A fire engulfed Hitler’s Kehlsteinhaus retreat in Bavaria on Friday. Police detained a suspect; no one was hurt.
A suspect has been detained after a fire destroyed much of the Eagle’s Nest, Adolf Hitler’s mountain retreat in Bavaria, German police said Saturday. No one was injured.
Upper Bavaria South police said authorities were alerted to a fire at the building, known in German as the Kehlsteinhaus, at about 9:15 p.m. local time Friday. It was completely engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived, police said, and no one was found inside. Fire trucks had some difficulty reaching the site because of local conditions. Shortly after the fire broke out, a suspect came into the focus of investigators, police said. The cause is now under criminal investigation, and one person was taken into custody.
The Eagle’s Nest sits on the peak of the Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden at an elevation of 6,017 feet (1,834 meters). It was completed in 1938 and was occasionally used by Hitler as a temporary seat of government. The building was spared from Allied bombing during World War II, which largely preserved its original state. It has since become a popular tourist attraction that also operates as a restaurant and beer garden. Its website describes it as one of the few undamaged monuments of the Hitler era, standing for the insanity of the regime.
Police did not immediately release the suspect’s identity or a possible motive, and they did not say how much of the structure was lost.
Information for this report was provided by CBS News, citing the Upper Bavaria South police.