Berchtesgaden lies snug against Bavaria's southeastern border in the shadow of the Obersalzberg massif. Just a cat's leap from Austria, is what the locals say.

It is an area both hauntingly beautiful and unquestionably haunted. Cow bells jangle in alpine pastures, but this isn't Heidi country. Rather, the landscape is a Wagnerian extravaganza of no less than six formidable mountain ranges. Intimidating peaks and deadly precipices thrust up from forested valleys that cradle serene and gleaming mountain lakes. Even in June, traces of stubborn snow dot the peaks, and the streams that spill down the slopes are still bitterly cold despite the heat of the early summer sun.

The hiking here in the 210-sq.-km Berchtesgaden National Park is said to be some of the best in Germany, the mountaineering some of the most dangerous, particularly on the 2,000-meter rock face of the Watzmann-Ostwand. Fatalities are almost routine. Scores annually, said my guidebook.

In the torchlit beer gardens at night, the locals sing drinking songs to accordion music and thump time on tables with their steins. All very atmospheric. Very Bavarian.

By day business is brisk. Buses disgorge visitors for tours of the historic salt mines and market towns. Tourists soak in natural thermal pools or take boat trips on Germany's highest lake, the Konigsee, which sits, surrounded by cliffs, mirror-smooth and the color of jade at an altitude of 603 meters. In winter they come to ski.

And some people -- not many, but some -- make the journey to Berchtesgaden with flowers or wreaths. They then lay them at various sites in fond memory of Adolf Hitler. Hitler is Berchtesgaden's specter. Hitler and the other Nazi elite such as Hermann Goring, Josef Goebbels and Martin Bormann, made this area their pleasure garden and southern HQ for the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party).

Shadow of the swastika

In a weird way, it is the shadow of the swastika that makes a visit to Berchtesgaden and the Obersalzberg particularly potent. Switzerland has Alps as grand, but when it comes to epic human drama, the Swiss weigh in with cheese fondue, goofy clocks and chocolate. And banks. And well, there must be something else. I'm sure there is. It just doesn't immediately spring to mind.

Hitler first visited in the 1920s, soon after serving six weeks in prison for breach of the peace in Munich. This was to become a pattern (visiting the Obersalzberg and breaching the peace both). He checked into a small pension using the name Herr Wolf, hoping to remain anonymous. Although he was already controversial by that time, his face was still unknown to most of the general public. The man who'd invited him to the pension was also using an alias, and he was also dodging the police who were after him for slandering the then Reich's president.

Dr. Hoffman, as he called himself, was in fact Dr. Dietrich Eckart, a charismatic, hard-drinking, best-selling author and translator of Ibsen. Eckart was also editor of the anti-semitic National Observer, and one of Hitler's greatest sources of inspiration.

The Obersalzberg was another. "For me the Obersalzberg became something quite wonderful," Hitler later recalled. "I completely fell in love with this landscape. Here were the most beautiful times of my life. My great plans have emerged here."

We all now know what those plans were, and what happened to them and the world. Total body count? About 50 million dead, millions more injured, displaced or left under the control of arguably a greater and viler dictator -- Josef Stalin.

But during the time of Hitler's patronage of Obersalzberg and particularly the small town of Berchtesgaden, the image that the region projected was one of peace and rustic idylls. As opposed to world conquest and mass murder.

Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress, was photographed sunbathing, kissing fluffy white bunnies and frolicking with her dogs and a pet fawn. The Fuhrer dispensed with his uniforms and was seen taking gentle strolls to the local tea house, enjoying the views or informally entertaining guests.

Assassination attempts

Hitler survived at least 40 assassination attempts and plots, but nobody dropped a bomb on Berchtesgaden or the Obersalzberg until April 25, 1945. Then, 373 British RAF aircraft did it. In spades. None hit Hitler. He was in Berlin preparing for the suicide he committed five days later. Goering, however, was in Berchtesgaden planning to become the new Fuhrer. Some people just don't know when to quit. He emerged from his bunker to see the alterations to his house and all other structures in the vicinity caused by 1,232 tons of bombs. Total destruction? No, not quite. Most of the buildings were flattened but some were subsequently looted and demolished.

For a real taste of what was, though, tourists can still visit the Eagle's Nest. It is now a beer garden, but that's Bavaria for you. Accessed by a very steep and winding bus ascent (private vehicles are verboten), then through a damp, echoing 300-meter-long tunnel cut into a cliff face, then up by a luxurious brass-clad elevator a further 124 meters, the structure perches precariously on a rock outcrop.

The views are exquisite. Sometimes you can't even see the valleys, just the peaks, because of cloud cover beneath the Eagle's Nest. The Eagle's Nest and that 6.5-km road that snakes up the sheer slopes of Mount Kehlstein were constructed by Bormann and the engineering genius Fritz Todt (with the help of 3,000 workers) as a 50th birthday present for Hitler.

It seems a curious choice of gift for a man who reputedly suffered from vertigo. You can't get much more vertiginous than this place. Hitler used it as little as possible, relying on it mainly to impress visiting dignitaries. Hitler abhorred the idea that, in the event of his defeat, gawkers would wander round the Obersalzburg pointing out places where he'd walked and drunk tea. "Better," he said, "that the whole place be engulfed in a magnificent pyre of flames."

So get going! Ascend the Eagle's Nest. Gawk, wander round and point out where he walked and drank tea. Eat a sausage, down a beer. It'll give his teetotal, vegetarian ghost the shudders!