The Nazi leaders' retreat is happy to welcome a new wave of visitors - tourists.
The unmarked path wanders from a small mountain road into a pine forest, and a pile of rubble covered with moss.
The remains of a wall, broken metal pipes and crumbling steps leading nowhere have an air of neglect and melancholy, as if trees crowding around them were trying to hide dark memories.
This is close to the truth: the ruins are of the inner sanctum of an alpine fortress where Adolf Hitler unleashed the dogs of war on Europe.
It was here in the Berghof, a Bavarian country house guarded by 2,000 SS commandos, that he argued with Chamberlain over Sudetenland, and ordered blitzkriegs against Poland and Czechoslovakia.
"Those were the best times of my life," he said later. "My great plans were forged there."
Like the Bavarian royal family and Viennese high society before him, Hitler had been drawn to the hamlet of Obersalzberg on Mount Kehlstein by the bracing air and spectacular vistas of 6,000 ft peaks above emerald green lakes.
From a gigantic window in his Berghof, he gazed across a valley to the Untersberg massif, a sheer wall of mountains that looms large in Teutonic myths.
According to one, the emperor Charlemagne lies sleeping beneath it with an army of heroes, awaiting a clarion call by ravens to rise and save the German people.
Hitler was deeply affected by the legend and remarked to Albert Speer, his architect and armaments minister: "Look at the Untersberg over there. It is not just by chance that I have my seat across from it."
On the morning of April 25, 1945, the skies above his mountain lair darkened and reverberated with a vengeful roar when 359 RAF Lancasters rained more than 1,000 tons of bombs on the residences of high-ranking Nazi Party of?cials, military barracks and security police headquarters.
Of?cial records said mist and snow on the ground made it dif?cult to identify targets, but the bombing "appeared to be accurate and effective".
For almost a decade Kehlstein had been the Holy Mountain of the Third Reich, drawing thousands of pilgrims to pay homage to their Führer. In less than an hour, the RAF transformed it into a Mountain of Doom.
Hitler was in Berlin, where he killed himself ?ve days later.
In 1952, army sappers blew up what was left of his Berghof. The former Nazi compound became a US army recreation centre, and it was only when the Americans left in 1995 that the Bavarian state government devised plans to bring tourists back to an area of outstanding natural beauty.
It was felt that the past had to be acknowledged, so the ruins of a VIP guest house were transformed into a "documentation centre" that chronicles wartime events at Obersalzberg and Nazi atrocities in Europe.
Curators had hoped for 30,000 visitors a year, and found the centre being inundated by four times as many. The next step came last March with the opening of a ?ve-star InterContinental hotel that boasts views of mountain summits from each of its 138 bedrooms.
What guests won't see are the villas next door once occupied by Martin Bormann and Hermann Goering, of which no trace remains, and the SS barracks, which became a sports ?eld.
But one building to survive the war is a star attraction - the Eagle's Nest. Perched on the summit of Kehlstein at more than 6,000 ft, it was intended for VIP receptions and presented to Hitler on his 50th birthday in 1939.
An impressive feat of civil engineering, it is reached by a switchback road from Obersalzberg that comes close to defying gravity, and then a brass-lined elevator that climbs more than 400 ft through the heart of the mountain.
Hitler rarely visited it because he suffered from claustrophobia and vertigo, but his lover, Eva Braun, often came up for tea. It was in a large room like a medieval banqueting hall, with marble ?oors beneath a ceiling of heavy oak beams, that she celebrated the wedding of her sister to an SS of?cer in 1944.
Now it is a popular restaurant serving beer and burgers to tourists who stroll outside in summer to sunbathe and admire panoramas of the Bavarian and Austrian alps.
There is no evidence of the building's Nazi past, but late in the season, when the crowds have gone and autumn mists swirl around the rocky promontory, it is easy to conjure images of a familiar ?gure in a military coat surveying the horizons of his short-lived Reich.
There are more graphic images in the documentation centre. Many of its visitors are German, from a generation that learned little of the war at school, and a dozen guest books are ?lled with comments of appreciation.
But it can be an emotional experience. Linda Pfnur, director of the centre, says: "We have tears. The history is so awful."
The most haunting part of the exhibition is below ground, a warren of tunnels and chambers that was a political and military command headquarters.
In a cavern that served as Martin Bormann's of?ce, a massive iron safe lies with a bazooka hole in its back. On a corridor wall, an unknown soldier of the French 2nd Armoured Division has etched the cross of Lorraine.
At the end of the corridor, a dank lift shaft disappears into the bowels of a mountain, like a scene from Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum.
Another building restored after the war offers a more homely welcome. The Hotel zum Türken in Berchtesgaden was appropriated by the SS when its owner was persuaded to sell after a three-week "taster" of life in Dachau.
It is now run by Frau Ingrid Scharfenberg, his granddaughter, as a family guest house for a regular clientele who enjoy the peace of the mountains and a cosy ambience reminiscent of the 1950s. She can't say for certain, but she thinks her guests have included the RAF crew who bombed the place in 1945.
In the old days, guests at the Hotel zum Türken included Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria, Johannes Brahms and the pianist Clara Schumann.
A few years later, the playwright Arthur Schnitzler visited Sigmund Freud in a nearby pension, where they discussed Gustav Mahler's marital woes.
It is hardly surprising they were drawn to this alpine retreat, barely 15 miles from the social whirl of Salzburg. At the foot of Kehlstein, the village of Berchtesgaden is back on the map as a base for roaming a pristine wilderness of lakes and mountains as magical as any in the Alps.
The most popular seasons are spring and summer, when walkers take to paths through forests and meadows carpeted with alpine roses and edelweiss.
I prefer winter, when the high valleys are silent under a deep mantle of snow and mists wreathe around icy peaks, like scenes from a fairy tale.
Berchtesgaden boasts a small ski resort, but with snowshoes and a mountain guide such as Thomas Huber, an old climbing pal of Chris Bonnington, it takes only minutes to leave the piste behind and enter a world of deep snow barely touched by man or beast.
Occasionally there are tracks of deer and hare, as well as a few back-country skiers seeking virgin slopes, but from a ridge overlooking the Konigstal, the Valley of Kings, the only sign of life was the distant speck of a golden eagle hovering above the crags.
All else was white and still, and our steps crunched through a frozen masterpiece of nature.
The jewel in this alpine crown is Königsee, a narrow stretch of emerald water enclosed by abrupt mountains that is the stuff of myths and romantic paintings.
In winter mists and low cloud, the landscape is a jumble of icy monsters dominated by the jagged pro?le of the Watzmann, at almost 9,000 ft the second highest peak in Germany. It takes its name - Cruel Man - from the legend of an oppressive king who was turned to stone by the gods, and it continues to live up to its reputation. Its fearsome east wall overlooking the lake attracts climbers, and so far 96 of them have died on it.
I admired it from a safe distance in one of the battery-powered launches that ply the lake to the small peninsula of St Bartholoma, where the red onion domes of a 17th-century church are mirrored in calm waters.
In the old days the boatmen used to ?re guns to demonstrate an echo in a particular part of the lake; now they play trumpet solos. The dogs of war are long gone from Berchtesgaden, and today the haunting notes of the Brautmelodie, a song for a bride, echo in peaceful mountains.
Bavarian flags have replaced the swastikas, but otherwise the great baronial hall is much as it was in the 1930s. The difference is outside, where a Hard Rock Café trades under a slogan in golden letters that would make Nazis turn in their graves: "Love All, Serve All".
Berchtesgaden basics
Getting there
A week's b & b in Berchtesgaden with ?ights from London to Munich and car hire costs £489, a week's half board from £669, through Dertour (0870 403 5442, www.dertour.co.uk). Prices on request for ?ight only from Stansted to Salzburg (15 miles from Berchtesgaden).
Where to stay
Berchtesgaden is the liveliest centre in the area. In Obersalzberg, the new InterContinental Hotel (0049 8652 976460, www.intercontinental.com) has rooms from £100 per person, and the Hotel zum Türken (0049 8652 2428, www.hotel-zum-tuerken.com) does b & b from £23 pp.
When to go
There are summer and winter attractions, but the Eagle's Nest is open from May to October only. Guided tours for £28 from Eagle's Nest Tours (0049 8652 64971, www.eagles-nest-tours.com).
From The Telegraph
The unmarked path wanders from a small mountain road into a pine forest, and a pile of rubble covered with moss.
The remains of a wall, broken metal pipes and crumbling steps leading nowhere have an air of neglect and melancholy, as if trees crowding around them were trying to hide dark memories.
This is close to the truth: the ruins are of the inner sanctum of an alpine fortress where Adolf Hitler unleashed the dogs of war on Europe.
It was here in the Berghof, a Bavarian country house guarded by 2,000 SS commandos, that he argued with Chamberlain over Sudetenland, and ordered blitzkriegs against Poland and Czechoslovakia.
"Those were the best times of my life," he said later. "My great plans were forged there."
Like the Bavarian royal family and Viennese high society before him, Hitler had been drawn to the hamlet of Obersalzberg on Mount Kehlstein by the bracing air and spectacular vistas of 6,000 ft peaks above emerald green lakes.
From a gigantic window in his Berghof, he gazed across a valley to the Untersberg massif, a sheer wall of mountains that looms large in Teutonic myths.
According to one, the emperor Charlemagne lies sleeping beneath it with an army of heroes, awaiting a clarion call by ravens to rise and save the German people.
Hitler was deeply affected by the legend and remarked to Albert Speer, his architect and armaments minister: "Look at the Untersberg over there. It is not just by chance that I have my seat across from it."
On the morning of April 25, 1945, the skies above his mountain lair darkened and reverberated with a vengeful roar when 359 RAF Lancasters rained more than 1,000 tons of bombs on the residences of high-ranking Nazi Party of?cials, military barracks and security police headquarters.
Of?cial records said mist and snow on the ground made it dif?cult to identify targets, but the bombing "appeared to be accurate and effective".
For almost a decade Kehlstein had been the Holy Mountain of the Third Reich, drawing thousands of pilgrims to pay homage to their Führer. In less than an hour, the RAF transformed it into a Mountain of Doom.
Hitler was in Berlin, where he killed himself ?ve days later.
In 1952, army sappers blew up what was left of his Berghof. The former Nazi compound became a US army recreation centre, and it was only when the Americans left in 1995 that the Bavarian state government devised plans to bring tourists back to an area of outstanding natural beauty.
It was felt that the past had to be acknowledged, so the ruins of a VIP guest house were transformed into a "documentation centre" that chronicles wartime events at Obersalzberg and Nazi atrocities in Europe.
Curators had hoped for 30,000 visitors a year, and found the centre being inundated by four times as many. The next step came last March with the opening of a ?ve-star InterContinental hotel that boasts views of mountain summits from each of its 138 bedrooms.
What guests won't see are the villas next door once occupied by Martin Bormann and Hermann Goering, of which no trace remains, and the SS barracks, which became a sports ?eld.
But one building to survive the war is a star attraction - the Eagle's Nest. Perched on the summit of Kehlstein at more than 6,000 ft, it was intended for VIP receptions and presented to Hitler on his 50th birthday in 1939.
An impressive feat of civil engineering, it is reached by a switchback road from Obersalzberg that comes close to defying gravity, and then a brass-lined elevator that climbs more than 400 ft through the heart of the mountain.
Hitler rarely visited it because he suffered from claustrophobia and vertigo, but his lover, Eva Braun, often came up for tea. It was in a large room like a medieval banqueting hall, with marble ?oors beneath a ceiling of heavy oak beams, that she celebrated the wedding of her sister to an SS of?cer in 1944.
Now it is a popular restaurant serving beer and burgers to tourists who stroll outside in summer to sunbathe and admire panoramas of the Bavarian and Austrian alps.
There is no evidence of the building's Nazi past, but late in the season, when the crowds have gone and autumn mists swirl around the rocky promontory, it is easy to conjure images of a familiar ?gure in a military coat surveying the horizons of his short-lived Reich.
There are more graphic images in the documentation centre. Many of its visitors are German, from a generation that learned little of the war at school, and a dozen guest books are ?lled with comments of appreciation.
But it can be an emotional experience. Linda Pfnur, director of the centre, says: "We have tears. The history is so awful."
The most haunting part of the exhibition is below ground, a warren of tunnels and chambers that was a political and military command headquarters.
In a cavern that served as Martin Bormann's of?ce, a massive iron safe lies with a bazooka hole in its back. On a corridor wall, an unknown soldier of the French 2nd Armoured Division has etched the cross of Lorraine.
At the end of the corridor, a dank lift shaft disappears into the bowels of a mountain, like a scene from Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum.
Another building restored after the war offers a more homely welcome. The Hotel zum Türken in Berchtesgaden was appropriated by the SS when its owner was persuaded to sell after a three-week "taster" of life in Dachau.
It is now run by Frau Ingrid Scharfenberg, his granddaughter, as a family guest house for a regular clientele who enjoy the peace of the mountains and a cosy ambience reminiscent of the 1950s. She can't say for certain, but she thinks her guests have included the RAF crew who bombed the place in 1945.
In the old days, guests at the Hotel zum Türken included Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria, Johannes Brahms and the pianist Clara Schumann.
A few years later, the playwright Arthur Schnitzler visited Sigmund Freud in a nearby pension, where they discussed Gustav Mahler's marital woes.
It is hardly surprising they were drawn to this alpine retreat, barely 15 miles from the social whirl of Salzburg. At the foot of Kehlstein, the village of Berchtesgaden is back on the map as a base for roaming a pristine wilderness of lakes and mountains as magical as any in the Alps.
The most popular seasons are spring and summer, when walkers take to paths through forests and meadows carpeted with alpine roses and edelweiss.
I prefer winter, when the high valleys are silent under a deep mantle of snow and mists wreathe around icy peaks, like scenes from a fairy tale.
Berchtesgaden boasts a small ski resort, but with snowshoes and a mountain guide such as Thomas Huber, an old climbing pal of Chris Bonnington, it takes only minutes to leave the piste behind and enter a world of deep snow barely touched by man or beast.
Occasionally there are tracks of deer and hare, as well as a few back-country skiers seeking virgin slopes, but from a ridge overlooking the Konigstal, the Valley of Kings, the only sign of life was the distant speck of a golden eagle hovering above the crags.
All else was white and still, and our steps crunched through a frozen masterpiece of nature.
The jewel in this alpine crown is Königsee, a narrow stretch of emerald water enclosed by abrupt mountains that is the stuff of myths and romantic paintings.
In winter mists and low cloud, the landscape is a jumble of icy monsters dominated by the jagged pro?le of the Watzmann, at almost 9,000 ft the second highest peak in Germany. It takes its name - Cruel Man - from the legend of an oppressive king who was turned to stone by the gods, and it continues to live up to its reputation. Its fearsome east wall overlooking the lake attracts climbers, and so far 96 of them have died on it.
I admired it from a safe distance in one of the battery-powered launches that ply the lake to the small peninsula of St Bartholoma, where the red onion domes of a 17th-century church are mirrored in calm waters.
In the old days the boatmen used to ?re guns to demonstrate an echo in a particular part of the lake; now they play trumpet solos. The dogs of war are long gone from Berchtesgaden, and today the haunting notes of the Brautmelodie, a song for a bride, echo in peaceful mountains.
Bavarian flags have replaced the swastikas, but otherwise the great baronial hall is much as it was in the 1930s. The difference is outside, where a Hard Rock Café trades under a slogan in golden letters that would make Nazis turn in their graves: "Love All, Serve All".
Berchtesgaden basics
Getting there
A week's b & b in Berchtesgaden with ?ights from London to Munich and car hire costs £489, a week's half board from £669, through Dertour (0870 403 5442, www.dertour.co.uk). Prices on request for ?ight only from Stansted to Salzburg (15 miles from Berchtesgaden).
Where to stay
Berchtesgaden is the liveliest centre in the area. In Obersalzberg, the new InterContinental Hotel (0049 8652 976460, www.intercontinental.com) has rooms from £100 per person, and the Hotel zum Türken (0049 8652 2428, www.hotel-zum-tuerken.com) does b & b from £23 pp.
When to go
There are summer and winter attractions, but the Eagle's Nest is open from May to October only. Guided tours for £28 from Eagle's Nest Tours (0049 8652 64971, www.eagles-nest-tours.com).
From The Telegraph
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