windy hills to the entrance of a long tunnel and from deep inside the mountain took an elevator up to the Eagle’s Nest.

History as written by Rick Steves… “Early in his career as a wannabe tyrant, Adolf Hitler was inspired by this dramatic corner of Bavaria, so steeped in legend and close to the soul of the German people.  This place, partly Austrian and partly Bavarian, held a special appeal to the Austrian-German Hitler.  In the 1920’s, just out of prison, he checked into an alpine hotel here to finish up work on his memoir and Nazi primer, Mein Kampf.  Because it was here that he claimed to be inspired and laid out his vision, some call Obersalzberg (‘above Salzberg’) the “cradle of the Third Reich”.

In 1930’s, as the German Fuhrer, Hitler chose this place for his mountain retreat.  His handlers crafted Hitler’s image here – surrounded by nature, gently receiving alpine flowers from adoring little children, lounging around with farmers in lederhosen… no modern arms industry, no big-time industrialists, no ugly extermination camps.  In reality, rather than an alpine chalet, it was a huge compound of 80 buildings – closed to the public after 1936 – where the major decisions leading up to WWII were hatched.  It was here that Hitler hosted world leaders wowing them with the aesthetics and engineering of his mountain palace, the adoration of his people… and National Socialism.

While many refer to the entire area as “Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest” the name actually belongs only to the mountaintop chalet, given to the Fuhrer for his 50th birthday in 1939.  While a fortune was spent to build this perch, Hitler made only 14 official visits.  Today the chalet is basically a restaurant with a scenic terrace. “

We met our friends, the Flake Family, at the top for a couple pictures…

 

You can see the Konigsee in the picture below… the lake we enjoyed the previous day…

  

We spent an hour an a half or so on the top just walking around, enjoying the view, singing our family favorite Coldplay song, ‘Paradise’, doing Sasha poses and climbing up the rocks.  Beautiful area.  Glad we waited for a clear morning.