BERLIN -- Austrian authorities say the house where Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 will become a police precinct, ending years of uncertainty over the building that's become a pilgrimage site for people who glorify the Nazi dictator.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Peschorn said late Tuesday that the "the future use of the house by the police should send an unmistakable signal that this building will forever be removed from the commemoration of national socialism."

Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, shortly before launching a campaign of military conquest and racist extermination across Europe that cost tens of millions of lives.

The house in Braunau am Inn, near the German border, will be redesigned following an international architectural competition.

It was expropriated from the previous owner in 2017.