Eagle's Nest Germany

Legendary

Sitting above the town of Obersalzberg, Adolf Hitler’s summit residence was used to entertain important guests.

Photo by glawster

Hitler was afraid of the elevator. He worried that the machinery on the roof would attract lightning, so he avoided riding it whenever he could.

He had a point. Lightning struck the site twice while it was being built, though Martin Bormann, the Nazi official in charge, made sure nobody mentioned it to him.

The building's real name is the Kehlsteinhaus, meaning "House on Kehlstein." It sits on a rocky peak 1,834 meters above the Bavarian town of Berchtesgaden.

Bormann ordered it built in 1937 as a gift for Hitler's 50th birthday. It wasn't meant to be a home or a fortress. It was meant to impress visiting foreign officials and show off Nazi power.

Getting a building up there was the hard part. Around 3,500 workers cut a 6.5-kilometer road up the mountain, blasting through five tunnels along the way.

Then they carved a tunnel straight into the rock and installed a brass elevator that rises 124 meters through solid stone. The whole project took just 13 months, and twelve workers died doing it.

Hitler visited only 14 documented times. He preferred his house lower down the mountain and usually let others do the entertaining here.

His first visit came in 1938. That October, he received the departing French ambassador, André François-Poncet.

François-Poncet later wrote about the visit for French newspapers and called the place the "Eagle's Nest." The nickname spread quickly among English and French speakers, and it stuck.

Near the end of the war, British bombers tried to destroy it. The building was too small a target to hit, so it survived while much of the area below was flattened.

Officials nearly tore it down after the war. A local Bavarian leader stepped in and saved it instead.

Ride the special bus up the mountain road, then take the brass elevator through the rock to the top. Look for the marble fireplace inside, a gift sent by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Visit the Documentation Center Obersalzberg at the base first, where exhibits and preserved bunkers explain what really happened here.