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In the final days of World War II in the spring of 1945, P-51 Mustangs of the 339th Fighter Group buzz the deserted mountain retreat of Adolf Hitler high in the Bavarian Alps - a compelling limited edition to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of hostilities.
Obersalzberg, a spectacularly picturesque area of southern Germany in the Bavarian Alps, became a focal point for the Allies as World War II was drawing to its close. This mountain village had become a Nazi stronghold after the Third Reich had seized houses, farms, and some 600 acres, and built private residences for Martin Bormann and Hermann Goering, an SS barracks, and erected a 30km fence around the perimeter to deter intrusion. At its centre was the Berghoff, Adolf Hitler's private mountain retreat.
Crowning Bormann's lavish building programme was the house he had built on a rocky spur almost 3000 feet above the Obersalzberg, some 6000 feet above sea level. Reached via a twisting road blasted out of the mountainside, the house was approached after entering a tunnel via a large brass two story elevator rising over 400 feet to the building. The Kehlsteinhaus was Martin Bormann's present for Hitler on the occasion of his 50th birthday in 1939. It was known by the Allies as the "Eagles Nest."
Believing the Obersalzberg to be where Hitler and his closest henchmen would make their final stand, in April 1945 Allied bombing raids reduced much of the area to ruins. The "Eagles Nest", intended as a private retreat from which Hitler could gaze over a conquered Europe, being an isolated target, survived this onslaught, and endures to this day.
Nicolas Trudgian's fine new painting shows P-51 D's of the 339th Fighter Group roaring over the rooftop of Hitler's now abandoned folly. With Germany and the Third Reich on the brink of defeat, this majestic aviation image conveys the poignant irony of the greatest lost cause in human history, with P-51 Mustangs providing a fitting symbol of victory over tyranny.
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