When Adolf Hitler first encountered the breathtaking mountain scenery and lofty isolation of Obersalzberg in the Bavarian Alps, he instantly fell in love with the spot.

　　As German leader he sealed off the hamlet, creating an exclusive retreat where he and other top Nazis could wine and dine, savor the crisp Alpine air, and plan the most barbarous acts of the Third Reich.

　　Sixty years on, the owners of a new luxury hotel in Obersalzberg, which opens this week, are hoping the area's serene natural charm can attract a different kind of visitor and open a new chapter in the area's blighted history. A glossy brochure presents "an oasis of well-being" where guests can indulge in spa treatments, have their ski boots warmed before use and play a round of golf.

　　The hotel, part of the Intercontinental chain, wants to avoid advertising the fact it is just a stone's throw from where Hitler's Berghof villa once stood, for fear of attracting the wrong sort of visitors. Nor does it wish to evade Obersalzberg's infamy altogether.

　　Staff have been specially trained to answer questions on the area's history, and guests will find "Deadly Utopia" in their rooms, a disturbing account of how the seductive Obersalzberg landscape was woven into Nazi myths of German blood and soil and presented as a pilgrimage site to the Fuehrer.

　　"Obersalzberg is a loaded place ... it was a site linked to the perpetrators, which is a stigma that lingers and will continue to do so," said Bavarian Finance Minister Kurt Faltlhauser, who is behind the development of the resort. "But Obersalzberg has another side. It was also a place to recuperate in stunning landscape. The new hotel is part of this tradition."

　　Despite assurances from the Bavarian state government that it will not tolerate any misuse of the area or "Nazi tourism," Jewish groups have attacked the project as historically insensitive.

　　"Either people don't know the significance of the Obersalzberg, which is bad enough, or worse - they know exactly what kind of a place it is, as Hitler's second seat of government, and they are doing this regardless," Jewish writer Ralph Giordano told German television.

　　In 1952, the American military cleared what remained of Hitler's Berghof, where the dictator received Benito Mussolini, relaxed with his lover Eva Braun and greeted children in lederhosen with his dog Blondie at his heels.

　　"Hitler was shown here as a majestic visionary, as a successful statesman receiving dignitaries, but also as a man of the people - a friend to nature and children," said Volker Dahm, who runs a documentation center on the Nazi period in Obersalzberg.

　　"We have to use the 'pull' this place exerts to inform people, and to present them with all aspects of the Nazi regime."

　　Until the center opened in 1999, neo-Nazi graffiti appeared regularly in Obersalzberg along with impromptu shrines to Hitler with candles and flowers.

　　But Dahm says now that the evils of Nazi rule are compellingly presented, far-right supporters have been deterred from further pilgrimages. Obersalzberg has been demystified.

　　Andreas Nachama, who runs a permanent exhibition on the site of the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin agrees.

　　"These people look for sites which haven't been interpreted by historians, where they can let their ideas run wild. The minute a museum appears they can no longer project their fantasies onto a place."

　　(Reuters)