The house in Austria where Adolf Hitler was born is to be turned into a police station with a human rights training centre attached, the Austrian government has said.

The announcement, made on Monday, comes as a film-maker claimed the scheme is close to the late dictator’s own plans for the place.

Guenter Schwaiger has said a local newspaper article, published in May, 1939, outlined the German leader’s wish to have his birth home converted into offices for local authorities.

Mr Schwaiger, a documentary-maker, makes the claim in a film about the house to be released later this month.

He urged authorities to change their plans, or, he warned, they will “always be suspected” of being “in line with the dictator’s [Hitler] wishes,” AFP said.

Renovations to the 8,600 square foot (799 sq metre) corner house, which is in the town of Braunau am Inn on the German border, are estimated to cost £17m.

Work is set to begin in October and be completed by 2025 and the police station to be operating the following year.

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Hitler only spent a short time at the property, but it has continued to draw Nazi sympathisers from around the world.

The country’s government took ownership of the house in 2016, after a lengthy legal battle with its former owner.

Austria has been condemned by historians for being slow to acknowledge its shared responsibility for the Holocaust
and the other crimes of the Nazis before and during the Second World War.

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