Walking around Germany today, one sees few signs of the brutal years of Nazi rule. Aside from concentration camps and a handful of larger sites like Berlin's Olympic Stadium and the Nuremberg Rally Grounds preserved as memorials, Germany has scrubbed away signs of its dark past and replaced them with memorials remembering countless victims. From the early 1930s until 1945, swastikas and Reichsadlers (“eagles of the Reich,” which usually held swastikas in their talons) were splashed over every German city, town, and small village in the country.
Today, it is incredibly rare to find an original “in the wild.” Ironically, a surviving Reichsadler can be found in one of the homes of the National Socialist Movement, Nuremberg, and even more surprising is that the symbol is found on the side of a Burger King. Yes, that Burger King, the home of the Whopper.
Known locally as the “Reichs-Burger-King,” the building is a former power station built between 1937 and 1939. It was meant to power the neighboring Rally Grounds, and at the time could pump out enough power to support a small city. The neo-classical building was designed by notorious Nazi architect Albert Speer himself. Entering the Burger King requires passing through its original massive metal doors, though the interior resembles the modern fast food restaurant that it is. The Reichsadler can be found on the eastern facade. The actual statue was been torn away, but the outline is clearly visible. So how did a symbol of evil escape erasure and end up hosting a burger joint?
After Germany's defeat in 1945, there are many images of Allied forces toppling Nazi symbols. In the case of Nuremberg’s Rally Grounds, next to which the power station stands, American soldiers used dynamite to annihilate the massive swastika crowning the pavilion. At some point, someone ripped the power station’s Reichsadler from its wall, but the outline remained and the building survived.
From 1960 the transformer house was owned by a power company, N-Ergie, which used it for energy supply and storage the late 1990s. In 2002, a proposal was made to construct a high-rise hotel with the power station integrated into the plan as the hotel’s entrance, but this never happened.
Enter the Burger King, which opened in 2006. It's a mystery why the company decided to keep the original exterior, though it's worth noting the building is protected as a historical monument.
The head of the Nazi Party Rally Grounds documentation center, Florian Dierl, describes it as a “curiosity” that an American fast-food chain is staying in a Nazi building of all places, but has stated that he doesn't necessarily see a scandal.
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