Loathing in the halls of `Hitler's lair'

To stand in Hitler's huge ballroom and theatre complex in the Nazi leadership's secret mountain hideaway in July, 1945, was one of the most extraordinary experiences of Jack Monteith's life.
The memories of the bizarre house-call almost 60 years ago are still vivid for the 82-year-old Mr Monteith, former Northland manager of stock and station agents Allied Farmers.
The visit to "Hitler's lair" happened during an eight-day, 2012-kilomtre roller-coaster of a trip through Austria, Germany and Italy in an army truck just after the war ended in Europe.
Thousands of New Zealand troops were marking time in Trieste, waiting to be shipped home. Quickly the challenge for army leaders had changed from keeping troops alive to keeping them amused until embarkation.
Jack Monteith, then a 22-year-old Warrant Officer, went into Germany with other WOs and sergeants, taking advantage of the freedom of movement that came when the Nazi empire collapsed and the war ended.
The group requisitioned a 3.5-tonne truck, loaded it with rations and sleeping bags and set out on July 11, 1945.
Mountains, forests, waterfalls, villages and well-tended fields in Austria and Germany entranced the New Zealanders, despite abandoned German army vehicles lining the roads. At one point they came face to face with the enemy _ having flagged down a car to ask directions and finding it full of German officers.
"A paratroop officer - possibly only a couple of months previously one of our most bitter enemies - gave us route instructions in the most perfect English," he said.
At Hitler's mountain hideaway, they found the village of Berchtesgaden undamaged but further up the mountain the houses of Hitler, Goering, and other Nazi leaders, the SS barracks and other buildings plastered by precision, high-level bombing.
Mr Monteith stood in Hitler's ballroom and recalled seeing photos of the Fuhrer standing on the same spot, looking out the bay window at the mountains. Reactions to the grandeur were derisory on the surface, he says.
"We joked in typical Kiwi fashion but there was some deep thinking going on. It seemed disgusting that the Nazi leadership should have set themselves up in such luxury when the troops were enduring terrible conditions," says Mr Monteith.
Hermann Goering's enormous bath set the troops off on a spiel of rude jokes about the obese leader's possible activities in the bath.
The great autobahn (motorway) that ran through Germany, years ahead of its time, impressed the troops mightily. At one stage they were stopped for speeding by an American military policeman, who made the mistake of asking (despite a sign saying "New Zealand" on the truck) if they spoke English. "The answer doesn't bear repeating," says Mr Monteith.
Their route took them to Munich - "a bombed-out mess" - and then back down to Milan, where they visited the petrol station where Fascist leader Mussolini and his mistress had been hung on display after being killed. They continued through the exquisite lakes area of northern Italy and back to Trieste.
Mr Monteith says the whole group was very grateful for the experience, because none of them could ever have afforded such a trip in peacetime, but the only place the battle-weary soldiers really wanted to see was New Zealand.