'Nazi vanity project': Eagle's Nest in Bavarian Alps a symbol of regime's 'conquest of nature'

Eve Irvine is pleased to welcome Sir Richard Evans, British Historian and Regius Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Cambridge. The controversy surrounding the fate of Adolf Hitler's Eagle's Nest, the Nazi-era mountaintop complex in the Bavarian Alps, raises profound questions about the relationship between architecture, historical memory and political extremism. At the heart of the debate lies a difficult distinction: preserving the material evidence of history is not necessarily the same as preserving the symbols through which a criminal regime sought to glorify itself. "This is a Nazi vanity project," Evans argues and his conclusion is unequivocal: the mountain must be "restored to its natural state."