Schloss Klessheim

[1] In the late 17th century, Prince-Archbishop Johann Ernst von Thun purchased the small aristocratic estate and Kleshof manor house at this site.

[2] After the Austrian Anschluss in 1938, Adolf Hitler, when staying at his nearby Berghof residence, used Schloss Klessheim for conferences and to host official guests like Benito Mussolini, Miklós Horthy, Ion Antonescu, Jozef Tiso and Ante Pavelić.

While Horthy stayed at Klessheim, Hitler on 19 March 1944 secretly gave orders[3] for Operation Margarethe to occupy Hungary and enforce the deportation of the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz.

On 7 July 1944, on the occasion of a weapons exhibition, an attempt by several Wehrmacht officers around von Stauffenberg to kill Hitler failed, when conspirator Helmuth Stieff did not trigger the bomb.

During the Cold War, the neutral Austrian government used it to hold conferences and to host international guests, among them US President Richard Nixon, who on his way to Moscow met there with Chancellor Bruno Kreisky on 20 May 1972.