Eagle's Nest Private Tour – History at 1,834 Metres

Location and Geography

The Eagle's Nest (Kehlsteinhaus) stands on the summit of the Kehlstein, a spur of the Hoher Brett mountain in the Berchtesgadener Land, at 1,834 metres above sea level. On a clear day, the view extends across the Königssee, the Watzmann (2,713 m), the Hagengebirge range, and far into the Salzburg Alps – on exceptionally clear days, all the way to the Dachstein in Styria. The building stands nearly 800 metres above the Obersalzberg and just a few kilometres from the Austrian border. Berchtesgaden itself is 30 kilometres from Salzburg, 150 kilometres from Munich.

Origins and Nazi History

Martin Bormann, head of the Party Chancellery and Hitler's closest confidant, initiated the project in 1937 as a gift from the Nazi Party to Hitler on his 50th birthday, 20 April 1939. The Munich architect Roderich Fick oversaw the design. More than 3,000 workers completed one of the most audacious mountain construction projects of the 20th century in just 13 months – at an altitude that normally makes building work almost impossible.

The Kehlstein road is the true engineering masterpiece: 6.5 kilometres of mountain road with 27 hairpin bends, blasted entirely from solid rock, with no crash barriers and gradients of up to 28 percent. More than 400 metres of mountain were tunnelled and excavated for the road alone. At its end, a 124-metre tunnel leads through the rock to the elevator – a brass-fitted cabin with Venetian mirrors, green leather upholstery, and a diameter of 3.5 metres. The lift covers 124 metres of elevation in 41 seconds.

Hitler himself visited the Eagle's Nest only about 14 times in the six years before the war's end. He suffered from vertigo and reportedly disliked the building. The so-called Adlerhorst was above all a venue for official state visits: Mussolini, Chamberlain, and other heads of state were received here.

End of the War and the Postwar Era

On 4 May 1945, soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Division and the Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment – made famous by the HBO series Band of Brothers – occupied the Eagle's Nest without resistance. The SS had evacuated the building shortly before. American troops drank Hitler's wine cellar dry and left the building largely undamaged. The Documentation Centre on the Obersalzberg gives a detailed account of these final days of the war.

Since 1952, the Free State of Bavaria has operated the Eagle's Nest as a mountain restaurant. It is open only from mid-May to late October – winter access is blocked by ice and snow. Private vehicles are not permitted on the Kehlstein road. The mandatory special bus service from the Obersalzberg Documentation Centre is part of the visitor experience.

Historical Context: The Obersalzberg

The Eagle's Nest cannot be understood in isolation – it must be seen as part of the "Führer's restricted zone" on the Obersalzberg, a 10-square-kilometre area that the Nazi Party systematically expropriated from its original residents from 1933 onwards. Hitler's Berghof, Speer's studio, Göring's country residence, and numerous bunker complexes shaped the Obersalzberg. The Documentation Centre Obersalzberg, 800 metres below the Eagle's Nest and incorporating a preserved section of the tunnel system, is the most rigorously researched account of this history anywhere in Germany – an ideal starting point for a private visit.