Suspected Arsonist Burns Down Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest

A fire tore through the Kehlsteinhaus — the Alpine retreat built for Adolf Hitler and known in the English-speaking world as the Eagle’s Nest — late Friday, leaving the building almost entirely gutted and a 33-year-old man under arrest on suspicion of setting it.

Emergency dispatchers in southeastern Bavaria were alerted around 9:15 p.m. local time, according to the AP, and roughly 200 firefighters, police officers and rescue workers were sent up the mountain above Berchtesgaden. When the first crews arrived, the entire structure was burning. Nobody was inside, and no injuries were reported.

On their way up the steep access road, officers came upon a motorcyclist heading down and took him into custody. German media reported that he tried to flee on the bike before being stopped.

Prosecutors in Traunstein said Saturday that a preliminary psychiatric evaluation indicated the suspect, a German national with ties to the area, suffers from mental illness. He was brought before an investigating judge in Rosenheim, and prosecutor Rainer Vietze said authorities would seek his commitment to a secure forensic psychiatric facility, adding that investigators must assume his criminal responsibility was at least diminished. Officials said they would still examine whether he had a political motive.

Wind and the season’s first snowfall hampered firefighting at the 6,017-foot site, and crews withdrew for part of the night. The risk of falling debris kept them from entering the structure Saturday.

Damage is reportedly estimated in the millions. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, whose state government owns the building, said it was well insured and indicated it would be rebuilt. “We will hardly be able to leave a ruin standing there,” he told the German Press Agency on the sidelines of a party convention in Munich.

Nazi official Martin Bormann commissioned the chalet in 1937, and it was formally presented to Hitler on his 50th birthday in April 1939. Hitler, reportedly afraid of heights, made only around 14 documented visits. The building came through an Allied bombing raid on the Obersalzberg in April 1945 largely intact and has operated as a mountain restaurant since 1952, with visitors arriving by bus and an elevator bored through the rock.

The Obersalzberg Documentation Center, the area’s main Nazi-history museum farther down the mountain, was not damaged.

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