On the morning of April 28, 1945, a small unit of Luftwaffe soldiers carried out their orders with terrible efficiency. Using more than eighty aircraft bombs, they reduced Carinhall to rubble, destroying the vast hunting estate that Hermann Göring had built northeast of Berlin. The demolition was deliberate, a final act of erasure ordered by the Reich Marshal himself before he fled south. Eight days earlier, on Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday, Göring had left the estate for the last time, giving instructions that the moment Soviet forces came within sight, the entire complex was to be destroyed.

The Red Army was advancing from the east, and everything Göring had spent years accumulating—the art, the luxury, the carefully constructed image of a Renaissance prince—was about to be swallowed by the war he had helped unleash. But Göring had not abandoned his treasures. Weeks earlier, he had made a fateful decision to evacuate his art collection from Carinhall and transport it south, to what he hoped would be a more secure location near Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps. The evacuation was massive in scale: twenty-four heavy trucks and multiple railway cars were loaded with paintings, sculptures, tapestries, antiquities, and furnishings.

Some pieces were sent to a converted salt mine at Altaussee in Austria. Others were loaded aboard trains and sent south toward Hitler’s mountain retreat at the Obersalzberg. Among those trains was Göring’s personal armored train, a rolling headquarters that had carried him across Europe in comfort and spectacle throughout the war. Now it carried the looted treasures of a continent, hidden inside railway tunnels near Berchtesgaden as Allied forces closed in.

Göring was not a man of modest tastes. Born in 1893 to a family with connections to German colonial administration, he had grown up partly in a castle owned by his godfather, a wealthy physician of Jewish descent, who provided him with a taste for aristocratic living that would shape his entire life. A decorated fighter ace from the First World War who had commanded the legendary Richthofen squadron after the Red Baron’s death, Göring was one of Adolf Hitler’s earliest and most loyal supporters. He had been wounded in the failed Munich beer hall putsch of 1923 and spent years in exile nursing a morphine addiction that would plague him for life.

But when the Nazis seized control of Germany in 1933, Göring accumulated titles and power with remarkable speed. He became Prussian interior minister, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, Reich Master of the Hunt, Reich Master of Forests, and ultimately Reich Marshal, a rank created specifically for him that placed him above all other military officers. In 1941, Hitler even designated him as his official successor, though this favor would not last. With each title came new opportunities for indulgence, and Göring seized them all with both hands.

He constructed a massive hunting estate called Carinhall in the Schorfheide forest northeast of Berlin, named after his deceased Swedish first wife Carin, whose remains he had exhumed from Sweden and reinterred in an elaborate mausoleum on the grounds. The main architect was Werner March, who had also designed the Olympic stadium in Berlin. Carinhall grew to enormous proportions over the years, eventually featuring a thirty-four-meter-long grand gallery where Göring displayed his most prized artworks, along with hunting halls, libraries, and every conceivable luxury. The loft contained a gigantic model railway layout complete with miniature airplanes that could drop tiny wooden bombs, a hobby Göring shared with visiting dignitaries, including at one point King Edward VIII of England.

He kept pet lion cubs borrowed from the Berlin Zoo both at Carinhall and at his secondary residence near Hitler’s retreat at Obersalzberg. And he traveled in a manner befitting his self-image as a Renaissance prince, aboard a personal armored train that served as his mobile headquarters. The train was officially designated Sonderzug Asia, a code name that had nothing to do with the continent and everything to do with wartime security protocols. Later, from February 1943, its designation was changed to Pommern, or Pomerania.

But whatever its official name, the train was unmistakably Göring’s creation, reflecting his personality in every detail. Unlike Hitler’s more austere Führersonderzug, Göring’s train was designed for comfort and spectacle. It consisted of approximately fifteen carriages, though the exact composition varied depending on the mission and the circumstances. At both ends of the train sat armored flak wagons, flatcars mounted with quadruple 20mm anti-aircraft guns operated by crews from the Luftwaffe’s General Göring regiment.

These weapons could fire at targets up to four kilometers away and were manned around the clock whenever the train moved through potentially hostile territory. The heart of the train was the Reich Marshal’s personal salon car numbered 10,215, which had been specially constructed for Göring by the Wegmann company in Kassel. This was no ordinary railway carriage. It featured wood-paneled compartments finished in fine mahogany and birch, plush seating upholstered in the finest fabrics, and a private bathroom that had been specifically designed to accommodate Göring’s considerable bulk; he was significantly overweight throughout most of the war.

The salon included a sitting area where Göring could conduct meetings, a sleeping compartment with an extra-wide bed, and even a small cinema projection system hidden behind a bookshelf. The bookshelves themselves were typically stocked not with classic literature, but with detective novels, which Göring preferred for light reading during long journeys. A second salon car, numbered 10,251, served as a library and additional living space. Built in 1937 by the same Kassel manufacturer, this carriage cost 390,000 Reichsmarks, roughly double the price of a standard sleeping car and equivalent to several million dollars in today’s money.

It featured a large salon with a radio, a gramophone, and comfortable seating, along with two separate sleeping apartments, each with its own bathroom and sitting area. The bathroom between the compartments featured a bathtub accessible from both sides through sliding doors, a remarkably extravagant feature for a railway carriage. The interior design followed the art deco aesthetic popular in the late 1930s, with carefully matched woods, quality textiles, and attention to every detail of comfort and appearance. Beyond these personal carriages, the train included a dining car where Göring entertained guests with elaborate meals served on fine Deutsche Reichsbahn silverware bearing special markings.

There was a communications car equipped with telephones, teletype machines, and radio equipment that allowed Göring to maintain contact with Luftwaffe headquarters and other military commands while traveling. A baggage car carried the Reich Marshal’s extensive wardrobe; Göring was famous for changing his elaborate uniforms multiple times per day and owned countless custom-designed outfits, including his signature leather hunting jackets and jeweled marshal’s batons. Additional carriages housed staff, security personnel, and the administrative officials who managed Göring’s various responsibilities. The train’s administrator was Fritz Görnert, a member of Göring’s personal staff who maintained close connections with Martin Bormann and the Nazi party hierarchy.

According to wartime intelligence reports, Görnert and his associates used the train not only for official travel, but also as a logistics network for transporting looted art from across occupied Europe. The train would arrive at locations in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and elsewhere, where Göring’s agents had identified valuable artworks. Selected pieces would be loaded aboard and transported back to Carinhall or other storage locations. This systematic looting operation made Göring’s train complicit in one of history’s largest art thefts.

Göring worked closely with the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, an organization specifically tasked with the looting of artwork and cultural material from Jewish collections, libraries, and museums throughout Europe. Headed by Alfred Rosenberg, the task force established a major collection center and headquarters in Paris at the Jeu de Paume Museum. Some 26,000 railroad cars full of art treasures, furniture, and other looted items were sent to Germany from France alone during the occupation. Göring personally visited the Paris headquarters approximately twenty times between 1941 and 1944, selecting artworks of especially high quality that had been set aside specifically for his inspection.

In addition to the roughly seven hundred works he grabbed from the Rosenberg organization, Göring also deployed his own unit, the Devisenschutzkommando, in occupied territories to confiscate art on his behalf. From 1937 onwards, Göring received assistance from the art dealer Walter Andreas Hofer in compiling his collection. From 1939 to 1944, Hofer acted as director of the Göring collection, traveling across Europe to identify and acquire pieces for his patron. Throughout the war, the train crisscrossed Europe as Göring traveled between headquarters, inspected Luftwaffe units, and attended to his various official duties.

It was frequently parked in camouflage positions near forests or inside railway tunnels to protect against Allied air attack. Göring’s personal photographer, Itel Langanger, documented many of these journeys, capturing images of the Reich Marshal conducting business from his mobile headquarters, meeting with subordinates like Adolf Galland and Hans Jeschonnek beside the train, and hosting foreign visitors, including Romanian Air Force officers. The photographs show a man seemingly at ease despite the mounting disasters befalling German arms, hosting outdoor lunches under white tablecloths, reviewing documents in his wood-paneled compartments, and enjoying the luxuries of travel even as German cities burned under Allied bombing. But by early 1945, the comfortable existence that the train represented was coming to an end.

Göring himself had already arrived at Berchtesgaden, where he hoped to assume leadership of the Reich as Hitler’s designated successor. What happened next is one of the war’s most dramatic episodes of political collapse. On the 23rd of April 1945, Göring sent a telegram to Hitler in his Berlin bunker, asking for confirmation that he should take over leadership of Germany in accordance with Hitler’s 1941 succession decree. Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary and Göring’s longtime rival, presented the telegram to Hitler as evidence of treason.

Hitler flew into a rage, stripped Göring of all his offices and titles, expelled him from the Nazi party, and ordered his arrest. SS troops placed Göring under house arrest at his Berchtesgaden residence while his wife Emmy and young daughter Edda remained nearby. Meanwhile, Göring’s trains sat hidden in the railway tunnels around Berchtesgaden, packed with stolen treasures. The main goods train containing art from Carinhall was concealed in an unfinished railway tunnel that had been intended to connect Berchtesgaden with Salzburg.

Walter Andreas Hofer, Göring’s art dealer and the director of his gallery at Carinhall, actually took up residence inside one of the train cars to maintain constant watch over the collection. As American forces approached, Hofer arranged for some of the most valuable pieces to be moved to air raid shelters dispersed around the area. On the 25th of April 1945, Allied bombers struck the Obersalzberg in one of the final major raids of the war. More than 1,400 tons of bombs rained down on Hitler’s mountain retreat, severely damaging the Berghof and destroying houses belonging to Göring, Bormann, and other Nazi leaders.

One Lancaster bomber from the Royal Australian Air Force’s 460 Squadron was shot down during the attack, among the last Allied aircraft lost over Germany. Göring himself survived the raid by sheltering in the elaborate bunker system that had been dug into the mountainside. The first American ground forces reached Berchtesgaden on the 4th of May 1945. Elements of the Third Infantry Division arrived first and received the town’s surrender on the Schlossplatz.

The following day, the French Second Armored Division arrived, followed closely by paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division’s 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, the famous Screaming Eagles, who had jumped into Normandy and fought at Bastogne. There was some confusion and even minor firefights as different Allied units converged on the prize of Hitler’s mountain retreat. But by May 8th, the day Germany officially surrendered, American forces had established firm control over the area. What the soldiers discovered astonished them.

The elaborate bunker systems beneath the Obersalzberg contained vast quantities of wine, champagne, and luxury goods that the Nazi leadership had stockpiled. The damaged homes of Nazi leaders yielded silver, china, and personal effects. GIs rummaged through the ruins of the Berghof, Hitler’s residence, collecting souvenirs ranging from monogrammed silverware to Eva Braun’s personal effects. The French Second Armored Division and the American Third Infantry Division had been the first to capture the area, but the 101st Airborne took over guard duties, and it was their men who discovered the full extent of what had been hidden in the railway tunnels and mountain bunkers.

Hidden in one railway tunnel, they found Göring’s train loaded with one of the greatest art collections ever assembled, much of it stolen from museums, galleries, and private Jewish collectors across Europe. The train had been parked there for protection against Allied air raids. And when American soldiers first opened the freight cars in mid-May, they found them packed with paintings, sculptures, tapestries, and antiquities of almost unimaginable value. The task of cataloging and securing this treasure fell to Captain Harry Anderson of the 101st Airborne Division, who served as the division’s fine arts and monuments officer, one of the Monuments Men who worked to protect cultural property during the war.

Anderson set up his operations at a former Luftwaffe guest house in Unterstein, a small alpine village about four kilometers south of Berchtesgaden. The men of the 101st carried hundreds of paintings, sculptures, and other objects from the tunnel and bunkers to this location for safekeeping. Above the door, someone erected a sign that captured the soldiers’ sardonic humor: “Hermann Göring’s art collection, through the courtesy of the 101st Airborne Division. ”

There were 1,375 paintings in the Unterstein storehouse, housed across forty rooms.

The collection included five works attributed to Rembrandt, along with pieces by Gerard David, Peter Deuce, Van Dyck, Rubens, Canaletto, Boucher, Corot, and most of the other great European masters. One painting that attracted particular attention was a work believed to be by Vermeer, Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery. It was considered perhaps the most valuable piece in the entire collection. Only later would it be revealed as a forgery by the Dutch artist Han van Meegeren, one of the most famous art forgeries of the twentieth century.

Walter Andreas Hofer, Göring’s art dealer, who had stayed with the collection, was captured by American forces and proved surprisingly cooperative in helping to identify and document the artworks. In footage preserved by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Hofer can be seen showing paintings to American soldiers, identifying their origins, and explaining how they had come into Göring’s possession. His testimony, along with detailed records that the methodical Germans had maintained, would prove invaluable in the postwar effort to trace and return looted art to its rightful owners. That process continues to this day, with many works still missing or their ownership disputed.

Göring himself surrendered to American forces on the 9th of May 1945, the day after Germany’s official capitulation. He had hoped to negotiate with General Eisenhower man to man, and proposed using Schloss Fischhorn Castle as a meeting place, perhaps not coincidentally, another location where Nazi art loot was stored. Instead, he was taken into custody and eventually transported to Nuremberg to face trial as a major war criminal. At his trial, Göring remained defiant, defending his actions and even boasting about his art collection.

He was convicted on all counts—conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity—and sentenced to death by hanging. On the 15th of October 1946, just hours before his scheduled execution, Göring cheated the hangman by swallowing a cyanide capsule he had somehow concealed from his guards. But what became of the trains that had carried him across Europe in such luxury? The fate of Göring’s rolling stock varied considerably, shaped by the chaos of the immediate postwar period, the policies of the occupation authorities, and sometimes pure chance.

The goods train packed with art from Carinhall was emptied by American forces, its contents eventually distributed to various collection points before being sorted for restitution or held in trust. Much of the looted art was eventually returned to its countries of origin, though the process was complicated, incomplete, and in many cases remains unresolved decades later. The freight cars themselves, stripped of their extraordinary cargo, likely returned to ordinary service on the German railway network, or were scrapped in the massive disposal programs that followed the war. The armored flak wagons that had protected the train were particularly valuable to intelligence officers studying German anti-aircraft technology.

Some were certainly sent to Allied testing facilities. Others were probably scrapped along with the thousands of other military railway vehicles that cluttered the German network in 1945. The personal salon cars followed more interesting paths. On the 26th of April 1945, just days before the German surrender, American forces seized the salon car numbered 10,215 near Berchtesgaden.

This was the carriage that had been specially built for Göring, with its extra-wide bed, private cinema, and luxurious wood-paneled compartments. The Americans initially stored it with other captured railway stock at the Frankfurt am Main Süd station. There, Colonel Stoddard, commander of military railways in Germany, selected it as his personal service vehicle, and it was transferred to Stuttgart. Shortly afterward, it was incorporated into special train A-600, used by General Lucius Clay and later by various high-ranking American officials during the occupation.

The Deutsche Bundesbahn, the West German Federal Railway, received the car back on the 23rd of May 1953, by which point it was in rather worn condition after years of American use. The railway considered various options: converting it to a standard passenger car, using it for special services, or selling it. Offers came from Argentina and South Africa, but the Bundesbahn’s asking price of 516,000 Deutsche marks proved too high. Eventually, in January 1951, the railway decided on the cheapest option, converting the former Reich Marshal’s luxury carriage into a Gesellschaftswagen, a party car or club car that could be rented for group outings.

The interior was stripped out to create a large open space suitable for dancing or meetings. Painted steel blue with a silver roof and made available to any group willing to pay for it. The second salon car, numbered 10,251, took an even more remarkable journey through history. After the war ended, this carriage, which had served as Göring’s library and secondary living space, found its way into Hitler’s Führersonderzug for a brief period.

On the 1st of June 1945, it arrived at Frankfurt am Main Süd station along with Hitler’s train, where American military authorities requisitioned it under the designation 098. It was incorporated into special train A-400, held in Frankfurt for use by occupation officials. From 1947, it reportedly served the American high commissioner for Germany. In 1949, the car was transferred to the Deutsche Reichsbahn in the western occupation zones, which shortly afterward became the Deutsche Bundesbahn.

Given the number 10,251 FM and stationed at the Frankfurt Maintenance Works, it might have seemed destined for obscurity. But Bonn had become the capital of the new Federal Republic of Germany, and suddenly West Germany needed transportation suitable for its head of government. The salon car was transferred to Cologne, renumbered 10,251 Köln, and placed at the exclusive disposal of the Bundeskanzler, the federal chancellor. Konrad Adenauer, West Germany’s first chancellor and one of the twentieth century’s most consequential democratic leaders, became a frequent user of the carriage that had once belonged to Hermann Göring.

The irony was striking. A car built for one of history’s greatest criminals now served the leader of a new democratic Germany trying to rebuild its reputation and reestablish its place among civilized nations. Adenauer traveled extensively by rail, using the salon car for domestic political trips, foreign state visits, and even election campaign tours. In one documented journey during the 1961 campaign, the chancellor covered 9,930 kilometers by train.

The salon car’s most famous mission came in September 1955, when Adenauer traveled to Moscow to negotiate the release of German prisoners of war still held in Soviet captivity, some of whom had been imprisoned for more than a decade after the war’s end. The negotiations were tense and emotionally charged, touching on the deepest wounds of the war and the Cold War division of Europe. Because West Germany had no embassy in Moscow, the entire train was designated as extraterritorial, effectively German sovereign territory on Soviet rails. The salon car served as the delegation’s meeting room and refuge, a place where Adenauer and his advisers could discuss strategy away from what they assumed were Soviet listening devices elsewhere in their accommodations.

In this former Nazi luxury carriage, the elderly chancellor, himself a victim of Nazi persecution who had been imprisoned by the Gestapo, worked to secure freedom for German soldiers who had served Hitler’s armies. The chancellor even had his official Mercedes-Benz loaded aboard the train for use in Moscow, the same vehicle that now sits in the Haus der Geschichte alongside the salon car. Special broad-gauge bogies were fitted to the car to accommodate the different Soviet rail gauge, a technical necessity that added to the symbolism of crossing between two worlds. The mission ultimately succeeded.

Adenauer secured the release of the last 9,626 German POWs, and the salon car had played its small part in one of the Cold War’s diplomatic triumphs. German families who had waited a decade for news of their sons, fathers, and husbands finally received word that they would be coming home. After Adenauer, the car continued to serve subsequent chancellors. Ludwig Erhard, who succeeded Adenauer in 1963, used it frequently and appreciated its comfort.

He once noted that it offered peace, relaxation, and the opportunity for undisturbed work. Kurt Georg Kiesinger and Willy Brandt also traveled aboard the historic carriage. Another significant journey came in 1973, when Chancellor Brandt rode the train from Bonn to West Berlin, passing unhindered through East German territory, a symbolic assertion of the ties between the divided city and the Federal Republic. In 1974, the Deutsche Bundesbahn introduced a new Chancellor’s Salon car capable of higher speeds, and the old carriage numbered 10,251 was retired from official service.

But it did not disappear. The railway began renting it out as a charter car. For the price of twenty first-class tickets, plus a service fee, anyone could hire the former Nazi and chancellorial salon car for private excursions. For sixteen years, the carriage that had once carried Göring and Adenauer served German rail enthusiasts, corporate groups, and curious tourists.

In 1990, as Germany prepared to reunify and Bonn’s days as capital were numbered, the Deutsche Bundesbahn made a decision that ensured the salon car’s survival. It donated the historic carriage to the Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany, a new museum being built in Bonn to document postwar German history. The salon car was actually the first major exhibit to enter the museum, installed during the construction phase before the building’s walls were even complete. Today visitors can find it in the U-Bahn station entrance at Heussallee, where it stands as the museum’s largest and heaviest exhibit, a tangible connection to both the darkest chapter of German history and the democratic renewal that followed.

The interior has been preserved in its postwar state, with the salon finished in muted green, milk coffee colored silk curtains, and wood paneling of Swedish birch, Tabasco mahogany, walnut, and cherry. Visitors can peer through the windows at the compartments where Adenauer strategized his Moscow diplomacy, where Erhard enjoyed his peaceful rail journeys, and where Brandt contemplated the challenges of governing a divided nation. The fact that this same space once hosted Hermann Göring, one of the architects of the Holocaust and the Luftwaffe’s terror bombing campaigns, adds a layer of historical complexity that few museum exhibits can match. The other cars from Göring’s train met various fates.

The 10,215 salon car, after its years as a party car, was eventually recognized for its historical significance. The car that Göring himself had used, where he had conducted Luftwaffe business and relaxed between campaigns, was preserved and can be studied by researchers interested in Nazi-era railway history. Other carriages from the various Nazi leadership trains were absorbed into the general railway fleet, modified for postwar use, or scrapped during the massive reconstruction efforts that transformed German infrastructure in the years after 1945. The silverware, china, and other portable items from Göring’s dining car largely disappeared into private collections.

American, French, and other Allied soldiers took souvenirs from Berchtesgaden in the chaotic days after the surrender, sometimes officially sanctioned, sometimes not. Items bearing the Deutsche Reichsbahn markings and Göring’s personal insignia occasionally appear at auction houses and military memorabilia shows, though authenticating such pieces remains challenging. The 101st Airborne Division’s commanders were presented with gold-plated silver chalices taken from Göring’s treasure trove, each engraved with their names and the division’s battle campaigns. These pieces, made by Göring’s personal jeweler in Berlin and bearing the coat of arms of both Göring and his second wife Emmy Sonnemann, had likely been used at their wedding banquet in 1935.

The railway tunnel near Berchtesgaden, where Göring’s art train was hidden, still exists today, though it is sealed off and inaccessible to the general public. The tunnel was part of an unfinished railway project that was never completed. Visitors to the area can see its entrance, but there is nothing of interest inside. The treasures are long gone, distributed to museums, returned to heirs of their original owners, or lost to history.

The broader legacy of Göring’s train extends beyond the physical carriages themselves. The train’s role in the systematic looting of European art became an important part of the documentation gathered for the Nuremberg trials. OSS reports on Nazi art looting specifically named Fritz Görnert and other members of Göring’s staff as participants in the vast network that stripped occupied Europe of its cultural patrimony. The evidence gathered from the train and its contents helped establish the criminal nature of Nazi cultural policy and supported the prosecution of war crimes that had nothing to do with military action, but everything to do with theft, destruction, and the attempted erasure of entire peoples’ heritage.

The story of the art itself continues to unfold more than eight decades after the war’s end. In 2012, the German Historical Museum published a comprehensive inventory of Göring’s collection, documenting the thousands of pieces that had passed through his hands. Researchers continue to identify works that Göring acquired through looting, forced sales, or outright theft, tracing their provenance and attempting to return them to the families of their original owners. Some paintings that the Monuments Men recovered were mistakenly given to the families of Nazi officials rather than their rightful Jewish owners, an error that has only recently come to light and continues to generate controversy and legal battles.

In 2015, it was discovered that some artworks from the Göring collection that had been recovered by Allied forces had never been properly restituted. The ongoing effort to trace, identify, and return Nazi-looted art has become a major focus of international attention, with dedicated databases, research institutions, and legal frameworks established to facilitate the process. Sarah Wildman, writing in the New Yorker, described Göring’s inventory as “a twisted treasure map, a guide to looting and pillaging and gift-giving among the Nazi brass. ” At the end of the war, she wrote, “Göring packed the booty stored at Carinhall into trains and fled south toward Berchtesgaden in Bavaria.

He blew up Carinhall behind him. The collection was discovered by Allied soldiers. ”

While many artworks have been returned, countless pieces remain in disputed ownership or have simply vanished into the global art market, their Nazi-era provenance concealed or forgotten. The train that Hermann Göring once used to cross Europe in luxury, carrying stolen masterpieces and hosting meetings with Luftwaffe generals, has been transformed into something very different: a memorial to democratic renewal, a teaching tool for understanding how Germany confronted its past, and a reminder that objects can accumulate multiple layers of meaning over time.

The same carriage that enabled one of history’s greatest criminals has become a symbol of the democratic Germany that emerged from the ruins of the Third Reich. Today, visitors to the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn can stand before the salon car and contemplate these contradictions. They can see the space where Nazi policies were discussed and later where the terms of reconciliation with a former enemy were negotiated. They can touch history in a way that photographs and documents cannot provide.

And they can reflect on how a nation rebuilt itself after catastrophe, not by erasing the physical evidence of its past, but by preserving it and placing it in a new context. The train that once represented Nazi excess and the plunder of a continent now tells a different story of survival, transformation, and the possibility of renewal. Of all the fates that might have befallen Hermann Göring’s personal train, this is perhaps the strangest and the most fitting: not destruction, not obscurity, but preservation as a lesson for future generations about the capacity for both terrible evil and remarkable renewal.