Storming the Eagle's Nest by Jim Ring Page A

authorities. They have schools for their children and there is also a Zionist youth movement. Despite the state of emergency life goes on normally, and thanks to the young Zionists cultural life is very well developed. Of course the refugees do not have the right to take jobs. The rich ones live off the money they have succeeded in saving from the Germans and the poor receive assistance from the committee. 17
    Somehow these communities maintained a sense of normality, even happiness, in the face of death. They had been dispatched like the unwanted goods they were into the high Alps to eke out an existence in that epic country, never knowing when a change in the fortunes of war would bring catastrophe.
    There was another warning just as the first of the refugeessettled into Megève in that spring of 1943. Following the extraordinary stand-off in February in nearby Annecy, the Italians had prevented a similar round-up of Jews in Chambéry in the Savoie. Should the French or indeed the Germans gain the upper hand, the refugees would obviously be on their way to Auschwitz. Who could tell what might happen next?
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    Over the nearby border in Switzerland, Alexander Rotenberg in his work camp was in a place of greater safety, but that spring of 1943 Switzerland was once again by no means secure.
    In March 1943, four months after his abrupt departure from Berchtesgaden to save Paulus’s army at Stalingrad, Hitler was to return from Rastenburg to Bavaria. In preparation for his stay in Obersalzberg the Berghof was given a spring clean, the terrace that overlooked the Alps of Berchtesgadener Land was cleared of snow, and the colourful parasols were dusted off. The Führer would be accompanied by his entourage: Generalfeldmarschall Keitel and Generaloberst Jodl were to be joined by the staffs of Göring, Himmler and von Ribbentrop. With patchy snow still on the ground, the Nazi leaders would settle themselves into Obersalzberg, spreading out into the nearby resort of Bad Reichenhall and the city of Salzburg. Here, warming themselves in front of blazing log fires, they would once again plot Switzerland ’s demise.
    Yet first – on their arrival – they discovered that Obersalzberg was beginning to reflect the deteriorating course of the Reich’s war. It was no longer quite the sanctuary they sought. Berchtesgaden , hitherto considered inviolable, was now thought to be increasingly vulnerable to Allied air raids. By the time of Hitler’s return to the Berghof that March of 1943, Reichsleiter Bormann was already drawing up plans for an elaborate bunker system. The underground accommodation included quarters for the Führer’s Alsatian, Blondi. (According to Speer, ‘The dog probably occupied the most important role in Hitler’s private life; he meant more to his master than the Führer’s closest associates… I avoided, as did any reasonably prudent visitor to Hitler, arousing any feelings of friendship in the dog.’) 18
    Equally unsettling were the wounded. The pressure on army hospitals throughout the Reich was now such that the Hotel Platterhof, intended to accommodate dignitaries visiting the Führer at the Berghof, had been converted into a hospital. Irmgard Paul, the girl who, as a three-year-old, had been dandled on Hitler’s knee, was one of the Kindergruppe invited to put on a play that spring for the injured. The children performed
Sleeping Beauty
to great applause, but Irmgard remembered that she ‘could not take my eyes off the young men with their thick, white head bandages, moving along slowly on crutches, arms in slings and legs in casts or missing entire limbs. I felt slightly sick and hoped fervently they would all get well, but wondered what on earth they would do with only one arm, one leg, or no legs.’ 19
    It was in this atmosphere that Hitler’s general staff began to scheme and plan.
    After the calamity at Stalingrad of barely a month