Newly discovered documents have revealed a bizarre footnote to the history of the second World War where German authorities launched an obsessive campaign against the Finnish owner of a dog because it mimicked a Nazi-salute with its paw.
At the height of the war, the Foreign Office in Berlin commanded its diplomats in the Nazi-friendly country to gather evidence on the dog, and even came up with plans to destroy the pharmaceutical wholesale company which belonged to the dog’s owner.
Historians had not been aware of the strange footnote to the Nazi period before some 30 files containing correspondence and diplomatic cables were found by a researcher.
Klaus Hillenbrand, who has written several books on the Nazi period, was contacted by the historian and examined all of the documents for an article to be published tomorrow in daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung.
He told the Associated Press the entire episode was “completely bizarre.”
“Just months before the Nazis launched their attack on the Soviet Union, they had nothing better to do than to obsess about this dog,” Mr Hillenbrand said.
The dog, Jackie, was owned by Tor Borg, a businessman from the Finnish city of Tampere.
Borg’s wife Josefine, a German citizen known for her anti-Nazi sentiments, dubbed the dog Hitler because of the strange way it raised its paw high in the air like Germans greeting the Fuhrer with a cry of “Heil Hitler!”
On January 29th, 1941, German Vice Consul Willy Erkelenz in Helsinki wrote that “a witness, who does not want to be named, said ... he saw and heard how Borg’s dog reacted to the command ‘Hitler’ by raising its paw.”
Borg was ordered to the German embassy in Helsinki and questioned. He denied ever calling the dog by the dictator’s name, but admitted that his wife called the dog Hitler. He said the paw-raising had only happened a few times in 1933 - shortly after Hitler came to power.
He insisted he never did anything “that could be seen as an insult against the German Reich”.
But the diplomats wrote back to Berlin that “Borg, even though he claims otherwise, is not telling the truth”.
The different ministries involved in the dog row - the Foreign Office, the Economy Ministry and even Hitler’s Chancellery - meticulously reported all their findings.
The economy ministry announced that the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben, which had supplied Borg’s wholesale trade with pharmaceuticals, offered to close down his company by ending their co-operation with him.
The Foreign Office wanted to bring Borg to trial for insulting Hitler, but in the end, none of the potential witnesses were willing to repeat their accusations in front of a judge.
On March 21st, 1941, the Foreign Office asked the Chancellery whether to press charges against Borg and five days later they answered that “considering that the circumstances could not be solved completely, it is not necessary to press charges”.
There’s no evidence that Adolf Hitler was ever told of the case. Tor Borg died aged 60 in 1959. His company Tapereen Rohduskuppa Oy eventually became Tamro Group, the leading wholesale company for pharmaceuticals in the Nordic countries.
A spokeswoman for Tamro Group said they had not been aware of the story until the recent archive discovery.
AP