In May 1945, American soldiers climbed a mountain road in Bavaria expecting a fortress. What they found was Hitler’s Berghof already burning, set alight by the SS guards who were supposed to protect it.
That was only the beginning. Over the next seven years the Berghof was bombed by the RAF, looted by two armies, stripped piece by piece by tens of thousands of soldiers, blown up with explosives on the anniversary of Hitler’s suicide, and finally buried under soil and planted over with trees.
This documentary tells the full story of what happened to Hitler’s Berghof and the Obersalzberg complex after World War 2: what the Allies found inside the ruins and the tunnel network beneath them, why the wine cellar broke the discipline of two armies, why the Bavarian government chose demolition over preservation in 1952, why the explosives failed against the foundations, and why the attempt to erase the site completely backfired, forcing Germany to reverse its policy decades later.
Today almost nothing is visible. Around 180,000 people a year visit the documentation centre built into the original bunkers, and most of them never realise the Berghof itself stood only a few dozen metres away.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The house that was already burning
1:20 The mountain they built: inside the Obersalzberg
3:30 The RAF raid, 25 April 1945
4:45 The Americans and the French arrive
5:40 The wine cellar and the looting
6:45 The documents, the tunnels and the interrogations
7:45 Seven years of souvenir hunters
9:00 A shrine begins to form
9:50 30 April 1952: the demolition
11:00 Burying what survived
11:55 Why the erasure failed
12:55 What remains on the mountain today
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This video is an educational history documentary. It is presented for historical, informational and remembrance purposes only. It does not glorify, endorse or promote National Socialism, its leaders, its ideology or any of its crimes. All events described are historically documented.
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