Suspect arrested over fire at Hitler’s ‘Eagle’s Nest’ retreat in Bavaria

German police have arrested a suspect after a fire ripped through Adolf Hitler’s former mountain retreat in Bavaria, leaving the historic Nazi meeting place – known as the Eagle’s Nest – largely destroyed.

About 200 firefighters were deployed on Friday night to tackle the blaze at the Nazi dictator’s remote, purpose-built Kehlsteinhaus residence, a protected building on the peak of Obersalzberg in southern Germany.

Flames rose high into the air as firefighters approached the scene to find the building “completely ablaze”, police said.

“A suspicious person was taken into temporary custody,” they said in a later statement, adding that nobody was injured in the fire.

Lisa Maier, a police spokesperson, said firefighters struggled to tackle the fire due to its location at an altitude of 1,834 metres (6,000 feet).

The building, which was one of the few undamaged monuments of the Hitler era, was only accessible with “heavy breathing apparatus”, she said.

Built by the Nazis and formally inaugurated by Hitler on his birthday in 1939, the Eagle’s Nest has been preserved as a monument to “the insanity of the regime”, according to its website.

It is only accessible via a road cut into the mountain through previously impassable terrain. Nazis would enter a tunnel and take a 124-metre golden brass lift buried in the mountain to get inside the building.

Authorities were alerted to the fire on Friday evening, when a smoke detector triggered a fire alarm at about 9.15pm (7.50pm), police said. When firefighters arrived on the scene at about 9.50pm, the entire building was engulfed in flames.

No reason for the fire was given, but the German media reported that the investigators suspected it was the result of arson. Firefighters found no one inside the building, which was reportedly still burning at 7am on Saturday – more than nine hours after the alarm was raised.

Fire departments from six municipalities sent emergency personnel to tackle the blaze and the Bavarian Red Cross, the local mountain rescue service and the police also attended the incident.

Later that morning, the blaze appeared to be out, although smoke continued to rise from the smouldering building.

A police spokesperson told the German tabloid Bild: “It is damaged to a large extent. The house is unlikely to be saved.” Officers blocked access to the road leading to the retreat, according to an AFP photographer.

Maier said police were still investigating and would hold a news conference later on Saturday.

According to Bild, a motorcyclist whom local police officers came across on their way to the scene had been arrested, but his involvement in the fire remains unclear and a police spokesperson declined to release information about his identity.

The Eagle’s Nest was constructed between 1937 and 1938 and forms part of the toxic legacy of Hitler’s Third Reich, which was responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews as well as Roma, LGBTQ people and Communists in the Holocaust.

It became legendary in the postwar period and was often depicted as an essential meeting place in US war films, although in reality Hitler rarely visited the complex.

The building survived the second world war undamaged and since 1952 has hosted an exhibition by the Institute for Contemporary History recounting the house’s Nazi history and a restaurant.