Hitler's Bavarian retreat to be turned into luxury hotel

A hotel is to open on the site of Adolf Hitler's retreat in the German Alps, the Bavarian government has announced.

A hotel is to open on the site of Adolf Hitler's retreat in the German Alps, the Bavarian government has announced.

The haunt above the town of Berchtesgaden was a part-time seat of government where Hitler and other Nazi leaders met to plan the Holocaust and Germany's assault on Europe. The US military used the area as a resort after the war, before handing it back to Germany in 1996.

The decision has angered many Jewish groups. Bavarian officials have in the past tried to address concerns of Jews, and opened a centre in the area in 1999 to detail the area's Nazi history.

The state of Bavaria has also kept ownership of the land and set the condition that the hotel be designed for affluent tourists - precautions designed to help keep out neo-Nazis.

The hotel, which will be called the Intercontinental Resort Berchtesgaden, will be on the Obersalzberg mountaintop.

When launching the project in 2001, Bavarian officials said the hotel would have 138 rooms, swimming pools, a health spa and nearby ski areas - and would reconnect the site with its 19th-century tourism tradition that predated the Nazis.

Most of the Obersalzberg buildings were destroyed by Allied bombers in 1945. Bavarian officials blew up Hitler's guesthouse in 1952 after fears it would become a neo-Nazi shrine.

The US military occupied Obersalzberg after the war. It was used as a skiing and golfing resort esort until 1996, and is a popular tourist destination for American soldiers.