The story of this place
From 1933 the Nazi leadership turned Obersalzberg, a mountain hamlet above Berchtesgaden, into a second seat of power around Hitler's mountain home, the Berghof. Whole villages were expropriated and a closed compound built for Bormann, Göring and the SS, with a vast network of bunkers tunnelled deep into the mountain as a last redoubt. Here Hitler received Chamberlain in 1938 and made key decisions away from Berlin. Allied bombers wrecked the complex in April 1945, and the ruins of the Berghof were later demolished to prevent it becoming a shrine. The Documentation Centre, opened in 1999 on the site, confronts the myth-making around Hitler and lets visitors descend into the surviving bunker tunnels.