HITLER IN HIS ALPINE HOME

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 212, 8 September 1936, Page 10

HITLER IN HIS ALPINE HOME

Revealing Study of the Man

IT BE that I am dreaming?’'

asks Ignatius Phayre in the "Windsor. Magazine” by way of introduction to a most illuminating description of a recent visit to the German Chancellor’s holiday homo.

So this earth-shaking Ilitlor could laugh heartily! Could this—l wondered —be the same sombre statesman whom I had seen in Berlin, receiving the envoys of forty nations in the flowerdecked Hall of Audience in the Presidential Palace? Not a shadow of n smile could then be seen! Colourless phrases, au air of weariness upon the speaker; signs of strain about the eyes and mouth. But afar off in this tranquil chalet, amid forest-clad steeps and humble hamlets, these hectic scenes are forgotten. Haus V achenfeld, by the way, is full of presents from adoring partisans far and near. I was laughingly told of a queer story a propos. One Otto Mueller, a "Greek” Nazi, who had a prosperous coiffure, salon in the shadow of the classic parthenon, was greatly troubled over all the skits and cartoons in which that unruly "browloek” of Herr Hitler’s 1 had so long figured tfo that loyal man wrote to his Uncrowned King, at the some time enclosing stern professional instructions to Hitler’s own barber in the opulent Kaiscrhof Hotel of Berlin.

The sole foreign guest in the party looks around a well-spread table at the faces of world-famous statesmen and ministers whose names conjure uo the word "formidable!” Yet all is laughter here to-night. Outside, and far below us, I can see the faint lights of Mozart’s own mediaeval city of Salzburg twinkling vaguely. Hitler himself was full of a humble war comrade he had that morning received—a poor carpenter who had been one of President Roosevelt’s out-o’-works, and was long on public relief over there. But he had read much about "Mad Adolf’s” rise to power and world fame. The two humble soldiers, it seems, had been gassed on the same day in 1918, on the Yprcs front. So the great man, still a ’‘bohemian” and leaning always to tho Yolkgemein-i schaft, or "Companionship of the People,” at once wrote to his fellowvictim. That poor emigrant had his passage, and that of his family, paid over to Bremenhaven.

That erring artist at home was thereby admonished so to deal with that droopy tuft of hair that it would ho down demurely in future, and thus rob foreign mockers of a point which they were prone to exaggerate. Herr Hueiler not only received a grateful acknowledgment from Colonel Brueckner, the Leader’s personal adjutant, but a few months later he was also sent a new set of photographs, to demonstrate tho "improvement” -which his patriotic counsel had wrought iu his far-off hero’s personal appearance.

Ho never seeks the society of persons of rank and wealth. "In my hungry Vienna days,” the "Squire” remarked to me, as I peered through the big terrace telescope which he swung to and fro as ho talked, "I once read a slogan over a cook-shop door which I have never forgotten—Dein Volk ist alles; Du bist niclits ("Thy People is Everything; you are Nothing!)” Very few letters reach this highland home from Berlin. They arrive in sackfuls at the Chancellery; and they vary from threats by the "Antis” exiled abroad to offers of money (and of marriage!) from fervid women and girls all over the Reich—and even in foreign lands, from England to the United States.

So well do the lakes and, peaks of this iovely frontier agree with Hitler, that Jong ago, when he was struggling up the political road (is not his prisonwiitten "testament” called Mein Kampf, or "My Battle?” And over throe million copies of that book have been sold!) —he bought for a song a crazy log cabin on the site of the present Ilaus Wachenfeld. Later, when unexpected royalties came pouring in from his publisher Hitler bought a little more land; and by degrees that timber shack began to grow into a villa.

Here at Berchtesgaden the "Jekyll-and-Hyde” personality of Hitler is almost incredibly manifest. By no stretch of the imagination can I picture the Reichfuhrer of the Reichstag, or of the Hal! of Audience, as one and the same individual with the carefree and laughing "Squire of Wnchenfeld” acting as host amid his blossoming cherry orchards.

.This, in turn, has become a handsome chalet, with toy-carving villagos and tiny hamlets forming part of tho small estate. The "Squire of Wachenfold” has been his own architect throughout, adding verandahs and garages, as well as wings, for the accommodation of daily and week-end guests.

Then our host went on to outline his children’s party for the morrow, with his own trusty air pilot taking the little ones for joy flights in batches of a dozen or so. Tho bigger boys wore to ply bows and arrow’s at straw targets under the tuition of grim General Goring himself.

Below the orchard lawns a spacious landing ground is laid ' out for the Leader’s own “stable" of fast planes. Ho can take off from the Teniplehof Field iu roaring Berlin, and in three or four hours alight in this alpine fairyland of pine woods and lakelets, with simple native folks still in their traditional costume.

He had made the sad discovery that marriage tie is only a slipknot.