I had really been looking forward to seeing the mountains at close quarters. I came from Munich myself, but I’d never before had an opportunity to go up into the mountains. But when I woke next morning and made haste to draw back the curtains and admire the famous landscape, I was disappointed to see nothing but a dense wall of mist and clouds, no trace of any mountain peaks. Sad to say, I discovered that these natural phenomena were among the principal features of the area, at least most of the time we were staying there.
But for the moment I was kept busy finding my way round the interior of the Berghof. Surely there must be breakfast somewhere? No one had told me where or how you got it here. So I stole down the stairs up which I had climbed so heedlessly the previous evening. Halfway down I found the door of another room, and behind it I heard the voice of General Schmundt, the chief Wehrmacht adjutant.[29] The last bend in the stairs brought me to a forecourt on the ground floor. On the left there was a door with glass panes in it, on the right a side door out into the courtyard. The glazed door led to a farmhouse-style living room with a big green tiled stove. I shut it again on seeing nothing that looked like breakfast. There was no one in sight, and I felt a little uncomfortable. I didn’t know if I might not suddenly land in Hitler’s study or somewhere. The forecourt narrowed and became a wide corridor with light falling in through the windows. I turned the corner and was in the big entrance hall again. On my left I noticed a very large semi-circular double door. Judging by its position, it must lead into the famous Great Hall that I knew from picture postcards. The broad corridor led past the flight of marble steps and straight to another double door. Here I finally heard voices. No one had remembered that this was my first time here, so I would have to find the way to the dining room on my own. Well, at last I’d succeeded.
The long room lay to the left of the front entrance. It occupied a large part of the left wing that had been built on when the whole Berghof was extended to make it an official residence. The broad side of the room had windows going almost up to the ceiling, with a fine view of the Salzburger Land. The long table surrounded by armchairs stood in the middle of the room. It could seat about twenty-four people. At its far end the room broadened out into a semi-circular bay. Here stood another big table, a round one, laid for breakfast. The only decoration of the dining room was the beautiful grain of the arolla pine of which the wall panelling, the furniture, even the wooden chandeliers over the table and the wall lamps were made. The wall opposite the windows contained a built-in sideboard with glass doors. Some valuable vases added a touch of colour to the golden yellow of the wood.
We were a small party at breakfast. My colleague Fräulein Schroeder was already in her place, and told me a little severely that she had finished breakfast. Apparently I’d got up late. But no one had woken me and told me the customs of the house. The other people at breakfast were General Schmundt, Captain von Puttkamer[30] the naval adjutant, and Walter Frentz[31] the photo-reporter from Führer headquarters. No one else was present. There was tea, coffee and cocoa, and if you wanted it fruit juice. A choice of different breads such as crispbread, wholemeal bread and ordinary black bread was available, but white bread was only for people with delicate stomachs. Everyone had a little piece of butter weighing ten grams, already put out on the plates. And there was jam. Since you mustn’t smoke in the Führer’s rooms, the company left the breakfast table very quickly to go and enjoy their usual breakfast cigar or cigarette. After that I went for a walk with Fräulein Schroeder and Otto Günsche, to get to know the Berghof and my new surroundings.
We began by climbing the broad flight of steps to the first floor. I wanted to know where the Führer lived. A very broad corridor was almost like a great hall itself– not only because of the big windows, but especially on account of the valuable pictures on the walls. Precious old masters, fine sculptures, exotic vases and presents from foreign statesmen made you feel you were in a museum. It was all beautiful, but strange and impersonal. If it hadn’t been for the thick carpets that muted our footsteps we would have gone on tiptoe of our own accord. All was perfectly quiet, for Hitler was still asleep.
The first door to the left of the stairs led to a small two-roomed apartment with a bathroom where the valet on duty and the chauffeur had their quarters, and opposite, on the right-hand side of the corridor, Eva Braun’s maids had a little ironing room. Outside the next door, looking as if they were cast in bronze, sat two black Scotch terriers, one on the right and one on the left. The mistress of the house’s doorkeepers. They sat motionless in their place until she woke and Stasi and Negus could say good morning to her. The next room was Hitler’s bedroom. There was a large bathroom between their two rooms, with no other way into it from outside. This took up the whole length of the corridor. The double door at the far end led to Hitler’s study. I did not go in on that occasion, but tiptoed past.
Opposite Eva Braun’s room a few steps […] led to the passage from the original Haus Wachenfeld to the great Berghof building. At the end of this passage we went downstairs again and entered the living room that I had already seen briefly that morning.
There was no one about apart from a few orderlies who had some task or other to carry out. The whole house might have been uninhabited. I learned that I was now in what had once been Hitler’s living room. It was well but not grandly furnished and no different from any ordinary middle-class sitting room. In fact it was the only room that had a certain feeling of comfort about it. The green tiled stove with the bench running round it looked an inviting place to sit. There was a rectangular table by the broad window, with a wooden bench at the corner. The tablecloth was made of the same brightly patterned rustic linen as the curtains and the cushion covers on the bench. On the other side of the window stood a large bookcase. Here again there were no startling books. An encyclopaedia in many volumes, some classics of world literature which didn’t look as if they had been read, the comic verse of Wilhelm Busch, a series of travel writings, and of course Mein Kampf bound in leather. Anyone could borrow a book from this library; none of them were banned. To the right, opposite the window, a heavy velvet curtain separated the living room from the Great Hall. I just took a fleeting glance in and got the same impression as I’d already had from the coloured picture postcards: it was very big and very grand, monumental, like everything the Führer built, but cold, in spite of the thick carpets, the magnificent tapestries and all the precious things adorning the walls and the furnishings. Even later, when I spent many evenings sitting beside the great hearth of the hall by candlelight, that feeling never entirely left me. I think the room was too large and the people in it too small to fill it entirely.
But the winter garden you had to cross to reach the terrace from the living room was very much to my taste. Best of all, there were a great many flowers in it, as well as pale, deep, softly upholstered armchairs and sofas with small round tables. The whole room was at most three by three metres in size, and two of the walls were all glass.
The best thing about the whole Berghof, however, was the terrace. It was a large, square space paved with slabs of Solnhofer stone, and it had a stone balustrade. When the mist lifted you could see Salzburg castle in the distance on the gentle rise of its hill, with the sun shining on it, and down below on the other side lay Berchtesgaden surrounded by the peaks of the Watzmann, the Hoher Göll and the Steinernes Meer. Directly opposite rose the Untersberg. In clear weather you could see the cross on top of it with the naked eye. The terrace ran all round the winter garden up to the living-room window, and then turned into a small paved courtyard going all along the back of the building. The rising rock of the mountainside made a natural wall for it.
29
Rudolf Schmundt,
30
Karl-Jesko von Puttkamer,
31
Walter Frentz,